A Little Distance: Vikram Seth

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

A LITTLE distance from the waterfall
By a small pool the yellow beachtowel lies
On a long warm rock, and near it azaleas grow
And the shadows of thin fish fall
Across the speckled stones, and a light breeze blows
Rippling the skin of the pool, first this way, then that.
A blue-tailed lizard suns itself
And we ourselves as the sun burns through a cloud
Into the rocks, into our cold bones.

Tired, tired, my mind melts in the sun.
An ant crawls over my ankle. I sit up: there
You lie, beautiful, half-nude on the white pebbles,
Cream-coloured breasts open to the breeze and the sky
And a few lines of silver hair in the brown
To announce the burden of your twenty-eight years.
To be chaste, how frustrating for minutes,
How uncomplicated for days - to order fish, chives,
To discuss the rats in our room when the morning gongs
Sound out the monastery routine. To be
Just friends, reverting in a richer vein
To what we were, the way that we once were,
The way I hope, for a while, we may remain.

After six days, with nothing voiced, we are
Unexpectant, companionable,
Perhaps like an aging couple. We do not
Even kiss goodnight yet wake to friendliness.
It is perhaps the tiredness in my mind
Or the fear of the structure set. Unsettledness
Is what I have come to fear. We sit away
From the noise of the waterfall, by a clear pool,
Less conscious of the risk that is not worthwhile
Than of the warm grey boulders and the slopes
That circumscribe our peace, and the warmth of the sun
Melting us into the stones, and the azaleas
Mauve against a sea of pine.

We are clueless as for what the poem is about. Is it about love and loving or the suppression of the fact at the internal level? Is it about friendship just as there is a female persona too with him and he is addressing to say the things of his heart? The things are happening just a little distance away from and he is watching it all with sensuality. Sometimes she comes and he likes to sit with her and view, but what has it happened that still loves her not from his heart nor has the courage and guts to? Is she just a partner for the pleasure sake? We do not know all that as the story is just like the ones we see them in foreign countries. She is a friend for the time being, not a life friend.

A Little Distance is about the joys of swimming and bathing together with; is all about a pleasurable trip and sojourn. Both of them go for a sunbath and enjoy the pleasures of sunbathing. The sea shore, the swimming pool, stones and the waterfall add to the beauty of the poem and make it scenic and landscapic presenting the whole panorama. Seth as a co-visitor captures the photos shared together with, the moments lived with. Just as the travellers travel with, the foreigner tourists come and go away, just as the friends mix up so are the things herein. There is nothing special about it. It is just about a sunbath and roaming of the beach. Everything appears to be hollow and superficial. There is nothing as deep to be felt inwardly. Vikram Seth has failed to grasp what it is Indian love.

A little distance away from the waterfall there lies a yellow beach towel by the pool on a long   warm rock and this is how the poet starts his poem and nearer to it the azaleas grown and the shadows of the thin fish falling across the spectacled stones. A breeze blows rippling the skin of the pool. A blue-tailed lizard suns itself and a sunniness is spread all around.

The poet feels tired and his mind melts in the sun. An ant craws over his ankle and he sits up. But there on the white pebbles lies she half-nude the female protagonist with the cream-coloured breasts open to the breeze and the sky and a few lines of silver hair in the brown. To speak frankly, it is difficult to be chaste here. How the days pass by! Just as the friends they take the breakfast and go on chatting.

After the expiry of six days, nothing takes place in between them. They remain as they were. They are friends but are unsettled. This is what the poet has said it all and as thus the days keep running. There is nothing as that to kiss her and show affection. Just the goodnight is the last word bade during the night time and they take leave of each other. They are just friends, modern friends and nothing more. But we do not know it what it the interest of the poet if she is just a friend. They sit by the pool and keep watching the things around. What do they want to do, this he says it not. What does he want to do, he also says it not. What is in their hearts it is very difficult to take out? What partners or friends are they, we do not know it.

A Little Distance as a poem is all about temporary love and friendship, a visit to the sea-beach enjoying a sunny warmth spread all over the landscape spanning the waterfall, the pool and the near-by rocks and stones. There is nothing of proposition and disposition, everything is hidden under the wrap of it.

The poem is an exploit of the live-in relationship. Seth is in doldrums if he should love or not and this forms the crux of his life-story. This is the reason for which he prefers the gay as well as the bisexual relationships and is a votary of that. To be or not to be is the Hamletian drama of his, should he love that girl or not, is she likeable and lovely or not? On the one he likes and  loves her while on the other takes to her differently. What is the spectacle of his love and loving we do not know it at all nor can we say about. This is but a personal matter. When we read the poem, we get reminded of Goa where the foreigners come for a sojourn, a sunbath, a tour and a change.

Though we call him an Indian English poet, he is very much like an NRI, shuttling in between America and India. A student of economics, he has got his maximum schooling in foreign and has visited many Asian and European countries. While in China for research, Chinese poetry drew him so close. The manuscript of his first of poetry was not accepted in the West, but was brought out finally by Writers Workshop, Calcutta before being popular. Call him the suitable or unsuitable boy of Indian English poetry, he has come far, very far from where one cannot look behind, such is the name and accolade of his.  

A Little Distance is a modern love story where hearts matter it not, only partnerships make a way for. They are fellow travelers, tourists, visitors, not life partners, nor lovers of any kind. Just as the holidayers, picnickers and hoteliers go for an outing similar is the case herein. One who often keeps visiting from place to place remains it not attached to anyone. A foreigner girl bathing on the sea-beach too may be the point of deliberation and he looking her with so much so love and affection. The blonde beauty, she is perhaps not of India, but of the West, which but only Vikram can say it if enquired and he says it in response to. Where did he meet her by the Atlantic or the Pacific? Where? We do not understand if she is some ex-girlfriend of his.

 

Mount Kailash

 By: Bijay Kant Dubey

Har Har Mahadeva,

Har Har Mahadeva,

Shiva, Shiva,

Let the world be

With the blessings of Shiva,

Lord Shiva,

Bhole Shankara,

Shiva Shankara,

Sambhu, Bholenath,

Damruwalla

With the kamanadala and the trident

And in the rudraksha beads,

Bracelets,

Nilkantha Har Har Mahadeva.

 

A sadhaka,

A yogi,

A fakira,

A crematorium ground wanderer

Smearing the forehead

With the three ash-lines,

The Yoginath,

Night-wanderer,

Aghora-sadhaka

Daninatha

Shiva

On Kailash

In a meditative state

Of the transcendental meditation.

 

Nilkantha

One whose neck is blue

As for the poison taken

During the churning of the ocean

And the poisonous snakes coiling

Around

With the Ganga flowing from

The locks of the matted hair,

How to stand before

With the holds folded

And the eyes closed

Seeking the blessing from

Shiva, Shiva Shankara?

 

One who rides a bull,

Remains half-naked, half-clothed

Into the loin cloth,

The tiger cloth

With the kamandala, the trishula

Going the way

Unmindful of

Having taken bhang, datura,

Sambhu, Bhole Sambhu,

Shiva Shanakara,

Har Har Mahadeva,

You take my,

Take my homage,

Tribute, my reverence!

 

I see the peaks of Mount Kailash

And think of,

Think of the peaks in glow,

In snow,

During the night,

During the morning

While going through Mansarovar,

Marking the  waters of,

Kailash, Kailash,

Mount Kailash,

How the peaks of,

Peaks of it

Radiating, glowing it red,

How looking white during the chill!

"Don't Call me Indo-Anglian" by Syed Amanuddin

No i don't want to be
a hotchpotch of culture
a confusion of language
a nullity of imagination
an abortive affair between an indo and an anglo
I hate hyphens
the artificial bridges
between artificial values
in the name of race religion n language
i damn all hyphenated minds
prejudiced offsprings of unenlightened souls
i denounce all labels and labelmakers
i refuse to be a moonrock specimen
to be analyzed labelled n stored
for a curious gloomy fellow to
reanalyze reclassify me
for shelving me again

They call me indo-anglian
I don't now what they mean
Cauvery flows in my veins
Chamundi hills rise in my mind with stars afloat
eyes of the goddess smiling on the slain demon
Brindavan fountains sing in my soul

But, I am not tied down to my childhood scene.
I have led languages by their ears
I have twisted creeds to force the truth out
I have burned candles in the caves of prejudice
I have surged in the oceans of being
I have flown across the universe on the wings of my thought

 

They call me indo-anglian
The mistaken misinformed folk
In class me with a small group of writers
Cloistering me
Crippling me
I would rather roam with Kalidasa n Kabir
or go on a spiritual journey with Dante|
meditate with khayyam on the mathematics of existence
or sing with ghalib the anguish of love
or drown with li po kissing the moon's reflection in the river

They call me indo-anglian
It's true I write in English
Dream in the language of Shakespeare n Keats
But I am not an anglo my friend
I am a POET
I have lived forty centuries under various names
I am now amanuddin 

 ‘Don’t call me indo-anglian’ as a poem tells of what it should be called, Indo-English, Indo-Anglican, Indo-Anglian, Anglo-Indian, Indian poetry in English or Indian English poetry in the absence of a feeder dialect of its own and a linguistic environment not suitable to it as English exists it as a library-consulting communicative language in a written form rather than in a spoken form. But a language flourishes it if the spoken base nourishes it which Indian English lacks in miserably. Whatever be that, K.R.Srinivasa Iyengar has given an impetus to it by terming it Indo-Anglian. V.K.Gokak’s anthology too has been The Golden Treasure of Indo-Anglian Poetry which we like to study it most. P.Lal’s Modern Indian Poetry in English: An Anthology  & A Credo will explain it best as the amateur ones just with one book or the poems to be published too have been called in as poets. But let us listen to him, what he says and what he feels with regard to quest for identity. Is there anything of identity crisis? It is also a fact that the small band of Indian writers in English struggled too much for their survival and it too took time in evolving as good writers. What it troubled Shaun Maundy was the volume of bad verses written by the Indians in English. On the one hand, he says it, don’t call him Indo-Anglian while on the other he is in the States enjoying the nuances and idiosyncrasies of the American English. We do not understand the linguistic play.

Without following the punctuation marks, he starts the poem as E.E.Cummings writes and forbids calling him an Indo-Anglian writer as he does not like to be a hotchpotch of culture. The poet means to say that it is a mismatch for to identity him as a writer of Indian English verse in such a way and that too under a misnomer. It will be a confusion of language, a nullity of imagination and an abortive affair in between an Indian and an English fellow. He hates the hyphens, the hyphenated connections, extensions. The artificial bridges in the name of religion, race and language he admires them not personally. He damns all the hyphenated minds the prejudiced offsprings of unenlightened souls. He denounces all the labels and label makers. He refuses to be a moon rock specimen.

They call him Indo-Anglian, but he is not as they think it, he is Syed Amanuddin, one from Mysore, the Cauvery flows into the veins of his, the Chamundi hills rise above with the goddess looking down on the slain demon under the starlit skies and the fountains of Brindavan sing in his soul. Here the lines are extremely beautiful as they capture the music and rhythm and the devotional fervor can be marked in.

He is not tied down to his childhood scene. He has led languages by their ears and has twisted creeds to force the truth out. He has burnt candles in the caves of prejudice and has surged in the  oceans of being. But his group is not a small group of writers to be counted on fingers or difficult to be traced out. It is also a fact the Indian English verse has remained in circulation as cyclostyled, lithographed, typed and photo stated small booklets of poesy which the classic-read teachers of English used to frown upon and see with disdain as most of the verses were below the standard, poor, weaker in construction and meaningless and the practitioners of such a sort were but the minor writers of Indian verse in English. When they started to write they in a short time  turned into the poets of India and their first poems made entries into the anthologies as the ones  from established poets. It will be better to roam with Kalidasa and Kabir, go on a spiritual journey with Dante rather than to be a poet of a small group of writers and poets. It is better to meditate with Khyyam or sing with Ghalib or drown with Li Po kissing of the moon’s reflection in the river.

They call him Indo-Anglian, it is true that he writes in English, dreaming in the language of Shakespeare and Keats, but he is not an Anglo-Indian. He is a poet and he has been here for many centuries under names registered or unregistered. He is but Syed Amanuddin, accept you it or not.

While reading the poet we get reminded of many a thing. As per the legend, asura Mahishasura, the king of the city of Mysore was killed by goddess Chamundeshwari in a fierce battle. So she is called Mahishasura Mardini. The Chamundeswari Temple is atop the Chamundi Hills and has been named after goddess Chamundi. The word Mysuru comes from the Kannada word  Mahishooru. Li Po’s kissing of the reflection of the moon in the river adds another mystery to the poem. When he refers to the heritage of Kalidasa, his works flash over the mind’s eye, specially The Cloud Messenger and so on. Omar Khayyam’s Rubaiyat opens up new vistas of thought and reflection when he talks of his trend and tradition which Edward Fitzgerald has translated into English. The couplets of Ghalib add a new dimension to our thought and idea. The river Cauvery tells of the South Indian heritage and culture as well as river valley civilizations. It has been used as a demarcation well as a symbol. The Cauvery is also called Dakshina Ganga, the Ganges of the South. Fountains and water cascades add beauty to Brindavan gardens or it may refer to the river banks too. When he talks of the language used by Shakespeare and Keats, the whole corpus conjures up in its fresh imagery, reflection, colour, dream, fancy and imagination.

Autumn by TE Hulme

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad,
And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.
I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about were the wistful stars
With white faces like town children.

T.E.Hulme, how to admire and appreciate a poet who is credited with the introduction of imagism into the realms of modern English poetry, how to assess and analyze a poet so imagistic in his approach and style? How to discuss his poetry who died in the prime of his youth just like Rupert Brooke, Wilfred Owen and others, got killed in the War while serving in Belgium? Hulme is a poet from whom Pound and Eliot have derived it poetic materials and think him fit to be called so. To read him is to know poetry is imagery, a study in imagism and imagistic elements. There must be poetic inspiration as well as the storing of new poetic images. Poetry is in images, poetry is the imagery of life, the poet means to say it. A Lecture on Poetry reminds us of Eliot’s essays, Arnold’s criticism and if poetry is criticism of life to Arnold, poetry is imagism and imagery, coming down to as a trail of images to Hulme and his explanation of romanticism and classicism too is splendid. Had he been alive for more, he would have surpassed and trespassed many great poets and masters of criticism, would have many laurels and awards and would have definitely changed the course of literature. One who has read Henri Bergson and Georges Sorel, translated them and has applauded the modern sculptors, what sort of poetry can we expect from him? He will definitely be introducing modern things, modern thoughts and ideas into the realms of poesy. How to pattern thoughts and ideas in the form of images and the trail of imagery?

Before we take to the criticism of this poem, we need to know something with regard to it. When was the poem composed? Had he been abroad? How his origin and upbringing? All these can allude to poetic anecdote and the inspiration behind creativity. It is very difficult to say what comes from where and what occasions which. Poetic meaning is very difficult to reach at.

Even after being touched by the cold of autumn, he steps outside and takes to the stroll of abroad, into the country with the ruddy moon hanging over a hedge and he marking it just like a red-faced farmer. He does not pause it there, just nods his head in reply to the ruddy moon lurking over a hedge just like a red-faced farmer and sees the stars blinking like the white-faced town children. Just with the images given under the wrap of a few lines, the poet hints towards the cold of autumn, the walks taken and strayed far into the country, the red moon lurking over the hedge and the white stars blinking like the white town children.

With a handful of words, he crams the poem with ideas and images and condenses the poetic thought lying inherent within the poetic texture of the poem. How beautiful the images are, how musical the lines rhyming with and so the phrases and idiomatic expressions! The ruddy moon, wistful stars, red-faced farmer, a touch of cold, autumn night, etc. add beauty, depth and meaning to the poem. All the lines are quotable.

The first two lines tell of the autumnal cold night which he could sense it but instead of his straying into the cold country during the night time,

A touch of cold in the Autumn night
I walked abroad. 

 Again he says,

And saw the ruddy moon lean over a hedge
Like a red-faced farmer.

The poet hides in meaning and the poem too defies it: 

I did not stop to speak, but nodded;
And round about the wistful stars
With white faces like town children. 

We do not the meanings hidden under the coating of words. Why has he used the word abroad? What does the ruddy moon? Why the words a red-faced farmer? Why the comparison with town children and wistful stars with white faces? When the poet talks of the ruddy moon, it reminds us of Ode to Autumn by John Keats and when he talks of the red-faced farmer, it reminds us of Gray’s village forefathers and when he talks of stars and town children, it of E.V.Lucas’ The Town Week, Lamb’s The Praise of  Chimney-Sweepers and Dream Children: A Reverie and Robert Burns’ A Red, Red Rose. There is also something of William Blake’s The Little Black Boy and P.B.Shelley’s To the Moon. There is something in it when he uses the words wistful stars.

 

Judith Wright

Source: https://allpoetry.com/Judith-Wright

 Judith Wright was a prolific Australian poet, critic, and short-story writer, who published more than 50 books. Wright was also an uncompromising environmentalist and social activist campaigning for Aboriginal land rights. She believed that the poet should be concerned with national and social problems. At the age of 85, just before her death, she attended in Canberra at a march for reconciliation with Aboriginal people.

Rhyme, my old cymbal,

I don't clash you as often,

or trust your old promises

music and unison.

I used to love Keats, Blake;

now I try haiku

for its honed brevities,

its inclusive silences.

(from 'Brevity' in Notes at Edge)

Judith Arundell Wright was born near Armidale, New South Wales, into an old and wealthy pastoral family. Wright was raised on her family's sheep station. After her mother died in 1927, she was educated under her grandmother's supervision. At the age of 14 she was sent to New England Girls' School, where she found consolation from poetry and decided to become a poet. In 1934 she entered Sydney University. Wright studied philosophy, history, psychology and English, without taking a degree.

When Wright was in her 20s, she started to became progressively deaf. Between the years 1937 and 1938 Wright travelled in Britain and Europe. She then worked as a secretary-stenographer and clerk until 1944. From 1944 to 1948 she was a university statistician at the University of Queensland, St. Lucia. At the age of 30 Wright met her lifelong partner, the unorthodox philosopher J.P. McKinney, 23 years her senior; they later married.

Most of Wright's poetry was written in the mountains of southern Queensland. Protesting the political policies of Joh Bjelke-Petersen, Premier of Queensland, Wright left her home state in the mid-1970s, and settled to a remote property near the heritage town of Braidwood, south of Canberra, where she wrote many of her later nature poems.

During her career as a writer, Wright did not reject to produce hack work, school plays for Australian Broadcasting Commission and children's books, for her living. She lectured part-time at various Australian universities. In 1975 she collected her addresses and speeches in 'Because I was Invited'. Wright was appointed a foundation fellow of the Australian Academy of the Humanities and an emeritus professorship of the Literature Board of the Arts Council of Australia. Wright's memoir, 'Half a Lifetime', covered her life until the 1960s, and appeared in 2000. Wright died of a heart attack in Canberra on June 26 at the age of 85. Her ashes were scattered around the mountain cemetery of Tamborine Mountain in Queensland. Wright had owned a strip of rainforest nearby, which she donated to the state so it could be preserved as a national park.

Wright started to publish poems in the late 1930s in literary journals. As a poet she made her debut with The Moving Image (1946), in which she showed her technical excellence without burdens of fashionable trends. Most of the poems were written in wartime - in 'The Trains' Wright took the threat of the war in the Pacific as a subject. The main theme in the volume was the poet's awareness of time, death, and evil on a universal scale. With the following collections Wright gained a reputation as a wholly new voice in literature with a distinctly female perspective. The title poem from Woman to Man (1949) dealt with the sexual act from a woman's point of view. 'The Maker' paralleled the creation of a poem and the creation of a child. Several of her early poems such as 'Bullocky' and 'Woman to Man' became standard anthology pieces. Wright also wrote love poems to her husband. His death in 1966 and her increasing anxiety of the destruction of the natural environment brought more pessimistic undercurrents in her work.

'I praise the scoring drought, the flying dust

the drying creek, the furious animal,

that they oppose us still;

that we are ruined by the thing we kill'.

(from 'Australia 1970')

Wright's poetry was inspired by the various regions in which she lived: the New England, New South Wales, the subtropical rainforests of Tamborine Mountain, Queensland, and the plains of the southern highlands near Braidwood. A new period in Wright's life started in the mid-1950s: "The two threads of my life, the love of the land itself and the deep unease over the fate of its original people, were beginning to twine together, and the rest of my life would be influenced by that connection."In The Two Faces (1955) she took Hiroshima as an example of man's power to destroy even the cycles of nature. Wright's activism on conservation issues led her to focus on the interaction between land and the language. According to Wright, "the true function of art and culture is to interpret us to ourselves, and to relate us to the country and the society in which we live." She started to see that her mission was to find words and poetic forms to bridge the human experience and the natural world, man and earth. "Poetry needs a background in which emotional, as well as material values are given their due weight; and the effect of this shallowness of roots is easily traceable in Australian writing, with its uneasy attempts to solve or to ignore the problem of its attitude to the country." Alienation from the land meant for Wright crisis of the language. She criticized the education system for failing to teach students the pleasures of poetry, and promoted the reading and writing of poetry in schools. Realistically she also expressed doubts about the power of poetry to change the scheme of things.

In the early 1960s Wright helped to found Wildlife Preservation Society of Queensland. She fought to conserve the Great Barrier Reef, when its ecology was threatened by oil drilling, and campaigned against sand mining on Fraser Island. In her passionate poem 'Australia 1970' Wright expressed her feelings of disappointment and anger, seeing her wild country die, "like the eaglehawk, dangerous till the last breath’s gone, clawing and striking." The Coral Battleground (1977) was her account of the campaign to protect the "great water-gardens, lovely indeed as cherry boughs and flowers under the once clear sea.” In The Cry for the Dead (1981) Wright examined the treatment of Aborigines and destruction of the environment by settlers in Central Queensland from the 1840s to the 1920s.

As a literary critic Wright enjoyed a high reputation, and edited several collections of Australian verse. She was a friend of Aboriginal poet Oodgeroo Noonuccal, whose work Wright helped her to get published. Preoccupations in Australian Poetry (1965) was Wright's pioneering effort to reread such early Australian poets as Charles Harpur, Adam Lindsay Gordon, and Henry Kendall.

Wright received several awards, including Grace Leven Prize (1950), Australia-Britannica Award (1964), Robert Frost Memorial Award (1977), Australian World Prize (1984), Queen's Medal for Poetry (1992). She had honorary degrees from several universities. In 1973-74 she was a member of Australia Council

Ghanshyam: Kamala Das

By: Bijay Kant Dubey

In panic I asked Dont you want me any longer dont you want me
Dont you dont you
In love when the snow slowly began to fall
Like a bird I migrated to warmer climes
That was my only method of survival
In this tragic game the unwise like children play
And often lose                      
At three in the morning
I wake trembling from dreams of a stark white loneliness,
Like bleached bones cracking in the desert-sun was my loneliness,
And each time my husband,
His mouth bitter with sleep,
Kisses, mumbling to me of love.
But if he is you and I am you
Who is loving who
Who is the husk who the kernel
Where is the body where is the soul
You come in strange forms
And your names are many.
Is it then a fact that I love the disguise
and the name more than I love you?
Can I consciously weaken bonds?
The child's umbilical cord shrivels and falls
But new connections begin, new traps arise
And new pains
Ghanshyam,
The cell of the eternal sun,
The blood of the eternal fire
The hue of the summer-air,
I want a peace that I can tote
Like an infant in my arms
I want a peace that will doze
In the whites of my eyes when I smile
The ones in saffron robes told me of you  
And when they left
I thought only of what they left unsaid
Wisdom must come in silence
When the guests have gone
The plates are washed
And the lights put out
Wisdom must steal in like a breeze
From beneath the shuttered door
Shyam O Ghanshyam
You have like a fisherman cast your net in the narrows
Of my mind
And towards you my thoughts today
Must race like enchanted fish...

 

Ghanshyam here is a typical Kamala Dasian poem which is semi-autobiographical, semi-religious and semi-classical in the sense that though she has titled it Ghanshyam, addressed to Krishna, the Blue Boy of Brindaban, but instead of it she transgresses into her personal and private spaces, maybe it that she is saying the things of her heart to the Lord as has Mira, unmindful of what the world says about or not, lost in Krishnabhakti and enjoying the company of sadhus and saints, but the case of Kamala different from Mira as she keeps not their company. The pains of Radha the world felt it not, the pains of Mira, the world knew it not. So, what to say of Kamala Das? The pains of her heart she is saying to Krishna, Lord Krishna. On the one hand, classical love poetry enthralls us with its folklore while on the other the reality is far from golden dreams and flight of imagery we can see the widows of Benares and Brindaban living a miserable life, the plight of the women beyond description.

Addressing Krishna as Ghanshyam, the poetess says that the Lord has settled in the arbour of her heart, taken it to be His place, just like the koel bird builds a nest. What does it mean really? The Lord has chosen it to be His place of dwelling. Krishnaprem is as such that it has coloured the poetess in its colour and she is love-mad. Where to go and what to do? Which way to take to? Her life which has been almost like a jungle is now astir with music. But the path to take does not come to the mind.  The cuckoo is cooingly sweetly and the musical notes are doing the rounds. It is not the bird, but just as a harbinger of His melody it is striking the chords of the heart and it is stringing and she like love-mad Mira and Radha is getting crazier. But whenever nearer to, the Lord turns up not rather vanishes out of sight.

There is beauty and music in the lines when she says that Ghanashyam has built a koel like nest into the harbour of her heart. Her life just like a jungle oblivious of it all gets a charm when the koel starts cooing into the woodland. Now the magic has done wonders and the things seem to be touched divinely in spirit which is but the charm of His. Krishna-Kanhaiya knows it all how to steer across the boat of life. 

Ghanshyam,
You have like a koel built your nest in the arbour of my heart.
My life, until now a sleeping jungle is at last astir with music.
You lead me along a route I have never known before
But at each turn when I near you
Like a spectral flame you vanish.

The flame of devotion keeps it flickering, the prayer-lamp holds the years in captive and she gazes into the red eyes of death laying it bare the bitter truths of life and the world and she seems to be possessed with the questions, what is it life, what is it death as well as gets shot back with the answers, life is blood, water, semen. Death is the last sob of a relative beside the red-walled morgue.

The flame of my prayer-lamp holds captive my future
I gaze into the red eye of death
The hot stare of truth unveiled.
Life is moisture
Life is water, semen and blood.
Death is drought
Death is the hot sauna leading to cool rest-rooms
Death is the last, lost sob of the relative
Beside the red-walled morgue.

How can she take to the life of a yogan? Is it the life of taking to bhajans and the rudraksa rosary? And even if she takes, she will take the tulsimala around her neck and the rudraksha rosary into the hands will just for romance and enactment. Kamala seems to be a modern-day Radha. Sometimes she plays the part of Radha, sometimes of Mira and Sometimes of Draupadi, what she is it is very difficult to reveal.

She has woven a raiment of words for Shyam, Ghanshyam, with the songs representing a sky and with music getting liberated in the oceans. The whole world appears to be attuned to Krishna music. But there is of course a time for flirtation and frivolity for everybody and if it is not, what to do with? She is young, full of flesh and blood but her partner is old comparatively. How to calm sexual lust? She weaves the garments of words for Him dressing and decorating in the best possible manner.

O Shyam, my Ghanshyam
With words I weave a raiment for you
With songs a sky
With such music I liberate in the oceans their fervid dances

But here one can mark the personal talk, how the body is at the root of all. We cannot discern bodily lust and sympathies which we need we most.

We played once a husk-game, my lover and I
His body needing mine,
His ageing body in its pride needing the need for mine
And each time his lust was quietned
And he turned his back on me

If the lover is aged and older, how to expect amorous love from? The age gap will stand as a factor. Lovefully she turns to him each and every time, but frustrated returns she without getting the love reciprocated. She sees with the loveful eyes, but he in turn comes to nought.

But what option is left out here for her without resorting to spiritual love? If there is dissatisfaction in love on the personal level, there lies no way to ventilate the thoughts and ideas otherwise. So, it is better to turn to spiritual thoughts.

When she comes to feel it he does not want her, she starts thinking of migrating to warmer climes which is but the only method of survival. Here she is very controversial and dubious in her wording.

In panic I asked Dont you want me any longer dont you want me
Dont you dont you
In love when the snow slowly began to fall
Like a bird I migrated to warmer climes
That was my only method of survival

She grows personal as well as slanderous when she takes to otherwise while making passing references to her old and aged husband, his declining strength and stamina and her loneliness. She resorts to the nights of love-making as well as desertion of that. There lie in differences in being loveful and in being loveless. When one awakes from a dream or a nightmare, one naturally wants somebody by one’s side to cope up with the repercussions.

In this tragic game the unwise like children play
And often lose                      
At three in the morning
I wake trembling from dreams of a stark white loneliness,
Like bleached bones cracking in the desert-sun was my loneliness,

A young wife she complains against her old and aged husband which is but a review of patriarchy and our social norms imposed upon womankind.

And each time my husband,
His mouth bitter with sleep,
Kisses, mumbling to me of love.

Suppose if there is a swap of imagery, how will it look? If he is the Lord and she is also the Lord, how will it appear to be? Who will come to love whom? Perhaps she means to indicate towards the divine state of things. Why will woman come to bear it ages after ages? If the woman is not, how will it be man’s world, God’s creation? How the earthen child and his mother? How the Divine Child and Yasoda? Who cares for whom and how? How the relationship, affection,  bonding in-between? Had the bonding been not, what would it have and for what? The same Krishna as a child of Yasoda, the same Krishna as a lover of Yasoda are but the facts unanswered and asked ages after ages by the conscious souls.

But if he is you and I am you
Who is loving who
Who is the husk who the kernel
Where is the body where is the soul

He is called by so many names and is visible in strange forms beyond the understanding of mankind. But instead of mankind goes calling for. Whatever be that, this is also a fact that man loves just the disguise rather than the real. So, she feels mistaken in loving the Lord by name as it may be misleading too.

You come in strange forms
And your names are many.
Is it then a fact that I love the disguise
and the name more than I love you?

This human life is of connections, biological and earthly. A child’s connection with his mother, can these be shaken off, forsaken? The world is ever fresh, ever new. Just be ready for new beginnings, new connections. The things just get refreshed, renewed.

Can I consciously weaken bonds?
The child's umbilical cord shrivels and falls
But new connections begin, new traps arise
And new pains

If not to say to Him then whom to say to? Who can know it better? Ghanshyam, Shyam is but the  last hope. Referring to Ghanshyam as the cell of the eternal sun, the blood of the eternal fire and the hue of the summer-air, she makes it clear what it is Divinity. But what it can win the heart of a woman when is blessed with a child in her arms. Here the lines refer to Yasoda or may be of a personal reference. How to get peace? Is peace just like an infant lulled into the arms of the mother?

Ghanshyam,
The cell of the eternal sun,
The blood of the eternal fire
The hue of the summer-air,
I want a peace that I can tote
Like an infant in my arms
I want a peace that will doze
In the whites of my eyes when I smile

 

Those in saffron robes have told her of the Lord, but is difficult to be tuned to Hari-name recitation, kirtana and bhajan. The age is not as such, the mood too is not so. How to take to heart? The mind is just in Him, in Krishna, the Krishna of love and love lore. It is difficult to pass youth in Hari-naam.

The ones in saffron robes told me of you  
And when they left
I thought only of what they left unsaid
Wisdom must come in silence

 

She grows personal and referential when she presents the scenery after the guests have gone, plates washed and the lights been switched off opening the vistas and avenues of bridal communion. Wisdom like the breeze stealing the shows peeps in and passes away. If the protagonist’s remembrances be as such, how to pass the nights restlessly without sleep into the eyes? The dreams of love and sex we cannot banish them from the mind. There is something of the bridal marriage day memory in it. But here who is whose bride or groom? Is she talking of the Divine Groom? Or, the earthly love?

When the guests have gone
The plates are washed
And the lights put out
Wisdom must steal in like a breeze
From beneath the shuttered door

 

Shyam, Ghanshyam, what it to do now? The music has the impact of its own. She feels drawn like a fish into the net of the fisherman. The net has been hurled and cast over and the mind is encompassed within its circumference. The enchanted fish must rush towards.

Shyam O Ghanshyam
You have like a fisherman cast your net in the narrows
Of my mind
And towards you my thoughts today
Must race like enchanted fish...

 

One who has no help has but Shyam, Ghanshyam by his or her side. This is but a religious point of view as we have discussed in classical love poetry where there is a point of surrender, total surrender to the Divine. Love for Krishna is good. Something definitely gets purged out while offering to Him, praying to Him and lighting the candle before Him. Such a thing it is in the placing of roses before the altar, the sacred shrine or the tombstone of St.Valentine. To remember him will also suffice to do. Who is the Lover of lovers may the other point of deliberation. Sometimes it also has been seen that the devotee beloved finally thinks of relinquishing the earthly connection for the Love Divine.

If we like to make a psycho-analytical analysis, we shall come to find various things, as for the streaks of abnormal psychology studied and the matter reverting back to psycho-neurotic issues. Sexual dissatisfaction, mismatch marriage, age gap and so on will come out. There is definitely something of the repression and suppression of sexual libido. Restricting and restraining the sexual urges, we cannot channelize our energies towards Divinity. So, such a thing one can study to some extent in Mira too as she was a royal widow. There is something of perverted sexuality which but we cannot deny it.

The psychology of a young devotee is a factor. To read her mind is to know many a thing. Can a beloved be not a worshipper of St.Valentine? But she will be in the likewise manner. Sometimes one turns to spiritual love for consolation. Broken hearts need to be nourished and embalmed. The candle burning before the Cross can also give solace to the broken soul. The light burning before Krishna can also can console the self.

Ghanshyam is no doubt a beautiful love poem written by Kamala Das and nowhere can we find such a description so poetic and lyrical, so aesthetic and amorous. Krishna, where is Krishna? Krishna is in heart, in our heart. Who can know Him? One who feels Him as His own, considers Him as His own moves so closer to. He will surely come to feel the melodies of His Divine Flute piping slowly and the golden notes breaking, unfolding and unfolding and encompassing with ruptures.
Is it a song of Radha or of Mira? Or, is it of Sarojini or of Kamala? Sarojini has also a poem named Ghanashyam and Kamala too has. But Surdas and Rashkhan, they too are specialists of Krishnite love and devotional poetry. Is Kamala a Vaishnava devotee?

The poetess uses the words, as such ‘a koel built your nest’,  ‘in the arbour of my heart’, ‘a sleeping jungle’, ‘at last astir with music’, ‘lead me along a route’,‘like a spectral flame you vanish’, ‘the flame of my prayer-lamp’, ‘I gaze into the red eye of death’, ‘the hot stare of truth unveiled’, etc. add to the beauty, depth and meaning of the poem.

Even as a bird to fly out, but where to go to? Where to go flying, my Lord? The Lord, You Yourself the Boat and the Boatman, the Reed and the Flute, is the thing discussed in. In the vast sea waters of life the ship is but the only shelter.