Devis and other things

A new installment of the Tamil Nadu saga was ready but alas, my laptop (newish, just out of warranty period) is showing signs of distress by way of a damaged hinge. I could not take it with me to ashram when I was there for Mahashivratri and since my return to Hyderabad, I've been ill with one thing or the other. 

Since then, Sadhguru has consecrated the Devi Linga Bhairavi in Nepal, and she appears to be a magnificent entity, housed in a most exquisite temple. I am most excited about what her presence will do for that region.

Over the Navratri in 2022, a most wonderful thing happened. I was in Bodoland for most of Dussehra and on Saptami, I found myself in Guwahati, the land of the Goddess Kamakhya. It was a particularly crowded day but I was simply fortunate to be there. After almost 9 hours of waiting in queue, I was able to offer my homage to the lady. Now with Devi Linga Bhairavi (in a slightly altered variation) joining forces in the northeast of the subcontinent... it will be interesting. Nepal is lucky indeed.

***

Are the various overlays not interesting? From seeing this land as a political entity, with its rise and fall of kingdoms, I had moved to being interested in its physical nature – the lush fertile plains of the Ganga, the mountain ranges, the rivers that crisscross our Hindustan. Now it appears that the more subtle map of our spiritual hotspots is the thing to follow. 

Where are the radiating hubs? Why are they there? How do they tie together? How do they work together? Is it a boundary, or a network? Where are the holy men and women? How are they dotting the geography? Which shrines are still strong? Which took the brunt of invasions and lost their power and relevance? What idols are lying in wait, hidden in streams, farmers' fields, under rubble... just biding their time to emerge? Wouldn't it be wonderful to able to see these subtle connections? Till my perception sharpens, a lively imagination and conjecture will have to do.

Picking up the thread

It has been a month since I updated last - the gaps between posts that are supposed to be part of a travel series is much too wide. I had really hoped to write up the Tamil Nadu travelogue at a fast clip.

Work intervened, however, and I went on assignment to Bodoland, the beautiful Autonomous Territorial Region within Assam. 

The Wild Side of Bodoland
(Created by me with Dall-E)

Those stories had to be written and this blog series got pushed down the queue. Then Sadhguru consecrated a wonderful Naga shrine in our new, upcoming center at Bengaluru, which was an unbelievable experience. It rained through out the consecration and there were about 16,000 of us, sitting in the wet, beyond midnight, witnessing the descent of a celestial serpent being. 

 

After we attended that, I seized the chance to spend a fortnight at the ashram in Coimbatore. 

Long story short, we had left the story at Kanchipuram and will pick it up there again. If nothing, it gives me an excuse to pore over pictures and dwell on the trip.

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

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:

Poise

Waiting,
utterly still—
for the mosquito to land

Andaz-e-bayan aur!

Know what I've been tripping on this past month?

Ghawwalis! (ugh, I know, I know!)

Rahat Fateh Ali Khan and group have sung a whole lot of ghazals by Ghalib as qawwalis and what fun they are!

As it happens with qawwalis, they sing the main ghazal through but now and then pick up key words from the preceding sher and intersperse with couplets from elsewhere, either stressing the sentiment, or taking off from it on another tangent altogether.

These are the efforts, I understand, of Yousuf Salahuddin, culture-lover from Lahore, under a series called Virsa Heritage Revived

I share here two videos:
1) Rahat and co singing Koi umeed bar nahin aati



2) A full concert called Nawa-e-sarosh with four qawwalis



Caution: Dost ghamkhwari mein meri is a potential ear-worm! I haven't thrown it off in days.

Blast from the Past

Every now and then, a disconcerting thing happens to you on the spiritual path.

For those who are not consciously on the road to liberation, I should perhaps explain that the idea is to become empty – of your likes and dislikes, of your identities, of your opinions, of your personality... a complex bundle of impressions received and kept, unquestioned and unexamined, which is collectively called karma. Dropping one’s karma is the attempt at this stage – and a range of tools, methodologies, approaches and schools are available to a spiritual seeker to help one do it. All forms of yoga serve to cleanse you, and each person picks whatever method or methods suit them best.

With the Master’s Grace, you become perceptibly lighter and paler, so to speak. The ultimate goal of this is to become so pale as to become utterly transparent. 'Vairagya' is the word used, and means ‘without colour’. Without any quality of your own.

Now we are progressing happily, complacent under the delusion that quite a lot has been dropped. Mukti and crystal-clear perception are a matter of time... if not tomorrow, then surely the day after that, enlightenment will happen.

And then, your karma bites you in the butt. Something crude, something very basic, something deep-seated will rear out of your accumulated personality and snarl. Leaving you shaken. And very much doubtful if you have advanced at all. What have you been doing? Is your sadhana achieving anything? Have you lost your way? How could this creep up on you unseen? How, in spite of your efforts to be conscious, did this old rubbish manifest? Shame, worry and disappointment.

Apparently, this is par for the course. Stuff will churn up – stuff you didn’t expect, stuff you thought was gone, stuff you’ll sneer at. There’s nothing to do. Be aware. Observe. Let go. Stuff comes and goes. Seek that which is permanent.

Meanwhile, a delicious haiku by George Dorsty:

am I holding
them correctly?
worry beads

Reaction

Impatient today.

Of specious sentiment, of aggrandisement of petty things, of small outlooks and small concerns. Of the constant need to pity someone, to tendency to be immersed in sickly sentiment.

Stop!
Look at the sky, I want to shout!

Stop, or at least stop pulling me in to participate. I am not sufficiently established, and so cannot play with you. I will only get entangled, and incoherent, and confused, and angry.

Just. Look at the Sky.

Wave after wave

My last header was a haiku that needed no elaboration. One of my own: 

Again

I hanker
for the simple life

And I replace it with a wonderfully multilayered one by Shrikaanth Krishnamurthy:

one more wave...
my toes curl tighter
around nothing

That’s how I experience it – that my Master comes at me in waves. As strong a wave as I can take at that moment. And each wave takes away the deposit of lifetimes, leaving me with less, clinging, curling my toes around nothing.

Game on

“I’m in love,” I told Shweta.

“Twentieth time this year!” she said.

It’s true. I’m what they call a dil-phenkh. My heart waits eagerly to find something worthy of worship – and in the world of East Asian drama, there are so many, so many demi-gods.

I’ve stayed for the most part with Korean dramas, but a couple of Taiwanese series, one lovely Thai story and a few Japanese pieces (mostly movies) have made it to my binge list. Chinese dramas, I’ve hitherto steered clear of, simply because of their length. 30 to 60 episodes per story are a bit daunting without strong recommendations.

But the mood came upon me and I watched a movie called Love O2O. Such an intriguing concept for a love story, I quickly devoured it in all its forms – I read the exquisite manhua (still in progress), watched the 30-episode drama version and sought out an English translation of the novel (A Slight Smile is Very Alluring) that all these are based on.

University Days: A frame from the manhua

Love O2O: The drama version

The movie version

[HERE BE SPOILERS – because I’m going to rave about it and don’t know when to stop]

Bei Wei Wei is a computer science student at Qing University, Beijing, who is addicted to an MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) called Dreams of Jianghu – she’s an ace player and ranked among the top ten gamers in the server. One day, she gets proposed to by the No 1 ranking Yi Xiao Nai He – in the game, of course. They should ‘marry’, he says, to win an upcoming couples’ tournament. She agrees. What follows is an immensely sweet (and yet not cloying) courtship. They battle monsters together in beautiful synchronisation, take down enemies, Yi Xiao Nai He fights some badass duels to protect her honour, they fly across the game landscape on a giant phoenix... and the two find themselves spending a lot of time at the game’s Sunset Point – a beautiful cliff edge overlooking a low sun that never sets, and where players hardly come because there are no monsters here to kill, no experience points to be gained, no missions to accomplish.

Normally not interested in meeting her online friends in person or in outing her gaming identity, Wei Wei is still all a’flutter when he finally suggests they meet. Yi Xiao Nai He turns out to be Xaio Nai – computer geek, hacker, programmer, super achiever and all round University star. They take their online love offline (which explains O2O) and then from a university romance, the story of this Alpha Pair becomes immersed in the mechanics of a new game that Xiao Nai and his team are developing.

Running contrary to every screenwriting formula, the love story has no hiccups, no misunderstandings... just development, development, development. To the last, Wei Wei is Xiao Nai’s most devoted fangirl and while he’s cool, impassive, unruffled in all his dealings, his eyes soften for Wei Wei every time he looks at her. The characters are wonderfully drawn. The leads are very alike: strong, passionate, decent and kind. The support characters, particularly Xiao Nai’s band of boys, are delightful.

Had I come across this seven or eight years ago, I’d have had no time for this post. I’d have been hooked to the nearest MMORPG I could lay my hands on and hacking at monsters. But older, wiser and altogether much more wary of my obsessive nature, I have not done so. (Yet.)

The graphics in the movie are better of course, but the drama is beautifully detailed and benefits from the build-up that 45 minutes x 30 can offer. The lead actress Zheng Shuang is fine but you’ll forgive me for throwing the better part of my love at the feet of the scrumptious Yang Yang.

I’m still caught in the tail-spin of this binge. What shall I do next? There are two more dramas based on novels by the same writer, Gu Man. Or if I’m willing to wait and keep pace with it as it airs now in Korea, there is the very tempting ‘The Great Seducer’ which is loosely based, I hear, on Les Liaisons Dangereuses.

Dheera sameere...

Very so often random browsing of the internet and youtubing is a fairly useless occupation, yielding an hour's entertainment perhaps but very little of enduring quality. But today I've hit upon a sublime album called Tranquility by L Subramaniam. Five ragas, all creations of the master violinist himself.

On Wynk Music, if you have access to it: https://www.wynk.in/music/album/Tranquility---Dr-L-Subramaniam---Violin/si_9206

I am not blown away but rather, wafted away on calm, scented breezes.

Taking it slow

My life tends to alternate between intense activity and luxurious nothingness. I enjoy both immensely.

After a whirlwind three months during which I went on the Rally for Rivers, went off on a birding trip to Africa, came back to get the house painted and overhauled, we are now in the easy phase. And I’m taking the time to catch up on a K-drama I’ve put away to savour at just such a time as this.

The Descendants of the Sun is everything they said it would be. Of course, with a mere 16 episodes, it will be consumed in one satisfying three-day binge. Bingewatchers believe that sleep is for the weak, and so it seems – the next episode at 3.00 in the morning, or a few hours of shuteye... it is so easy to hit ‘play’. However, this time, I’m determined to stretch it out. So an epi at a time... breaks in between, and I haven’t subsisted on sandwiches and bananas, or left my father to procure his meals from the local curry point. But still seven episodes have zoomed by and I would be there right now, avidly drinking in the eighth but there’s a power cut and this blog gets an emergency update.

Travelling light

Part of the frenetic time we've been having is because we got our house painted, while, of course, living in it. That sounds like a pain, and it was. We shifted everything out from one room into the next, and then back again, trying to fit everything back into barely dry cupboards, and trying at the same time to cull and limit what went back into those dark caverns.

Some decisions were easy. Some stuff from the attics that we had only seen the last time we painted the house - clearly they had to go. So we threw away, gave away, sold away masses of things - old tables, vessels, a cooker, steel cylinders, dubious ceiling fans, a couple of metal trunks... paring down to strictly what is needed.

People who need to shift homes occasionally have it easier - there is only so much you can carry and you tend to focus on the essentials. But when you live in the same house as we've done for close to four decades, you don't even realise how much stuff you gather, even if it's only bags that will someday be "useful".

We're still cleaning up but there's light at the end of the tunnel -- and a lighter house at the end of it.

Full throttle

एक लम्हे में सिमट आया है सदियों का सफर
ज़िन्दगी तेज़ बोहत तेज़ चली हो जैसे

That is how it feels. Life is whizzing past - a new thing every day, every week, every fortnight... a month seems like an age for all the stuff that has happened through it. The themes change. Colours, drapes, scenery... entire concepts. The complexion of each phase is different, the focus varies... and I am trying through it all to stay on an even keel... not rising and dipping with the ebb and flow of events.

It becomes somewhat easy to discern in such a state that things happen, that they come and go as I stay constant.

बाज़ीचा-ए-अत्फाल है दुनिया मेरे आगे
होता है शब-ओ-रोज़ तमाशा मेरे आगे

I never appreciated that sher so well before.

Bharatam, Mahabharatam!

Now listening to a superb Vrindavani Sarang by Pt Venkatesh Kumar, and it's lulling me into something approaching rest.

For otherwise, this last month has gone leaving me running very fast and gasping for breath. I was on the Rally for Rivers for a couple of weeks and even after I got off, I was so much with the convoy in spirit, there was an uncomfortable feeling of still being in movement... coupled with the even more disconcerting conviction that 'real life' was happening elsewhere. That's new because usually for me, where I am is where the universe is centered.

But the Rally has been accomplished, well-accomplished. A good start and it seems we'll be able to bring back our rivers after all into their former mighty glory.

Jai Hind!

Rally ho!

So I'm off.

Ever since my Sadhguru announced that he would be undertaking a massive nation wide rally to save our rivers, I have been wanting to go with. Rivers, travel along the length of my sacred land and my Master's presence... could you imagine a more appealing prospect?

It seemed difficult but when he wishes it, difficulties fall away.

I'm about to join the rally in Coimbatore. It's going to be crazy. And crazy-fun!

Sahore Bāhubali!

Haha, just had to, you know! I’ve been fangirling Bāhubali all of April. I watched the first part again last week for purposes of revision and I’m off to see it at last! (So late, but my pre-booking hopes for ‘first day, first show’ fell through).

I absolutely loved the first part, and I have such admiration for this entire team for their commitment and attention to detail. Every frame storyboarded, every character thought through, the world marvellously detailed and then, there is SS Rajamouli’s sense of human drama. That kind of involvement shows through, and it gets communicated... no wonder it’s one of our biggest films.

This haiku by James Chessing is just perfect.

it begins...
a galaxy of dust motes
in the projector's beam

Dot Matrix

My maid has gone to her native village – two weddings, she informed me. She would be back “as soon as possible”. Ominous. Because she is a much adored member of her extended family and by her own account they do not let her leave once they have her in their loving clutches. Daawats, functions, visits... all happening.

But do I complain? NO! Why? Because this gives me the chance to do the morning muggu myself. (Yes, yes, we are drawing out the muggu theme.)

I have been long fascinated by this kolam business but I don’t do it very well. My technique isn’t polished and even my dots come out like little strikes... really good pulli kolam must be generic and anonymous in its imprint. Mine looks woefully like distinct handwriting. Anyway, Narsamma is away and I have been entertaining myself enormously by learning up loads and loads of simple designs. And because my skill with the powder is limited, I have been drawing with chalk – a compromise but at least it lets me focus on the design.

This is a craft with limitless possibilities. The women in Tamil Nadu of course are masters of this game – come festival time, they can cover vast areas with intricate loops and patterns, jaw-dropping in their sophistication. While I was typing ‘sikku kolam’ into every search window, I came across this fascinating paper by experimental economist Timothy Waring. (Another link to the same article here)

Evidently, kolams have been of interest to ethnomathematicians for a long time now. Did you know that a simple 2x2 grid has five possibilities but the 3x3 matrix has 785 configurations! The 1-7-1 diamond matrix apparently is capable of 11,661,312 designs. Absolutely mind-boggling.

I have started with the 3x3, 4x4, 5x5 and the 7-5-3-1 grids... and then, the world is my canvas.

Sahib ne bhang pilayi

I said earlier that this year felt like it had been running wild? Well, one of the exciting things we did was to go to a workshop on Kabir. A five-day residential workshop on one of the most hard-hitting raconteurs of the spiritual journey. Readers of this blog will know how much I love this man, and love to quote him: for many years now his utterances have served as clinchers to my primary quandaries as a seeker.

In 2009 – what a year that was! – I happened to go to a Kabir Festival in Delhi. I speak of what happened to me here, and a little more about the festival and its personalities here. 

It seemed extraordinarily important even as I went through the weekend, but what it was doing to me, how it was preparing me and to what end... this became apparent only a few days later. The immersive festival experience happened on 4, 5 and 6 September 2009. Around the same time, my mother was feeling poorly and went through a few medical tests. On 11 Sept, the results came and we learnt that we were going to lose her in a matter of weeks.

Now, this – that my mother might die – had always been one of my worst and very active fears... the stuff of nightmares. As much as I was sure that I would not be able to bear her loss, I had fretted about it for decades. And now it was coming true.

It was my Guru’s compassion, his grace, his love... to prepare me for a blow I had dreaded all my life. Buffered by Kabir, I took the news better than I could ever expect to. The next few months, I was able to live intensely, love intensely and let go gracefully, even joyfully.

Now seven years later, here was a chance to go to a workshop conducted by the inspirational Prahlad Tipaniya himself. It was meant. A chance to express my gratitude – and close a loop.

And another chance to bow low, very low to my Guru.

Running Wild

prairie grass
a mustang runs
with the wind
~William Cullen Jr.

That's how I've been feeling this year - like a wild thing let loose, rippling across the surface of life with the wind spurring me on. Speed, such speed. Exhilaration too. And galloping in any direction of the wind's choosing.

I wanted to say a little of the many many things I did - the travel, the singing, the genuflecting, the flying... but really, who cares! I might still, but what matter what I did, when it's all about what is. And then, about what isn't.