The other side of silences

Bathed by the naked moon bulb

oblique rays filtering through translucent curtains

billowing down from black ceilings

into the shadow  garden

where she crouches

watching for distant voices

in her world of silences

Wordless whisperings murmurings in the moon-soaked night

The soft cling of finger-mists in the undergrowth

The crackling tempo of leaves muttering

A bird calling – incessantly

Moist soil’s sinuous squelch

The trees standing with arms outstretched

Behemoth beings seeking succour

Her eyes are transfixed on the

slouching yellow orb

camouflaged in the twig forests

slinking through

her purple turbulences

on the other side of silences

-by Rita Putatunda

my illuminished star

my eyes slurred, now I see you, illuminished star, now I don’t -

I savour your corrosive cadavers scattered in the penumbra,

I am cloistered calendula, encrusting embellishment of crustacean cyst,

cloud-seam rent apart of wholeness, nub of deadened

frusta, you have changed my eye-horizon, dismantled

tall towers clothed in ore-rust, where I crouched, pensive,

never conceived abseiling into detritus –

I am echo lost in an empty mirror --
tell me my unseen illuminite, why --

my fingers rent the sky-curtain, to glimpse a vestige of you

I watch my hidden footprint rise, only to humble,

my limbs crotching the igneous stone, straining, chafing,

you have forborne my years of venerations,

now I cling with broken clutch

at faint illuminations of you -

you, convolute me, fetish me, faminish me,

my illuminished star --

-by Rita Putatunda

Seeking Consolation

It was a little too mundane, even plebeian

One could say

The cleaver’s hacking of the deadened joint

A commonplace enough event

In any roadside butcher’s shop.

One hardly smelt the blood spattered chopping block

One didn't even register the threadbare face he wore

As he struck with insensate swoops.

One barely noticed the entrails and the gizzard

Lying in clumped lumps – lesser meat for lesser folk.



I must hurry out in the clean sunshine

Dip my eyes in the burning glare

Soak it all in - down to the roots of my burning toes.



I will seek my consolation where the peepal leaves shudder

In the cloud-winds that whip the grasses of boulder strewn hills

That purple my horizon.


I will walk. I will watch. I will sometimes even talk. To myself.



And I will feel. Always feel. The need

That feeds like blind gastropods that worm up from the sodden earth.

The sodden earth where I lie buried. Hair, teeth and limbs.



I must hurry out in the clean sunshine

Dip my eyes in the burning glare

Soak it all in - down to the roots of my burning toes.


-by Rita Putatunda

The Shut Door And The Goddess

Exhausted from banging on the door that was shut so tight that not even a sliver of sound could get through, she ran, helter-skelter, screaming and shouting into the empty night sky, which watched her with stony eyes, bereft of the moon and even the stars. And then she stopped running and screaming and shouting, went back to the door, still shut, and stuck herself to it, with slathers of sticky glue. Surely the shut door would respond now, she thought. But it didn’t. It stayed shut, resolutely. So, she thought she would use a method that everybody swore by, beseech the great Gods with prayer. She didn't know how to pray, but she looked for a God to try it out anyway. She found a Goddess, instead.

There she stood, beauteous and proud, astride on her fearsome beast, her spear plunged deep in the heart of a snarling demon. And there grew shards of hope in her heart. Surely such a powerful Goddess would intercede on her behalf with the shut door and prevail upon it to open. A little. Just a crack would do.  But how did one pray to such a powerful Goddess, she wondered. Would she have the time for an insignificant nonentity like her? It didn’t seem possible. So she decided to tell the Goddess a story instead. Maybe the Goddess would think they were prayers if she mumbled her story inaudibly, she thought. But the Goddess seemed deaf, her face pasted steadfastly with the expression of victory painted on it.

The next day, the sun didn't arrive. And the day was grey and dreadful quiet. And the leaves in the trees were silent, for even the breeze was gone somewhere. At around mid-morning, or was it mid-day, or had it been some time at midnight – she had forgotten the precise time, it wasn’t particularly important anyway – she extracted the knife she had hidden somewhere in her heart and prized herself apart from the shut door with its sharp blade. Yes it hurt awfully and it bled profusely and she wondered if she would survive this assault she had inflicted on herself. But the ache in her heart had dulled a little. And the screams and shouts subsided a little.

And the Goddess smiled her stony smile, and said, yes, it was a sad story, but sorry, there were other, more serious matters in the world she had to attend to… there were so many demons to slay… there were floods, and poverty, and people were dying of sickness and destitution.. can’t you see? And so she tied sterile bandages on her bleeding wounds and stopped mumbling her sad story, while people carried the Goddess on their shoulders to the ocean, chanting their practiced prayers, which she accepted with grace and benevolence and compassion. And even as she drowned and dissolved in the waves, her hair in complete disarray, she said to her, look, even Goddesses must perish sometimes.

-by Rita Putatunda

Turbulence

It's not done yet.. That's the trouble with abstracts, difficult to decide

when they're done, but my instincts say this needs some more work. It's been a

long time since I've worked for a good part of the day and almost all of the

night on a painting, I'm reminded of my school and college days when I used to

be this obsessed. It's a happy feeling.. no, deeper than that.. it's a very

fulfilling feeling. There is something so sensually and spiritually satisfying

to smear colour on canvas, especially oil paints. Water colour has a more

ethereal feeling.

I intended to do a landscape actually, but as it often happens, the mind

decides what it wants to do, and I let it. I need to give vent to my feelings,

poetry and paint help me to do that. So, yes, Turbulence, as I'm calling this,

does reflect the turbulence I am feeling. Some artists say that painting is

cathartic, even therapeutic, helps in resolving, at least assuaging turmoil,

or sorrow, or pain, or even expressing joy. But I don't experience that. When I feel pain

or joy.. or anything.. while I do express it in my painting or poetry, but it

does not really assuage it, especially pain. The pain remains in the heart, I

just put a bit of it on canvas or into words.

I wonder what I else I want to do with this painting. My mind is alive and

awake and happy, my body is tired, my spirit is limping. I need to nurse it,

but I don't know how to. What a paradoxical state of mind I am in.. happy

about painting, unhappy because of my heartache.. Why is Life so complicated

always..

This blog is becoming like a diary.. I had meant it to be just a place to put

my art and poetry in..

dying cinders

the fire burns
in the dark of the night
it writes with its flames
songs that flail and wail
at the silent sky
with its cold moon
and distant blue suns
it flares it glares
it bares its burning soul
that turns to ash and charcoal
it writhes and sighs and rages
its longings that swirl
in its sobbing hot vapours
which scatter tattered bits and pieces
of its throbbing heart
in the flying dying cinders
into the dark of the night

-by Rita Putatunda

Of Objectification of Females and Glorification of Males in religious texts, Karma, And so on

First, here's the link to Koenraad Elst's essay, on which what I say is based: Atheism in Indian philosophy: http://koenraadelst.blogspot.in/2013/10/atheism-in-indian-philosophy.html


A very interesting read, as usual from Koenraad Elst... I get such intriguing glimpses into the culture and philosophical thoughts into which I have been born, from him, because I have been uprooted from their source because of the "secular" educational system I've been thrust into, willy-nilly. But, this is not what I want to discuss. My mind was drawn again to the sexual objectification of "woman", which I rebel against.

In the Samkhya para, and the Samkhya simile quoted therein from the Svetasvatara Upanishad. Nature is depicted as a woman, while Units of Consciousness depicted as men who have "taken their pleasure with her". My heart, mind, consciousness recoil and revolt at such heartless, mindless narratives of my gender.. at this completely strange and bizarre male-centric view of Nature (Female) and Consciousness (Male)...the demeaning sexual objectification of woman or Nature and the glorification of man or Units of Consciousness. 

First of all, why give "nature" and "consciousness" any gender, symbolic though it may be? Second, why is it always implied that the male takes his pleasure of the female, as if the female is devoid of any sense of pleasure or sensuality and does not take her pleasure of the male? There is zero mention anywhere I come across such concepts from our religious texts of what the female feels, or her psyche, especially in sexually oriented depictions or symbolisms. Nature, or Woman, is made out to be some sort of passive creature who is taken/had pleasure of by some male symbolism, here, Units of Consciousness.  Third, if gender must be attributed to such concepts, why is it never the other way round - why can't Nature be a man and Consciousness be a woman, and therein, why can't the Units of woman-Consciousness take their pleasure of the Man-Nature, and when having had enough of the pleasure, seek their liberation by seeking separation?

I know how traditional Hindus will respond to this; they will snigger at my "modern feminism" and tell me paternalistically that such modern concepts cannot be applied to ancient texts. My point is, it is indeed important to throw light on such male-centric concepts that are accepted blindly, unquestioningly, and it must be done, can only be done, through modern insights and sensibilities.

Another aspect of Hindu thought I have trouble with are the notions of "reincarnation" and "karma" and their relation to each other. I find the concept of our "karma" in this life being determined by something we did in a past life quite simplistic. Basically it smacks of the same simplistic "you, or your soul, will be damned to existence in hell after you die if you do not behave goodly while you are alive here and now" of Christianity. the only difference between Hindu and Christian thought being, that in Hinduism, one has a chance at redemption by being good in a later birth, or reincarnation, whereas in Christianity, you are damned forever. But the attempt at forcing people to be good by instilling fear into them is the same in both systems, it seems to me. And I reject that. Instead, I am inclined towards Immanuel Kant's notion of "doing the good for its own sake, and virtue being its own reward" and therefore doing evil being repugnant because of its own sake - I wonder if this concept exists in Himnduism; I'm pretty sure it must. And as for our condition in this life, and why there is suffering and evil, I haven't figured out yet the causes of it...

But, I do like the more subtle version of karma and reincarnation, which are determined by desire, wherein no simplistic attributes of good and evil are given to it... I must quote the full para here, since I find it so interesting and meaningful: "However, there exists a more subtle version of the karma doctrine. When we die, the motive force that spurs us on to return to this world in a new body is desire. Our deeds and experiences have shaped a pattern of non-satisfaction due to preference and aversion, and this leads to seeking new chances to satisfy these. Therefore, if the desire is quelled, and neutrality takes the place of preferences and aversion, there is no motive force anymore that drives you to a new birth. That is how desire leads to rebirth, while the cessation of desire leads to liberation or nirvāṇa (“blowing out”). But outside the circle of ascetics, this more subtle version of the karma doctrine is little known. Note that this version is “beyond good and evil”."


The problem of why suffering and evil exist, however, still has no answers. And for that matter, why well-being and good exist - though I'm inclined to think that we are inherently good.

P.S. - After reading Koenraad Elst's wonderful essay, as I usually do when I find anything interesting, I went to the "comments" section, where I often find many illuminating thoughts on the subject discussed by the author, and I wasn't disappointed in this one too, especially the comments of the person who calls himself "American".. Most remarkably, I found his "alone" comment so close to the poem "Alone", which I had written much before I came across this essay and the comment.