Pandemic: A Community Poem

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And the world came together in isolation -

re-hearing the earth's music-

From space the sky discovered civilization

And suddenly, our hands and breaths became the enemy

The Black Swan has glided in for a landing

electric fingers scream past tumbleweed clouds

We are at the mercy of a one-eyed caged bird

The beast is born but we can't know its impenetrable meaning

The air remains open, from song to terror

In what we later called the year of the Never Was

an alien multiplier in search of a host to do its bidding

There's something missing on our streets

Our cauldron of time is nearly empty.

...

The above is an extract from an amazing creative initiative by Muse-Pie Press. 220 poets, who have been featured by them in their journals over the years, from 16 countries, contributed one-line poems, which the publisher, R. G. Rader, put together to craft 'a community poem'. There's an audio of the poem too. You can read as you listen to the whole poem here.

White Desert

Bharati Varrier

Moon so showers light

on the desert sands, the night

stays dark, and sands white.

©

[As published on https://spillwords.com/white-desert/]

[This photograph was clicked at the Rann of Kutch, which is a salt marsh in the Thar Desert in the Kutch District of Gujarat, India. It is one of the largest salt deserts in the world.]

Enigma

The unsolved mystery
in nature's history
is how wee blooms can be
in their infinity. 

[Excerpt: Fireflies]

And then Arrived the Goddess

Title: Eight Armed Goddess
Poet: Sindhoor Varkoor
Publisher: Adisakrit

Sindhoor Varkoor’s ‘Eight Armed Goddess’ is creatively brilliant and simply unputdownable. I confess, I didn’t expect I would be as impressed with the Goddess as I had been with the poet’s earlier collection of poems, Musing Madhawa – Viraha Madhawam. But that was before reading the book. I couldn’t have been more wrong really. I read the first poem, and I knew I was hooked.

After everything
Gets over
Only outlines of memories
Remain like kohl in the eyes
Smudged into life
Nothing gets erased (Outlines, p.7)

That was enough to make me sit up and I didn’t put the book down until I finished the entire collection. The poems portray the woman and all her facets.

I have stories
Of spilt milk
On burning coals
Watching carefully
I let it simmer and spill

I have stories
Of lost wars
When like the iron-gate
I still stood
Bearing the first slashes

I have stories
Of waiting
Like drought for rain
Deserted I live In vain

I have stories
Of bottled life
Filled to the brim
Empty

Empty
Like grave silence coffined in dust (Stories, p. 8)

You can see the everyday woman here - the woman who is bearing it all in silence. And the woman who has faced her challenges, who stood her ground and never gave up even as she lost her cause. There is also the woman who refused to quit even when she was left with no other choice. And then there is the woman who realises all of it was for nothing after all. Of course, a woman is all of these rolled into one, and this echoes and re-echoes through her poems.

…When glass shattered
You know how many pieces
Made it
When they scatter all around
You remember how it stood there
As one piece once in time
—A monument
Shelved and wrapped in aroma… (Spice Jar, p. 9)

In the above lines, you can almost hear a soliloquy of submission – a deceptive submission, for, she, the woman, having “…come/This far…Will not/Go back…” (‘Goddess’, p.10). And the Goddess in her had to reveal herself at last.

Do not play with this Goddess
As if she’s in your fold
She plays with you instead
This eight armed Goddess
Needs no single-shouldered bliss (Eight Armed Goddess, p. 11)

In the same poem, the Goddess jolts you out of your stupor when she says

In her heart she holds and unfolds
Your universe as it is
And can shut your eyes
With a single kiss. (Eight Armed Goddess, p. 11)

Here’s where the poet emerges in all her glory. With her poetry, she can show a mirror to your soul, she can shake you until your façade slips leaving you facing your truth, she can take you on a spiral of bliss. The poet, or the Goddess (because here both are one and the same), fills you with fire, consumes you in fire, and what’s more, turns you into fire.

Varkoor’s poetry is intense with emotion. When the Goddess says, “My tresses can be angry dark waves/Sweeping you/Into their night” (Just because, p. 12), one so wished she did just that. The sheer beauty of the words makes you want to lose yourself in them. The poet has this knack for catching you unawares.

Do not think
You can cross those bordered isles
And become dew drops
In dreaming eyes

I may shut them once
To choke you twice (Just because, p. 12)

But what is poetry if it isn’t filled with these little, yet profound, surprises? Varkoor’s metaphors are beautiful. In the poem ‘Rapunzel’, the poet defines the golden-haired beauty as,

A braided mystery twisted
You cannot hold
Or unfold (Rapunzel, p. 13)

One finds this Rapunzel so perfect perhaps because one can see oneself in her. And finally when the poet says,

For you do not want to
See her face smile
Or
Her eyes yearn for you
You will not dare look into them
As they show only a reflection
Of you
…
You will
Find it there
Where all ends end
Into a new beginning
Where you have her
Face to face (Beheaded, p.17)

you come face to face with the woman who is, alas, liberated. For all the poignancy and profundity in her poems, the poet also displays occasional humour.

The endless curry contest has just begun
Hers versus mine
As I start cooking his favourite dish
….
My pickled poetry and her jarred emotions
All for him—hers and mine. (Contest, p. 22)

In ‘Excavation’ emerges the liberated woman again, the woman who had to pay the price for it, like all women, of course.

The corals still preserve their pale red
Once a deeper shade
May be I can wear it on
Without mending it
Antiques have a price
That’s priceless

I wear it on now
The new old ornament
My Pride (Excavation, p. 25)

‘Ma’ (p. 27) is so full of pain, hope and imploration, I feel I should leave it to the readers themselves to delve into its fathoms. Varkoor can make silence speak through her poem, when she says,

I like dolls

Their perfect pout
With
That perfect silence (Dolls, p. 28)

The silence here speaks volumes.

Something I had particularly noted was the complete lack of punctuation in the entire collection of poems. Surprisingly, I noticed it only when I was halfway through the book. Without the distraction of punctuations, the poems seem to flow freely laying bare their intrinsic emotions, sometimes ending in an ultimatum.

Do not
Hate me
For I am Love
If you do not dare it
Bear it
Or
Fare me well (Stigmata, p. 57)

Picking the best out of Varkoor’s collection of poems is difficult. There is something in every poem that you want to take away, that you want to keep locked within your heart forever. Her poems are so rich in meaning that different readers may relate to them in different ways. As Varkoor herself says,

All of us from the same weave
Will drape life
Differently (Mother’s Banaras Saree, p. 29)

[As published at https://www.boloji.com/articles/51937/and-then-arrived-the-goddess] 

When Fair is not so Fair!

Illustration: Bharati Varrier

Revolts and revolutions against discrimination based on skin colour have rocked the world at every turn of history. Rather, these revolts mark the turn of the history. But what’s exactly in skin colour? Melanin, of course. Melanin, is the pigment which in different forms and ratios gives the skin its colour. And then there are factors like genes, exposure to sunlight, etc. So basically your skin colour – just like who you are born to – is a mere accident. And factors like how close you live to the equator are coincidental. The colour of an individual’s skin, hence, is neither an indicator of their class nor a measure of their ability.

Then what made the ‘whites’ feel superior and why were the non-whites helpless enough to allow this discrimination? The whites were not superior because of their colour, they were superior because of their power. And that’s definitely not fair. If blacks (kindly pardon the usage, but one’s trying to make a point) had been more powerful, then perhaps the whole picture would have been its own negative version.

Recently the multinational company Johnson and Johnson took the decision to stop selling skin-lightening products. It’s heartening, and it’s high time. Indian companies are also rethinking their business tactics.

To overpower the acts of discrimination of others, however powerful they may be, is by far easier than to conquer the sense of discrimination within the self. Indians, more than 7 decades ago, in spite of their skin colour which includes white, black and all the hues, tones and tints in between, and with hardly any power as compared to the whites who ruled over them, still managed to overthrow those in power and gain freedom. Though the ruling whites left the country, the seed of discrimination they left behind have been growing tall, with its roots running deep.

It is still prevalent in India to ask whether a newly born or a prospective bride or groom is fair or dark. This in a land where deities like Goddess Kali and Lord Krishna are dark as their names proclaim! Then there is the discrimination between the fair ‘northies’ and the dark ‘southies’. Imagine India being located farther away from or closer to the equator, then you will also be able to visualize shifting monochromes of the same picture.

Indian epics and puranas have many heroes and heroines – Draupadi and Arjuna, for example – who were dark and much extolled for their looks. In the ancient vernacular literature, syamavarna (dark complexion) was considered an epitome of beauty. And none of the world literature, art or revolutions, which came later and threw light on the unfairness meted out by the fair on the not so fair through the centuries, could restore blackness to its past glory. Unfortunately, not all the progressive thought, enlightenment and knowledge helped humans evolve beyond their skin.

Today the world is raging post the George Floyd tragedy. Humans are fighting for the rights of humans (one consciously avoids saying ‘whites are fighting for blacks’), trying to overthrow statues in an attempt to overthrow the stigmas associated with ‘black’. And it’s in this context, one hit upon the history of the word ‘black’. It seems it was one of the earliest words in the language. According to an update by Dictionary.com, the word is also described as ‘absence of colour’. In that sense, black is then perhaps the most ethical of all colours. The problem, after all, is not in the word, it’s in misconstruing it.

[As published at https://indusscrolls.com/when-fair-is-not-so-fair/]