Indian Weavers: Sarojini Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Weavers, weaving at break of day,

Why do you weave a garment so gay? . . .

Blue as the wing of a halcyon wild,

We weave the robes of a new-born child.

Weavers, weaving at fall of night,

Why do you weave a garment so bright? . . .

Like the plumes of a peacock, purple and green,

We weave the marriage-veils of a queen.

Weavers, weaving solemn and still,

What do you weave in the moonlight chill? . . .

White as a feather and white as a cloud,

We weave a dead man's funeral shroud.

Did Sarojini start writing about Indian weavers, palanquin bearers, fishers, boatmen and bards herself or someone else suggested her to do so? And it was none the else but Edmund Gosse and Arthur Symons who told her to celebrate, sing of India. Let us think of Sarojini with Edmund Gosse and Sir Arthur Symons and let us without them in the absence of the British mentors. None has striven to know, none has striven to care about. Let us think of Sarojini without Indian stuffs and connections. Poetic talent cannot get reared so easily if there are no gardeners to look after the garden of poesy. But in the case of Sarojini she got it everywhere.

Indian Weavers is without any doubt a song so lovely and charming bringing to our memory the weavers at work, making the cloth, netting, putting on the frame, measuring, printing and designing however be the method of their work. To read the poem is to be reminded of the textile industry, handloom and machine-made cloths. Here mainly the dreamy and colourful side has been touched upon. Something it is of course of the veil and shroud. Weavers, Indian weavers, how did they make the cloth? How had it been their craftsmanship?

Addressing the weavers in an indirect way with the answer tendered to or given, the poetess begins her poem with a lyrical excellence of her own. She asks how they are making the garment so attractive, catching the eyes of the on-lookers, making the dreamers dream about, putting desires on fire. The weavers respond to that they make the garments for a new-born babe so blue like the wings of the wild halcyon. Here the picture and image of a wild halcyon dances before the eyes.

Weavers keep weaving, keeping busy with work even at the fall of the night. Again, she asks why the garments are so bright.  What the reason behind? How their art, weaving art and colour design? How their concept on the canvas of the cloth? Weavers respond it that they make green and purple marriage veils for the queens to put on, wear it. The marriage veils appear to be just like the peacock feathers enchanting us with the colour design so dreamy and pearly indeed, looking rainbowish and drizzling. Here the mind gets lifted to embroidery work and bespangled designs.

But same weavers are found to be solemn and grim when the talk of the white cloth arises it. Dressed in whites sometimes looks it well, but sometimes the whites are used for the shroud to be cast over and cover up. Nuns and widows too don it. In the moonlight chill they weave the white cloth. Moonlight has been pulled in to suit the poetic purpose.

Some colour concept and the fabric design go on doing the rounds here in this poem. The poetess has added poetical colours to it as because weavers do not inculcate in specific times for weaving cloth. But something of it depends on colour choice and perception no doubt. They make cloth keeping in mind common sales, festivities and age bars. What do the people like? What is the occasion of use? But notion and rationality are something different. Something is definitely relating to capacity. Can many afford to purchase? At that time many used to go half-fed, half-clothed. Actually, just for a colour match she has arranged the scenes for the poem as she does it in the poem pertaining to glass bangle-sellers. The contours of fabrics, art work and motifs designed, colours given, painted and printed, how to tell of an age gone by and the history of art coming down to, continuing for so long with the change in models and techniques?

Song of Radha: Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey 

Songs of Radha puts it, how the states of the heart pulsating with, how the manna, inner mind, mood and heart of Radha at variance with from time to time; how the heartbeat, the heartthrob of a beloved waiting for a lover which but happens it in love? How loverly, divine and mundane is this feeling of love! How this drama of love? How this burning in love! What in it being divine? What in it being devotional? And what is it romantic? Can amorous love be only spiritual? We do not know. Love is a meeting of two hearts and souls turning one. Love is the name of some pain. The agonies of distraught lovers, how to describe it? Love is also the name of joy, but how many of us are joyful? It is also the name of pain. Many bhaktas feel it spiritual pain. Many are but the devotees.

How many of us are the adorers of nishkam manna, desireless inner mind and heart? It is also the name of giving and taking of hearts. How does it sound when one proposes romantically, I love you, I love you? What it in the feeling of surrender to God, the Maker of it all? The pulse of love none but a lover can feel it, what it is love and what it happens in love. What does it pass over the heart of the lovers which none but a lover can say it. The lila of love and we are but a part of it.

Though we call it classical love poetry, but can the classical be so in the absence of the pastoral and the folk element? The answer is assertively, ‘no’. When the hearts are in love, they feel it not how the nights pass it away, time glides and slides away stealthily. How to make it understand the ignorant manna in love and its affection for which the world has always acted as a villain! What to say about the flute of love?

At Dawn as a poem is about the love of Radha for Krishna, a form of Krishnite literature which has been engaging us since long as the saga of Krishnalila, Raaslila taking love to the pedestal of celestial love based on classicism and classical temperament. But love is a thing of the heart. How can it bound with the chains of restriction? The bird will not live in a cage. It will finally get liberated from as and when the chance comes for it to escape to. The elements of romance, love and affection are bound to be therein. Radha waits for just like a bride waits to go to, Radha waits for just as a young maiden thinks of her bridal departure or meeting. So is the case here as she keeps dreaming of her just as a bride in waiting for the groom to come and he is not a simple groom, the Divine Lover of the soul and heart. Here she dresses and un-dresses herself adding to dismay and frustration. Where is he her Ghanashyam, her King? This is the question. Where the King of her heart? The picture is just like the shy and coy mistress of Andrew Marvell’s To His Coy Mistress.

Had we but world enough and time,

This coyness, lady, were no crime.

We would sit down, and think which way

To walk, and pass our long love’s day.

Thou by the Indian Ganges’ side

Shouldst rubies find; I by the tide

Of Humber would complain. I would

Love you ten years before the flood,

And you should, if you please, refuse

Till the conversion of the Jews.

My vegetable love should grow

Vaster than empires and more slow;

An hundred years should go to praise

Thine eyes, and on thy forehead gaze;

Two hundred to adore each breast,

But thirty thousand to the rest;

An age at least to every part,

And the last age should show your heart.

For, lady, you deserve this state,

Nor would I love at lower rate.

       But at my back I always hear

Time’s wingèd chariot hurrying near;

And yonder all before us lie

Deserts of vast eternity.

Thy beauty shall no more be found;

Nor, in thy marble vault, shall sound

My echoing song; then worms shall try

That long-preserved virginity,

And your quaint honour turn to dust,

And into ashes all my lust;

The grave’s a fine and private place,

But none, I think, do there embrace.

       Now therefore, while the youthful hue

Sits on thy skin like morning dew,

And while thy willing soul transpires

At every pore with instant fires,

Now let us sport us while we may,

And now, like amorous birds of prey,

Rather at once our time devour

Than languish in his slow-chapped power.

Let us roll all our strength and all

Our sweetness up into one ball,

And tear our pleasures with rough strife

Through the iron gates of life:

Thus, though we cannot make our sun

Stand still, yet we will make him run. 

       ----Andrew Marvell in To His Coy Mistress

At Dawn

All night my heart its lonely vigil kept

Listening for thee, O Love. All night I wept.

Where went thy wanton footsteps wandering,

Sweet Ghanashyam, my King? 

My bridal veils are flung upon the floor,

My bridal garlands drop across the door.

The buds that on my bed their fragrance spilt,

Grief-scattered, wane and wilt. 

O Flute-player, how quickly dost thou tire

Of thine own gladness and thine own desire!

Couldst thou not find upon my sheltering breast

Thy rapture and thy rest? 

Whose are the fingers that like amorous flocks

Raid the ambrosial thickets of thy locks?

Ah, whose the lips that smite with sudden drouth

The garden of thy mouth? 

What shall it profit to revile or hate

Thy fickleness, her beauty or my fate,

Or strive to tear with black and bitter art

Thine image from my heart? 

Without thy loveliness my life is dead,

Love, like a lamp with golden oils unfed.

Come back, come back from thy wild wandering.

Sweet Ghanashyam, my King. 

All night she keeps it waiting, all night stands she by the door waiting for the coming, arrival of her lover, Shyam, Ghanashyam, but he does not turn up, keeping her in utter doubt and suspense to where he is wandering and taking to his time all day long. The night has started in, but he has not come, this is a matter for to fear in. God knows where he has gone to. She cannot take where he has been, where he can be. All night she weeps and wails as for Krishna, Krishna-Kanhaiya. She keeps it thinking where he has gone away. Where can he be? Why has he not turned it up so far? The heart in love will definitely do it.

Her bridal veils lay it flung upon the floor. The garlands of flowers too matter it not. Everything seems to be dropping from the hands. The buds bedecking the bed too have split their fragrance. The buds and the flowers all seem to be drooping and welting as happiness not,   grief takes over. The floral beds too seem to be mourning for wearing a pensive mood and reflection. Grief pervades in the atmosphere. Here the beauty of dreams and dreaming can be marked in. How the imagery is! How ornate and ornamental indeed. 

She waits for him so earnestly burning with the desire of waiting and meeting the lover. When will he come, the flute-player? When will she get her lover? When will she be able to see him, his face?

When will he come and comfort her, make her understand? She keeps waiting for earnestly with a yearning within.

The locks of his are beautiful enough just like the groves; the face so charming with the crown and the flute and these seem to be consoling the self, cooling the heart, taking to the thickets of the woods. How the lips with the flute! As a beloved waits for to see the face of her lover so is the case here. Radha is thirsty from her within to have a lustrous look of Krishna.

At Dawn as a poem is of Radha, searching with, where has he gone? She searches him all through the night opening the door of his manna repetitively and waiting for restlessly. How are the feelings which she has undergone? What has it gone over her heart there is none to feel it. A poem dealing with Krishnabhakti, Krishnaprem, it is about love for Krishna, the same Shyam-Ghanashyam.

What will it profit if we revile or hate we your fickleness? It is not going to make any difference to her beauty or even to my fate. Nothing can bring it out the reality. Just go we with the image of yours into our heart. There is definitely a divide in between the human and the divine and it cannot be bridged.

Without his loveliness, this life of hers is nothing. If he does not come, what will it happen? How will she live? How will she her time? Where does she lie in wandering? Why does she like wandering so much? What is more important is God’s loveliness and that too is not, then how to live a life? How to pass the days? Love is a lamp lying unfed with the golden oils. It has but to burn, burn and light. Radha asks him to come back, come back from his wild wandering into the tracts and domains unknown. Sweet Ghanashyam, where are you? Why do you not? Where do you lie in?

In the poem At Dawn one can hear the music of Shyam, Ghanashyam; one can Shyama Sangeet, why is Govinda blue-complexioned, why Shiva blue-necked and Vishnu so. Actually the words, Shyam, Ghanashyam lift us to the imagery of the blue, blue mountains and the clouds hanging by during the days of Shravana or a heart laden with grief and pensive reflection. These also create a melody of waiting, burning, burning with the desire of yearning. When the heart is heavy, one feels it so.

At Dusk as a poem is one of joy and happiness which but one feels when one’s period of waiting comes to an end and the transition in mood and spirit takes to another dimension of viewing with the scene of the time shifting so is the thing herein, Radha is happy with the coming of her Krishna Murari. Now it is time to dress and put on beautiful attire and jewelry. Now it is time to be ready. So, she is calling her companions to assist her in the make-up, the dress-up to be made and done. The lover has come and she will go away with. The things of a womanly heart have been painted nicely. The heart of a woman is almost the same. So golden is his face and appearance. So radiant is the image and picture. Whoever sees it, will like the charming and pleasant face no doubt. Who will not like to look such a divine face?

At Dusk 

Krishna Murari, my radiant lover

Cometh O comrades haste.

Bring me rich perfumes my limbs to cover.

Saffron and sandal paste.

Bring shining garments for my adorning,

Blue of the dusk and rose of the morning.

Gold of the flaming noon.

Bring me a breastband of gems that shimmer,

Making the lamps of the stars grow dimmer,

Fillets and fringes of pearls whose glimmer

Shameth the Shravan moon. 

Krishna Murari, my radiant lover

Cometh, O sisters spread

Buds and ripe blossoms his couch to cover,

Silver and vermeil red.

With flowering branches the doorways darken,

Is that his flute call? Sisters hearken!

Why tarrieth he so long?

O like a leaf doth my shy heart shiver,

O Like a wave do my faint limbs quiver.

Softly, softly, Jamuna river,

Sing thou our bridal  song. 

At Dusk when contrasted with At Dawn is a poem of Krishna Murari rather than Shyam, Ghanashyam and here after the waiting, there is the news of the coming of Krishna, Radha getting ready for just as a bride for the groom to come, Muraliwalle, Krishna Kanhaiya. One who is Krishna is Murari and Mohana. And if the manna is in Krishnabahkti, it will not dwell it anywhere. Here Radha acts like a dreamer in the theatre of spiritual love. When we read the picture, the picture and image of an Indian bride hangs before the eyes.

At Dusk is actually a shringaric song, a song of bridal dress-up and make-up as for the meeting with the lover whose arrival is expected and awaited so much so earnestly. Radha lies it happy as for the message, the news of his coming.

Krishna Murari is coming, the flute-player is coming is the theme of the poem and Radha keeps herself busy with decorating or dreaming of the arrival of her lover. She asks her comrades to dress her, to beautify her so that she may look like a bride. Radha asks the companions to sing the bridal song. She thinks of her meeting with the lover with so much glee and joviality.

She asks her companions to bring the perfume to smear her costumes with so that they appear scented. With saffron and sandal paste she will be decorated. The sandal paste designs and decorations will add to her beauty. Colourful, shiny, glowing and silken clothes she will wear with the assistance of the friends. Blue, golden and rose-coloured will match the auspicious moments. A breast band of gems will hang over the breast glimmering and lighting beautifully.

Here the picture of a bride, an Indian bride comes before the eyes, but God knows how the paths of life! Whatever be that, Radha is being readied with utmost beauty care and caress. Beauty touches, marks and decorations add to. Her companions are helping her in getting look like a dream girl, a beloved with an imaginative look which but every girl cherishes it during the wedding time. This is the time to mark gaiety and glee.

But what seconds, punctuates the make-up, dress-up most is the coming footsteps, the thud of the footfall telling of doubtfully he may be coming, may be coming. How will be the groom? How is the party as we often talk of Shiva’s party during Shivaratri? That question of Parvati’s mother is not here in it. There is something of Gandharva wedding in it. This is also a matter of reckoning. What more to say about bridal things, wedding matters, nuptial bonds, matrimonial relationships?

But God has some purpose to fulfill which Radha must understand it and if this be not, he will go away to finally gifting the flute to her to pipe by the banks of the Yamuna whenever pensive or full of memoirs for which the Lord too may have felt pity for. The tears of love, how to express it into words? The heart which loves can only say it.

The love of a milkmaid for the cowherd boy, Sri Krishna is a matter of the bhakti samudra which cannot be fathomed at one go. God is but Pyaar Ka Sagar, the Ocean of love. The song of his murali just keep you listening. Krishna with the flute casts a magic spell over us and we seem to be tuned to his melodies.

The Quest

My foolish love went seeking thee at dawn,

Crying — O wind where is Kanhaya gone? 

I questioned at noonrise the forest glade,

Rests my sweet lover in thy friendly shade?

 At dusk I pleaded with the dovegray tides,

O tell me where my Flute-player abides? 

Dumb were the waters, dumb the woods, the wind,

They knew not where my playfellow to find.

 I bowed my weeping face upon my palm,

Moaning — O where art thou, my Ghanashyam? 

Then, like a boat that rocks from keel to rafter,

My heart was shaken by thy hidden laughter. 

Then didst thou mock me with thy tender malice,

Like nectar bubbling from my own heart’s chalice.

Thou saidst, — O faithless one, self-slain with doubt,

Why seekest thou my loveliness without, 

And askest wind or wave or flowering dell

The secret that within thyself doth dwell? 

I am of thee, as thou of me, a part.

Look for me in the mirror of thy heart. 

The Quest as a poem is all about the romantic quest of a heart in love, about the spiritual quest of a lover in love and the quest is not only mythical, but symbolical too at the same time. We think within, whose quest is it? What is it love? How the feelings of it? Is it of Radha or a lover? Is Radha classical or pastoral? Is it romantic or spiritual, pastoral or classical? The thought and idea may be classical, but the theme is definitely pastoral and the feelings and emotions felt have been put to certain nomenclature and protocol. It is but restraint, sobriety and stoicism which but imparts a classical standpoint otherwise the emotions and feelings are almost the same. It is really foolish to be a lover and so is never understandable manna, the heart and mind of man. We do not know how do we love? What is this loving? Is Radha a living soul? Or, an imaginary one? What sort of love is it of Radha for Krishna?

Are the lovers fools? Why does the heart understand it not? How to say what it is love? How to describe the feelings of the heart? How to burn the lust? But can it be burnt? In classical love poetry, the heart matters it more. Here the lovers burn into the lamp of light. But in romantic love poetry, feelings and emotions are exchanged freely.

The Quest as a poem is a poem of Radha; Radha’s quest for Krishna, where the cowherd boy, the Blue Boy of Vrindavan fluting the flute, where is Krishna gone, Krishna-Kanhaiya, it is but the heart takes to it not, understands it not, what it to say about foolish love and foolish heart. Love-mad Radha and that too in the love of Krishna, what it to say to here, what it to make her understand as the manna understands it not. Radha lost in Krishna’s love is the main thing of the story.

Her foolish heart goes seeking for, searching the whereabouts, crying and weeping, sobbing and weeping, yearning for and hoping against hope, where has Krishna gone, Krishna-Kanhaiya and she keeps asking the wind swaying, passing by if it has her Krishna-Kanhaiya. She is at a loss as for where Krishna has gone.

She questions at moonrise the forest glade where lies he resting in the friendly shade of it, where the sweet lover of hers. Here the imagery is one of the forest tract, the arbor, the grove, the bower and the time that of the moonrise. Now the question is, how does the forest appear to be under the moonlit nights? How does it under the stars twinkling up above? How does it appear to be the moon rising?

At dusk she pleads with the tides asking to tell about the Flute-player, where he dwells. It is getting dark. Why has he not come? The heart thinks it in many ways. Where is he taking time? Where is he wandering? Where has he gone?

All are silent about. None is in the know of, all the animate and inanimate objects of the world, unable to say it, where Krishna has gone. Where the playmate of hers is? Where is he playing his play? Where is he doing his lila wrapped in Maya? The woods, the waters of the river and the winds, all are answerless with regard to his location.

She keeps weeping, placing the head upon her palm, shedding tears, looking it all tearfully with the red eyes, but nobody comes to feel her sadness, the sadness of love, what pains does it love give to. How lonely is a girl? You can feel it here. How lonely a woman in her life? The agonies of the heart seek it consolation, but who is there to console the aggrieved soul, the aggrieved heart?

On finding him not, when she goes to the tract and asks the woods, the trees, rocks and the waters about Krishna and his whereabouts, they say it not maintaining a strict silence. Her heart gets a jerk and jolt just like a boat beginning to start seconded by a laughter mocking her. How foolish is she that she is searching him all around! Does it behove her to be madly after! He is in the bhakti of the heart, in the devotion of the heart. He is within her and if she searches him, she will come to feel it. He may think what she is doing it about, how the state of her foolishness. Why does she think in such a way? Why does she continue to the leaf, the wind and the wave about his whereabouts? Does she not believe him? Can she not believe? It is not good to look everything with doubt and suspense which is but self-annihilating.

But the inward voice leads it to that he dwells within her heart and she must search for in her heart rather than searching elsewhere. To love him is to love spiritually. To love is to love from heart. It is better to look for the Love Divine in the mirror of one’s heart and here lies it the philosophy of love.

Songs of Radha as a poem is a series of reflections, a set of three poems enjoined together to celebrate Krishnite love which Radha feels it for Krishna. As the tunes change it so the notes and melodies with the dawn break and the twilight as do change human feelings and emotions. Love for Krishna forms a prominent aspect of all the three poems under our perusal and discussion, be it At Dawn, At Dusk or The Quest. But it is not only the fault of Radha, but of Krishna too who has won her heart in such way and has dislodged her at the end of the play. In Sagun Brahma there lies it the picture of the Nirguna Brahma too. But we doubt, can one love God in such a way? Can God be a lover? What is the matter? I do not know it.

When I consider how my light is spent,

Ere half my days, in this dark world and wide,

And that one Talent which is death to hide

Lodged with me useless, though my Soul more bent

To serve therewith my Maker, and present

My true account, lest he returning chide;

“Doth God exact day-labour, light denied?”

  I fondly ask. But patience, to prevent

That murmur, soon replies, “God doth not need

Either man’s work or his own gifts; who best

Bear his mild yoke, they serve him best. His state

Is Kingly. Thousands at his bidding speed

And post o’er Land and Ocean without rest:

They also serve who only stand and wait.”

       ------John Milton in When I consider how my light is spent

 

 

 

 

 

Song of Radha, the Milkmaid: Sarojini Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

 

I carried my curds to the Mathura fair …
How softly the heifers were lowing …
I wanted to cry, “Who will buy
These curds that are white as the clouds in the sky
When the breezes of shrawan are blowing?”
But my heart was so full of your beauty, Beloved,
They laughed as I cried without knowing:
Govinda! Govinda!
Govinda! Govinda!
How softly the river was flowing!

I carried my pots to the Mathura tide …
How gaily the rowers were rowing! …
My comrades called, “Ho! let us dance, let us sing
And wear saffron garments to welcome the spring.
And pluck the new buds that are blowing.”
But my heart was so full of your music, Beloved,
They mocked when I cried without knowing:
Govinda! Govinda!
Govinda! Govinda!
How gaily the river was flowing!

I carried my gifts to the Mathura shrine …
How brightly the torches were glowing! …
I folded my hands at the altars to pray
“O shining ones guard us by night and by day”—
And loudly the conch shells were blowing.
But my heart was so lost in your worship, Beloved,
They were wroth when I cried without knowing:
Govinda! Govinda!
Govinda! Govinda!
How brightly the river was flowing! 

Rasalila, Krishnalila, how to take to Krishnabhakti, Premlila, the Lila Divine, the Love Divine  in which Krishna the Lover and none the else but Radha the Beloved, the Consort of Krishna, You are my Love, Krishna, You are my Heart and Soul, how to live, live a life without You? This but happens, happens in love, be it pastoral, romantic or classical. But here the lore of Krishna, the love lore, the ancient lore coming down to us in the form of Rasalila, Krishnalila and the Krishnabhaktas lost in, submerged in,  drenched with premrasa, bhakti-bhavana!  Shringar, prem, is the thing. How to adorn, how to bedeck with beauty? How to make it attractive and lovely? How to hear the story from singers, dancers, poets, bhaktas and the terracotta-plate makers? How their versions and tales? Krishna is in heart, Krishna is in soul. Where do you search Him? But we do not know if Krishna’s love was amorous or not, bodily or spiritual. Can love be purely spiritual? Is it not the myth of love? Who loves the soul, the heart? Makhanchor, Nandakishore? Who is He who steals the hearts from? Who wins over the manna? The thread of love binds entangles it all. The colour of love is fast, fades it not. Love comes from within. Is it bodily or divine?, is the question. But chaste love is rare, rarer. The flute sounding, sounding it, so melodiously and sonorously sounding, resounding it and the gopis giving an ear to the music coming from. This is but idyllic. Here we confuse it really in defining what it is love. How the tune of the murali? Who the flutist? How the tunes of it, the melodies breaking? And who the listeners? The prempujaris, prempujarans? The worshippers of love? Who the adorers of it, how they in reality?

Now we need to locate it Mathura, the river, the villages and the mart of the then times? How were those places? How the ways leading to? And the gopi under perusal is she Sarojini or not? The sakhis of Krishna, the female friends-cum-cohorts?  Whatever be that, leaving Vrindavana, Mathura, Govardhana, Gokul, let us see how Sarojini takes up the scene. How Krishna-bhakti germinate in? How does Krishna-prem draw her close to?

The poem is about Radha, how she started for Mathura as for selling curds in the fair, but the colts and heifers did not leave her behind. They started calling, calling her, lowing from behind which but somehow averted it. Instead of she went on cherishing her dreams of making a sale. She cried too as for selling curds, but the heart laid it not in selling curds but in observing the white clouds of Shravana matching the curds and in Govinda. The river was flowing softly.

Again the imagery of the spring full of buds and the fragrant winds blowing and she with the companions wearing the saffron garments going to at the call of took over the self. Even though she carried her pots to facing the Mathura tide marking, how gaily the rowers were rowing! When marking the river in tide, the comrades proposed to make merry rather than. But nothing could hold her love. At her every exclamation it was but Govinda doing the rounds. They mocked her when she cried Govinda, Govinda, Govinda without knowing the meaning of the word. But the heart was tuned to Krishna music which she was till then hearing it. The imagery is here one of the pastoral background the village maids going to the  river as for filling with water which but gets pictured it before. The heart lost it to the Divine Musician as the music kept it taking the mind away from.

She carried her gifts all along up with her to the shrine to offer it to the Lord, the Lord of life, the Lord of love! What else can be better than worship as the oblation of the heart tendered to? How beautifully the torches were glowing! She folded her hands before the altars to say her oblations. She prayed to guard them by day and night and sought for blessings in that state of blessedness, oblation and devotion. In that state of obeisance and prayer she heard the conch shells blowing. Here one can feel the fragrance of the Divine Incense Sticks, the pearly drops dropping from the Overhead Lotus of the temple. The charm of Krishna music and magic, how to say it? With the hands folded over and in a worshipful prayer so full of reverence and piety, she stood before the Temple of Love.

Song of Radha, the Milkmaid is a song of Radha. It tells of what it is taking place on the heart of Radha. Though she is en route to Mathura, but instead of it the heart is not in selling curds she is carrying with. Even though she wants to sell it, words come it not out of her mouth. Rather than calling curds, she spelt it out, Govinda, Govinda, Govinda and if this be the state of the poetic persona, what will she do? A lover’s heart only a lover can understand it.  Such a thing it is there in a different way in Wordsworth’s Strange Fits of Passion.

Strange fits of passion have I known:
And I will dare to tell,
But in the lover's ear alone,
What once to me befell.

When she I loved looked every day
Fresh as a rose in June,
I to her cottage bent my way,
Beneath an evening-moon.

Upon the moon I fixed my eye,
All over the wide lea;
With quickening pace my horse drew nigh
Those paths so dear to me.
       -----William Wordsworth in Strange Fits of Passion Have I Known

She dwelt among the untrodden ways
Beside the springs of Dove;
A maid whom there were none to praise,
And very few to love. 

A violet by a mossy stone
Half hidden from the eye!
—Fair as a star, when only one
Is shining in the sky. 

She lived unknown, and few could know
When Lucy ceased to be;
But she is in her grave, and O!
The difference to me!
          ------William Wordsworth in The Lost Love

Here the Krishnite love under our perusal is but love mixed with devotion. Love’s talks only a lover can do it. Love’s matter only a lover can whisper it into the ears of. Love is but a secret matter; an internal matter. What it happens within, takes it place internally none can say it. Only a lover can feel it. In James Joyce’s Araby story,  such a scene can be marked in the author’s reaching of the oriental fair late night  and against the backdrop of it, the bazaars lying shut out, he sees two drunk people, perhaps one young man and one woman whispering in the dark lanes which but suggests him to return from without purchasing the gift for his friend’s sister.

We do not know if it is a dream sequence or a poem. The milkmaid lost in Krishna-prem, Krishna-bhakti is not a common lover, but a Krishnite devotee lost in Krishna consciousness, Hare Rama Hare Krishna, Rama Rama, Hare Hare, Krishna Krishna, Rama Rama. Who’s whose, how to say it? Where Radha? Where Krishna? Where that landscape and scenery and painting?

Krishna-mad Radha, what to say about? Where Krishna fluting, under which tree and where Radha standing, hearing the tunes from, giving an ear to and running towards? How to say it about love, love mundane and love spiritual? Who loves with what feeling, how to say it? Who loves whom? Who is whose lover, how to say it? Love, what do you mean by it? Love, what do I mean by it? I do not know it if my love is pure and chaste from my within or not. Similarly you too cannot say it how your love is. Enter the manna mandir and say you after coming out from? How was your worship full of shraddha? How the flowers of reverence? How it the lamp of the immortal love burning? If you yourself are pure only then you too can talk of immortal love. But here stand we in the mire of worldliness. How to love Krishna by heart? How do you expect our love to be pure? Burn your earthly yearning, aspiration, lust and desire with the oil of Krishnaprem to be lit with the wick of Krishnabhakti to be purged out by the light emanating.

The myth of Krishnite love, how to bust it? Is it physical or spiritual, how to say it? Can love be chaste and pure? At that time will it not turn into shraddha, reverence, a hand full with the flowers of reverence, worship with punit, pavitra (sacred, sacrosanct) manna in a punit  hridaya (heart)? Where the temple of love? Where that immortal love? Where those immortal lovers? If it be not, the hridaya not so pure and chaste, where the pairs looking each other in joy and sorrow as life-long partners? Where even the plain worshippers too? Where the plain guileless adorers too now-a-days?

When we read the poem, Song of Radha, the Milkmaid, the pictures of Rasalila, Krishnalila conjure upon the mind’s plane, the medieval paintings and frescoes reflecting Radha and Krishna on the swing under the kadamba tree or in beautiful attires and colours differently-posed, the artisans making the golden statues cast in gold, some blackly and some other metallic, the folk singers taking us by strike with Krishnadhuna and folktales, the terracotta-plate makers presenting it lively through baked clay work. The poem is a visit to the Radha-Krishna temple and a viewing of the coloured, painted statue so lovely stands it therein. To see the statue is to feel, what it is love, what it devotion! How the feelings of love! It is actually not a poem, but a song of Radha, Radha and Krishna, Krishna and Radha; a poem of Krishnaprem, Krishnabhakti.

Where the Blue Boy of Vrindavan fluting? Where Radha listening to? How the tune, the Golden Tune?  How the Reed, the Golden Reed and the notes of it breaking? How the lagan, the fever and frenzy, craze and whim? How the dhuna of music, the rhythm and beat of music? Krishnabeat, Krishnadhun, Krishna rhythm? Somewhere Krishna painted blackly or bluish. O, how to say about the images and paintings that the painters make? How to about the beats the musicians and singers beat they? How the wordings of the songs that the songwriters write it? How to about the lovers in couples and pairs as the swans do they in Yeats’ The Wild Swans At Coole and The Lake Isle of innisfree?

I have looked upon those brilliant creatures,
And now my heart is sore.
All's changed since I, hearing at twilight,
The first time on this shore,
The bell-beat of their wings above my head,
Trod with a lighter tread. 

Unwearied still, lover by lover,
They paddle in the cold
Companionable streams or climb the air;
Their hearts have not grown old;
Passion or conquest, wander where they will,
Attend upon them still.
          -------W.B.Yeats  in The Wild Swans At Coole

I will arise and go now, for always night and day
I hear lake water lapping with low sounds by the shore;
While I stand on the roadway, or on the pavements grey,
I hear it in the deep heart's core.
    ------W.B.Yeats in The Lake Isle of Innisfree

How do the theatre men enact they Krishnalila, Rasalila? How do they the opera men? A love song and dance drama? The gypsies in the  roadside tents lying nearer to the adjoining parts of the towns how do they make the excellent idols of Radha and Krishna made from clay and painted beautifully as beautiful artworks to be kept in galleries or showcases? Radha’s love for Krishna, Krishna’s for Radha, how to depict it? An art model, how to keep it, a love song, how to sing it, a dramatic posture, how to enact it, a painting, how to sketch and draw it? Krishna in our consciousness, how to be infuse with? There is something of Mirabai, something of Surdas in Sarojini’s Song of Radha, the Milkmaid.

With this the lore of Kirshna exhausts  it not as many had nothing to do with name and fame and they wrote it not the emotions and feelings of their heart as is the case with the Naga sadhus of India. What more do we know about them? What it going in the hearts of the Krishna idol-makers, what it in the embroiderers? How the singers scripting the songs of Krishna? How the dancers posing as to perform?

Who to say why is Krishna a little bit dark-complexioned and Radha fair? Even Yasoda fails to give satisfactory answers. But Krishna keeps asking her.

Where Krishna the Divine Musician and Magician playing the music and it taking us away from here, transporting us into a world of perennial  delight?  The song of Radha, how to script it?

 

Wandering Singers: Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Where the voice of the wind calls our wandering feet,
Through echoing forest and echoing street,
With lutes in our hands ever-singing we roam,
All men are our kindred, the world is our home.
Our lays are of cities whose lustre is shed,
The laughter and beauty of women long dead;
The sword of old battles, the crown of old kings,
And happy and simple and sorrowful things.
What hope shall we gather, what dreams shall we sow?
Where the wind calls our wandering footsteps we go.
No love bids us tarry, no joy bids us wait:
The voice of the wind is the voice of our fate.

 

Who are these singers? The Bauls, the Vaishnavites or the Krishnites? Are they the bards or the singing fakirs? The Bhartriharis, the ragged singers of India, the nirgunias too may be the ones discussed here. Some takers of Ram-naama too may be the people here.

The poem also reminds us of the kirtan-doers, Hare Rama, Hare Krishna singers. But not the professional ones as the folk singers; those who are detached will not attach to the amorous and will not keep wandering. By the folk singers she means to hint towards the bards and the minstrels whose deep devotion, dedication and bhakti flash upon the mind's plane. 

We are the wandering singers, wandering singers, wherever we go, we go on singing, camping and passing through. Under the bivouac of trees we can live and pass by our time. Under the canopy of the skies, we can live and pass our days. By the roadside leading out of the town or on the outskirts of, we can sojourn. Our destinations are unknown. Wherever we like or the spirit leads to, we go to, wherever the wind carries our voice to, we go to, singing and passing through. With lutes into the hands, we keep roaming and singing with our vagabond, vagrant bands. We have nothing to attend to, nothing to fear it. The whole world is our family. All the people are our relatives, kith and kin, kindred people. What it is ours, what it yours, we are not in it. We move from cities to cities, towns to towns. We have nothing to be attached to, nothing to be fascinated with, infatuated with. What is it to do with laughters, joys and sorrows? Laughters are long dead, lost in them. What is it to attract in the name of beauty? We are but detached people, we are the vagrant singers, singers of India. The kings and the common men are alike to us in love and affection. Instead we sing of the battles lost and fought long ago, about the glories of kings and queens, their good and bad days, the crowns and palaces commemorating grandeur and fall  both, beauty and laughter. We draw the things from our old stock.

Wherever the wind calls, our wandering feet move in to, go to, we are the wandering singers, the wandering singers of India. Our houses lie they forgotten, our identities quite obscure and unknown.There is nothing as that to do with nostalgia and homesickness. Where we live there lies our home, where we stop it that is the place of our sojourn. We do not have any permanent address. We are the bairagis, homeless people, the  saintly beings, the wandering singers. Bhakti, kirtana is our job. To sing of old things is our stock.

Wandering Singers is a poem about the folk singers of India, the gypsy bands, the nomadic groups, wandering bards and minstrels moving from town to town whose echoes can be heard even in the suburban forests while passing through the ways. Saints too first and foremost are the singers, the singers of devotional hearts. Bairagis, renouncers are the experts of this field singing with home-made instruments. The Ramayana singers, the Mahabharata singers, recreating from and singing in vernaculars the scenes and references, where, where are they? The mind goes to Fiji, Mauritius, Java, Sumatra, Bali and Kampuchea. The portions of the Ramlila and the Krishnalila flash over the eyes. The pictures of Kabirdas, Mirabai, Surdas, Kabirdas, Tukaram, Chaitanya Mahaprabhu and Jayadeva hover before kaleidoscopically.

The poem is a peep into the heart of the devotional singers of India, the mystic singers, the bairagis and the fakirs of India. They have nothing to wait for and get. They are the wandering singers, the folk singers. To spread the message of love and affection is their joy cutting across the lines. This is their philosophy of life and the world. This is how they have understood the world. What is to get from or lie in the hope of? To be a singer of life is the main thing; to be a traveller on the path of life. The devotional heart, loveful heart, we fail to feel it.

The Village Song: Sarojini Naidu

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

HONEY, child, honey, child, whither are you going?

Would you cast your jewels all to the breezes blowing?

Would you leave the mother who on golden grain has fed you?

Would you grieve the lover who is riding forth to wed you?

Mother mine, to the wild forest I am going,
Where upon the champa boughs the champa buds are blowing;
To the köil-haunted river-isles where lotus lilies glisten,
The voices of the fairy folk are calling me: O listen!

Honey, child, honey, child, the world is full of pleasure,
Of bridal-songs and cradle-songs and sandal-scented leisure.
Your bridal robes are in the loom, silver and saffron glowing,
Your bridal cakes are on the hearth: O whither are you going?

The bridal-songs and cradle-songs have cadences of sorrow,

The laughter of the sun to-day, the wind of death to-morrow.

Far sweeter sound the forest-notes where forest-streams are falling;

O mother mine, I cannot stay, the fairy-folk are calling.

Sarojini is a singer of heart and the songs she has are the songs of her heart. Just through the village song, she tells of the daughter reared from the cradle to go away in a bridal palanquin. This is but our life. The call of the champa blooms is irresistible and one cannot resist.  Here things grow to take their own recourse. So are our children. Daughters are never our own. What can they too do? But man-made restrictions are so cruel and mindless. Our life too hangs on in between the cradle song and the bridal song. But above all, the  farewell song is the last to be bidden.

 It is really a village song, the song of the Indian villages and the Indian people, how their life and feeling! But under the cover of the village song, she tells of daughters, their journey of life from the cradle to the palanquin. How does the love of the champak blooms call them? How do the cuckoos? How do the streams and forests charm them? What to say about the song of life? What about time? How do the things change it here? How do the people? How this life of desire and expectation? One day she used to toddle as a toddler. but the same girl child develops into a young maiden to be bidden bye.

The Village Song is not only the song of agrarian and rural society in which dwell they, their set of norms and nomenclature, but apart from how do they think, take to life and think about? It is actually the song of India, the love song of India; it is all about the life of a village girl, an Indian girl, how their life and conditions and what it to befall  her? The same small girl who grows in the fair country under the rural background one day goes to another’s house without feeling about  the pros and cons of life. Happiness or sorrow, it all depends on her fate, the resources of the land and the country and the family. Our life is fraught with difficulty, none can contradict it. The village girl unaware of her fate knows it not all though she can sense it a bit.

The Village Song is a song of love in which one can read the life of an Indian girl, her life from that of a growing child unto the old age, the structure of a society lies it drawn. It is for us to analyze from the gender bias point of view, how had it been social taboos, how still the psychological fears marauding the self of a woman! How the course of life? How our nomenclature and protocol? How the situations and conditions? How had it been the condition of a woman in the world?

The poem is not a village song, but a cradle song, a bridal song and here we can hear the saddest tunes of the shehnoi in which a girl as a bride is departing for her newly searched home, that is the groom’s  house just like an unknown stranger.

When as a child, she swings and the mother gets pleasure in seeing her, taking it to not that she will go away one day. But when she grows up, the champak blooms start tempting her and the cuckoos taking her to the forest bordering the river Yamuna from where she will waterful earthen pitchers. But mark it that in the Yamuna lives it Kaliya nag. The forests are not free from snakes and wild beasts. The  lonely tracts too may be fearful.

While reading this poem, the purdah system, ghumta, gender inequality, drawing of the Lakshamanrekha, house as the periphery of thinking, patriarchal hegemony, gender discrimination, child bearing   deaths, social taboos, societal restrictions, etc. flash over the mind’s plane.

In the first stanza of the poem the mother of the girl asks her about her going, where she is going is and keeps asking about. Will she forsake her jewels to the breezes? Will she leave the mother who has fed her, reared her with so much so care, love, affection and sympathy and bonding? Will she make her love aggrieved that is coming to with his Indian wedding dreams? Every daughter to her mother is but flower-like, so honeyed and sweet.

The daughter in her response to the mother says it that she is going to the forest here upon the champa boughs have flowered beautifully with the champa buds, at once catching our dream, joy and imagination. The koels cooing from the isles and the lotuses and lilies in bloom give an additional beauty to the domain, decorate the dreams of ours. The fairy folks continue to call her. If this be the picture, panorama and landscape of the madhuvana, how to resist it? How to resist the temptation of the sweet scent coming, fragrance so maddening and the things in bloom and buds? Give an ear to and listen!

Again, the mother reminds her of the wedding clothes being made on the loom which she will as a bride wear it one day. Bridal cakes are being baked on the hearth and these will arrive when the wedding day comes it. The world is full of pleasure. The cradle song with the lullabies and swings, bridal songs with bands, dances and songs and sandal-applied imagery, all are but the beautiful, lyrical and fanciful side of life which a mother has to witness it all.  

But behind all these there is an internal rhyme scheme of the sad tune, the unheard sad note of life which she knows it not. Bridal songs, love songs, cradle songs, lullabies outwardly these appear to be so lovely and charming, but are not. Those who sing lullabies know it how to care and caress the babies to sleep, letting it not to be disturbed even by the wind, taking time to repose them. Only a Yasoda can say it. Those who sing it bridal songs know it well how heart-trending the departing time of the brides! Even the musical bands and their tunes weep and wail it inconsolably. A bride in tears, have you seen her? See and say it after. First see her and then say to. Many of us would have experienced the brides while going on the bullock carts and crossing the dry river beds and teardrops lining the cheeks as a trickle of water streaming over. But who to wipe them? Man a traveller of the paths, unknown paths of life and the world! Whose daughter she is, who will give solace to and comfort her thereon? It is really a melting time.

But the daughter takes to not the words of caution. She insists on going there to attend their call, the mild breeze blowing, the river babbling by, the forest tract full of dreamy and scented blooms, the scenery so beautiful and charming and lovely to the core.

The Village Song is but a song of the Indian Mira and the Indian Radha, a life song never tuned like this, as such, she has presented here. It is a song of Radha and Yamuna and the gopis and Krishna fluting. The song of love is as such but we read it not the saddest notes of music and song, what it pains us?

What had it been in the heart of Radha, what had it been in the heart of Mira, could we feel it, feel it? To be classical is not to leave the contact with life. One who can feel it ‘mann’ (inner mind, inner heart) can actually know it all.

It is actually a song of the Indian champas and the Indian maid as growing daughter so affectionate and dear unable to resist the call of the madhuvana, the sweet, honeyed woodland, taking permission from her mother to let her go but she instructing her otherwise as per her motherly personal experience of human society and living.

 

A Buddha Seated On A Lotus: Sarojini Naidu

 

To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus by Sarojini Naidu: A Study

LORD BUDDHA, on thy Lotus-throne,
With praying eyes and hands elate,
What mystic rapture dost thou own,
Immutable and ultimate?
What peace, unravished of our ken,
Annihilate from the world of men?

The wind of change for ever blows
Across the tumult of our way,
To-morrow's unborn griefs depose
The sorrows of our yesterday.
Dream yields to dream, strife follows strife,
And Death unweaves the webs of Life.

For us the travail and the heat,
The broken secrets of our pride,
The strenuous lessons of defeat,
The flower deferred, the fruit denied;
But not the peace, supremely won,
Lord Buddha, of thy Lotus-throne.

With futile hands we seek to gain
Our inaccessible desire,
Diviner summits to attain,
With faith that sinks and feet that tire;
But nought shall conquer or control
The heavenward hunger of our soul.

The end, elusive and afar,
Still lures us with its beckoning flight,
And all our mortal moments are
A session of the Infinite.
How shall we reach the great, unknown
Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne?

To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus by Sarojini Naidu is one of those poems of the poetess which take us back to the days of yore, to the land of Buddha and Buddhism, Buddhist art and architecture, how did they make the statues of Buddha, craft and chisel from art materials and substances, Buddhas cast in gold, Buddhas made from baked clay, Buddhas as art-models and symbols. How to put the iconography of the Buddha life? Buddha in meditation, Buddha under a tree, Buddha on a lotus, Buddha as rock-cut carvings, Buddha as Avalokitesvara; the Buddha of the bhikshus, how to view it? We do not, do not know it. Let us see Sarojini Naidu’s poem To A Buddha Seated On A Lotus. Just mere a darshan, sightseeing of the master says it all. Buddha, the statues of his, so panoramic and serene and lovely to look at made by artisans, artists and sculptors, is really a joy to view Buddha art and artifacts, relics and carvings, sculptures and figurines. What it appalls us is the Divine Grace around Lord Buddha.

Lord Buddha seated on a lotus and lost in prayer and meditation with the elated hands is the thing with which the poetess starts the poem under our discussion. To picture Buddha seated on a lotus in itself adds to the aesthetic sense to the poem. What a mystical posture? How the halo around? How the peace serene? How peace encompassing it all? It is a beauty to see the Lord on the lotus throne as the lotus serves as a myth, motif, symbol and sign. The art model speaks more than a presentation in words. The blissful state of the Lord is itself supportive of what we want to speak forth or put down. As the world is so will remain it peace and nothing can annihilate it. Peace is what we hanker after finally. Everything is laid in peace and rest need not to be discussed here.

The world is forever in a flux as the things keep it changing here. They do not remain the same as they were in the beginning. Even those which are by now will cease to remain so. What it to say about human life, short and transitory? The paths of life too are never smooth. Against the backdrop of all this, the situation given, how to take to, where to go? Life is so full of troubles and tribulations. Tomorrow’s unborn grief takes over the grief of today and if misery and sorrow seem to be a part of life then what to say it more, this is what the poetess means to present it here. One dream after another dream keeps it unfolding the doors of dreams and as thus the story of our attachment keeps doing the rounds. But death is the ultimate reality which we cannot refuse to accept it. Our ordeals of fate we have to take to the test ourselves.

But we the human beings live with the frailties, follies and foibles of our own. We want to be perfect, but we can never be as we of the baser things have to return to dust and clay from where we are and our needs tend to be to. Our wants and desires are many and we cannot limit them. Our wishes too are  not sublime and good. We are concerned with ourselves merely. We want to attain moksha, but this too cannot be so easily. We want to ascend the diviner summits. Nirvana is the most sought after, but few can meddle with it. The samsara is all that we are trapped in; into the vortex of its maya-moha. Vasanaa, infatuation, fascination for is all that engages us and keeps us bound with and we cannot rise above as the daily trifles tending to lust and affection let us not to be free. The travails of life those who ail through know it well. We want to discard and discern like you as you came out leaving the palace and the family, but we cannot help, we cannot be like you, my Lord, is the thing of deliberation. We cannot cut the bonds of maya, moha, illusion, hallucination.

The samsara is of maya-moha with the chakras as such of sukkha and dukkha. How to get rid of? The snares of the world are what we seem to be grappling with, but instead there is something which but burns within, which is the thirst for spiritual thought and idea, the idea of moksha and mukti, deliverance and liberation. The quest for light is indefatigable. How to be with the Divine is the essence and without which the void will seem to be encompassing us.

The poem is in itself a Gautam Buddhian poem as herein lies it a volley of questions answered and unanswered which Siddhartha came to grapple with and in whose solutions to find he left the worldly life to be Gautam Buddha after having got Enlightenment and he the Enlightened One. Why sukkha, why dukkha, sukkha after dukkha and vice versa? What is nirvana? How to attain it? What is moksha and how to attain it? The Lord is the answer of it all, so serene and full of quietude, as if were blessing every seeker after truth. To see the face is to forget the questions ailing the self; to see is to feel peace and blessing. Wisdom comes from peace and blessedness from contentment.

What India has forgotten the world knows that, who is Buddha, how his Buddhism and these will continue to cherish mankind ever in search of shantih, ananda, moksha and nirvana, whoever comes unto him will get shantih, the peace of mind and soul. How to be in his refuge, great shelter sheltering from it all? Into the shelter of Buddha? How to feel that illumination of that light, just a sparkle of that? How to be get lit? The light is the all which is but knowledge.

The first four lines tell of the calmly-poised image of Buddha so full of mystic rapture, serenity and bliss divine:

LORD BUDDHA, on thy Lotus-throne,
With praying eyes and hands elate,
What mystic rapture dost thou own,
Immutable and ultimate?

Let us mark the lines for annotation explaining the heavenward hunger of our human soul:

But nought shall conquer or control
The heavenward hunger of our soul.

As long as the creation is and the world of creatures is so long will the soul aspire to be with the Cosmic Self. The lines are really very beautiful which is but a poetic beauty emboldening the aesthetic sense implied within the texture of the syntax of the structural context.

Who can say about the pathway end, the goal of life which but we are not sure of leading to where at the end of the journey. But instead of whatsoever be that we keep taking the beckoning flight with the view that all our mortal moments are a session of the Infinite:

The end, elusive and afar,
Still lures us with its beckoning flight,
And all our mortal moments are
A session of the Infinite.


The last two lines of the poem give the poetic suggestion with regard to the purpose of our living, why are we here and how the goal of life:

How shall we reach the great, unknown
Nirvana of thy Lotus-throne?

 

 

Ghanashyam: Sarojini Naidu

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Ghanashyam by Sarojini Naidu

Thou givest to the shadows on the mountains
The colours of thy glory, Ghanashyam,
Thy laughter to high secret snow-fed fountains,
To forest pines thy healing breath of balm.
Thou lendest to the storm's unbridled tresses
The beauty and the blackness of thy hair,
And scatterest the joy of thy caresses
In lustrous rain upon the limpid air.
Thou dost vouchsafe to pilgrim-hearted ages
The music of thy mercy, Ghanashyam,
And grantest to thy seekers and thy sages
Mystic sanctuaries of transcendent calm.
O take my yearning soul for thine oblation,
Life of all myriad lives that dwell in thee.
Let me be lost, a lamp of adoration,
In thine unfathomed waves of ecstasy.

 

Ghanashyam, Ghanashyam, how the music of the word, Ghanashyam, how the literal meaning? Who is Ghanashyam? The same Krishna Murari, Muraliwalla, Manamohan. But here  Ghanashyam, one who is deep blue coloured, one who is dark coloured as the hanging clouds seem to be laden with showers lurking over the hills, looking darker blue, bluish darkness. And here lies in the mysticism, the mysticism of the word. Can one somewhat dark but with a nicer face-cutting be not called beautiful? The answer is, of course, without any doubt. Is dark not beautiful? Generally in musical notes with the ragaas the word, Ghanashyam, my Ghanashyam spreads the melody and music of its own and this is often done in classical music. He went on playing the music, the murali and I went on hearing the melody so breathtaking, awe-striking is it, if one can feel about, as such is the impact cast or exerted upon. Where is Krishna? The Krishna of heart? How to search him? Where the blue-coloured idol? Where the blue-complexioned boy of Brindavan? How this trend of bhakti? Indian classical tradition of devotees, singers and fakirs lost in Krishnadhun, the rhythm and recitation of Ghanashyam? The heart is submerged in bhakti, Krishna-bhakti, the music of Shyam and it taking away the heart with him. As the halo of the blue lotus is, the azure of the skies, the colour of the hills in the sunshine or during the cloud around, changing into a gloom so is his colour and complexion. When lightning flashes or the thunderbolt crashes, the heart beats it with fear, taking the name of Shyam, Ganashyam just like the birds afraid of and screaming in fear.

 

Here the blue image is so prominent and the yearning merges with the Divine through the music and devotion of heart, through spiritual thirst and longing. Ghanashyam, how to see the image of his? How the painting of his? How the blue-complexion? How the blue colour alluring to all? Without being a devotee, how to be lost in? In Krishna-rasa, Krishna-prema? The blue colour and complexion of his matches with the clouds hanging over the hills and the mountain ranges, in the loom seen far as the outbursts of lurking clouds combined with thunder and lightning, seen in the blue waters of the lake or in the blue lilies fascinating it all. First, love him then feel you the magic of the Love Divine.

The poetess means to say it whose colour is it reflected in the mountains and the gloom around it, whose is it sunniness during the daytime reflecting as strangely, radiating blue, so attractive and charming to core. It is but his colour reflecting over, reflecting in and he is just like that, like that. The snow-fed so high secret fountains from which the crystal and blue waters flow form, drip as the pearls do not misunderstand them as carry forth the laughter of the same. It is none but he who heals with a breath of balm the forest pines. The storms which take us by surprise and awe carry out the beauty and blackness of his hair. But that gloom and storm result in a downpour dispelling and discarding the thaw in the air.

It has been continuing for long, for ages and ages and it will go by as long as the creation is, drenched in your bhakti, is the thing. There will be no life without his Krishnalila, Krishnalila  Divine. Where is not Krishna? At the root of all. This romantico-devotional heart is his; this classico-devotional heart is his, is what we know it not the truth. Just we need to be lost in Krishna-consciousness, Krishna-ananda. Wherever go you, goes it the heart with you, with Krishna, my Ghanashyam. One who is present it in all, how the world to go without his mercy divine?

He is in everything that we do and dream. The ages with time-spirits are the makings of his. There is nothing as hidden from. He is the Lord-god whose blessing is reflected in it all. What can be greater than the soul drenched in Krishna-bhakti? Who is it who gives transcendent calm? It is but he, the power behind our grace and blessing. The poetess prays to him for his grace, blessing and love. When we read the poem Ghanashyam, the picture of Radha who is bluish also dances before the eyes. If there is none, he is but Ghanashyam, if the heart submerged in him, the soul lost in him, why to fear? The world is the leela ground of his and he playing the flute from the orchards, hills, bowers and arbours, hills, dales, vales and mountains, woodlands, forest tracts and rocky domains. Such is the melody of his flute; such is the lyricism of love-song; such is the power of love. He is Shyam, Ghanashyam, the Blue Boy of Brindavan. Where do you lie, fluting, my Lord? Where do you? Where is the melody coming from? The heart stays it not put in. Such is Krishnabhakti. The ecstasy of deep devotion is fathomless and immeasureable.

Ghanashyam is a poem of Krishnabhakti and Krishnaprem, dealing with classical love poetry and bhakti-tradition continuing to since long, so full of folkloric music, dance and song incantations, taking us to Krishnalila and Raaslila, to Brindavan and Mathura, the banks of the Yamuna river and the kadamba trees with the gopis moving about in search of and Krishna playing the flute.

The Pardah Nashin: Sarojini Naidu

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

HER life is a revolving dream
Of languid and sequestered ease;
Her girdles and her fillets gleam
Like changing fires on sunset seas;
Her raiment is like morning mist,
Shot opal, gold and amethyst.

From thieving light of eyes impure,
From coveting sun or wind's caress,
Her days are guarded and secure
Behind her carven lattices,
Like jewels in a turbaned crest,
Like secrets in a lover's breast.

But though no hand unsanctioned dares
Unveil the mysteries of her grace,
Time lifts the curtain unawares,
And Sorrow looks into her face . . .
Who shall prevent the subtle years,
Or shield a woman's eyes from tears?

To read the poem is to be conjured of a Muslim woman going in the burkha, the blackly veil, gown and slippers, naqab or hijab. Just the eyes are visible and nothing else. She is under the veil from head to toe. How to identify her? How to be introduced to her? Hence, the poem The Pardah Nashin before us for a reading. A pardah nashin, a veiled persona, protagonist is the chief attraction of the poem under our deliberation and discussion. One cannot see her, but she can from her pardah as far as she can kaleidoscopically. Through the holes, she can and rarely will she lift it and that too purposively if the need be and that too with a prior permission. We do not know who the dark heroine is; the queen of the heart. Sarojini Naidu would have seen her, met her often in Hyderabad or the bazaars of it which she is describing it here in this poem, but how much advanced had she been when she took a note of and described into her poetry even in that age so ahead of times. E.M.Forster too speaks of the purdahwallis and ghumtawallis, the purdah system in his one of his prose-pieces, but he found it so drastically changed it during his second visit just after the independence perhaps. The poem as a subject-matter is one of human rights, women studies, gender bias, patriarchal hegemony and Asiatic studies. It is a feministic issue. The poem opens our eyes in respect of gender equality, human rights and womanly existence.

The burkha is a long enveloping garment worn by the Muslim women in public and hence a burkhawalli is the protagonist, mouthpiece of this feminist poem. The poetess says that her life is a revolving dream of languid and sequestered ease. The girdles and fillets gleam as these keep fastening the garment at the waist and the headband hair too. The fillet means a band or ribbon worn round the head as for binding the hair which but looks like changing fires on sunset seas in their gleam. Her raiment, whatever call you, clothing, attire or garments is opal, gold and amethyst. Here the poetess has given a different look to the poem after calling the dress raiment and when describing the dress, she uses the words, opal, gold and amethyst. Just like the morning mist it appears to be discarding the nightly shroud and wrapper. It is opal, colours seem to be swimming within it, transparent and translucent as well. Apart from opal, golden the raiment appears to be amethyst, just like a precious stone of a violet or purple variety of quartz, trying to dress in a decorative way, in the best possible manner.

The maiden under the dark blackly veil is almost secure and free from the thieving light of the impure eyes who may not see her with lustful looks her beauty and youth to follow her or hold in  admiration of to die for her as love lies it forbidden here and Laila cannot meet her Majnu. The cover also guards her form the coveting sun or the wind’s caress as these do in the desert lands of Arabia saving from heat and dust and desert storms and swirling sands. The covering keeps her delicate as well hiding from sun and dust. She is guarded well and secure behind the purdah, curtain of the theatre, an artiste in the making. She is just like a jewel of the turbaned crest, a secret of some lover’s breast. The poem is indeed a portrait of an artist, the artist as a young burkhawalli, purdahwalli and this takes us to the imagery of Andrew Marvells’ To His Coy Mistress. Sarojini Naidu herein seems to be the writer of A Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man and The Portrait of a Lady and the Pardah Nashin is but her My Last Duchess, Mona Lisa’s much debate and discussed smile. But only Browning can question it, why did his duchess smile? Had there been some artist here, the model would have been in Madame Tussauds’  museum of wax models. If not, it is here a beautiful human mannequin, an art piece of Naidu and in this regard Beharman’s painting of the last leaf art model and the photo making of the model millionaire cannot be forgotten.

But she is also a living character of flesh and blood. She too has love in her heart. She too has a body and a soul. She is not merely a slave. She also wants to fly like a bird as she is after all a woman. She has also her freedom, her human rights. Though the dress is a beauty, she can definitely wear it, but to oppress and suppress her, throttle her freedom are not going to work. How shall we keep her in the dark?

A thing of beauty definitely it glistens. But who can check the advancing steps of time, age and ageing as time does not leave, spare anyone who ever be it. Her youth and beauty are also as such doomed to be shrunken and shrivelled. Though none can lift her veil, instead of that it will slip through the  passage of time one day when sorrow will peep into the eyes of hers to find that she is also after all a woman and her breast filled with the milk of human kindness which but she cannot forsake it. Who can check tears from her eyes falling, tricking down the cheeks? A woman’s tears only a woman can know it, not a man, only a female, not a male.

The Pardah Nashin as a poem describes a veiled beauty peeping through the purdah, the veil, the hijab or the naqab, the headscarf or the covering over the face. But when she peeps, looks through the lattices it strikes a different chord. A tailor can explain it well as it is also a fact that clothing has a say all through the poem directly or indirectly as we cannot do without taking the dress, attire and reflection into our scrutiny and assessment. Her looks through the lattices piercing may also hint towards Arjuna’s looking of the bird-eye for archery if to compare and contrast with differently. Her looks also may relate to the stories of the modern-day lens-eyed looks of the spectacled, powered girls.

While reading the poem, several pictures come to the eyes as if someone from the country were going on the bullock-cart driving it hurriedly to meet and bid goodbye to the theatre girl acquainted with at the village fair ground and in the meantime the train whistling off from the halt with the things of heart remaining unshared, unsaid to with the strange heroine met by chance and fallen in love with strangers which she should not have done it. The other image may be of someone peeping through the house arrest or the prison cell. The other image may be of a green, red-necked parrot lying caged and speaking ‘Buti bhejo, Sita-Rama, Sita-Ram, Gopiji, buti, buti bhejo’. The situation is almost like that.  The poem also conjures up the image of the clouded skies and the moon shining through. When we think of the purdah system, the Sati system, child marriage and the widows subjected to tyranny also dance before the eyes. Once the purdah system wreaked havoc and India grappled with, struggled to come through casteism, illiteracy, backwardness, underdevelopment, poverty, hunger and above all, inaction, lethargy, fatalism and belief in the Unknown. The last of all, not the least, is Sarojini Naidu the James Joyce or the Henry James of The Pardah Nashin? Is she the Dark Lady of Shakespeare?