Learning by Soul

By Anannya Dasgupta

AATMASAAR
( for Aparna & Seema) 


 
“Aatmsaar kar lijiye”* she said,
after a poem with a life lesson
had been recited -- “You know,
learn it by heart, memorise it.”
 
How beautiful a way to learn --
to have a saar, a gist, an insight
become a part of who you are, in
your aatma, your self, your soul.
This learning to be whole
in another language becomes a
learning-by-heart. Where words
felt and known are not apart. But
then we move somehow to
memorising – recalling for feat
from the surface of the mind,
heart and soul quite left behind.
 
Now we flog the dead horse of
rote learning, dangling carrots for
parrots, not for the soul’s yearning.

*Hindi phrase meaning 'learn by heart' 

Anannya Dasgupta writes both formal and free verse and enjoys writing in rhyme. She has a book of poems Between Sure Places. She has also been published in several print anthologies and online journals, most recently in Soul Spaces, Drifting Sands Haibun, Usawa Literary Review and Hakara Bilingual. She teaches at Krea University.

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Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles