Gayatri

GAYATRI : THE DIVINE ENERGY OF THE VEDAS

The twilight spoke
and the hour of Gayatri stepped in
to open the portals everywhere.
The light spread
on the hills and lakes
in the valleys, and the crests
of the trees swayed.

The voice began to be heard :
"The chariot of Gayatri arrives.
it's riding on the path; make way.
It's the light of the divine understanding of life;
It dawns in your deepest mind
as the soul; your soul,
the light of which you share with the Divine.
It's the energy divine, leading you across the seven realms.
It's the vibration of the harp when the harp is touched
by the winds of another life.
It pierces the rings that guard  the six centers
of the energy stored in the portals of your body.

Know that the secret of the fear
is there in the fatigue of the mind and the body.
Never lose sight of the divine mind,
the consciousness that guards your being.

The sky will transmit to you the divine light,
and be aware of the moment then;
accept it and receive in the coolness of the heart.
for the light can dazzle if the mind is not right.

Suffering and comfort are the forms of life, not the targets.
The mind gives them a base, a foundation
and calls them yours and mine.

The hour of twilight holds a meaning;
it's an hour of farewell,
and welcome too,
for the heart has stopped its swaying with winds;
in this hour the heart is still;
your shadow lies close to your feet, or completely beneath.
The dimensions of nature grow beyond the world that you know and see
with the physical eye and the body.
The mind transcends all boundaries,
and in the transit, you will see
a numberless auras of light
standing witness to your flight.

When you aim at finding pleasure and joy
what you get is pain,
and all through the passage of infinite time
your Timeless Soul stands witness to your plight.

There comes once in your life
this hour of twilight, the hour of Gayatri
and the truth shines
in a moment :
the moment of reckoning when the darkness melts.

Live in these moments of utter simplicity;
and you will live in the shade of your friendly soul;
at every step he will be your protector and guide.

This secret of Divinity, once grasped and internalized,
will keep you awake, you will never forget it even in your sleep.
,

In Courtesy To A Flower Myth

In Celebration Of Flower Myth

Under the mounds of sand and clay
the ground broke.
the pianist's fingers lightly touched
and then glided across the board.
the tall pines and oaks
shivered in the sheer thrill.
Somewhere near their feet
a little bulb
of energy and light
was breaking the rim of the wholesome earth, and the earth was celebrating
a birth of a life
Tenderness incarnate bristled forth
on a defiant fragile note
a little stem carried a little bud,
shaded and folded between two little leaves,
and inside its heart lay a bed of dormant seeds,
a bed of pollen waiting for the fingers of the sun
to force open their secret deed and cast to the wind ,
the thousand seeds with tousled hair.
Away into another land, under another sky,
on a dark fortnight with an absent moon
a seed will go to sleep
until another fortnight will stir it out of sleep.
In another part of the earth the pianist's notes will sing and blend
the blue with the white and another flower bloom.
The myth of the flower will break its code.





Image Courtesy Anna del Valle Marti


Paul Klee   "Flower Myth"
 

A COMPANION SUCH AS THIS

A COMPANION SUCH AS THIS



A COMPANION SUCH AS THIS

Two horsemen rode on the hill,
caught in the beat of the horse's hooves
and the desire raging in the restive heart of one
who rode behind, a laggard on the way uphill,
as the rider in the front goaded his horse to trudge and gallop, all at once.

The wilderness forced its way,
spread over the hill and the valley,
found its secret path
into the heart of the rider and the horse.
Everything was a call to stay
and tap the doors,
feel the deadly cold of the steel lock,
a lock that had forgotten how to open.

Forced tears were never the way
 to open rusted locks such as these.
The rider laughed a sardonic laugh
and the lock gave way and broke..
and the negative markers on the door
suddenly revealed the code.

The wilderness listened,
the heart listened
and the horse welcomed the pause.
The melody the wilderness sang was not a thunderous song.
It floated in the breeze, stirred the leaves,
whispered a roadmap into the ears of the horse
and the horse, a dumb creature that could not follow,
kept it locked in his heart.

stamping and fuming
was all that the horse could do.
On a foggy morning this was all
that the rider in the front could see.
The journey downhill, treacherous,
in need of the trust of the horse,
and the valley calling;
the wilderness of the hill,
the horse of the laggard tied to a branch of the tree;
the rider in front will never reach
the place he wanted to reach
with a companion such as this
with a companion such as this.
SUSHAMA KARNIK

Once A Tree

ONCE A TREE

Once a tree, now a stag with many horns,
,once a celebration of green,
now another emergent form
the tree is eternal, a miracle, invigoration,
once erect, now prostrate,
and yet its bark speaks
of a saga risen from earth,
and its branches pushing a trail
of energy, undying strength,
a transmigrating soul,
forever in gratitude bound to earth

Image Courtesy Kostas Michalis

Profile

WHAT IS IN A MYTH?

What's In A Myth?

The morning brought dew-drops
and several suns
multiplied
and dropped their images in every petal ,
clinging lightly at the end
and the petals held them the longest they could;
after all they were meant to be suspended between the night and the dawn, ready to drop any moment when the leaf and the petal stood heavy with the weight of love they could bear no longer.

Eyes, there are eyes everywhere if you would care to see.
Eyes in the dew, in the grass blades that shine
in the petals and the leaves.
They are all your eyes,
looking at me wherever I go,
to the sea or sky or the river,
to the mountains, the plains and the fields of grass.
Their shadows spread like the shadows in the woods;
their nuances deepen like the voices in a dream.

It's not love ordinary;
it's an invitation to partake
in the synergy of the flow;
a hint to follow till the horizon's end' till the sky's space that never ends;
reminding : life begins always at the edge of everything that seems to have come to an end.

THE RAIN MUST COME

Sushama Karnik originally shared:

 

THE RAIN MUST COME
The rain must come and complete the round
of falling and filling in the broken ring ,
the missing link that causes the miracle,
that restores order, the symbols the earth had given to man,
the images the rain had promised the sea,
and the script that needs to be read again
for the child who would watch, unable to speak,
of the miracle the sound would bring back,  life,
the miracle of the sound of the impossible,
the sound of the simple brotherhood that unites the dreams which this planet was given to nurture for the child.
The child knows nothing of the hatred that kills ,
nothing of the weapons that are marketed
in the place of the old discarded dreams.
He knows only the perverted magician
who barters on the counter, to whisk away the dreams as rusted lamps
and replaces them with weapons of trauma
and installs a monster that redefines hunger, power and war and peace
The rain must come and cover the child
standing beneath this bleak sky
that has forgotten the memory of the rain

The Child And Me Or The Child In Me

Truth, our personal truth
and trust, our fragile truth
have both a need of surveilance.
Like the breath they follow us
in slumber, sleep and dreams
and like the breath we know them not.

Do we stop the breath, or does the breath fail us
if the truth, the trust, the sleep and the dream fail us?
It's the child in us then holds our hand and leads.
The child holds neither a belief nor any truth.
It holds no secret, no shadow of a self to precede or follow.
When the child steps ahead of me

I have to catch it and pull it behind
to walk alongside me, because I am all alone
without its pristine innocence,
and my primal shadow, this child

Image Credit : Dr. Ego Prozac

The Human Spirit

THE HUMAN SPIRIT
No one ever dreams a dream to its completion;
sleep intervenes; changes to slumber;
or the allegory slips,
fear interrupts;
courage sinks ;
the soul leaves the hand of the self.
But the spirit, this human spirit is invincible;
it is ever awake;
be it day, be it night, it never sleeps.
I don't see dreams in sleep;
I see them in the day.
I sift the illusion from aspiration,
translate the cryptic signs into strength.
I am invincible; I am human;
and that's the essence I draw
from the maze of all of the sage's words,
out of  all the challenges thrown.
One day I shall ride the crest of the tide,
and that's the promise , not a dream.

The lioness Pensive, Not Yet Sad

Beautifully pensive, but not sad,
reflecting still
on life's mystery and her own heart,
youthful longing, seductive charm,
the lioness when not in need to prey and hunt
can look at the object of love
with a warm and a quiet gaze
and walk through the maze of the forest's ways,
past the herds of elephants and watch them graze,
walk past the swarms of birds
and watch them feeding on worms,
peacocks in their feathered glory and crown,
the lioness is never surprised
by what lurks around the bend
to interrupt her ground.

The forest, now humming with the silence that speaks
of a presence in the shadows of the tall weeds,
is the quiet  scent, of the one she is seeking and being sought by it.
In the quiet that is lurking around,
she seeks the sound that will match her gait,
and make the dark and the light all alike.

Image original by Lu C Via Anna .a

ALL

Sushama Karnik originally shared:

ALL
When I stood at a distance
to watch you from the shadows,
not yet certain
if we were enemies, friends or simply hostile beings,
I resented the thing that separated us;
it was something far deeper than language and creed.
it was the Lethe that divided us,
from the memories of a shared past, shared links.
Once in the past, but you may not recall now,
I remarked, casually to hide the raw injury,
I said,"You mentioned me not when you mentioned everyone else you loved. Did you forget me?"
You turned around and looked into my eyes
with no surprise
and said, "Not at ALL".
There is such happiness , I never knew, in being counted among 'All"
than being referred to
as us and you and they.

A Wilderness Of Signs

A Wilderness Of Signs

A road-sign erupts
suddenly out of the blue,
the blue the neon sheds on the lamentable gloom
of a road that is indifferent to those who walk,
shunning intimacy, brushing past in haste to another day.
the road -sign erupts
with a perfect shadow
drawn with a dense patch of congealed light,
and the road sinks
with one more absurdity added
to the wilderness of a forest of signs.
The light still streams
into the holes, over the stones not spotted in the day,
streaming, flowing, halting in the way,
breaking into perfect geometrical play
of a vivid understanding
of the heart of loneliness that spreads
the evening's dusky feel.
The road is a persona
in the pages of an anonymous entity
that has invaded the homes , the apartments that heave
a breath of silence, a breath of heavy cumbersome weight,
and the high walls of the citadels lean
with a concern, a warmth scarcely felt, scarcely seen.

/tuttartpitturasculturapoesiamusica.com/

Tree At My Window

Tree at my window, window tree,
My sash is lowered when night comes on;
But let there never be curtain drawn
Between you and me.
Vague dream-head lifted out of the ground,
And thing next most diffuse to cloud,
Not all your light tongues talking aloud
Could be profound.
But tree, I have seen you taken and tossed,
And if you have seen me when I slept,
You have seen me when I was taken and swept
And all but lost.
That day she put our heads together,
Fate had her imagination about her,
Your head so much concerned with outer,
Mine with inner, weather.

Robert Frost. "Tree at my window" in West Running Brook, 1928.

Image credit +Anna del Valle Martí

 

Vastness

The flower bloomed
out of season
alone on a single stem,
in the midst of blades
of wild grass fluttering
in the fleeting wind,
in the wilderness that stunned,
the little frail peeking heart.
And the wind when he saw
the flower standing alone in the grass
came invisibly, caressed and softly said,
"I need to feel you my little darling,
I need you to breathe my word,
and spread it around in the mist."
The flower heard, and the vastness no longer stunned.

Conversation

 A CONVERSATION

"Did we both speak the truth- or one of us did- or neither?..."

The law of probability. If the law covers all probabilities, we just keep waiting for Time to speak. the truth.

Yours are always amazingly inspiring insights. It's been (and still it is) a period of doubts and reflections. Concerning the truth of the Being, the beings and of what are simply appearances, I'd rather not to answer here but to post something in the future. Something I've already in mind and concerns the lottery and the universe of all its possible results. 

The priestess wishes that all your speculative concerns may load the dice favorably and Time may be a fair judge. :):):)

What Lord Jim taught me is that while we presume to choose (or escape) our destiny, in the end what belongs to us is inexorably given back to us.. 

Oh, the man of law! :) Then we must say, Time is just. But our human failing, we say, 'Justice delayed is justice denied' Each one abides by their own conception of justice and law. That is why the necessity for a uniform code of justice.

And that is why also the need for Conrad and Lord Jim who view it from the inexorable laws of destiny.

And also the need for philosophy, art and poetry which help us retain equanimity.

Men of God and men of law have strange affinities. Maybe it's a matter of the equanimity indeed. The equanimity we seek every day, walking down the way to dusty death.

Rules, order, proportions... the stuff for both law and art.

Something destined to be put down by Time itself.

Chronos, the great Junk Dealer, the leveler who has deceived us, concealing the fact that our ultimate destination is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

our ultimate destination is unspeakable and calamitous beyond reckoning.

A strange dream it was;
a strange congregation they were,
a group of people heading for the north
and I among them :
a barefoot, barebreasted mother.
They never stared at my nakedness.
For the rigours of the journey
and the challenges had cleansed them all.

And just as we were nearing the goal
and bracing ourselves
for the last test of endurance,
I heard,
 you,heading for south, had camped for awhile
on the other side of the road.

Barefoot and barebreasted though I was,
I rushed across.
You were not alone; you were isolated.
They, the barbarians were haranguing you
for your heresies
and pronouncing death as I entered your camp.
But before I could comprehend,
their eyes fell on me :
I standing at their door,
barefoot without a cover on my breasts,
frantic to reach out to you.
It was not a sight that lured them;
it was another proof of your sacrilege.
I saw their meaning as they glowered at me viciously.

I stood stunned, suddenly conscious of my bare breasts and empty hands,
and my alienness above all.
I could neither cross over nor turn back.
At that moment I suddenly knew the meaning of the body as shame;
a body, my body, suddenly sen from an alien eye:
it turned into a mass of unenhanced physicality.

The meeting of our eyes in that moment of trauma
was more than what they could understand
in their reproachful piety.
Before they could reach me in my vulnerability
you moved forward and threw a shawl of yours,
and in a split moment wrapped me around and retreated to their side quietly

Dhuaan (Smoke) The original gazal in Urdu, by Mir Taqui Mir

Something is hidden from the view
behind the smouldering fire and the stifled smoke.
Somewhere are hidden in the mist,
 the embers of someone's  love.

Someone looked long at the sky
and under that anguished gaze
the sky has turned into a blaze
of a fire that yet could not erase
the last remnants of a clear sky.

Every morning at every dawn
the flames arise and redden the  screen,
leave trails of a script half erased
and half still visible. behind the smoke.

A sigh of despair arises in the alley
as if a coffin is being carried to the grave.
The sign of someone's grief
this smoke that you see in the breeze.

Harvest Moon

The eclipse of the Harvest Moon

The harvest moon
with the teasing smile
arose and suddenly brightened the sky.
The big red Moon, the farmer's lamp,
the light shone above the thatched earth,
tired and sleepy after the day's toil.
The moon seemed enormous in the starless sky,
easy, unfettered, the brave  moon of the equinox poise
set upon the path as the martyr moves
to  the certainty of the eclipse, imminent, in an hour's time.

No mist concealed the prospect of the doom.
And the harvest moon, the farmer's delight
was moving alone, with no anchor, with no light
to assure the safety of the journey tonight.
the light that bounced off the surface and rolled down
to the earth in her tremulous anticipation
was soon to be blocked by her shadow.
Sometime the shadow, albeit of love, is the cause of the eclipse
for the journeying moon.
The moon was going to be on his own,
 reddened with the knowledge of being alone,
the Moon entered the decreed zone
with the heart held in silence
and the breath suspended in a quiet retreat
the earth can do nothing but watch
till the brave harvest moon
comes back in the light and shines again 

Untitled XII

An all-night's journey in a moonlit dark
suddenly comes to a day,
a burst of sunlight behind the hill,
the things battled for visibility
fall in a clarity
hidden from the sight;
and where the hill-top was,
 now stands a glorious peak!
A drop of sunshine travels through the thicket and falls at my feet.
I pick it in the folds of my garment,
this little diamond found on the way.

SUSHAMA KARNIK

Attainment  Image Courtesy +Fabien Todescato 

Not seeking delight here and there,
Not indulging in complacent becoming,
Such is the way of the true dweller,
In insubstantial abiding;

Of what good those acquisitions,
Mere adornment to ignorance,
And blinkers of misperceptions,
Of the all pervading non essence;

Should the conceit of attainment,
Obscure your insight,
Renounce it that instant,
With all your might.

Photo courtesy +Nyanamoli Bhikkhu​

AND I AM IN ALL OF THEM...

AND I AM IN ALL OF THEM...

The old-town market-place! I love its smells,
 its colours. I love to feel its dust
in my nostrils and its noise
in the innermost pores of my heart.
Soon the streets will be deserted, the noises cease one by one,
the bargains stop, the buyers and sellers
will collect their belongings and start for home.
The market-place will be emptied of its contents
like a vessel from which water has leaked out.
A silence, like that which follows after a vibrating chord is stilled,
will pervade everywhere.
When an intensely animated and vibrant instrument is silenced,
the listener is plunged into a gloom
which penetrates deep.
It is in such moments of silence
that I would often re-enact the mysteries
 that would not open up.
I wander through the streets of the deserted market-place,
 its intricate mazes, the narrow lanes and alleys,
 where none knows me.
I sit under a tree, pull a shawl around my shoulders,
and a hood to cover my head.
Hardly recognizable now, I sit there, watching the flux of life.
The houses all around, are quietly huddled
 like solid masses of rocks carved from inside,
revealing their interiors filled with quivering light,
and I am in all of them now.

MEDITATIONS

MEDITATIONS

Sometimes we all need
a shelter, an answer,
a quiet moon
and a raging sun.
echoes under domes.
The bicycle riding
under the autumn equinox
I in search of the Word that makes
the mountains move;
I search for the dark the lantern-moon
and the funny acoustics that
conserve the voices that sing,
but do not answer back.

THE WORD WE SEEK

Little lilacs sway in the breeze;
the voices come
tripping lightly over the saffron fields
seen in the light of the dusk.
The vineyards are ready with the glass of wine
the air heavy and drunk
with the pollen
scattered in the wind,
a lunatic mind
of an ethereal being
is flying with the brittle wings.
Tornadoes rise and hit the shores.
The lighthouse stands unmanned.
The night breathes
the mind stands still,
a total moon-eclipse.
the darkness shines with a subtle glow;
untranslatable, the Word we seek

THE ESSENCE

In the deepest cave on
a full-moon-night
his presence glowed like embers speaking
to the mind of a child that had never seen the glow
of embers dying.
"Think of the fire only as Fire
dwelling neither in the flame
nor in the embers dying.
The essence will never die.
A flame gone
in one candle will rekindle
a thousand more before it is gone."

THESE EMBERS
These embers, this live coal,
this fire that in dying glows,
this light seen on fleeting clouds,
is the grace i give; a grace that endures in the passing on,
not in the passing out of the light.
Thousands will come and go;
will live and love and die;
and yet a thousand more will come;
and brighter shine
the living, loving and dying.
Life and love, a candle in the dark, a torch for the passing night
a river of an endless flow.
The river knows and calls;
live in the flow; the river will know.

ARE YOU THE PROPHET...

ARE YOU THE PROPHET...

Drop it, the chant, the rosary of beads;
watch dissolve the mist.
Such a flow of honey,
not honey, not a mist,just a flow,
an alertness, an awareness of being.
The flow expands, but does not sweep you off the feet.
No more fear in the deluge of peace.
Are you lost? Are you there for me?
I no longer need
the comfort of your being.
It expands and carries
all that remains of me.

I come back and hear the voices of agony ;
voices of suicides choking in tunnels,
I know not the cause.

I see a poet being accused
of terrorism, a revolt that he could not carry.
His audience accuse him
of an incomplete mission,
of leaving them dangling in the air
with impotent words of poesy.

"Truth is incorruptible", they had heard him say.
"Show us the Truth; give us hands either to kill
ourselves or kill Truth."

"The cowards cannot kill", he said.
The corrupt cannot kill the incorruptible"
They who were half-way on the way to Truth,
turned back.
From a safe distance they shout,
"Are you the prophet or the terrorist of the day?

Van Gogh's Path

Van Gogh's Path

A day was when he got up from his bed
with the sun on his mind
and the moon in his heart.
Heedless of the hunger
he set out on the path,
just a yellow light tinged
with grey
and a deep blob of blue to his palette's stock.
And the sun that climbed to look at him
was never caught in the landscape of that day
save for the forgotten marks of dreams.
The sun smiled, a wan smile
and hid the tears behind a cloud
And one day the man rose from his tomb and merged with the cloud that came to be called
Vincent Van Gogh.

Sushama Karnik (c)

A SONG OF TIME

A SONG OF TIME

A blue lake glimmers

The shadow of the hill descends,

Lightly, ever so slightly, in the lake,

And time glides without a sound

As I enter your sleepy town.

Your night stirs with ripples of the quiet unrest.

You don’t know me, an alien in your quiet town.

A full moon night, streaming light,

And the clouds are hastening over the ridge,

A pageant of purple, stealing across your sky

And putting out the light on my path;

I am poised for the flight.

It’s a steep ascent.

Evening shadows lengthen across; are swallowed by the voluptuous dark,

And your city is aroused one by one as the lights emerge.

Everything lights up: the shadows that play in the blades of grass,

The silhouettes of skeletal trees against the softly darkened mist.

Your mansion comes in view against a craggy hill;

Every window a casement of distant glow,

And light breaks out quietly,

Once again, another day,

Of gold and grey

Is sliding in the canopy of your sky.

The song that time sang

Has come to an end too soon.

A solitary black swan

Swims in the stillness of my heart,

The stillness of the lake,

A fugitive bird of the water and the sky

Beating a retreat

Before the armies of the day

Begin to invade the spaces of a bohemian  wanderlust.

Sushama Karnik (c)

 NEITHER THE SUN NOR THE MOON

The moment of wakefulness before the sleep begins;

A plain of the sun where no shadow falls,

A plain of the moon where nothing filters

The light of the celestial beings.

Something slips out of hands.

A solitary bird watches and does not speak.

The branch gives way;

The fear recedes;

A welcome spring

Is waiting to receive.

The remnants fall without being seen

With nothing to hold, nothing to let go,

And nothing to happen in between.

A lull, a silence, a primordial sleep,

An occurrence that signals nothing,

An overpowering conquest begins.

Nothing can obstruct the invasion of sleep.

The mind a ceaseless ground of constructs and fall,

The heart, the timorous companion that hides and seeks,

The memory, a witness to the imprints of history’s timeless footprints;

They are all billowing waves, left behind,

And that is the dawn when no sun rises,  no moon shines.

July 25, 2015
(c) Sushama Karnik

Seeing With The 'Third Eye' Part 1

Seeing With The Third Eye'  Part 1

Seeing With The 'Third Eye'

A:    Here is the page you were looking for.

B:    Yes? You found it? Read from it.

A:    Let me close the window; it's April wind, too hot for me.

B:     Let it be. I love it.  Torridly hot. I like April to be that way. Now , read.

A:     Ok. Listen, "And eight are her virtues in which she is clad, Gauri,
much the prayer that's gone, that the Lord open the Eye."

B:      You are sitting near the window. I can feel you because the wind is blocked now. What are those flowers? Are you holding them in your hand? But no, you can't, because you are holding the book. Is it a bouquet near the window? And it's not a familiar perfume of the roses.

A:       No, it's not the rose. It's jasmine, and you can't make a bouquet with those. They are buds, white buds, like small white pearls, woven into garlands. I am wearing one right now in my hair.

B:      Ok. Stay where you are. Don't move from there. It's just the right distance for the fragrance. And now let me recall the lines you read.
Do you know why I selected them for this particular sequel to the first act?

A:      I know. there is a reference to the Eye, the Third Eye.

B:        Yes. The Third Eye of Shiva. He was blind like me; blind because he refused to see, and I, a blind man who cannot see.
Gauri, the virgin princess of the Himalayan king is under the vows of austerity, vowed to make the adamant Shiva open his eyes and look at her.  And Shiva, unaware of her anguish and torment, continues to be in a trance.Do you know how the reincarnation has come full circle? Now I am the Shiva who is in torment because I refused to look at you in that incarnation.

A:    There is a possibility of redemption still.

B:     Redemption? For me? How?

A:     You have the mythical Third Eye still. You aren't deprived of that faculty. It's with you still.

B:     Hmm...You are smiling.

A:    How do you know?

B:    Because your voice has a certain inflection when you smile. I can hear laughter; everybody does. But I can hear a smile. You don't need a special faculty for that.

A:    Well, that was what I wanted you to understand, that you do have it--You have the Third Eye. Can you hear my smile? Can you see it?

B:     In my case, it is transposition, like in a piece of music, being lifted to a different key, a key that does not fit in the music of all. Yes, I can hear your smile, and I can touch it too. Did you blush?

A:     I don't know. I didn't look in the mirror. What made you think so? Rather presumptuous, I dare say.

B:       I am pretty confident. Blindness has given me the prowess which the sighted persons don't have, sadly.

A:       Ok. But what makes you feel that I blushed?

B:       From the slight pause, and the way you rustled the pages of the book and turned them over frantically. I hope you haven't lost that page you found after so much of effort. Doesn't matter. Now, I have a clear memory of another page which i want to incorporate some way or the other into the script. It's on page 271, para one, the right hand side of the book. You had read it to me before and I have noted it down. Found it?

A:      Yes, I have.
"Laving in the waters of the young stream,
Donning the garments sacramental,
Slowly, ever so silently, adoring Shiva the Lord
She became the spouse,
O happy Parvati,
The white hibiscus, the garland of round jasmines--
To the parting of the Moon's hair, Sister,
Pour pearls."

B:     That's enough. Words are only incantations. I just use them to launch into a flight, or hydrants you might say; something to first ignite the fire and then to sprinkle water, just enough to let bloom flowers, flaming flowers of passion, imagination, something to set in motion the quest--the quest for the body of the words.

[To be continued.....as this is too much of an effort for this day.]
Note:  B is a man and A is a woman in this dialogue. B is a playwright and A is his assistant.

The Broken Pitcher

The Broken Pitcher

You broke that pitcher;
or was it someone else who did it?
Going by the majestic, double face you wear,
that perhaps is closer to the truth!
The hurt, oh that hurt in your eyes,
while you repress the pathos,
how it seeps like some ominous sillage
to overshadow the poise
of your precarious, vulnerable stance!

Something else broke with the pitcher in your hand,
something more precious and sad,
which you so carefully held to your heart!
I can see it in the way you clasp
the folds of the only satin dress you have!
Yes, I don't want to shrink from that word:
"the only one you have"!
I can see the hurt and the anger,
which you don't see perhaps!
I can see it the way you clasp at the folds

as if to withhold
something else from breaking
along with the pitcher;
your fencing anger in a subtle transformation
moving closer to a desperate defiance.
Wrath and anger were never your privilege perhaps!
And as I gather the fragments
of the thing that broke
something from the fragments comes to me  in a continuous stream, unbroken.
At the touch of the world of one
with another world lived apart,
edged with a mist that melts,
we flow into each other
with words that melt into
colours and shadows.

Sushama Karnik (c)

Image Credit : +Dirk Puehl