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Leela, The lovely play of life! What is it, when it is all woman? Fineness, fabric, famine, abundance? What is it, when she is all creation? Mother, grandmother, daughter, wife? Teacher, solitary tree, floating sky? What is it: Leela, Touch, sense, smell, space? What is it, this elusive essence, This strange spirit That embraces, that leaves alone, That infuses, inspires, destroys, brings to life, What is it, this leela In song, in laya, tala, In colour, movement, In design, shape, form In nothingness In me?
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How do I say I am in love or that I am not, Tiny perfect feather lying on the ground, black and white. The chanting goes on of freedom, of flight, of flow like ripples that meander to become jeweled necklaces; shimmering cotton garments. Life- endless, abundant in versatile form, mutating, dying, living, connected in mutual kindness. - Listening to Nawang Khechog's Universal Dance of Kindness... https://myspace.com/nawangkhechog/music/song/universal-dance-of-kindness-72918472-80426664 I am watching Sugarcane leaves. Each one dances. Almost as if the space-time they belong to is different. I don't know why I have titled this piece Deva Gandhari, I am not a musician, nor do I know Ragas, but when I am in nature, I am tuned into her moods. Watching sugarcane leaves dance, their rhythm slowly picked up by a dragonfly further afield, and that ripple slowly transported to a falling neem leaf, falling to ground so softly, that the gentle ripples caused by its weight on the ground, caught me unawares when they reached me. These softer rhythms of the earth, the gentle cadences of which flow into one another, the dew drop in silence slipping off the leaf, causing a ripple in the water below, that sets of a leaf towards a scurrying spider on the bank, whose web, seemingly lifts of all the movement into a dew drenched jeweled mystery, shimmering in the first light of dawn. Shadows too dance in this rhythm, sparkling serene, playfully teasing leaves, trees and birds. Bugs jump, insects roam in drunken sweetness, and the tip of a tall grass responds with a gentle nod. I too smile and sway to the rhythm. I am grateful to my years of training in Bharatanatyam that gives me the sensitivity to watch these subtle rhythms, and let my body respond to this unheard music, to this rich play of spaces and silences. I come back searching for the sounds that can fill this intensity of experience, and softly without my knowledge, Deva Gandhari floats into my head. I go back to search and I find the songs that fit perfectly... Enneramum Undan ... Gopalakrishna Bharathi , K.V.Narayanaswamy rendition Ksheera Sagara Sayana....Tyagaraja, Balamurali Krishna rendition The rules of poetry have changed I watch a leaf shiver in the breeze I watch it spin fall fade... The rules of poetry have changed. Green spider Unwoven legacy, woven dreams Children barefoot, their laughter filling the forest... The rules of poetry have changed. I watch branches, twigs music, infinite rhythms interconnected lives... The rules of poetry have changed. Roots, ripples, croaking frogs waves upon waves of a simple smile... I watch a pod break a seed burst a flower blossom pumpkins flow in fun... The rules of poetry have changed I watch... Written during a trip to the Sadhana forest on their 10th birthday celebration http://sadhanaforest.org/ -Powerful experience, sacred day! Luckily, I spoke to Vijayalakshmi Aunty, a dear family friend this week and she rightly interpreted my year of reflection as essential, in two simple words calling it a Spiritual Holiday.
I have been here, present, performing, creating, falling sick, taking care, responding, reacting, in relationship. But I have been away, away in another space resting, bringing together my essential core, in touch with the deepest spirit of my soul, disconnected from this time and space I am bound to, tuned into another time and space that I belong to. It is natural for me to live parallel lives, as it is for many others I know. Perhaps we all do live one of our lives in eternity and the other in mortality, forever playing hide and seek with ourselves. Like the shadow of a giant tree that dances with sparkles of light on the ground, I have been swept away in the dance of a spirit far greater than my own, dissolving my limited being in its unlimited ruthless compassion. The shadow has spread across the earth and I cannot fathom where this giant tree grows for such a vast expanse to be covered and the dancing lights laugh at my perplexed awareness. I think I am drawn to the shadow and I look up to find the light filtering through me, disintegrating my physical sheath into a billion particles of wondrousness. I am lost and then something puts me back together, all those billion particles from all their diverse paths and speeds. I embrace, I allow, I let it be. I am left with a newer material sheath, unfamiliar, yet not completely unknown. And then again the disintegration happens and again I am woven together. Again and again like a lullaby, the rhythms of this rocking, changing, manifesting, un-manifesting shadow and light sculpt me into something that I cannot fathom. Oh! I am still bound to form, seemingly ever more than before, and then I am not. I am light of body and heavy of being. Can a heavy bird soar in flight, I ask myself and before the question acquires its words thousands of tiny swifts lift the heaviness of my being into their light joyous flight. And I am left interwoven with their bodies, thousands of them, as my own. I don't ask why this happens anymore or even question the reality of the parallel worlds. It is easy to bring doubt into the equation and abruptly lay a heavy boulder in the path of a volcanic eruption or a sprouting seed. Neither seem to be stopped by the mythical boulder of this world. I naively presume that I can keep both worlds from colliding with each other as if celestial processes are my concern or in my capacity I spot the tree and as soon I catch hold of her roots, she disintegrates into a billion particles of light, or perhaps dust and caught unawares I let myself go. And seemingly one of me falls to the ground taking root again, and the others are lost with that laughing disintegrating mighty tree. I wonder which ones of me are on a holiday, a spiritual holiday, the rooted, the flying, the swimming or the dissolving? The paradox of existence and non-existence cradles me in its infinite playful love. Everyday life goes on. I react, I respond, I exist, I own something or the other. We are in relationship, Life and I. The tree laughs, or perhaps the shadow or is it the dancing lights? There is a certain absurdity to being who I am. I can't say it is wonderful all the time. But then it is there, this strange absurdity of being, of a reckless, rash, thoughtful and quirky combination of selves. Most of the time, when I am suddenly asked to introduce myself, I am confounded - Which of my selves should I introduce, I wonder: the micro organisms, the coral, the reef or the ocean or the waves? I wonder if others may perceive this weird confusion as profound silliness, confused identity or if they may have the patience to see it as a palpable mystery. And similar to my perception of my many selves, I am thrilled to meet the manyness in the oneness of people with seemingly singular identities. Conflicting and confusing, mesmerizing and meandering, hilarious and eventful, I enjoy and come away often overwhelmed by meeting people. In fact it takes me a long time to process everything because I am obviously seeing too much and then I am also going into tangential zones of imagination and creativity. Then to appear quite simply polite, I drag all these meaningfully multiple forces of perception and keep them in an almost strangle hold, not that the forces care much about my idea of restriction. They are slippery and sneaky, wonderful and precocious. And they are ticklish as well, giving me enough reason to burst into laughter every few minutes or so. I like that, though it is sort of cranky to burst out laughing on serious occasions. And quite often these selves hold their holy meetings, all joyous and wacky, all serious and reflective and engage in some kind of a ecosystem evolution. It is terrifying at best, mystical at worst, a complete upheaval throughout. And when I observe their meetings with that 'Nth' self who is being observed by yet another, I am drawn back to nature again and again to learn. Suddenly, when I switch off and get drawn into the uncanny depth of a leaf, a tree, a flight of birds and a sudden breeze, I am embraced by this great ecosystem, which I mirror in all my sheaths, physical, emotional, intellectual and metaphysical. Then my absurdity is no surprise, it is natural, it is real and it is profoundly simple. For sometime if we can shut of the clamor in our lives, without our super-imposed human individualistic identity and watch the dance of a leaf and an ant, waves and sand, clouds and skies, we might find an abundance of selves in conversations around us; Evolving ecosystems of exchange, thought, transformation, holiness, conflicts, confusions, hilarity and blessedness in absurdity. In healthy perspective, I find it even more unintelligible and wander off to wonder if I am driftwood, lake, iguana or dark night. I love watching mountains. And I watch them because I find myself in them, as I do, in the rivers and the seas. I find myself in tree and bird song, in brilliant colour and frog. I find myself in sky and soil, seed and rock. It is not strange to me, what I feel, how I feel. It is how it has been all my life. I don't know how or why, it seems almost ridiculous for me to question this sense of being or for that matter try to explain it. And when I am with the mountains, we vibrate in song. It is how we are, the mountains and I synced in our rhythms. The mists pass us by and the sudden flight of wings brush our souls. We do not have to speak to each other, the mountains and I, but we are listening and understanding things we have never spoken, thoughts we have never felt, futures we do not know of. And on one side I know the mountains are being mined, and perhaps for the same reasons, I feel in my body and mind, the corrosive effect of our cultures and our times. We cry, the mountains and I, ripped apart and yet we stand with grace as the mists move and the birds fly. There is a lonely tree clutching the disintegrating rocky edge with her roots and I hear her in my mind. And her roots, it seems, clutch at the fragments of my sanity as well. The mountains, I find, are light and never colossal. To me they are delicate, moving, breathing and subtle. They are shy and rare, precious beings. And when we are insensitive, they are hidden to us. They change with light, mysterious and secretive and yet their hearts are open and when we sing together, I can hear their softness, their tenderness. When I am with them, the rivers hold new meanings for me, for they too sing with us, sharing their secrets. Our vulnerability holds us together. I have a notebook and pencil in hand, sometimes water colours. I want to sketch these magnificent beings, I think to myself. But it is overwhelming for me. It seems personal, the spirit and energy , our song and the love that we share together, the mountains and I. It is prayer to me, but it is also fun. It is also my joy, undiluted, pure and it is my sanity. But I know that what I write on this blog, on this computer, comes from those mines of my mountains. I know that the song I hear, the steady hum that is interwoven with my heart is too deep to break, but I know when my heart feels the strain, that the mountains are in danger. I know when I hear the roots clutching at my bones, that the mountains are coming down. Oh the earth will shift, new mountains will be churned out of the sea perhaps and the steady hum of my heart will always be filled with mountains. But perhaps then, I may be mist or rock or sea. The mountains and I, we belong together. http://www.onbeing.org/program/wild-love-world/feature/widening-circles/1444
Oftentimes, I think it is a miracle when a ripple touches us, and then on that light, yet powerful connection, revels in delight, creating another widening circle of ripples. Reading and listening to Joanna Macy is profoundly transformative, like the magical strength of a never ending ripple... Even the seemingly last one on the lake, reverberates and shakes up the adjoining land. A little blade of grass on the edge begins to dance, and the dragonflies take the ripple effect to another zone... Yet that tiny ripple, caused by a falling seed, a leaf, and whence it began from before that, is truly a mystical experience to encounter... And in this reading of her translation of Rainer Maria Rilke's poem "Widening Circles", Joanna Macy effortlessly breaks open our shackles of understanding about the 'sacred', taking us, like the dragonflies into a new zone of the universe! As she says towards the end " Our human minds are too small to be able to make pronouncements and definitions around the source of the sacred.... It is not be separated from the web of life." Lights burst forth in their thousand forms I hide myself in a cocoon of emptiness The festival of lights bursts forth in all its assumed glory an aberration in its celebration. Crackers define the stories of wisdom the miraculous victory of Durga; of Krishna; of all those wonderful Gods and mindlessly light bursts forth from 'rockets', 'flower pots' Deafening sound in applause, covering the stars, the moonlight in smog The fresh October air, with its light chillness in Chennai, rare and lovely with rains now mixed with all those chemicals with an acrid smell of smoke! The mind contemplates symbolism through an interpretation of fireworks Leaves dry Water cries Birds disappear Soil dies... The silence of what we do not hear deafens ! A beautiful festival A powerful story a misguided celebration and a fragile earth! A gentle light flickers, A lonely firefly passes by I dream of dreams that can change and a star lit sky within, like jeweled rain floods my being! And perhaps you too share my cocoon my emptiness my star lit sky my dream and my Diwali! Let's dream of dreams that can change. Meanings that can grow. Celebrations that can embrace the earth! Flowers bloom trees grow mountains sing and new light floods my being!  Trapped in the frames of a body
in the frames of many minds and then there is that distant ancient memory that calls out vast open lands, sacred groves, forests, trees you cannot reach roots of the ficus, scent of rain on parched earth rivers long forgotten flowing relentlessly through your being that ancient memory beckons you to come home and you look at the city around you you stop abruptly you don't understand the bleakness that follows taunts the new mind And there is just that sense of being trapped not seeking a holiday an excuse, but a change in the way of that which we call living! |
Srivi KalyanSrivi Kalyan works at the fluid and exciting intersection of arts, media and education. She is the Founder-Director of Fooniferse, a company that enables a 360 degree approach to working in the arts through a confluence of arts, education, media, design and self-reflection. Archives
March 2017
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