5 PM Love

Nostalgia is strange and memories stranger..It is a bit past 5 in the evening..till the clock turns 7..there shall be a sense of slow eternity that crowds into an impending sleep. A sense of waiting, as if watching the little things closing in for the night. There is still light streaming in from some of the delicate curtains in the living room and all of a sudden a song hovering in the mind. For someone from the East, it still surprises me at the amount of light late into the evening.

I was perhaps in lower school, we had a record player that looked a bit like this. Sundays smelt of the mandatory Mutton while Baba would put on a shiny black record on the player and the strains would waft in..The houses in Assam had wooden floors, I remember trying not to step on the odd board that creaked. More than the song it was Baba humming along that I loved listening to..the opening of a tap somewhere..the whistle of a pressure cooker, all while Hemanta sang-

'Mone robe kina robe amare

Se amar mone nai mone nai

Khone khone asi tobo duare

Okarone gaan gai'

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1MrLjeJXK6g

The player would sometimes stop and the pin would stick to one place and keep repeating the same part again and again..I would lift my head from my abstract games behind the curtain, giggle and look at someone walking up to the player to adjust it..sometimes the same song would play again for sometime..with feet creaking on the boards, the humming would be louder..Ma would call from somewhere..stillness in the air was still complete.

Today as I sip my tea and remember the song from childhood I hum it again while I play it on Youtube..things have become simpler..only nostalgia remains inexplicable. 

( Image from Google)

Love in the times of Malls

Was dragged by cousins and family to a pre-Bengali New Year lunch and some mall hopping today..In many ways malls feel like Facebook, everyone wants to be seen here( & I'm not excluding myself here) and look at others..people aimlessly wandering around, many a times adjusting their dresses and Ray Ban's wondering if they were being looked at..Women in the toilets pee less, adjust their make up more :)

My take away was this couple I chanced upon on the stairs, completely oblivious to anyone else, laughing and talking animatedly with each other, at times pausing and looking at each other's eyes..I could not help but take a pic from the back( thankfully I did not disturb them, they didn't notice me at all..besides would not have wanted to click their faces). I was reminded of few lines from a book I am reading, 'Asura', when Ravana is asked by his Gurus to kick aside all emotions in order to be the supreme warrior he says of love, ' Without love, without the king of emotions nothing exists..if one has not felt the painful need to be with one's lover..if you have not felt the love of your own, nothing matters...People have died for love in the past, and will continue to do so as long as the world exists. I shall always love. I love because I exist, I exist because I love.' 

As for myself I found my love in a lovely hard bound copy of Henry Jame's ' The Portrait of a Lady'..at a terrific discount.

A poem for Mahadevyakka- A.K Ramanujan

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Around the 12 th century, the Bhakti poetry movement spread rapidly in the Southern parts of India. Many of these poets especially those in the Kannada region were worshipers of Shiva. Amongst them was a well known woman poet named, Mahadevyakka. An ardent Shiva worshiper, she is said to have roamed around naked. When people asked her, about her immodesty she replied that, since the Lord had already seen her, she did not care about who else saw her.

A.K Ramanujan translated four such poets from the 12 th century, in his book- 'Speaking of Shiva' ( 1973) For Mahadevyakka however he wrote a special poem in a separate anthology called 'The Black Hen'. 

Mythologies 3

'Keep off when I worship Shiva.
Touch me three times, and you'l never see me again',
said Akka to her new groom
who couldn't believe his ears.

Om Om!
she seemed to intone with every breadth
and all he could think of was her round breast,
her musk, her darling navel and the rest.
So he hovered and touched her, her body deathly

cold to mortal touch, but hot for God's
first move, a caress like nothing on earth.
She fled his hand as she would a spider,

threw away her modesty as the rods
and cones of her eyes gave the world a new birth:
She saw Him then, unborn, form of forms, the Rider,

His white Bull chewing the cud in her backyard.

While I am not sure if the last line was meant to spring a surprise or add that little dash of humour as many of his poems, that end in a surprising twist. But Ramanujan is said to have undergone a tremendous change in his persona while he translated these Kannada poets, who spoke on Shiva. 

( The image taken from http://przmm.blogspot.in/2011/06/celebration-of-kama-love-frozen-in.html is a personal favourite of mine, it shows a broken image of Shiva and Shakti in a blissful union under the tree of life. The posture is supposed to resemble a Tantrik Bouddha..somehow the incompleteness of the broken sculpture seems to add to an unspoken of dimension that is yet to be discovered..perhaps never will and hence immensely seductive and mysterious)

( Story of Mahadevyakka from 'An A.K Ramanujan story')

A bit of Jasmine

It would rain tonight,

the winds had whispered-

The Jasmine by my window

shook in agreement.

A white canopy covered the brown earth,

as I greedily picked.

The rains they fell..

I sat a little apart

and slowly,

became their smell.

© 2013  Maitreyee Bhattacharjee Chowdhury 

Trying to find oneself through Dance, Masks and Theyyam- Stranger in my own country

Among st all the states in the Southern India, Kerala as always fascinated me..in different ways and in different directions. I was in Kerala in the early 90 s..did most of the touristy things..went back again in early 2000 and then again about 2 years back. 

On one of these trips I witnessed the 'Theyyam'..perhaps one of the most well preserved dances in these regions. The energy at such a dance recital is to be seen to be believed. The dancer is a strange combination of masks, garish costumes, armor, flowers, masks and paints. There is a kind of sacred frenzy about the dancer. One has the feeling of theater, play and dance all being rolled into one.

There is meticulous make up, the process where the dancer slowly becomes the character and manifests himself into a particular form. Most of the masks are different and as elaborate. The dance gains momentum once the dancer is on stage and watching the dance one feels his transformation from the ordinary mortal to God, to the character he plays. 

As I sat watching, it was night, the evening slowly enfolding itself. People begin to fill in a makeshift stage. There is the heady fragrance of Jasmine, sometimes a bit too heady for me. Men in starched white dhotis surround me. As if after great thought, suddenly they smile and one is in raptures. Often I am considered French, why, I have no understanding. Everyone seems to settle down at their own pace and they seem to understand that things will settle in its own time..here there is no time..everything is fluid. Little children try and clamber up on the stage, mothers laugh and pull them down, men fan their dhotis, there is a general bonhomie. I am the stranger, only if I chose to be one.

I remember wondering if this was dance or a reminder of rhythmic movements. It is something that one has a feel has been untouched by time and its changes. There is terrifying melancholy in those painted eyes, even anger sometimes in expression. The dance is supposed to bring alive myths and some of the most hallowed traditions from ancient scripture..I wonder which ones..but after a while actually it really does not matter which..one is so taken up by the energy of it all and one reaches a space where you believe what the dancer wants you to believe.

The fluidity of the dance seems to overtake the fluidity of the changes. In the mask, the dancer becomes someone who he is not and also who he is trying to find..the present becomes ancient..the drum beats, the mask, the motions, all seem small parts of a magnificent whole. I sometimes recognize the roles, he plays, sometimes the myths, the ancient stories portrayed. Somewhere down the line, the dancer overcomes the dance..and one is left with the overwhelming beat of the drums and then the peace of resounding silence, where the dancer looks through you and seems to see your inner thoughts, in that moment time stands still.

- Image courtesy Dhanaraj Keezhara

The diary of a common woman

I am a common woman, a point of view, a stumbling belief and some bitter faith in humanity are things that seem to linger on in me..kill me for that if you will and I shall still remain an ordinary, opinionated woman. Just like some of you guys, with inner demons, I deal with my history, chemistry if you like, with angels in the head screaming at the demons to keep peace & I emerge with some kind of de-coctioned form of God brewed in my own incoherent beliefs. I am pally with my God and with my demons too, I flaunt my simplistic opinions, the occasional tragedy and the calm beneath the alarm and on some day s I'm not on speaking terms with what the world calls a God for the lack of a better term perhaps? There are days, when I am a dreamer..an unskilled and incapable one at that, of which nothing comes, nothing becomes and still one plods at it. I am refuge, in convenient reason, the warm sun after a midnight's churning..a Beatnik gone horribly wrong, a misprogrammed radio with kathak and Odissi in tune to rock & roll..I am emotions rolled into a high performance heart..the fool who is tired with the mind games and sulks in a corner only to be pulled into the warmth of a smile. I am best locked in a closet like a mad man rummaging through another s drawers in search of an invisible love letter that never was written on paper but remained in the heart..I thump on the closet door, find it shut and grow quiet in sudden fits of peace. I am the fool, the woman who tried and never gave up, like the woman who hung from another's ceiling in another closeted door..I am the chameleon, Karma had decided to have a fling with, got bored and designed and walked away into the 'roses are red hue'..a cashless poet, writing nonsense poetry..for the silences that do not speak, for your sorrow and mine too, the chameleon who grew colors or died..the cashless, emotional fool who wrote long stuff for people who cared and those who didn't, who learnt no lessons, never the ones that mattered at least..I am Ms wonderful..filled in a bag full of posey s the scent of which I detest.. in a room full of good behavior, I am the smirk who wishes to kick aside good manners and get drunk...I am a bag full of mis-conceptions, the woman with a smile that you might just have picked up and begun to read..a howling wolf from lonely shores..singing lullaby s to decent children on decent days. I am the drunk, the simple woman , with simple needs, the fugitive with the need to escape..the warm hearted fool..the young man's stupidity, an elderly's smile..short sighted, mad and incomplete..I am all of you and yet none..I am trying & not-trying too.

Goodness, you're such a blind alley..the latest slang in town.

( Picture from Google)

Sperms in every city

A few short cuts,

In what seems to be a very long run, at times.

A woman here,

A woman there.

Sperms in every state,

Was the journey worth the conclusion?

She shall ask,

when you burn-

In different faces, in different forms..

A fragile heart, the only commonality.

The shadows applaud with some macabre..

They dance, in pyres of glee.

Ides of March, they come.

© 2013 Maitreyee B Chowdhury