Melting Potluck

People worry quite a bit about social media and its effects upon society, their children and so on, but I must admit that in the limited and rather benign way I use it, I’m enjoying this phase of the Internet enormously. My mother for one would have LOVED Instagram.

Particularly food! Growing up, I think households stuck with their traditional ways of doing things. As a young, inexperienced householder, my mother’s talimpu or chaunk, her mix of spices, even her preferred way of chopping vegetables displayed a certain particularity; a style made up with a few elements – certainly including her caste, her region, her mother’s ways of doing things. She branched out hugely as she went on, loading more variety in a meal than we could possibly eat.

I, who wasted my mother’s presence while I had it by not learning very much, am not very hardwired. My knowledge for whatever I may seek comes from Youtube Akka, the collective sorority on the web. Some searches go back, diving into traditional recipes, some expeditions are made into the brave new world of other cuisines and experimentation.

“Akka, pandu mirchi pachchadi cheyyadam…?”

“Idigomma, ila!”

“HoLige maaDo vidhana?” 

“Yes, yes, sariyagi noDulkoLi…”

“Maami, kozhukattai eppadi…” 

“First outer maavu panDradu kattikonga…”

And then there is the unsought. I had no idea the humble rava coupled with a cup of curd could be so versatile. And then there are combinations that I had not previously considered.

One of my favourite summer recipes has come to be this lovely cold soup, which was described as a kind of gazpacho. It pairs cucumbers and green grapes with yoghurt. I don’t know what Ayurveda has to say about it, but I have decided it’s worth the risk.

In my version, in go a couple of green chillies, some black peppers, four or five bird eye chillies, two pods of garlic, pink salt and a dash of olive oil. The addition of dill makes it fabulous but equally nice are coriander and mint. Blend it all and serve chilled.

Walk Slowly

A very long time since I wrote on this blog… I’ve outgrown it perhaps.
But the beautiful Mary Oliver resonated once again with me and where would I record this but here?
 

When I Am Among the Trees, she says…
When I am among the trees,
especially the willows and the honey locust,
equally the beech, the oaks and the pines,
they give off such hints of gladness.
I would almost say that they save me, and daily.

I am so distant from the hope of myself,
in which I have goodness, and discernment,
and never hurry through the world
but walk slowly, and bow often.

Around me the trees stir in their leaves
and call out, “Stay awhile.”
The light flows from their branches.

And they call again, “It's simple,” they say,
“and you too have come
into the world to do this, to go easy, to be filled
with light, and to shine.”

Dawn Chorus

I have not been able to figure out a more precise pattern. But it is always early morning, before dawn and always a Sunday. A group of people, often about 40 in number – or as it happened today, closer to 70 – proceed down the street in a moderate pace, singing bhajans accompanied by manjiras and chimes. Many of them wear white. The men walk to the front and the women bring up the rear.

I have not been able to arrive at what sect they might belong to, or even if the grouping is just a geographical one. They sing mainly of Vishnu, but as they passed slowly out of earshot today, I heard one bhajan to Mahadeva as well. The whole vibe is old fashioned. The melodies are from a former era, the style of sankirtan is gentle. The singers merely pass through, neither looking around nor performative in their attitudes. Simply chanting. One person leads, the others follow. Sweet, and very pleasing.

 

Who are these people? How are they organised? I have not been able to ask, because a) they are singing and it seems rude to snag a straggler and pose questions in moody, crepuscular light; b) I was still in my night things this morning and by the time I was dressed in a more seemly fashion, they were ambling along the next street.

***

It is true I have a nostalgic temperament. An old sepia photograph of Hyderabad from eight decades ago, with wide open spaces and bullock carts, is enough to cause a physical pang. Archival recordings of classical music leave me extraordinarily wistful. I am appreciative of the present moment, but what we have lost – architecturally, culturally, socially, structurally – pinches the heart.

(I remember some hand wringing in this old post.)

So a throwback like this one, a simple nagara sankirtana, is like finding a handful of seed of some precious, long-forgotten landrace, or a small colony of a species considered extinct. A specimen from which it is possible to learn, draw and replicate.

I wonder if they’ll let me join?

Ram naam ras paan

Kumarji has been an acquired taste for me. Although I’d hear some pieces repeatedly, the unique aesthetic that he crafted escaped me with the more technical renditions. But he’s grown on me over the years. During the Samyama program (one of the advanced programs at Isha), they played on loop a few Nirguni bhajans by him. In the state I was in – open, empty – my Master seeped into me in Kumar Gandharva’s voice.

For a few days now I’ve had this earworm. Raga Kalyan in which Kumarji sings a small tukda from Ramcharitmanas. A gorgeous gorgeous piece. Someone in the comments elucidates that the whole verse goes like this:

देखराबा मातहिं निज अद्भुत रूप अखंड।
रोम रोम प्रति लगो कोटि कोटि ब्रह्माँड॥
अगनित रवि शशि सिव चतुरानन।
बहुगिरि सरित सिंधु महिकानन॥
काल कर्म गुन ग्यान सुभाऊ।
सोउ देखा जो सुना न काऊ॥

This, I understand, is from an episode from the Baal Kanda, where Kaushalya is given a glimpse of the Lord’s vishvaroopa:

She saw therein countless suns and moons, Sivas and four-faced Brahmas, and a number of mountains, rivers, oceans, plains and woods, as well as the spirit of time, the principle of action, the modes of Prakrti (Sattva, Rajas and Tamas), the spirit of knowledge and Nature and many more things of which she had never heard before.
(Translation from Ramcharitmanas.org)

Of Krishna’s vishwaroopa darshanam I had heard many times but I had not known that Tulsidasji describes Rama showing his mother the Truth as well.

Listening to these four lines leaves me in a jumble of replete bliss scrubbed in with shades of longing, regret, and a certain grasping greed. If four lines, taken out of context can be so beautiful, the mind wishes to acquire all of Ramcharitmanas. It doesn’t work that way, but that is the mind’s way.

Anyway, here it is, Kumar Gandharva with Aganita Ravi:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cyWhNcKGmHY

Nan anju maram valarthen…

It was borne on me a couple of days ago that I’d been living under a rock. Completely unaware of a viral song, Enjoy Enjaami, a production from AR Rahman’s initiative Maajja – a tech platform for independent musicians. (And what a start!)

My friend Sriram introduced the song to us with a bit of a backgrounder. The poet-singer Arivu draws from his own life and the accounts told to him by his grandmother – tales of humble farm workers employed on lands that they did not themselves own. Lives sweetened with the joy that being close to the land brings, but also insecurity and a looming fear and dread of being dispossessed. 

The song has caught me by the gut. It is so many things at once – on the surface a catchy, well-made music video that ticks all the ‘good entertainment’ boxes. But also a powerful song celebrating the earth, a lament for old griefs, a tribute to ancestors who bequeathed their precious seed and land to us.

Like all hugely successful things, many aspects come together to make this work. Santosh Narayan composes it in intricate layers, weaving in parai drums, reggae, rap and a Tamil art form called oppari. Singer Dhee is a revelation with her raspy airs and Arivu clutches your heart with the keening lament of the oppari. The video by Amit Krishnan accentuates the beat, the lilt and places the song in its natural surroundings – the land. The effect is simply stunning.

This is a quintessentially Tamil song, about the Tamil people’s deep and profound connection to the soil, water and all creatures. It reminds me of what Sadhguru says about ‘looking up’ and ‘looking down’ cultures. The Tamil people exemplify the second sort – those who look down at the Earth as mother, as the source of their sustenance and all divinity. 

 

=========

Nan anju maram valarthen is from this song, translating 'I planted five trees...'

Jaan phoolan tan laal ni

There, in the rubble, and among the drying, yellowing leaves,
a clearing of a rough sort.
A grey-white shroud lies there,
a tell-tale trickle of smoke winding upwards.
What lies beneath? Is the fire alive? Asphyxiated perhaps by a blanket of its own burning?
The evidence of the slow burn mounts on me. Till I no longer know if I’m the heart of the burning coal or just the ash.
Layers of ash.
Many layers of ash.
One breath-fan from you and the construct falls apart. Blown in the wind, strewn around like wisp, inconsequential, a pack of lies.
One life-breath and I burn red-hot again. A ruby-red chunk of live coal coming up for Grace.

 

 

___________

Title translates "Burns red-hot wherever He blows"
A line from Shah Hussain's kalaam Maaye ni main kinnu aakhan

For those who came before us

It is amazing how something can stay hidden in plain sight. How nothing exists perhaps till you turn towards it and shine the light of your attention on it. I have said before that I only first paid any heed to death rituals when my mother passed away. Since then, there has been a further deepening of awareness how meticulous this land, this Bharat has been in dealing with its dead.

The dead are dead, you may say; better to turn our energies towards the living, you may insist. You’re right, but there is no dichotomy. Catering to the dead also takes care of the living. You are both assisting the disembodied as well as giving your own life ample room to maneuver and express itself.

Yesterday was Mahalaya Amavasya – a phrase I have been hearing for most of my life without knowing the significance of. We have so many festivals and special days in our culture, it seemed just one of those things elders made a grand fuss about. Plus, a somewhat morbid concept – a fortnight to address the needs of pitrus… generations of dead ancestors who lived centuries ago. We don’t even remember their names – what then is the need to make such a shoo-sha about offering them balls of rice and sesame? Wasteful symbolisms! Doubtless this must’ve been the frame of mind that prevented me from even observing this rite with the consideration it deserved.

Sadhguru says, “Your body carries trillion times more memory than your conscious mind. Will you remember your great-great-great-grandfather? You don't, but his nose is sitting on your face because your body remembers. Your body remembers how your forefathers were a million years ago.” I now dimly understand that we are a continuum. The latest but not the last in a series of pop-up lives on this planet. Pitru Paksha is a way of paying homage to those who came before us, and it is also a way of distancing the influence of these pitrus over our lives – loosening, in a way, their genetic hold over ourselves, so that we may live free-er and fuller lives.

In recent years, Sadhguru has been paying inordinate attention to this aspect. His book on Death is an explosive one, a revealing treatise on a range of aspects that were hitherto veiled. Also, I have been thinking a lot about Kashi, the maha smashana, where death rituals are a way of life. [Of course, any excuse to remember Kashi will do. When can I go back there, I wonder?]

Yesterday, around midnight at the Isha Yoga Center, there was a rather magnificent ceremony – they’ve done it for years but the scale this year was a bit grander. This was in preparation perhaps for the Kala Bhairava deity that my Guru is in the process of consecrating.

Some pictures:

(Pics: LingaBhairavi.org)

Imprint

I hailed one of our street vendors this morning to buy flowers for Krishna Janmashtami today. They were fresh and lovely and I splurged on a bit of everything - chamanti, sanna jaaji, malli, lilies, roses... 

It's been almost ten years since my mother passed away and still he said wistfully, "Amma achche se, chchaav se lete the!" I remember Leelamma specially on festival days too - she would sit in the tiny pooja room, and sing as she weaved garlands. Our neighbours across the back wall still remember pausing in their work to hear her sing. 

Wonderful, isn't it, to be remembered like that, a decade after you've left?

But then what of Krishna? That Glorious One who walked this earth more than 5,000 years ago? And still we talk of his beauty, his feats, his cuteness, his charm, his colour, his clothes, his lovers, his enemies, his wiles, his compassion. Even today, people dress up their young children in his image, tying up peacock feathers in their hair. Even today, songs are sung in longing for him.

Still to remain an intimate experience for millions of people, still tangible... you could close your eyes today, reach out for him, and manage to touch him. 

How truly wonderful to have lived like that! 

 

***

Edited to add:

#HappyJanmashtami pic.twitter.com/yvcxky4Kpg

— Sadhguru (@SadhguruJV) August 11, 2020

Tu ka Tu

A change in header was long overdue. The winter chill has given way to a rainy, moody summer.

But, of course, there are big things on our minds. The pandemic is going viral and we’ll be remembering this year for a very long time. What will change, how, which industries will stay, which will fall, who will win, who will lose, will humankind recover its conscience, or will this be a blip that only momentarily eclipsed our collective daily grind?


Time will tell, but in the meantime, a haiku by Paul Pfleuger, Jr.

Smiling
behind the death mask,
this is God, too

My Guru, ever compassionate, held our hands for 43 days, giving us darshans – a glimpse of him and room at his feet every single day. That makes a full mandala – a length of time approximately 40 days in which the human system completes one physiological cycle. When we take up something for one mandala, it gets written into our system like software and functions on a completely different level. Across these days, he spoke about a range of matters including this crisis facing us. How his constant presence has transformed us, I cannot even begin to guess.

During one session, someone asked him what Shiva thought of the virus.



His response reminded me of these verses by Kabir:

Inka bhed bata mere avadhu, acchi karni kar le tu
Dali phool jagat ke mahi, jahan dekhun va tu ka tu
 

Tell me the secret, Avadhoo, shower your compassion
In all of nature in this whole world, wherever I look, I see you

Hathi mein hathi ban baitho, chinti mein hai chhoto tu
Hoye mahavat upar baithe, hankan vala tu ka tu


Massive you are as an elephant, tiny when as an ant
Also as the mahout you sit, the one riding the elephant is also you

Choro ke sang chori karta, badmashon mein bhedo tu
Chori kar ke tu bhag jaave, pakdan vala tu ka tu
 
Among thieves you are a thief, you sit among scoundrels too
You are the robber who robs and runs, the one who catches him, also you

Jal thal jeev mein tu hi biraje, jahan dekhoon va tu ka tu
Kahe Kabir suno bhai sadho, guru milaye jyun ka tyun

In water, earth and all life you are present, wherever I look, only you!
Says Kabir, listen Seeker, the Guru shows you the unsullied You!


A version of the song by the awesome Prahlad Singh Tipaniya:

Yin-nish

I have been home for a while.
My last travel was in October and that was quite a road trip – a trail from Gwalior to Satna through Chanderi, Orchha, Khajuraho, Panna and Rewa. An immersive, intensive experience of northern Madhya Pradesh. Simply fabulous.

Since then, I've just been home, writing up the stories and... simply being home. Domesticity is a never ending job and I find that the concerns of the domestic life are what you might call choranaptyxic in nature – able to grow or shrink in order to fit available (mind)space. They diminish when I have 'bigger' things on my mind, but grow fairly demanding otherwise. I have taken care of a pile of leaves in the corner of the garden, hosed down a termite mound that was predating on the jasmine climber and I have made plans for the beetroot that are a week old and sitting heavily on my conscience. I am ahead of the curve.

Just the time for this quotidian observation from the Lucknow poet Sushma A. Singh.

winter chill
  I press harder
on the rolling pin

A feminine slice of life. 

About the little things. 

A small detail, a small blip in the pattern with an activity that is repeated perhaps every single day.

It is colder. Even if you have mixed the atta with a little tepid water, the dough is hard. Rolling out the rotis calls for a little extra.

Floof love

I think I have a problem. Rather, two. I have an addiction and I have a scarcity of the substance I'm addicted to.

Like everyone on the planet with internet access, I watch cat and dog videos. And panda videos. You know you have to get into the piece you're working on, there is no time for a K drama, but you can fit in a 7-min break featuring a cute labrador, can't you? Of course you can.

Re dog breeds, I'm very much in the middle of the pack. I thought Golden Retriever Labradors were my most favourite type but that was before I was introduced to the Samoyed. An utterly gorgeous double coated creature of cold climes, this ancient breed has a laughing face and a temperament to match.

It started innocuously enough. I watch quite a bit of content from Korea, so YouTube thought nothing, I assume, of pushing originating-in-Korea dog and cat videos at me. It started desultorily enough but I got inveigled into following their daily lives and now there are three that I cannot live without: MilkyBoki, mochamilk and HoyaDanchu.

All three feature Samoyeds paired with other dogs and cats in some combination or the other. Milky of MilkyBoki lives in Korea but the other two are Korean-in-Canada. They are individually and collectively adorable.

This is Milky, all flat out at the park:

 This is darling Wooyoo (Korean for, yes, Milk)

 And the baby of the lot, Danchu (Korean for button)

These are enormously popular channels and, I suspect, hugely lucrative. They celebrate subscriber milestones, they receive marketing merchandise for placement. Wooyoo and Mocha of Mochamilk even have their own book out. These fellows are celebrities of a kind - a phenomenon that I'm old enough to be amazed by. This Internet-worked world is throwing up unimagined scenarios.

Now I've watched them all, more or less. Nothing new till there's another update on just how much fun Danchu had in the snow.

Sharp focus

Home alone—

the onset

of a haiku frame of mind

Wind Up and Wind Down

Is talking about one’s maid too démodé? But, Goddess help me, I must.

L___ amma has a rather loose idea of her employment with us, and tends to take off rather frequently. Her reasons are varied – some warranted, some extremely frivolous. She has a difficult life, and I never know how serious a matter it might have been that kept her from turning up the previous day. Once it was a violent husband, once a sick grandchild, once a bereavement in the family. But also, she considers her frequent poojas and family gatherings sufficient reason, and enjoys a startling assortment of ‘noppis’... pains and aches in the head, back, legs, feet... all of which add up to several casual leaves. She lays the ground the previous day and I am required to pick up on her complaints of an oncoming fever or somesuch and anticipate a dumma the next. Once I demanded the reason for her absence and she said – most disarmingly – that she had overslept.

I like to be harmonious, and have a preference for subtle messaging while L___amma banks on her considerable charm and cajoling to keep me sweet. Her voluble chatter about the minutiae of her life holds me captive for some length of time daily, and her favoured weapon is an extra chirpy ‘Good Morning, Madam’ which she has picked up from one of the offices she works at.

Our arrangement as she understood it did not work quite as well for me – and it wasn’t getting across. Plus, I particularly abhor being let down during the Navratri festival. So I worked myself up into a froth and yelled at her this morning. Sadly, method acting has its downside, and I am still attempting to bring my breath back into its normal easy cadence. In the throes of manufactured emotion, I oversalted the bhaath.

I know my anger was feigned, but my body doesn’t. How right is my Guru when he says, “Resentment, anger, hatred are poisons that you drink and you expect somebody else to die. Life does not work like that.”

Meta Moment

This evening, as I undertook the somewhat womanly chore of fumigating the house,
I moved from room to room
with an outstretched cup of lit incense,
smoking out the demons from the corners where they are wont to sit when no one is looking

I caught myself in the slanting golden light from another room:
The shadow on the wall stood out starkly.
Hair framed around my face,
my silhouette both particular and generic
But the intention conveyed itself.
Tendrils of dark smoke rose steadily from the shadowy hand

I looked at this woman.
Encapsulated in a slice of cinema. A sharp moment of awareness.
A moment infused by the now.

Tutored by my influences to find that romantic, I did.
But every moment, they say, is that way.
Every moment, if you can look at her.
From a little distance away.

A little distance.                            Away.

Source Code

Colour me green

Have I confessed my deep desire to be artistic on these pages? I must have.

Anyway here’s the thing: I long to draw, paint and colour. Sadly, I am held back, seriously held back by a lack of talent. I stare at a blank page, tighten my grip on the medium at hand and invariably there will emerge – a tree. That is the culmination, the pinnacle of my creations. A gnarled tree, with a few branches, a knot in the middle and tapering roots. And, sadder still, it’s always more or less the same tree. I branched out slightly into coconut trees, but it yielded unsatisfactory results.

In some past life, I must have been surrounded by artists who, with a few magical strokes, could suggest and evoke whole worlds. I must’ve watched and admired, despaired of my own skill. Because I don’t have the imagination and I certainly don’t have the technique. Over my adult life, I’ve bought paints, brushes, charcoal pencils, shading pencils, illustration books... spent rather a lot of money on, as a friend once punned, ‘a paint hope.’

These two pencil shading landscapes from my learning book had convenient outlines that were dead useful as a structure. Perspective is everything!

And then adult colouring books happened. It was godsent. Now, with someone else drawing out the lines, all I had to do was colour within the lines. Now, this was well within my powers. And for a few years now I have enjoyed this – listening to music and poring over printed sheets of sketches. My blending skills have improved, I love using a mixture of water colours and pencils. Then I also bought Johanna Basford’s amazing book, Enchanted Forest. 

There are many such books now, but I absolutely love Basford’s whimsical, intimate rendering of imagined scenes. I bought myself a rather nice set of colouring pencils and I enjoy the whole process. That is to say, I did. Till yesterday.

I went to pinterest and instagram desultorily looking for finished coloured pages. Awe and angst in equal measure! What imagination, what skill! I hate these showoffs. They should be out there creating their own masterpieces. What are they doing in amateur circuits? Not only is their colouring spectacular, they fill up the white spaces around the illustrations with their own creations, and now alas, in her latest book Johanna has taken to leaving huge portions of blank space to leave scope for these. And WAIL, I don’t know WHAT TO DO WITH THEM!!!

Let me show you what I mean:

3D by night

Riot

He or She colours outside the lines! Fancy that.

All that inside stuff is the colorist's own tweak on this wreath

Let's add a story to that flower wagon

Brown fox in the deep wood.

Have you seen anything so beautiful?

Now I have to plod on with my own pitiful efforts. I don't know how I'm going to find the heart to carry on.