Ratnottama Sengupta in conversation with Sohini Roychowdhury, who uses dancing to build bridges across cultures
“Meet my daughter Sohini,” Uma Di was introducing the dancer who then lived in Madrid. And my first response was, “Why isn’t she in the movies?!”
Sohini Roy Chowdhury. Courtesy: Sohini Roy Chowdhury
Tall, fair, lissome, agile, Sohini Roychowdhury is the stuff beauty queens and show stoppers are made of. That wasn’t surprising: after all, Uma Roychowdhury herself is the picture of perfection in aesthetics.
It didn’t take me long to realise that, much like the well regarded sculptor’s bronzes, her daughter too was made of enduring stuff. One day she was teaching Bharatanatyam to French, Spanish, and Italian enthusiasts. The next day she was lecturing on mythology in New York. One day she was dancing to ‘Jai Ho![1]’ for the director of the Oscar winning Hollywood movie[2]. Another day she was delineating Durga in an Anthropology Museum…
None of these saw her run out of breath. Nor does she, ever, run out of time. When she’s not holding her fingers in a dance mudra, she is holding a metaphoric pen. This month she unveiled her second book, Dance of Goddess Kali. Yes, she has rings on her fingers and bells on her toes — and wherever she goes, there’s dance on the cards!
Here is what she had to say when I spoke to her:
The Dance of Kali follows Dancing with the Gods. How are the two books different?
Dancing With the Gods and The Dance of Kali are two distinct works, each focusing on different aspects of my artistic and spiritual journey.
Conceived by Monideepa Mukherjee and Sutapa Sengupta, featuring photos from Sohinimoksha
Dancing With the Godsis a pictorial, coffee-table book stemming from my journey as a classical Indian dancer with a multinational dance troupe. Its vivid visuals showcase my onstage performances and behind-the-scenes moments. These are highlights of my career as a dancer, both solo and with Sohinimoksha World Dance and Communications[3].
This visually captivating book focuses on imagery and aesthetics. It offers glimpses into my artistic expression through dance, celebrates my journey around the world, and highlights my life-mantra of connecting civilisations through my craft. This tracing of Sohinimoksha’s journey is for a broader audience: Indian dance enthusiasts, art lovers, and individuals interested in my achievements. The aim is to inspire through visually compelling storytelling.
In contrast, The Dance of Kali is a treatise on the ethos of Goddess Kali and Shaktism. It delves into the deeper spiritual and philosophical aspects associated with the goddess, exploring Kali’s symbolism, mythology, and significance within the context of Shaktism, a Hindu tradition of worshiping the divine feminine energy. The tone of this work is contemplative, as it delves into the profound symbolism and the spiritual aspects associated with the Goddess. It incorporates scholarly research, analysis, and interpretations from various perspectives. Hopefully it offers readers a deeper understanding of Kali’s significance in Hindu spirituality.
May I point out here that The Dance of Kali is not a religious book. It is for readers with a specific interest in Hindu mythology, spirituality, or the myths and legends around the resident Goddess of Kolkata. Those seeking a deeper understanding of Kali’s symbolism and philosophical underpinnings within the context of Shaktism, will find this book dispels disrespectful misrepresentations and unfounded Western misconceptions surrounding the images of Kali as a demonic goddess.
To sum up: both the books reflect different facets of my artistic and spiritual journey. However, they differ significantly in their subject matter, focus, tone, and intended audience. One celebrates my achievements as a dancer through captivating visuals. The other is an academic tome exploring the profound symbolism and spirituality associated with Goddess Kali.
What prompted you, an international dancer, to pick such a rooted in mythology subject?
I have always had a personal affinity with or inclination towards Goddess Kali. Many artistes draw inspiration from their own beliefs, experiences, and cultural backgrounds when choosing subjects for their work. I am no different. For me the depiction of the Goddess is an opportunity for artistic exploration. Kali, with her complex symbolism and multifaceted persona, offers rich material for creative interpretation through the arts, be it dance, literature or visual arts.
This book also celebrates India’s rich mythological heritage and the way it connects to other ancient cultures, in Mesopotamia, Egypt, Spain and France. Kali, with her global soul sisters Ishtar or Sara La Kali, holds significant cultural and religious importance, not just in Hinduism, but other cultures as well, particularly within the contexts of worshipping Mother Goddesses. I delve into Kali’s mythology and symbolism to honour this aspect of Indian life, and its universal resonance.
Yes, Goddess Kali is rooted in Indian mythology. But the themes she embodies — feminine power, transformation, and liberation —transcend cultural boundaries. I hope this book will serve to explore universal themes of empowerment and spirituality. It also aims to provide a deeper understanding of Hindu mythology, and the symbolism associated with the Dark Goddess. Effectively I seek to promote intercultural dialogue and foster greater appreciation for diverse religious traditions. Most significantly, I hope to dispel the uneducated interpretations of Kali as a horrific, savage, demonic goddess. How often she is typecast as a symbol of evil — in popular Western films, books and even as Halloween costumes for disrespectful celebrities like Heidi Klum!
I have witnessed your performance as Durga in an anthropology museum in Madrid. I have noted your commitment to meaningful, even profound themes in your endeavours. What has been your grooming in dance?
I started dancing at a young age under renowned Bharatanatyam Guru, Thankamany Kutty. Later I learnt from Kalamandalam Venkitt in Kolkata. I received rigorous training in Bharatanatyam, the dance that originated in the temples of Tamil Nadu. My dedication to classical art led me to delve deep into its nuances. I mastered intricate footwork, expressions, and storytelling techniques. Over the years, I refined my technique and expression through consistent practice and performance and came to embody the essence of Bharatanatyam.
Your father was a renowned sitarist living in Germany. Your mother is a reputed sculptor of Kolkata. Why did you, an only child, not take to any of these streams of creative expression?
Indeed I was born into a family of accomplished artists. My father, Pandit Subroto Roychowdhury was a renowned sitarist, and my mother, Uma Roychowdhury, is a reputed sculptor. But I chose a different path for myself.
As an only child, I was exposed to various forms of creative expression. But my passion for dance was ignited after watching a riveting performance by Yamini Krishnamurthy when I was about four years old. While I deeply respect my family’s artistic legacy, I followed my own calling and embarked on a journey to carve my niche in the world of dance.
What are the values you have imbibed from them individually?
My father’s sitar schools in Germany have produced hundreds of students — including distinguished sitar players. From him I imbibed a profound appreciation for music and rhythm. I learned discipline, dedication, and the importance of perseverance in mastering an art form. From my sculptor mother I inherited a keen love for aesthetics and eye for details. I learned the importance of expressing emotions and stories through visual and performing arts.
Together these values have steered me towards excellence and innovation in my journey as a dancer and communicator.
Mixed genre performance by Sohini Roychowdhury. Courtesy: Sohini Roy Chowdhury
You have lived in Moscow and Madrid. You are guest professor in far-flung Universities, in America and Columbia. You have danced Bharatanatyam and you have danced to Jai ho! at the premiere of Slumdog Millionaire. What have you gained through your international exposure?
My international exposure has enriched me both personally and professionally. Living in cultural environments as diverse as Moscow and Madrid have broadened my perspectives and deepened my understanding of global arts and communication.
More than 2000 students have ‘graduated’ through my two dance schools in Spain — Casa Asia and Sohinimoksha Artes de la India. In Moscow, more than 80 Russian students performed with me on stage at the Embassy of India and Nehru Centre at the end of their course. As a guest professor in universities across Europe, USA and Latin America, teaching dance, Natyashastra [theory of dance] and Indology, I have not only shared my expertise — I have learnt from students, artistes and scholars from different backgrounds.
Through my performances of Bharatanatyam, and collaborations with international artists, have bridged cultural divides. My dancing to Jai Ho! at the European premiere of Slumdog Millionaire showcased the universal appeal of Indian dance and music. It highlighted its ability to connect with people across borders. Today I can confidently claim to have promoted cross-cultural exchange globally.
Coming from an aristocratic, old Calcutta background, what merit do you see in Bollywood dancing?
Despite coming from an aristocratic background rooted in old Calcutta, I recognise the merit in Bollywood dancing which has become a global phenomenon. Not surprising. For, characterised by vibrant energy, expressive movements, and fusion of multiple dance styles — from Salsa to Tango, Twist to ChaChaCha – Bollywood dancing holds mass appeal. It serves as a platform for artists to showcase their talents to diverse audiences and has contributed to the popularization of Indian culture worldwide. It is rooted in traditional Indian dance forms, yet embraces modern influences. And it reflects the evolving tastes of contemporary audiences.
Since the 1960s, Bollywood has drawn inspiration from various musical traditions across the world. This imparted its films a rich tapestry of global influences. This fusion of world music and dance enriched the aesthetic of Bollywood — and in turn contributed to its cultural significance and global appeal.
In the 1960s, Indian cinema underwent a transformation with the emergence of filmmakers like Guru Dutt and Raj Kapoor, who infused their films with elements of Western music and dance. The most iconic example of this is seen in the song Mera joota hai Japani [my shoes are Japanese] from Shree 420 (1955): here Raj Kapoor’s character sings about wearing Japanese shoes, English pantaloons, and Russian caps — all of which symbolised the growing influence of the West in post-colonial India. And yet, as the song stresses, at core these films are Hindustani — Indian.
Throughout the ’60s, ’70s and ’80s, the industry witnessed the rise of dance and music directors who played a pivotal role in incorporating world music and dance forms into Hindi cinema. Composers like OP Nayyar, Shankar Jaikishan, SD Burman, C Ramachandran, Kalyanji Anandji, RD Burman, Laxmikant-Pyarelal, and Bappi Lahiri experimented with disparate musical styles. These ranged from rock-n-roll, rumba, flamenco to disco, reggae and jazz. This infused their compositions with international flavours.
Similarly, choreographers Sohanlal, PL Raj, Herman Benjamin, Suresh Bhatt, Saroj Khan, Chinni and Rekha Prakash, Shiamak Davar, Farah Khan, Remo D’Souza, Terence Lewis, Vaibhavi Merchant, and Prabhu Deva have blended Indian classical dance with Western styles. This has created the unique dance style that is now identified as Bollywood dancing. It has homogenised movements from hip-hop to salsa and contemporary dance.
Soon stars like Shammi Kapoor, Helen, Asha Parekh, Hema Malini, Rishi Kapoor, Mithun Chakraborty, Jeetendra, Govinda, Hrithik Roshan, Madhuri Dixit, and Sridevi became synonymous with Bollywood’s larger-than-life dance numbers. For, it showcased their versatility and flair for different dance steps. Embracing the twist and turn era of the ’60s to the disco craze of ’70s and the hip-hop-inspired moves of the 2000s, Bollywood stars captivated audiences with their energy and charisma.
Along with Western influences, Bollywood also drew from traditional Indian dances. Its choreography incorporated elements of Bharatanatyam, Kathak, and Odissi. Dance sequences like Dola Re Dola from Devdas (2002) and Pinga from Bajirao Mastani (2015) exemplify the fusion of classical and contemporary dances, blending intricate footwork with dynamic movements and expressions.
In recent years, Bollywood has continued to evolve, reflecting the changing tastes and preferences of global audiences. Directors, like Sanjay Leela Bhansali and Farah Khan, have pushed the boundaries of traditional filmmaking, creating visually stunning spectacles that showcase the diversity of world music and dance. Stars like Priyanka Chopra, Deepika Padukone, and Ranveer Singh have embraced this eclectic mix of styles, bringing their own unique interpretations to the screen.
Spanish, Bulgarian and other European dancers from my own troupe, Sohinimoksha World Dance, have performed specially choreographed fusion dance items set to popular Bollywood tracks. Kristina Veselinova danced toMere Dholnafrom Bhool Bhulaiya; Violeta Perez and Lola Martin to Senorita! from Zindagi Na Milegi Dobara and Maria Sanz on Padmavat’s Ghoomer on stages across India and the world. So I readily acknowledge the significance of Bollywood dance in preserving India’s cultural heritage while adapting to changing times.
Would you say our films are taking our dance traditions to votaries abroad? Just as Indian musicians of the 1960s had taken our ragas to the West?
In the 1960s, Ravi Shankar, Ali Akbar Khan and other maestros played a crucial role in initiating the West in the rich notes of Indian classical music — and that had enriched the global cultural landscape. My own father, Pandit Subroto Roychowdhury, spent more than 40 years in Germany and other European countries, spreading and popularising Indian classical music through concerts and classes. Today Indian films, particularly Bollywood, are carrying forward this legacy. They are showcasing the wealth that is Indian dance — often fused with world dance influences. Just as our musicians shared the wealth of ragas with the West, Bollywood films are spreading the infectious exuberance of Indian dance to enthusiasts around the globe. This is fostering cultural exchange on an international scale. Small wonder that Bollywood is now acknowledged as India’s most potent soft power.
What, in your opinion, is needed to make GenNext learn from our past traditions?
If we want GenNext to learn from our past traditions, we must provide them with comprehensive exposure to our rich cultural heritage. For this, we must integrate our arts and cultural practices into educational curricula. We must foster appreciation through interactive experiences — workshops, performances, cultural events. Additionally we must leverage modern technologies and platforms to disseminate information. Let’s make traditional arts more accessible and engaging for the young. Let’s cultivate mentorship programs and intergenerational exchanges. For, we must bridge the gap between past traditions and contemporary lifestyles, to ensure their relevance and continuity for the generations to come.
Sohini I have seen you at close quarters, as a mother, wife, daughter, and daughter-in-law even as you criss-cross the world for your dance. How do you still find time to write, which is such a demanding, reflective expression?
I am fortunate to be able to balance my roles as a mother, wife, daughter, daughter-in-law, and a performing artiste. My experience as much as my dedication to my craft honed my time-management skills. Despite crisscrossing the world for performances, lecture tours, and other professional commitments, I carve out time to write, for I recognise its significance as a reflective form of expression.
To effectively manage my time, I set priorities, create schedules, and maximize productivity during the available windows of time. I designate specific periods for writing, be it early mornings, late evenings, or during travel downtime. I try to integrate writing into my daily routine, seizing moments of inspiration and reflection to jot down ideas or draft passages.
My passion for writing is a driving force — it motivates me to make time for it amidst my busy schedule. Writing provides a creative outlet for introspection, and intellectual exploration. It complements my artistic endeavours and enriches my personal and professional growth.
I am grateful for the support I receive from the network of my family, friends, and collaborators. They play a crucial role in facilitating my writing pursuits. My latest book, The Dance of Kali, was co-written with my son Rishi Dasgupta, an Economics MSc from the University of St Andrews, UK.
However, at the end of the day, that I find time to write amidst my multifaceted life, reflects my passion for engaging in reflective expression. Because? It contributes to my holistic development as an artist and an individual.
[1] A song from the 2008 Bollywood movie, Slumdog Millionaire
[3] A dance troop started by Sohini Roychowdhury with presence in Madrid, Berlin and Kolkata
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Ratnottama Sengupta, formerly Arts Editor of The Times of India, teaches mass communication and film appreciation, curates film festivals and art exhibitions, and translates and write books. She has been a member of CBFC, served on the National Film Awards jury and has herself won a National Award.
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It is clear that English is employed here not as a language on loan, but as the rich, spluttering resource of the marrow and the bloodstream.-- Arundhathi Subramaniam.
At the outset, let me make a candid statement. I am a very prosaic person, someone who in her long teaching career and academic writing as well as translation, has never ventured to write poetry myself. I might seem like the odd woman out, but somehow, I have been closely following the recent trends in which Indian Poetry in English has been rapidly spreading its wings and with new volumes being published every other day, it is now a force to be reckoned with.
Tomb of Henry Louis Vivian Derozio at the South Park Street Cemetery, Kolkata.
Recapitulating literary history briefly, it is well known that Indian English Poetry (or often called Anglophone poetry in India) is the oldest form of Indian English literature. Beginning roughly from 1850 to 1900, it went through the ‘imitative’ phase when Indian poets were primarily ‘romantic’ and tried to imitate the British masters. Beginning with Derozio[1], many poets of the time — namely Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo, Sarojini Naidu, Michael Madhusudan Dutt, Toru Dutt — were also Bengalis by birth. The poetry written between 1900 to 1947 belonged to the ‘assimilative’ period and often questions were asked why the poets didn’t write in their ‘own’ languages. Post-independence poetry was primarily experimental, and when we come to contemporary Indian English poetry, we find it becoming wholly urban and middle-class. The poets are realistic and intellectually critical in the expression of their individualised experience. They go in for precision at all levels and do not stick to one genre but experiment with multiple poetic forms.
Interestingly, I realised that a whole host of Indian English poets writing at present (some have several volumes of poetry published already, whereas others have just given birth to one or two), but coincidentally many of them happen to be Bengalis — Bashabi Fraser, Sudeep Sen, Kiriti Sengupta, Sanjukta Dasgupta, Mitali Chakravarty, Angshuman Kar, Shyamasri Maji, Basudhara Roy,Radha Chakravarty, and others. It is not a complete list at all, and what makes this study more interesting is that except for a couple of them, all these poets come from an English literature background. It is also not a coincidence that most of them teach English as their profession. So, whether it be personal lyrics, free verse, memories, experiences, observations, or even translation, the English muse therefore gives them the impetus to experiment with all forms, and at the same time helps them to move away from themes like nationalism, nature, Indian culture, love etc. that dominated Indian English Poetry in earlier times.
Bashabi Fraser receiving her CBE (2021 The Queen’s New Year Honours) from Prince Charles, now King Charles III.
Bashabi Fraser is an Indian-born Bengali and a Scottish academic, editor, translator, and writer. She is a Professor Emerita of English and Creative Writing at Edinburgh Napier University. Fraser’s work traverse continents in bridge-building literary projects. She was appointed a Commander of the Order of the British Empire (CBE) in the 2021 New Year Honours for services to education, culture and cultural integration in Scotland, in particular for her projects linking Scotland and India. Among her several volumes of poetry the Bengal and Bengali connection comes out in volumes like From the Ganga to the Tay: a poetic conversation between the Ganges and the Tay (2009), Letters to My Mother and Other Mothers (2015), My Mum’s Sari (2019), and Lakshmi’s Footprints and Paisely Patterns: Perspectives on Scoto-Indian Literary and Cultural Interrelations (2023). Fraser has worked extensively on a project about the Bengal Partition and the angst resulting from this divide expresses itself in the following poem.
This Border Can shadow lines on the earth’s surface divide language and literature, rituals and customs, rivers…and memories?
There was a time when you and I Chased the same butterfly Climbed the same stolid trees With the fearless expertise That children take for granted Before their faith is daunted Do you remember how we balanced a wheel Down dusty paths with childish zeal Do you remember the ripples that shivered As we ducked and dived in our river Do you remember what we shared Of love and meals, and all we dared Together – without fears Because we were one In all those years Before we knew that butterflies Were free to share our separate skies That they could cross with graceful ease To alight on stationary trees On either side of this strange line That separates yours from mine For whose existence we rely Entirely on our inward eye This border by whose callous side Our inert wheel lies stultified This border that cuts like a knife Through the waters of our life Slicing fluid rivers with The absurdity of a new myth That denies centuries Of friendships and families This border that now decrees One shared past with two histories This border that now decides The sky between us as two skies This border born of blood spilt free Makes you my friend, my enemy.
Another well-established poet is Sudeep Sen who studied in New Delhi and in the United States and is a global citizen, so to say. Sudeep’s literary output is enormous and some of the titles of his volumes of poetry have subtle references to Indianness and Bengaliness embedded in them as well. Mention may be made of volumes like Leaning Against the Lamp-Post (1983), The Man in the Hut (1986), Kali in Ottava Rima (1992), Postmarked India: New & Selected Poems (1997), and several others. Though he might not do it consciously, his Bengaliness remains embedded in his psyche.
Kiriti Sengupta who has been awarded the Rabindranath Tagore Literary Prize (2018) for his contribution to literature, is a poet, editor, translator, and publisher. What is more significant is that along with Bitan Chakraborty, he mans the publishing house Hawakal, which has already carved a niche for itself as the largest publisher of Indian Poetry in English. Several poets mentioned in this essay have seen their creations see the light of the day through Hawakal Publishers and they have done yeomen service in this regard. As an established poet, Sengupta has several volumes of poetry to his credit. His collection from 2019, called Rituals, is very different from the work readers usually read in that there is a narrative thread in many poems that is not there simply to tell a story but to ultimately present a meditation on an aspect of life and the modern world that they haven’t considered before. “Fleeing the house and leaving the doors ajar. Is it perversion or fallacy?”
In an earlier volume entitled Solitary Stillness (2018), Sengupta does not give away the traits that have pervaded his poetry, he has not forgotten his Bengali roots, and has once again drawn his poetry on the canvas of the time that has been rooted in Calcutta. As he elaborates upon this point in his professional website, here, he makes a reference to Lapierre, and indeed, the ‘city of joy’ tag sounds fake just as we read that particular poem, which is so natural, that it almost appears to have been spoken by a resident of a city, one who is not a poet. According to him, that person who complains about water logging or that person for whom any tag of romanticism about the city is bourgeois, it is nothing but a label that’s needed to promote consumerism.
Mitali Chakravarty, the indefatigable editor of Borderless Journal, wrote to me saying that she is happy I feel she belongs to Bengal, “I call myself a Bengali and a human”. Though a non-resident Bengali, her perception of her own work and Bengali cultural identity is clearly revealed in a poem published in The Daily Star (Bangladesh)[2].
Confused
I am mixed up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
I can read a bit of Hindi Cannot understand much of French A little Chinese …low class, they said… I am mixed up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
I grew up thinking I will find a way But now pidgin is all that I can say I write in English – the language borrowed from the West The language that taught us or brought us unrest The language that through The Raj spread Importing Nationalism in its tread I am mixed-up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
But my life is that of the non-English A probashi Bengali at best
People say I am not typical, not quite the right type A mixed-up Bengali – I said Culture is something I dread at every tread Because what Culture I have is mine - Not of a Race, a Country or Religion – Human Being is the only race to which I belong
Help protect my home, the Earth – its every drop, its every stone
In a world of 7.7 billion, can I be alone? I am mixed up – cannot help English and Bengali under my belt
Though she has been writing poetry for a long time, Mitali’s first poetry collection, Flight of the Angsana Oriole: Poemswas published by Hawakal only in October 2023. In the ‘Introduction’ to this volume, she states that her random collection of poems “are sometimes of the past” as she knew it and “sometimes of the present. And sometimes in quest of a future or a dream that she hopes will go to create a more hopeful future than the world presents to us currently.” The poems in this volume are personal; some talk of her journey through life, the world as she sees it, some even influenced by her travels across the world. She further states: “Inherent in each line is not just the influence of my experiences in many countries but the nurturing I had in India, where I was born, educated and spent the first two decades of my earthly existence.” So, poems like ‘Death of Lalon’, ‘Shivratri’, ‘Kali Rise’, ‘Shraddha‘ [last respects] and a few others do convey the subconscious Bengaliness embedded in her psyche, irrespective of where she physically resides now.
Radha Chakravarty, a prolific writer and translator, Former Professor of Comparative Literature and Translation Studies at Ambedkar University, Delhi, has recently joined the bandwagon of Indian Poetry in English with her debut collection of poems Subliminal published by Hawakal Publishers in 2023. In a detailed interview given to Mitali Chakravarty for the March issue of Borderless Journal[3], she tells us about her aims and ambitions as a poet and how most of the poems in Subliminal are independent compositions, not planned for pre-conceived anthology.
My poetry actually delves beneath surfaces to tease out the hidden stories and submerged realities that drive our lives. And very often, those concealed truths are startlingly different from outward appearances. I think much of my poetry derives its energy from the tensions between our illusory outer lives and the realities that lurk within.
Many of Radha Chakravarty’s poems express the feeling of Bengaliness in different perspectives. We read about the typically soft quilt called kantha in Bengali in the poem ‘Designs in Kantha‘ thus:
Sewn into soft, worn layers, forgotten fabric of grandmother tales – patterns of the past, secret memories, hidden designs, intriguing patterns in silk strands dyed in delicate dreamy shades— embroidered storylines in exquisite, dainty kantha-stitch.
When Mitali Chakravarty asks her why she writes in English though it isn’t her mother tongue, she answers:
Having grown up outside Bengal, I have no formal training in Bengali. I was taught advanced Bengali at home by my grandfather and acquired my deep love for the language through my wide exposure to books, music, and performances in Bengali, from a very early age. I was educated in an English medium school. At University too, I studied English Literature. Hence, like many others who have grown up in Indian cities, I am habituated to writing in English. I translate from Bengali, but write and publish in English, the language of my education and professional experience. Bengali belongs more to my personal, more intimate domain, less to my field of public interactions…. Both Bengali and English are integral to my consciousness, and I guess this bilingual sensibility often surfaces in my poetry. In many poems, such as ‘The Casket of Secret Stories,’ ‘The Homecoming’ or ‘In Search of Shantiniketan’, Bengali words come in naturally because of the cultural matrix in which such poems are embedded.
Of course, the poet also mentions that all her poetry is not steeped in Bengali. In fact, in most of her poems, Bengali expressions don’t feature at all, because the subjects have a much wider range of reference. As a globe trotter, Radha has written about different places and journeys between places.
Another debut book of poems that Hawakal Publishers brought to light in December 2023 entitled Forgive Me, Dear Papa and other poems is written by Shyamasri Maji, an Assistant Professor of English teaching at Durgapur Women’s College, West Bengal. Dedicating this collection of poems to her “incurably romantic self,” Maji feels that “being ‘romantic’ in this context is being imaginative, reflective, puerile, rebellious and emotional.” The poems are a mixed bag, belonging to different thematic issues. Some focus on a woman’s radical views on the gender hierarchies in our society, in some nature plays the role of mediator between the narrator and the world, the idea of loss of love, which is closely linked with thoughts of death, while a few poems also represent an interpersonal dialogue between the self and the other. Some of Maji’s poems focus on the role of memory whereas some are experimental in the sense that they portray a woman’s comprehension of a man’s thoughts. Stressing upon the fluidity of identities, she shows how love, pain, pandemic, separation and grief affect all human beings irrespective of an individual’s gender and sexual orientation.
Six books of published poems and twenty-five years of creative journey has been a consistent exploration by the poet Sanjukta Dasgupta as she tries to find the path of freedom from among the misleading mesmeric mazes that threaten and stifle both sense and sensibility. As a woman poet with a strong feminist stance, Dasgupta admits in an online interview given to Basudhara Roy[4]:
Though I read Bangla poetry since my schooldays, I wrote my poems in English. It was an unconscious choice. Much later I learnt that I should have been embarrassed about writing in English rather than in my home language, my mother tongue Bangla. The poems written in English kept on being born on the page with embarrassing regularity.
Writing poetry is an irrepressible urge for me. It is, in a way, far more intense than the biological labour pain. This labour pain of creativity leaves me restless till the words are born on the page. But the creative process allows endless revisions; a biological production is largely about acceptance, neither revision nor deletion are considered ethical practices. In the case of poetry, it is not about choice, it is a compulsion which is intense and gratifying and multiple revisions often lead to the emergence of the perfect product.
The title of Dasgupta’s poetry book Lakshmi Unbound (Chitrangi, 2017) is very significant. Lakshmi being an intrinsic part of the fabric of Bengali culture, the radicality and dissidence of the idea of ‘Alakshmi[6]’ will require no explanation to a Bengali reader.
She thinks the core agenda in Lakshmi Unbound is a defiant, determined search for freedom. So, it is not just deconstruction, it is an endeavour to call attention to the need to destabilize the deep-rooted stereotypes that have controlled the minds and mobility of women. In Sita’s Sisters (Hawakal, 2019), she crafts a revisionist feminist mythology by taking up familiar figures like Sita, Lakshmi, Kali, Mira and attempts to free these mythic figures from their claustrophobic space so that they can be re-invented in sync with the contemporary times.
Residing in Jamshedpur, in the state of Jharkhand, Basudhara Roy is an established poet and has several books and publications to her credit. In her own website, is stated: “Committed to an undying affair with words, Basudhara finds in poetry an epistemological and existential skylight. She writes because she feels she must test words on her tongue, pulse, moods, agitation, abstraction and satire. She is convinced that words can change the world and hence, she works at them in her own culinary way – washing, peeling, grating, pounding, baking, sautéing, kneading, roasting, often flaming them for what they might yield.”
The following poem from Stitching a Home (Red River, 2021) considers the eternal problem of a woman that plagues women writers a lot.
The Right Kind of Woman
The right kind of woman will inspire affection, regard, trust. Not promiscuity, never lust.
Bred by a mother equally right, she knows to avert her eyes to innuendoes, telling smiles.
In crowded buses, shops, streets, she knows to shut tight, bud-like, relinquish space, circumscribe limbs.
Above all, she knows the prudence of holding her tongue, of choosing silence’s worth over wordy rebellion.
Schooled to surrender in dark rooms, she knows, unasked, to feign desire, moan, stifle, sigh on cue.
On her forehead, she had a third eye to emit fire, take sides, rake storms. Last night, its lid rusted
with disuse fell out, and the right kind of woman laughed herself to death over all she had left undone, unsaid.
“Writing poetry is an isolation exercise” says Angshuman Kar, an established Bengali poet who by profession is also an English Professor at a university in West Bengal. His book of poems Wound is the Shelter (Hawakal, June 2023) is unique and different from the other volumes discussed here because the poems are all translated by the poet himself from his original Bengali poems. In the ‘Introduction’, Kar tells us that authors who translate themselves often seem to be unhappy about the task of translating their own works. The Marathi poet Arun Kolkatkar likens it to incest, — “like making love to your own daughters.” Critics of translation studies have both supported and criticised self-translation. Those who support it argue that the author knows their work the best and hence s/he is the best translator of their own work. Those who oppose self-translation argue that the author-translator takes too much liberty while translating his/her own work; thus, the translation hardly remains faithful to the original. In such a situation Kar says, “Without being critical, I must say that I love self-translation. I enjoy translating my own work, I love committing incest. It makes me a better poet…. As a self-translator, I find incest healthy. It makes me a better poet – il miglior fabbro.“
Coming to the individual poems in Wound is the Shelter, it need not be reiterated that most of them portray universal feelings but at the same time are seeped in Bengali culture as well. In “My Poems” Kar talks about Jungle Mahal, the three districts of West Bengal that are full of jungles; in “World,” he writes about blooms of a sal tree and shiuli flowers; in “Memory Card” he talks about a bus ride to reach his maternal uncle’s house in Bankura from where he went to the studio to take a family photograph — “Grandma in the middle/On either side we – three brothers, two sisters and a cousin”. In “Father” he mentions how his father’s bereavement fades with time and how his portrait adorns the wooden throne in which gods and goddesses are kept and he stands with Kali, Shiva and Durga. In “Neelkantha” he refers to Shiva; in “Park” he states how man forgets grief when he comes to a park, “That is why in a city as sad and lonely as Kolkata the number of parks is always high.” The five-part poem “Tiger” is also very powerful, “there is a tiger inside every human being” he states. Kar also mentions about the mask of a demon of Chhou dance of Purulia, the aal path in paddy fields, the Chandi mandap[7] of a small village, the man called Bhagaban Das who labours in a factory, and the man called Shubhasis Babu who rents him cars, whose voice he hears but has not seen him. Thus, even in his transcreated poems, Kar’s Bengaliness expresses itself overtly.
It is not possible to analyse the poems of each of the Bengali poets that I have mentioned above within the purview of this single essay, and so I have just selected a few of them (especially the poets who have one or two volumes to their credit at present). As mentioned earlier, though Bengali by birth, all the poets rendering their emotions in English, do often consciously or unconsciously express multicultural elements, Bengali cultural nuances, and idiomatic force in their poems. As the trend for providing glossary is passe now, much is left to the readers’ imagination, but still certain occasional Bengali words and phrases make their poems even more appealing.
After sharing my random thoughts about Indian Poetry in English in general and selectively mentioning a few Indian English poets who also happen to be Bengali and often unconsciously exude a sort of Bengaliness in some of their poems, without attempting to sound rather parochial, I wholeheartedly wish to see more volumes of their poetry being published in future. I conclude by quoting a very salient observation made by Arundhathi Subramaniam who is not wholly optimistic about the situation, but believes that despite hurdles in publishing, the voices of Indian poets writing in English would be heard [8]:
Despite the clunky discourse that continues to hover around it, however, Indian poetry in English endures, even flourishes, seventy years after Independence. Publishers may be few and far between, the royalties meagre, the critical climate thick with indifference or theoretical bluster, and the poets themselves bewildered by disputes over their identity, even their existence. But poetry, in its mysteriously resilient fashion, continues to be written, shared and discussed (if sometimes with more passion than discernment). … I am not ecstatic about the state of Indian poetry in English. (But then I am not ecstatic about poetry; only, at times, about poems.) What I do know is that Indian poetry in English is alive. And like all things alive, it engages, it annoys, it provokes, it excites. On several occasions, it has given me the jolt of wonder for which I turn to poetry in the first place.
Considering the slightly mellow tone in Subramaniam’s observation, I personally feel Indian English Poetry has become a significant force in the literary arena at present and will grow stronger with time. Seasoned poets who have several volumes of poetry published already, as well as the fresher ones whose debut volumes promise a lot more to come in future, can all look forward to seeing their ‘spontaneous overflow of powerful emotions’ in print and carry on the legacy of Indian Poetry in English to newer heights. And sure enough, the sub-genre of Bengali Indian English poetry can be researched in greater details in future.
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[1] Henry Louis Vivian Derozio (1809–1831), poet and assistant headmaster of Hindu College, Calcutta, a radical thinker and started the Young Bengal Movement.
A cobra came to our house in Burdwan two days ago. It stayed for few minutes in the washroom downstairs and then vanished in the dark. The caretakers were terribly frightened. They wanted to kill it by any means. When I got the call, I told them to wait for some time without even trying to do anything. Somehow, I knew it would go away on its own. And it did.
My mind raced back to the years when I was in school. One evening, to our horror, a cobra was discovered in my brother’s bedroom on the second floor. We shouted our heart out while my mother kept staring at it in silence with folded hands. After few seconds, it magically vanished. She looked at the calendar, hanging from the wall, and in a calm tone, declared that it wasn’t an ordinary cobra but Goddess Manasa, the Goddess of snakes, who came to ask for her annual worship; she further told us that whenever this would happen in future no one should try to do any harm to the snake but prepare to offer favourites to the Goddess.
Strangely, snakes kept visiting our house, infrequently though, before Manasa puja[1] and my mother wasted no time in preparing for her annual offerings. She, however, never cooked the day before, as was the usual practice related to the annual worship known as Aarandhan or No-Cooking Day. It is a ritual where Bengali households refrained from cooking on the day of worship and ate whatever had been cooked the day before, after offering the same to the Goddess. Neither the typical menu associated with Aarandhan— for instance, five types of vegetable fritters, vegetable mishmash, mixed vegetables, varied fish preparations and sweet dishes — nor the practice of eating previously cooked meal was a part of my mother’s annual worship of the Goddess. Her way of honouring the Goddess was a matter of pleasing her with a personal touch, something that was beyond the shackles of set rituals. As I grew up and got entangled in all sorts of activities, I hardly cared to ask her about such serpentine visitations. I don’t recall any such occurrences in the last seven-eight years until day before yesterday.
My mother was deeply religious and immensely superstitious. She had her own worldview about things, especially anything related to Goddess Kali — Goddess Manasa, being an incarnation, was quite honoured by her, though Manasa was not the coveted Goddess to be worshipped. In our locality, Viswakarma[2]puja, which falls on the last day of the Bengali month Bhadra, that is mid-September, is observed with huge pomp and glitter as we live in the same locality where the main power supply plant of Burdwan is located. On the same day of Viswakarma puja, Manasa puja is also observed. Close to the boundary of our house, every year a huge pandal is constructed by the working-class people and a sort of community meal is served. My mother never went to the power supply plant to offer puja, but to the pandal for Manasa. She strongly believed that it is her devotion that kept the snakes/evil away from her three children. When we would become unmindful of the power of Goddess, she told us, Manasa would send her agent to remind us!
As I have hardly believed in my mother’s self-constructed logic, I never subscribed to her practices. But, this time, with the cobra coming home, I felt I was being instructed to offer something to Manasa. I couldn’t believe myself doing this, but I called up the caretakers and coordinated so that Manasa got her favourites from us.
“Rinku, please buy some fruits, milk and a packet of sweets and offer it to Goddess Manasa tomorrow. Make sure that you remember doing this.” I gave clear instructions to our homehelp.
In my mind, I prepared myself to visit the Goddess the next day, to see how she was doing!
Before the car took a turn towards Power House Para, my locality, Kumar Sanu[3]‘s powerful nasal tone that dominated my adolescence, reached my ears:
“Tu meri zindegi hai/Tu meri har khushi hai/Tu hi pyaar tuhi chahat /Tu hi aashiqui hai…(You are my life/You are my joy/You are my desire/You are my love)[4]
This song from the movie, Aashiqui[5], welled up fragments of my past. There used to be a time when I waited for ‘Pujor gaan‘ or Bengali songs released during the puja. Almost all the notable singers of the time came up with new albums, yet Kumar Sanu was the unrivalled King. I passed my teens and jumped into adulthood with his superhit song – ‘Priyotoma mone rekho (‘Keep me in your heart, sweetheart’).’ That afternoon, after more than two decades, I heard him singing, again – ‘Koto je sagar nadi periye elam ami /Koto poth holam je paar/Tomar moton eto oporup shundor/ Dekhini to kauke je aar...(‘I crossed the seas/I walked through ways/ The beauty that you are/ I haven’t met’).’ Almost hypnotised, I got down from the car and walked straight to the direction of the pandal. I needed no Pied Piper from Hamlin; we, Bengalis have our own, the nasal Sanu. The closer I got, the louder he sang. Soon, familiar faces surfaced —
“Good to see you.” Lahiri Aunty shouted from her balcony.
“Same here.” I shouted back
The Lahiris and the Mukherjees are literally ‘samne wali khidki’[6], existing on the opposite lane, of Power House Para[7]. While my mother and Aunty went on talking for hours from their respective balconies, the doctor husbands silently attended to their respective patients in their respective chambers downstairs — a practice that went on for almost forty years.
The weather-beaten balconies have witnessed to the transformations in both the families. Lahiri Aunty was still standing on hers, while ours was empty. Instantly, I found myself standing there at the wee hours of a certain nineties morning, when Kumar Sanu was ruling the music industry and Uncle, the field of Dermatology, watching my father rushing to the Lahiris. Within few moments, our red telephone rang. I came inside and my mother told me to follow her immediately to the Lahiris. Inside their first-floor bedroom, for the second time in my life, I saw a dead body. Uncle’s eyes were closed. Aunty sat motionless. My mother went the window and sat beside her dear friend. I had nothing to do. I kept staring at various showpieces collected by them from all over the world. When my grandfather died couple of years earlier than Uncle, I had my cousin, Tiya, to play with me. We had our freedom then; the elders were busy. It was fun. Death had no power to scratch me, even though I saw a dead body for the very first time.
At the Lahiris that morning, not a sound could be heard. A house where harmonium, tabla and sitar existed in harmony, was unusually quiet. After Uncle, however, Aunty continued to sing but Kumar Sanu never ever dared to peep into her bedroom. She had the classics of Bengali music for her company. In contrast, I welcomed everyone in my life. From Kishore Kumar to Rafi, from Kumar Sanu to Udit Narayan, from Baba Saigal to Apache Indian etc[8], I brought all the cassettes that were available in the market. I was largely spoiled by my elder brother. Madonna, Michael Jackson, Backstreet Boys, Spice Girls, Harry Belafonte, Elton John, Phil Collins etc[9] were supplied by him and by some of my school friends. It was my elder brother who inculcated in me a deep love for what he called the four pillars of Hindi music: Kishore Kumar-Asha Bhonsle -R.D. Burman-Gulzar. I was in class eight when I heard ‘Sei rate rat chilo purnima/Mon chilo falguni hawate[10] (‘It was a full moon night/ my mind wandered in the spring air’)’. I replayed it ten times in our old, black tape-recorder. A hot and humid afternoon seemed so breezy then. And when dusk came, I became a moon-gazer. I have never stopped looking at the gorgeous lady ever since.
Since Viswakarma, Manasa and Kali pujas were observed in our locality with much gusto, I got the chance to listen to and update myself with the recent puja releases. At the same time, I also became aware of the oldies. A locality mostly consisting of doctors, engineers and professors, the choice of songs played was up to a certain standard. It was only when I went to one of the most notorious of colleges in town that I became acquainted with the masala numbers and I loved them! With time, the second generation took hold of the pujas and likewise the choice of songs to be played underwent a rapid change. Soft, romantic numbers as well as Jhankar beats were preferred. It was a time when Kumar Sanu gave voice to all the Khans — Shah Rukh, Salman, Amir [11]— and to seniors like Jackie, Anil and Sanjay[12]. Amongst Bengali Puja songs, Kumar Sanu somehow managed to coexist with the neo-liberal paracetamols of the nineties – Suman, Anjan and Nachiketa[13]. When ‘Bhoomi’, a Bengali band, swayed us with their hit songs, all sweethearts or ‘priyotomas’ were earnestly desired through Sanu’s nasal voice. The loudspeakers constantly amplified Sanu’s songs — be it the contemporary Bengali numbers or Bollywood hits. He was, as if, the unavoidable menu in our daily music-buffet.
My mother was cool about the change in the songs being played in our para-pandals but her friend, Lahiri Aunty, probably, was not. Bathed in the classics of Nirmala Mishra, Kanika Bandyopadhyay, Satinath Mukhopadhyay et al, she shut all her doors and windows when the speakers howled – ‘Ke bole Thakuma tomar / boyesh periye geche aashi! (It is unbelievable that Grandma/ you have crossed eighty)’– another Sanu blockbuster! She kept herself confined within the four walls and rarely came out in the balcony. Ma was always downstairs, on the streets, without caring which song was being played. Her attention was fixed at the puja, be it Kali or Manasa.
I don’t remember Lahiri Aunty joining her during Manasa Puja. But she enthusiastically participated during Kali Puja’s final ritualistic bidding adieu to the goddess, boron, and then, in sindoor khela[14], a community practice where married women smear each other’s cheeks with vermilion powder. Aunty was the first to do boron and then to start the typical sindoor khela. Unmarried girls like us were not spared either. I disliked the rubbing of vermilion in my cheeks but who had the courage to say ‘no’ to her? After Uncle passed away, she stopped coming for boron and my mother, in solidarity, refrained herself from participating in the play. But nothing, absolutely nothing, could deter her from the elaborate preparation for the puja.
“So, puja means you would get a chance to harm your body by eating those items which you are not supposed to eat, right?” I often rebuked my mother.
“You are mistaken. I don’t eat anything. I offer everything to the Lord.” She was always ready with her defence.
I strongly believe that it was her blind devotion and irrationalities that drove her astray. I could no longer tolerate any ritual after her cremation. However, within one-and-half-year of her passing away, strangely enough, that same me, was standing in front of a Snake Goddess and repeating what her mother used to do.
*
“Here, take some prasad[15],” Nitai, the little boy of yesteryear, now a responsible local boy, in-charge of the Durga puja, offered a plate full of fruits and sweets. I don’t know for how long I was standing at the steps to the mandir[16]. His husky voice jolted me out of my inertia.
“How are you doing?” I asked him.
“Oh, I am very busy. Where were you yesterday?” He questioned
With no one waiting for me at home, why should I come to Burdwan during that time? I asked myself. Why should I pray to the Goddess whose annual visit, three years back, robbed me of my greatest treasure? My wounds were still fresh.
He probably read my silence.
“Don’t worry at all. Uncle and Aunty have left the world but we are there for you. It’s where you were born. It’s your locality. Your roots are here. You must come.”
The para or locality where I grew up has changed a lot. My life, too, underwent massive transformations. Nobody awaits my arrival here anymore. Yet some things remain. Most importantly, my past remains, my root remains, my delightful memories remain. And in them, my parents still breathe. Why should I stop myself from generating further memories? Why won’t I live for my happiness too?
I smiled and assured him that I will be back. He was still holding the plate of Prasad.
“I have given up sweets. I am taking a piece of cucumber, okay?”
“This is the blessing from Goddess. Nothing will happen if you take some,” he insisted.
Greedily, I picked up a batasha, a flat, coarse whitish sweet, and started to munch on. Ah! that heavenly feeling! When did I last eat a full batasha? I could not remember. We now have fancy sweets as prasad. The indigenous sweets like batasha, nokuldana — tiny, roundish sugary substance — are fast vanishing from the platter of Bengali prasad.
During our childhood, nokuldanas and batashas had been middle-class Bengalees’ coveted folk-sweets. Roshogollas, pantuas or even malpuas, traditional Bengali sweets, were prepared by my mother on special days. But we always had jars of nokuldanas and batashas readily available at home. For an unannounced guest, a domestic help, a hungry beggar, the next-door child and, most importantly, for me, always looking out for something to munch on, batashas were generously distributed. However, she disliked my habit of stealing them from her Gods! Normally, after daily puja, I, reflexively, snatched batashas from her offerings and, in no time, crunched them inside my mouth. She cursed me for being so impatient. In those days, contrary to the softness of Bengali sweets, the crispy sound and feel of both nakuldana and batasha gave me an unparalleled satisfaction of winning over an invisible opponent.
After the ritualistic offerings, when my mother went inside her room to change (normally, she wore a special white and red saree for Puja purposes), I practically, ‘stole’ all the nokuldanas and batashas from the small silvery plates of her Gods and Goddesses. They were readily available candy to me. After her evening worship or during Satyanarayan puja, I watched with rapt attention the making of shinni– a semi liquid mixture of flour, banana, batasha, sweets, milk and dry fruits, treated as a special offering to the Gods. Particularly, I watched her hands, mercilessly squeezing the bananas, breaking the batashas and mixing milk and curd until it formed a smooth, soft semi-solid paste. We were at loggerheads, for her unmindful crushing of the batashas irked me to the core. It was, as if, she was bent on breaking the backbone of my childhood fantasies. I enjoyed the masculinity of the batashas amongst her otherwise feminine palate of prasad. I still avoid crushing batashas. I feel terrible to see them silently disintegrate.
My precious memories of this rustic sweet were challenged by the Bengal politician, Anubrata’s gur-batasha politics; like a palimpsest, the visuals of my mother’s white cream-like smooth right hand, adorned with gold rings, a red and golden bangles, submerged in a copper tumbler full of flour, milk, fruits and batasha, surfaced in my mind. Ironically enough, the last desert which she ate before she passed away was shinni and, in all probability, it caused infection in her blood. An insulin-dependent, dialysis patient, after all, was not supposed to take such concentrated sweet items. But it was impossible to rationalise her. In Nitai’s plate of prasad, I saw her hand and felt the touch on my palm, as if asking me to take another sweet from it. But I controlled myself. I am not going to spoil my body after having witnessed the gradual disintegration of my mother’s body due to uncontrolled diabetes.
“Goodbye. We shall meet soon.” I waved at Nitai and left the pandal.
As I came home, instructions followed: “Rinku, please spread carbolic acid properly. We cannot take any risk with snakes.”
“Don’t worry. Snakes won’t come now. It came to ask for Puja. Your mother used to worship Manasa. Now that she is not there, you’ll have to carry forward the tradition.”
Rinku spoke like a philosopher. I was surprised to find her so relaxed! Just two days back she almost fainted when the Cobra had come.
I looked at my mother, hanging from the wall, and smiled.
“So you will make me do such things even in your invisible mode!” I communicated to her in silence.
Just then, it started to rain. I saw her smiling back at me.
Like the images of my mother’s jars of mixed pickle, her stories are stored in the depth of my unconscious mind. Whenever I need to energise myself, I take a scoop out and revitalise myself, the physical destruction of her body notwithstanding.
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[1] Praying, normally in a community festival in this case
[14]Sindoor is the vermilion powder worn by married women in the partings of their hair and Khela means play in Bengali. Women play with sindoor to bid the Goddess farewell.
Antara Mukherjee is the editor of three books and a Member of Review Boards of International Journals. She is a part of West Bengal Educational Service, Govt of West Bengal. She is presently teaching at the Dept. of English, Durgapur Govt College.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL.
The year was 1881. The city — Kolkata. Its people, caught in the throes of a social and spiritual awakening the like of which they had never seen before, were sharply divided. Spinning between two worlds—one dying; one struggling to be born–they were all protagonists, all engaged in battle. Some to keep alive and perpetuate the old; others to hasten its death and bring about the birth of the new. But there were also those who felt the pull of both. Old and new. Traditional and modern. Science and faith. One such was Narendranath Datta, eldest son of Advocate Bishwanath Datta of Shimle.
Eighteen-year-old Naren was a fine figure of a man already. Tall and muscular, with broad shoulders and a heavy frame, his large, dark eyes flashed with spirit and intelligence from a strong, handsome face. He was a brilliant student and an even better sportsman. He could fence and wrestle and was an excellent boxer. Only last year he had won the Silver Butterfly at a college contest. With all this he was a fine singer and could play the pakhawaj and esraj[1].
PakhwajEsraj
That afternoon, he was pacing up restlessly up and down Hedo Lake Park under a sullen monsoon sky. Classes were over for the day, but he didn’t want to go home.
Naren: “What shall I do? Where shall I go? Home? Na! Na! Ma has filled the house with matchmakers. But I… I can’t even think of marriage just now. Life is short. Life is precious. I must discover the truth of it first. The worth of it.
“Shall I walk down to the Brahmo Mandir? I’ve gone there often with Dipendra. I like the prayers and sermons. I even join in singing the hymns. But…the experience remains on that level. Once, unable to control the curiosity that burns continually in my breast, I was guilty of a grave impertinence. ‘Have you seen God?’ I asked the Maharshi. But he had evaded the question. ‘You have the eyes of an ascetic,’ he had replied. ‘Abandon all enquiry and give yourself over to Him. With prayer and meditation, you will experience Him some day.’ The answer told me nothing.
“I’ve read the works of Western philosophers–Descartes, Hume and Herbert Spencer and have tried to make Logic and Reason my watchwords. I’ve tried to dismiss religion as the prop of the blind and weak. But…but certain religious customs have entrenched themselves in our culture from time immemorial! Can we wipe them out in an instant. And, even if we could, wouldn’t that create a terrible void?”
He laughed self-consciously. Was this a consequence of my meeting with Ramakrishna? Na Na. Not that. Never …
A few days ago, his uncle Ramchandra Datta had asked him to accompany him to Dakshineswar. And Naren, eager to escape the matchmakers, had agreed. He had been charmed with the place. The wide flight of steps rising from the river! The immense chataal[2]dotted with temples! The river itself — vast and unending as the sea! And, then, he had been led to a tiny room in the north west corner where, on a simple wooden chowki[3], sat a little dark man with a gap between his teeth and tiny, twinkling eyes. His hair and beard were unkempt and his coarse, half-soiled dhuti[4]rose to his knees. But the sacred thread that lay across his bare torso was thick and shining white. “Thakur,” Ramchandra Datta led the boy forward, “This is my nephew Naren. He sings well.” The man smiled and nodded encouragingly. And Naren, who enjoyed singing, dropped to the floor and sitting cross legged, a hand at one ear, commenced in a rich baritone…Mono Cholo Nijo Niketane…mind go to your own abode …
Ramakrishna in a trance
Ramkrishna went into a trance. He returned to consciousness and rushed up to Naren.
Ramakrishna: “I know you, my Lord! You are my Narayan! Why did you take so long in coming to me?”
Naren: (to himself) “The man is mad. Stark, raving mad! What do I do now? (Aloud) Let go of me. Please let go…”
Ramakrishna: “I will. If you promise to come again.”
Naren: (sternly) “I promise but I want to ask you a question first. Have you seen God? Tell me the truth.”
Ramakrishna: “Yes. I have seen God. As clearly as I see you standing before me.”
Naren had promised Ramakrishna that he would go to him again. But he had no intention of keeping his word. His reasoning told him that the man was a liar and a lunatic. But why was his heart saying something else? Why was it urging him to redeem his promise? He made a fresh resolve. He would go to Dakshineswar one last time and tell Ramakrishna, politely but firmly, that their worlds lay apart and he had other things to do.
A few days later Naren and his friends were enjoying a meal in an English hotel when he suddenly rose to his feet and walked out leaving everyone gaping in astonishment. Walking all the way to Dakshineswar, he barged into Ramakrishna’s room.
Naren: “I have just eaten what Hindus call forbidden meat. (His eyes challenged the priest) Now do what you need to do with me!”
Ramakrishna: “O re! Do you think My Mother will peep into your stomach to see what you hide in there? Beef and pork? Or vegetables and greens? She looks only into the heart. And yours is as pure as gangajal[5].” He put his arm around Naren’s shoulders. “See. I have touched you. Am I changed in any way?”
Naren: (aggressively) “How do you know where Your Mother looks or does not look? You claim you see Ma Kali and talk to Her. But I say your claim is false. I believe, like the Brahmos, that God is an abstraction–neither seen nor heard.”
Ramakrishna: (murmurs) “God? …. God is akin to a vast sea; an unending stretch of water. But when true faith is breathed upon it the water congeals and turns into ice—solid, tangible. And only then one sees God. Don’t I see you, one of the seven rishis, standing before me?”
Naren came home and thought long and hard. What did it all mean? Why had Ramakrishna called him one of the seven rishis[6]? Was the man mad? Or did he truly believe what he was saying? And, as the boy groped, his heart beat out the answer — dim and muffled but consistent. He, Naren, had assumed that faith and logic were polar opposites, and one could survive only by denying the other. But what if the two were one and the same? Ramakrishna saw faith as empathy in any relationship — human or divine. He saw Naren as that part of himself he considered his Godhead. Which was why his faith in him was unassailable. What a wonderful concept that was! Could he, Naren, ever establish that kind of empathy with anyone? Man or God? Wouldn’t his spirit deepen; grow richer if he could?
And now Naren understood one thing clearly. He was special because Ramakrishna thought him so. And he would have to carry the burden of love and faith placed on him, throughout his life, and make himself worthy of it…
A few months later Naren’s life changed dramatically. His father died and, as the eldest son, the responsibility for the family fell on him. Bishwanath Datta had been a prosperous advocate but, having always lived beyond his means, had died a pauper. What was worse he had left a trail of debts. Death had come to him so swiftly and suddenly — his wife and children reeled under the blow.
Vivekananda or Naren’s ancestral home in modern day Kolkata
With the creditors baying like a pack of wolves outside the door, Naren was forced to look for employment. He had no idea it would be so difficult. The streets were flooded with job seekers. Naren ran from pillar to post then, weak and exhausted with starvation and fatigue and crushed under a sense of defeat, he decided to run away from it all; to become a sadhu[7] and wander among the mountains. People would blame him for evading his responsibilities. They would call him an escapist. But he didn’t care…
Dakshineswar
Somehow, he didn’t know how, Ramakrishna got wind of his resolution and sent for him. Naren didn’t want to go. The man aroused all sorts of strange sensations in him. His body vibrated violently to Ramakrishna’s touch; his head swam, and his limbs felt weightless. Waves of rapture passed over his soul. Then, suddenly, he became his old, tormented, doubting, questioning self. He couldn’t bear these contradictions and decided to keep away. But Ramakrishna drew him like a magnet. Naren struggled against a current he didn’t understand for days, then succumbing, went to Dakshineswar. Ramakrishna took the boy’s hands in his and burst into tears. Something like a giant wave of light passed from those gripping hands and washed over Naren’s soul. His body trembled with ecstasy, and, in an instant, the truth lay bare before him. This little priest of Kali knew everything; saw everything. He sensed Naren’s suffering and suffered with him. The fire went out of the headstrong, stubborn boy. Loud sobs racked his chest and he clung to Ramakrishna’s hands as if they were his only hope.
Ramakrishna: “Naren re! It’s been so long since I’ve seen you. S-o-o long!”
Naren: (blubbering like a child) “You say you talk to Ma Kali. Why don’t you ask her to give us some food? I’ve heard you call her the Goddess of Mercy; the succour of the poor and wretched. Am I not poor and wretched? Why doesn’t she cast her eyes on me? My mother and brothers are starving…”
Ramakrishna with Naren
Ramakrishna: “Why don’t you ask her yourself?”
Naren: “How can I do that? I don’t know her.”
Ramakrishna: “You don’t know her because you don’t care to know her. I have an idea. Today is Tuesday. Go to her quietly when she’s alone and tell her what you want from her. She’ll give it to you.”
Late that night, when everyone was asleep, Ramakrishna sent Naren, practically by force, to the temple of Kali. The torch of knowledge trembled as enlightened India took her first cautious steps into an unknown realm. A vision, dim and shadowy, of something beyond the tangible world was driving out judgment and debate. Reason was about to surrender to faith, logic to intuition, as Naren stepped into the womb of the temple where Ma Kali stood. An earthen lamp, flickering in a corner, cast a soft glow over the naked form, black as night and of breath-taking beauty. A pair of glittering eyes gazed intently into Naren’s as he walked on unsteady feet and sank to his knees before Her…
Suddenly, a tremor passed through his limbs, making the blood leap up in his veins. He had seen — yes, he was sure he had seen the exquisitely chiseled lips part in a smile. He shut his eyes and opened them again. Yes — there it was. A smile of love and tenderness. And was it, could it, be… triumph? He thought he saw the image sway gently. But the room was full of shadows. Perhaps he was imagining it all! In his desperation he tried to revive all his old arguments; to summon up the logic and reason that had sustained him all these years. But he felt them slipping away. His eyes were glazed. Strange currents were running in his blood — sweeping him away. In the poorly lit room, swaying between patches of light and shadow, the image of the smiling goddess was trembling into life.
Naren: “Ma…Ma… Ma go![8]” Naren called again and again; stopped and looked around as though puzzled. “Why am I calling out to her? What do I want from her? Ah! Yes. I want food for myself and my family.” He shook his head vehemently. “Na Na. She’s the Mother of the three worlds! And she has smiled on me. How can I ask her for mundane things like food and clothes?” Naren knocked his head on the floor and cried out wildly. “Give me knowledge! Give me faith! Give me light! And above all these give me strength. Strength to suffer and endure! Strength to renounce!”
Ramakrishna was ill. He had been suffering from a bad throat and violent fits of coughing for some months now. His disciples had moved him from Dakshineswar, where the river air was cold and clammy, to a house in Baranagar. They had also sent for several doctors who diagnosed his ailment as Clergyman’s Sore Throat. But their treatment wasn’t working. Ramakrishna’s health was deteriorating day by day. His tongue was bloated to twice its size and was covered with sores. And to drink even a drop of water was agony.
At length Dr. Mahendralal Sarkar was called in. He was the most reputed doctor of Kolkata. He was also the harshest and most unpredictable. Yet, looking at the slight figure lying on the wooden chowki, he asked with a rare gentleness, ‘Where does it hurt?’
‘I feel a swelling in my throat the size of a rose apple.’
‘Open your mouth. Let me take a look.’
Ramakrishna obeyed, his eyes fixed fearfully on the stern face above his. Looking down at the torn, bleeding, ravaged organ the doctor’s eyes softened and he shook his head thoughtfully. “What is the diagnosis doctor?” Naren whispered, drawing him aside.
“Karkat Rog.” A shadow passed over Mahendralal’s face. “The sahebs call it cancer.” But within seconds he was his usual cut and dried self. Turning to the patient he said roughly, “I’m leaving some medicines. Take them regularly. And talk as little as possible. The world can do without your eloquence…”
Naren’s face reddened. “He’s our guru,” he said angrily, “Our link with God. He merits your respect.”
“Hunh!” The doctor gave a snort of contempt. “Why can’t man leave God alone and do his work on earth as best as he can? Why…”
“His work is the discovery of God,” Naren interrupted, his face flaming, “Just as yours is the spread of Science.”
Mahendralal laughed. “Has any man obsessed with God, be he Jesus, Chaitanya or Buddha, been content to make it a personal quest? No. He has to scream his lungs out and pull crowds along with him. Anyway– they were not my patients so what they did is none of my business. But this man is.” Fixing his large, fiery eyes on Ramakrishna he said sternly, “Remember what I said. No sermons and homilies. Give your voice a rest — for the present at least.”
Two days later Ramakrishna vomited blood — great globs splattering on his clothes, bed and all over the floor. Groaning with pain he beckoned Naren to his side, and holding his hands, looked deep into his eyes. “I give you all I have,” he said in a hoarse whisper, “From this moment I’m a pauper. I have nothing left. Nothing.” Then, his glance falling on his wife, Saradamoni, as she stood weeping in a corner, he said, “I leave her in your care.” Fixing his eyes on his wife’s pale, drawn face he said, “Do not weep. Naren will be to you the son you never bore.”
At these words something stirred in Naren’s brain. An image rose before his eyes — of a bleeding, battered body hanging from a cross; a pale emaciated brow crowned with thorns; a dying voice murmuring… “Mother…Behold thy son.” Sharp, scalding tears rose to Naren’s eyes and he wept like a child.
Ramakrishna died after midnight, two days later. His disciples thought he was in bhav samadhi[9]. For his eyes were open and his fingers twirled in the air. A thin whirring sound, like that of a clock work toy, was coming from his half open mouth. They moved around him chanting mantras and singing kirtans[10] — all except Naren, who jumped to his feet and ran all the way to Mahendralal Sarkar’s house. But the doctor, when he came, didn’t even touch the patient. “Start making arrangements for the cremation,” he said quietly, “He’s gone.”
One of the disciples, fearful of a sharp rebuke, murmured nervously, “He’s in bhav samadhi Daktar Babu.”
The doctor’s eyes were somber and his voice gentle as he answered, “I’m an ordinary physician who was given the privilege of ministering to a great soul. But I recognise the end when I see it. He is not in a state of bhav samadhi this time. It is maha samadhi[11].”
Swami Vivekananda and other disciples at the Mahasamadhi of Ramakrishna on Sunday, August 15, 1886.
There were a few distinctive features about the funeral procession that wended its way to Neemtala. One of the mourners held a Hindu trident, another a Buddhist spud. A third had a Christian cross in his hands and a fourth a replica of the crescent moon and single star– symbol of Islam. Ramakrishna had preached the concept of jata mat tata path (there are as many paths to God as there are faiths) and, even in their hour of desolation, his disciples hadn’t forgotten it.
Not many people had heard of Ramakrishna. Consequently. the number of mourners was pitifully small. The funeral processions of some other sadhus of the city had contained thousands. Ramakrishna’s numbered a little over a hundred. But one of them …was equal to a million.
Exactly four hundred years ago, to the day, a Italian sailor named Christopher Columbus had set sail on a discovery of India and landed, instead, on the shores of America. To mark that epoch making event a great festival was being organised in the city of Chicago of which an important feature was the coming together of spiritual leaders from all parts of the world. Invitations had been sent to Jews, Muslims, Buddhists, Confucians, Taos, Shintos and Zoroastrians along with representatives from the Roman Catholic, Greek Orthodox and Protestant Churches. Even Brahmos and Theosophists had been invited. The only religion left out was Hinduism. And that was because Americans knew nothing about it. From what they had heard, it was a savage, primitive cult whose members worshipped monkeys, elephants and rivers. The speakers sat in rows on either side of Cardinal Gibbons –Head of the Catholic Church of America. There was a young man among them; a youth in his twenties with strong, handsome features and dark, flashing eyes. He wore a loose robe of orange silk and a turban of the same material. There was something riveting about his appearance and many eyes turned to look at him.
“Who’s he?” Someone whispered from the audience.
“A Hindoo.” Another whispered back, “From India. His name is …let me see…S-o-a-m-i…very difficult to pronounce…S-o-a-m-i Viv…Viveka…Ananda.”
Naren’s metamorphosis from a whimsical lad to a representative of Hinduism at the Parliament of Religions was owing not so much to his own efforts as to a sequence of events that had carried him on its wings. After Ramakrishna’s death he took serious stock of his situation. ‘Who am I?’ he asked himself, “And what should I do with my life?” The answer came to him readily. He was an ascetic. And the true ascetic was rootless and free like a river that needed to flow to keep its waters pure and clear. He took a decision. He wouldn’t stagnate in this little Bengal. He would explore every inch of this huge country and see what it was like.
And thus, Naren’s travels began. He went from place to place without aim or direction. If anyone gave him food, he ate it. If not, he went hungry equally cheerfully. Sometimes someone bought him a railway ticket. But, more often than not, he had only his legs and lathi to take him forward. Everywhere he went he impressed everyone with his knowledge, dignified bearing and fluent English. Gradually his fame spread. More and more people were talking of the scholarly young man who was steeped in the wisdom of the East yet as liberated in thought and spirit as any European. He started receiving invitations from the royals of India. From Hyderabad, Alwar, Kota and Khetri.
While staying in the palace of Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri, Naren had an experience he would never forget. One evening, on entering the Durbar Hall, he was surprised to see a woman sitting on a carpet facing the Raja who lay sprawled on satin cushions surrounded by his courtiers. She was beautiful, though somewhat past her youth, and dressed in rich silks and jewels. She was singing a love song with smiles and provocative gestures. Naren’s back stiffened and his nostrils dilated in distaste. The choleric temperament and intolerance he had taken such pains to subdue flared up in him and he turned to leave the room. Suddenly the woman rose to her feet. Abandoning the song, she was singing she started on another. The song was a bhajan[12], Prabhu avagun chitta na dharo — Lord, hold not my sins against me.
Naren stood at the door, his feet rooted to the ground. His heart thudded painfully and a voice within him whispered, “You call yourself a sadhu! Yet you judge this woman!” Suddenly Ramkrishna’s eyes swam into his vision. Soft and sad. Holding oceans of mercy! And, in a flash, he saw the woman — not as she stood before him, wanton and voluptuous — but as a human being who carried within her a spark of that same godhead that irradiated his own soul. His eyes softened. He entered the room and took his place with the others.
Naren wove back and forth like a shuttle over the vast tapestry that was India. And, wherever he went he saw illiteracy and superstition, poverty and abuse of power. The caste system was like an insidious web trapping and choking the life breath out of the people. “To hell with Hinduism!” he muttered bitterly. “What is the worth of a religion which humiliates and rejects its own followers? True morality lies in feeding the hungry, nursing the sick and comforting the comfortless.”
Kanyakumari with the Vivekananda rock Memorial, where Naren attained enlightenment
It took Naren four years to tour the whole country. Then, one day, he came to the end of his journey. Reaching Kanya Kumari, he sat on a rock jutting out of the sea. A vast expanse of blue green water stretched, as far as the eye could see, on three sides. Behind him was India. Sick, starving, suffering India! Burying his face in his hands he wept; deep harsh sobs racking his starved, fatigued body. But his mind was clear. He had to find food for his countrymen. He could think of their souls and his own afterwards. But how was that to be done? Science was the answer. Scientific knowledge and modern equipment had to be imported from the West and used to grow more food for the masses. But no one gave anything for nothing. What could his country give in return?
He thought for hours and, slowly, the answer came to him. Weak and enfeebled though she was, India had something the West had lost. Christianity was under severe stress, reeling under a weight of doubt and speculation. Despair was setting in. But India had a spiritualism that went back thousands of years. It had survived the shocks and traumas of innumerable invasions and still stood firm. Give us food and we will give you a philosophy. That could be India’s slogan. He would take this message to the West. But how? Suddenly an idea struck him the enormity of which made him spring up, trembling, to his feet. He would go to Chicago and speak at the Parliament of Religions.
Implementing the decision was easy. Funds were raised by his admirers –the largest donation coming from Raja Ajit Singh of Khetri. And it was the latter who designed the costume he would wear at the Conference and gave him his new name. And thus, Narendranath Datta became Swami Vivekananda[13].
Swami Vivekananda at the Chicago Parliament of religions (1893)
And now the hour, for which he had undertaken a long and hazardous journey, was at hand. Naren walked towards the rostrum his heart thudding violently, his mind blank. Looking with glazed eyes at the sea of faces before him he tried to think of his guru Ramkrishna, tried to recall Ma Kali’s face as he had seen it on the night of his first spiritual experience. But, strangely, another face swam before his eyes — the face of Saraswati, the Goddess of Learning. “Have mercy on me Ma!” he prayed, “Unlock my tongue and give me speech.”
Taking a deep breath he began: “Sisters and Brothers of America.” As an opening sentence, this was an unusual one. People started clapping, a few at first, then more and more joined in. Naren was puzzled. Western audiences were generous with their applause. He knew that. But this was something more than ordinary applause; something he couldn’t fathom. Stirred by an emotion he had never experienced before, his fears fell away. His voice rose sonorous and strong:
“I am proud to belong to a religion which has taught the world both tolerance and universal acceptance… As different streams, having their sources in different places, all mingle their water in the sea, so Oh Lord, the different paths that men take through different tendencies, various though they appear, all lead to thee…”
The applause rose to a crescendo. Like a mighty storm it washed over the vast hall, in wave after deafening wave. People rose from their chairs and ran towards the rostrum. The other speakers stared at one another. What had the young man said that they hadn’t? Everyone had, at some point or the other, advocated tolerance of other religions. What they didn’t realise was that their discourses had been academic exercises. Naren had spoken from the heart and, in doing so, had won over the hearts of the Americans.
Swami Vivekananda was in a fix. As soon as it became evident that the young ascetic had the power to draw crowds the go-getting Americans lost no time in making a few dollars out of it. A Chicago firm, The Sleighton Lysium Bureau, offered to organise tours in various towns and cities of the United States for the dissemination of his message. Vivekananda signed the three-year contract with alacrity but regretted his decision within a few months. His managers drove him relentlessly from forum to forum and what began as a joyous interaction soon became a painful drudgery. He also found himself out of sync with the average American mindset. They attended his meetings in thousands but most of them looked at him as though he were a rare and exotic animal and asked absurd questions.
“Hey Mr Kanand!” A man addressed him once. “Is it true that in your country mothers throw their babies into a holy river to be eaten by crocodiles?”
“Well,” Vivekananda smiled, “If my mother had done so would I be standing here before you?”
“Boys are not thrown,” another voice was heard. “Only girls…”
“Is that so?” Vivekananda’s lips twitched. “But if all girls are eaten by crocodiles, I wonder how males are born. Perhaps one of you can enlighten me.”
“Even if you deny female infanticide,” an angry voice boomed, “Can you deny suttee?”
“No. But sati has been punishable by law for many years. Now, may I ask you a question? Have you heard of Joan of Arc of France? Or of the thousands of women who were branded as witches and burned at the stake in all parts of Europe? You haven’t? That’s what I thought. The West has conveniently forgotten its own history. You will never question a Frenchman about Joan of Arc. But the moment you see an Indian you’ll make it a point to ask him about sati.”
However, not all Americans were this insensitive. Some came in a genuine spirit of enquiry and listened to him with interest. One of them was a wealthy widow named Ole Bull. Another was a charming, vivacious woman in her thirties. Josephine Macleod, for that was her name, attended all his lectures and, over the years, became a good friend and an ardent admirer.
But, in faraway England, another young woman was waiting for the call. A woman whose destiny would become synonymous with Vivekananda’s, who would, in time to come, make India her home, imbibe her spirit and culture and work for her people as though they were her own…
Margaret Noble was thirty years old–the daughter of an Irish clergyman and a spinster. Love had come to her drab, lonely existence twice but she had been robbed of them both times. Once by death and once — desertion. This last blow was harder to bear than the first and it was in this frame of mind that she first saw Vivekananda. Listening to him, she felt herself transported to another world. She saw herself standing by a well beside a banyan tree under which an ascetic, bathed in the hues of sunset, was murmuring verses in a strange, exotic tongue. The spell broke in a few seconds, and she went home. But, for days afterwards, his face swam before her eyes– a bright golden face with large dark eyes burning with power and passion. She tried to shake it off, but it kept coming back.
After this she started attending Vivekananda’s lectures regularly — though in a spirit of non-acceptance. Her education had given her rational views and she was atheistic by temperament. But though she rejected the Hindu yogi’s doctrines, she couldn’t stay away from him. Vivekananda was amused. Perhaps he heard in the young woman’s vehement denials, an echo of his own. He had ranted against Ramakrishna but gone to him again and again. Margaret, he knew, was going through a similar experience.
There was one thing, though, that had a profound impact on her. Vivekananda never once touched on the negative aspects of the human race. The word ‘Sin’ was missing from his vocabulary. He always appealed to the highest and noblest instincts of humans. “The world needs men and women,” he said once, “who can find the courage to…abandon their own small families and seek out a larger one…” These words fell like blows on Margaret’s heart. She had sought love; a husband and children–a family of her own. But they had eluded her. She didn’t desire them anymore. She would answer Swamiji’s call. She would walk in his footsteps and seek out a larger world.
Vivekananda returned to India after four years — a conquering hero! A special Reception Committee, set up by the Maharaja of Dwarbhanga, met him at Khidirpur dock and escorted him all the way to Sealdah. As the train chugged its way into the station, the air rang with a tremendous cry and the platform shook under the feet of thousands of people pushing, jostling and treading on each other’s toes to catch a glimpse of the man who had left the country as obscure, penniless Naren Datta and returned as the universally acclaimed Swami Vivekananda. Not that everyone came in a spirit of respect. Many were mere onlookers. Some others came to carp and criticise. “The man is no longer a Hindu,” they whispered to one another. “He has eaten forbidden meat and slept with mlecchha[14] women. Besides, what call has a Kayastha to don a sadhu’s robe? What is our great religion coming to! Chhi! Chhi! Chhi!”[15]
Vivekananda was unfazed–touched neither by adulation nor censure. He had his work cut out. The first thing to do was to go to Alambazar and seek the help of his co-disciples in opening a mission in Ramakrishna’s name.
“A mission in Thakur’s[16]name!” the inmates exclaimed, “Like the Christians?”
“Yes.” Squatting on the floor and taking deep puffs from a hookah, Vivekananda said, “I intend to put together a band of committed workers who will go from village to village, providing succour to the poor and needy and educating the masses especially the women of the land. And by education, I don’t mean literacy. That too. But the need of the hour is the inculcation of self-respect and self-worth in our people. India must awake from her stupor.”
From that day onwards Vivekananda turned all his energies into establishing the Mission of his dreams. It couldn’t have come at a better time for plague had broken out in the city and a severe famine was raging in many parts of Bengal. The disciples formed groups and moved from slum to slum and village to village, distributing rations, nursing the sick, burning the dead and teaching the unafflicted how to protect themselves from the dread disease. As for Vivekananda–he drove himself relentlessly though the strain was unbearable. After four years of living in a temperate climate, his body had lost its ability to cope with the heat and humidity of Bengal. He suffered from bouts of fever and dysentery but wouldn’t let up for a second.
He had his misgivings though. Funds were being organised by Ole Bull and Josephine Macleod. But how would he organise a band of women? Women, in this conservative society, refused to interact with males. He wondered what to do. Should he send for Margaret Noble?
The first glimpse of grey was paling the inky darkness of a winter night when a great ship inched its way into the estuary. Margaret Noble stood on the deck shivering, not so much with cold as with apprehension. She had severed all her links with England and come out to India. But would her new country accept her?
After Swamiji’s return, he had written to her a couple of times. Short, dry missives informing her that the Ramkrishna Mission had been established and that Ole Bull and Josephine Macleod were already there supervising the work. Not a word about her joining them. Then, six months later, the letter she had longed for and awaited, had come. A letter that had set her pulses racing despite the formal courtesy of its tone:
“Dear Miss Noble,
“I am now convinced that you have a great future in the work for India. India cannot yet produce great women, she must borrow them from other nations. Yet the difficulties are many. You cannot form any idea of the misery, the superstition, the shunning of the white skin. Then the climate is fearfully hot, not one European comfort is to be had in places out of the cities. You must think well before you plunge in. If you fail or get disgusted, on my part I promise you, I’ll stand by you unto death–whether you work for India or not.”
I will stand by you unto death…– a tremor of ecstasy passed over Margaret’s frame every time she thought of the words. Now, with doubt and fear gnawing at her heart, she repeated them over and over again like a mantra.
Belur Mathh
On alighting she sought his face eagerly in the crowd. Suddenly, a deep musical voice came from behind her. “Margot!” She spun around and got a shock. It was Vivekananda but how he had changed! He was only 34 but he looked close to 50! She didn’t know that he had been extremely ill. Diagnosed with diabetes he had been advised to make substantial changes in his diet, take a lot of rest and keep his mind calm and free. But he had shrugged off the doctor’s counsel particularly the latter part. The mathh[17]in Alambazar had been gutted by a fire and another one was coming up in Belur. Tension and anxiety had become part of his life. There was nothing he could do about it.
Sister Nivedita (1867-1911)
One evening, as they sat together looking out at the river in Belur, Vivekananda fixed his large dark eyes on Margaret’s clear blue ones and said softly, “I’m giving you a new name Margot. A new identity. From henceforth you shall be known as Nivedita. Do you know what that means? It means One who has dedicated herself.”
Fortunately for Vivekananda, the pestilence disappeared from the city as suddenly as it had come. But the grinding work and sleepless nights had taken their toll. He became very weak and had difficulty in breathing. The doctors were alarmed and ordered him to leave the dust and fumes of the city and go to the hills where he could imbibe some pure, clean air. Vivekananda had wanted to go on a pilgrimage to Amarnath for many years and he decided to do so now. Nivedita insisted on accompanying him. He was reluctant at first. It was an arduous, dangerous climb over steep jagged rocks and ice-covered terrain. The weather was wild and inclement, while the most basic amenities were missing. But Nivedita stood firm. She hadn’t come to India to enjoy a holiday, she pointed out. She had abandoned her own country and was trying to put down roots in this soil. She wanted to gain all the experience she could; to merge with the people and become one with them. Why couldn’t she do what he; what so many others were doing? Hadn’t she given herself to this country? Was not her name Nivedita?
On a dark cloudy day at dawn, a party of about three thousand pilgrims set off for Amarnath. Vivekananda and Nivedita walked side by side for a while. Then, suddenly, he left her and strode off to a ledge where a group of ascetics were flailing their arms and crying, “Hara! Hara! Bom! Bom![18]” Nivedita craned her neck to catch a glimpse of her guru. But she couldn’t see him. A throng of pilgrims had swallowed him up.
And thus, it was throughout the journey. He avoided her most of the time. Occasionally he would appear to make a gentle enquiry about her well-being or to bark out a command to the porter to secure her tent against the wind and rain and put a hot water bottle in her bed. Then he would be gone again. Nivedita walked in a crowd but alone. Footsore and weary; limbs aching with exhaustion; heart heavy as lead.
Along the mountain path the pilgrims walked, the line winding and unwinding like a giant snake. And now the path wound upwards, dramatically, over slippery snow-covered rocks for about two thousand feet. This was the last lap and the most dangerous part of the journey. Nivedita’s heart beat fast. Would she be able to negotiate it without him by her side? What if she failed? So many pilgrims lost their footing and fell down the treacherous precipices to lie there forever — buried under drifts of snow. What if she too…? Even as the thought came to her a voice, rich and resonant as a roll of thunder, called out her name. Startled she looked up to see Vivekananda leaning against a boulder smiling down at her. “Look Margot,” he said, “Look ahead of you.”
Following his pointing forefinger, she saw a stretch of level ground covered with a blanket of freshly driven snow which glimmered like a ghostly sea of silver in the light of the fading moon. At the same time, a shout of jubilation came to her ears. Singing and ululating, the frenzied pilgrims ran forward, slipping, falling, helping each other up. The perils of the journey lay behind them. Amarnath was less than a mile away.
Nivedita wanted to wait for Vivekananda. But the crowd engulfed her carrying her along on its waves. On and on she went propelled by the force of faith behind her, feet flying, arms outstretched; deafened by cries of “Hara! Hara! Bom! Bom!” Was this the merging she had envisaged and yearned for? Then why did she feel so restless? So empty?
Amarnath Temple with its shining pillar of ice
Nivedita entered the cave. In front of her was the shining pillar of ice that was the phallus of Shiva. But all she felt was a sense of anticlimax. Was this all there was to see at the end of this seemingly endless, nightmarish journey fraught with so much pain and peril? Water dripping from a crack in the roof of a cave and solidifying into a column of ice?
Vivekananda came in after a while. He had bathed in the river and his dripping body was naked except for a flimsy bit of saffron that covered his genitals. His eyes were stark and staring and his feet unsteady as he ran towards the linga[19] and flinging himself, face downwards, knocked his head on the ground. Then, rising, he stood eyes closed, head bowed over his hands, lips moving in a silent chant. Nivedita noticed that his body was swaying from side to side. As though he would lose his balance, any moment, and fall to the ground. But Vivekananda did not fall. He turned and, fixing his large bloodshot eyes on hers, cried out in a wondering voice.
Naren: “I saw Him Margot. He revealed himself before me. He who is the first in the pantheon! Deb Adideb Mahadeb[20] stood before me in a cloud of blinding light…. And you…you Margot?”
Nivedita: (shamefacedly) “To tell you the truth, I saw nothing and … and felt nothing. Nothing at all. The famed linga thousands come to see is nothing but a natural phenomenon. I’m sure there are dozens of such ice pillars in Europe.”
Vivekananda: “The eyes of your mind are shut like a newborn child’s and your soul sleeps within you. You understand nothing. Yet the great pilgrimage you undertook will not go waste. You’ll receive its fruits when you awaken–older and wiser.”
Returning to Kolkata Vivekananda flung himself into all his self-appointed tasks. But the old energy was gone. He looked and felt like a ghost of his former self. The doctors told him that his heart was severely damaged. It had gone into a shock and stopped the moment he had plunged his body, steaming and quivering with the rigours of the strenuous climb, into the icy waters of the river at Amarnath. He could have dropped down dead that very minute. But, since all organs have a way of recovering themselves, his heart had started beating again on its own. However, the muscles had slackened and it was, now, hanging an inch longer than it should. It was a dangerous condition and his condition could not improve. It could only deteriorate.
Vivekananda had lost touch with his family for many years now. But these days he found himself thinking of them often. He yearned particularly for his mother and went to see her one day. The old lady was shocked to see her son looking so sick and frail and insisted that he rest, excusing himself from his excruciating schedule. Extracting a promise from him to take her on a pilgrimage to Langalbandha, on the banks of the Brahmaputra, where Parasuram had been absolved of the sin of matricide, she cooked a meal for him and fed him with her own hands as though he was a child.
On his way back from Langalbandha, at Dhaka, Vivekananda had an unforgettable experience. It was a hot humid evening and, exhausted from meeting streams of people, he was standing on the balcony in the hope of catching some cool air when he noticed a phaeton at the gate surrounded by people clamouring in agitated voices.
A few minutes later, two women entered the room. One was stout and elderly; her face coarse and darkened with the ravages of her profession. The other was young and a ravishing beauty. “Sadhu Maharaj,” The older woman knocked her head on the ground at Vivekananda’s feet. “This is my daughter. No one would guess, looking at her, that she is very sick. She suffers from asthmatic attacks so severe–she screams with agony. We’ve come to you from very far with a lot of hope.”
“But I’m not a doctor,” Vivekananda smiled. “I try to cure the ills of the mind. And even in that I’m not very successful. I know nothing about the body.”
“Everyone says you are the greatest sadhu living. Read a mantra over my child’s head and release her from her suffering.”
“If I knew such a mantra, I would read it over myself. I’m an asthma patient, too, and suffer excruciating pain at times.”
“You’re testing me my lord!” The woman burst out weeping –harsh, racking sobs rasping out of a chest congealed with years of repressed grief. “I’m a lowly woman led astray in my youth…”
“I’m not testing you Ma,” Vivekananda shook his head sorrowfully. “Sadhus are human like the rest of mankind. If they had the power of bestowing life and health would they not be immortal themselves?”
The woman continued to weep and plead. “Touch my daughter and give her your blessing,” she begged. “That will be mantra enough for her.”
Suddenly the girl rose to her feet and pulled her mother up by the hand. Hate and anger flashed into her beautiful surma-lined[21] eyes. “You’re wasting your time Ma,” she said. “We’re fallen women–despised by everyone. He won’t touch me.”
Vivekananda smiled. Stretching out his hand he placed it on the girl’s head. “If by blessing you I can soothe your pain away I do so with all my heart. Now you must do something for me. If you find a doctor or a sadhu or anybody who can cure your asthma be sure to let me know. I suffer such terrible agony at times– I would be grateful for some relief.”
Nivedita was on a tour of Europe and America to collect donations for the Ramakrishna Mission. Away from the country she gained a clearer perspective. She saw India’s poverty, ignorance and subservience under an alien rule. She felt her pain and humiliation as she had never felt before. She told herself that the first task before anyone who loved India was to rid her of the foreign yoke.
While in America she heard of the great Japanese philosopher, Count Okakura, and his dream of creating a vast Asian race that could overpower the European. Okakura was in India, already, meeting people and pledging support on behalf of his own and several other countries of the east — not moral support alone but military and financial as well. An overjoyed Nivedita decided to abandon what she was doing and throw herself into Okakura’s movement. Swami Vivekananda heard about Nivedita’s return and felt disturbed and angry.
Nivedita: “Count Okakura is launching a movement for the independence of India. He wants me to accompany him to Mayawati. I’ve come to take your permission.”
Vivekananda: “Independence. Hmph! Is it a piece of candy you can snatch away from the British? Who doesn’t know or admit that living under a foreign rule is humiliating? But backwardness, ignorance and superstition are deep rooted social evils which have to be removed first. Freedom will follow. You’re chasing a mirage, Margot.”
Nivedita: “Why do you say that? Count Okakura…”
Vivekananda: “The most important task before you is to educate the women of the land. And that is what you should be doing.”
Nivedita: “I’m not a simple school teacher. I’m a daughter of India. You have dedicated me to her service. That is why I am Nivedita.”
Vivekananda: “No. I haven’t dedicated you to the service of any country. You’re a disciple of my guru Ramakrishna Paramhansa. I brought you here to serve humanity.”
Nivedita: “I haven’t strayed from the path of service. Is not freeing the enslaved service to humanity?”
Vivekananda: “We are ascetics. Politics is not for us. You have two options before you. To stay with the order and obey its rules or sever your connections with the math and follow your own inclinations. I cannot allow the Mission to be threatened.”
Nivedita’s face turned a deathly white. Stooping she touched Vivekananda’s feet and walked out of his presence. Two days later she left for Mayawati with Okakura.
Vivekananda was stunned on hearing the news. But strangely, what he felt most was neither outrage nor a sense of betrayal. He was overwhelmed by a feeling of loss. Nivedita had left him. Not because she had wanted to but because he had compelled her. Had he been too harsh? Too intolerant? He wanted to go to her and soothe her with a few kind words. But every time he thought of crossing the river his spirit quailed. He felt acutely exhausted and breathless these days and the slightest strain brought on severe palpitations. Yet, one day, he went. Dropping into a chair he said with a desperate urgency in his voice. “Come to the mathh Margot. Come as soon as you can.”
Vivekananda meditating
Nivedita went, early one morning, a few days later. She looked very beautiful in a flowing dress of white silk and a string of rudraksha[22] beads around her neck.
Vivekananda: “You came because I asked you. Not because you wanted to.”
Nivedita: “I wanted to with all my heart,” She murmured with tear-filled eyes.
Vivekananda: “You must be hungry. I’ll cook you some breakfast.” He went out and returned with a thala[23].
She ate. He washed her hands and wiped them tenderly finger by finger.
Nivedita: “What are you doing Swamiji? It is I who should be serving you.”
Vivekananda: “Jesus washed the feet of his apostles…” he murmured so low that it sounded like he was almost speaking to himself, “on the last day… “
Nivedita: (shocked) “Why do you say that? There are many years before you. You have so much more to give…”
Vivekananda: “No Margot. I’ve given everything I had. I’ve nothing left.”
Nivedita: (bursting into tears) “Who else but you? Who else but you?”
Vivekananda: “Sometimes it becomes necessary to cut down a large tree to enable the smaller ones to grow. I must make room for you.”
Vivekananda woke up, the next morning, feeling as though he had never been ill in his life. Rising he walked to the balcony without any pain or breathlessness. And, strangest of all, it seemed to him that his vision had improved. Was the sky really as blue as it looked today? The grass and leaves as green? Then a sensation, long forgotten, stirred in his belly. He was hungry. Prodigiously hungry. He yearned for ilish –thick wedges of the delicate fish — some fried crisp in its own fat, some nestling in a rich spicy mustard curry and some in a sweet and tart sauce. He fell hungrily on the food as soon as it was served. Pouring the fried fish along with its oil on a mound of smoking rice he crushed some sharp green chillies into it and ate big handfuls with noises of relish. When the last course, the sweet and sour fish, came he cleaned the thala with his fingers and licked them, “Yesterday’s fast has left me very hungry,” he said, “I’ve never enjoyed a meal so much.”
He spent the whole afternoon talking to some visitors, who had come to the mathh, without betraying a trace of uneasiness or fatigue. But the moment he retired to his room for a rest he exclaimed, “Why is it so hot in here? And so dark? Is there a storm brewing outside?”
His face was streaming with sweat and he was breathing in loud painful gasps. Throwing himself on the bed, he commanded his young disciple Brajen, “Open all the windows, Byaja, and fan me.” Despite the strong breeze that blew in from the open window and Brajen’s frenzied fanning, he cried over and over again, “I’m sizzling all over. This heat is killing me.” Suddenly his head slid from the pillow and fell over the edge of the bed. Brajen leaned over his guru and shrieked in fear. And now, before his amazed eyes, Vivekananda straightened his head slowly and lay on his back. A deep sigh escaped him…then all was still.
In a few minutes the room was full of people. The doctor was sent for. But no one thought of informing Nivedita…
The news reached her the following morning. Snatching up a shawl she ran out of the house, just as she was, and came to Belur. Swamiji’s room was crammed with people, weeping, chanting Ramakrishna’s name and talking in agitated whispers. They made way for her as she walked in softly, on bare feet, and knelt by the bed. He looked exactly as he had yesterday except that his eyes were as red as hibiscus and runnels of blood had congealed around his nose. Asking for some damp cotton wool she wiped the blood tenderly away.
Around two o clock in the afternoon someone said to her. “You must rise now. It is time.” Nivedita moved away without a word. Fingers of ice clutched at her heart as she watched the disciples bathe the body in gangajal and dress it in new saffron robes. Then they carried their guru to a sandalwood pyre set up under a huge bel tree in front of the mathh. Nivedita looked on as the sanyasis[25] chanted mantras and placed his belongings, one by one, on the pyre. Among them was the shawl he had worn the day he had come to see her. “Can I have that?” Nivedita asked the senior most disciple, Saradananda, timidly. “As a keepsake?” Saradananda hesitated a little. “Everything a sanyasi had used in his earthly life is supposed to burn with him. But if you are very keen…”
“No, no,” she said hastily. “There’s no need to break the rule.”
The pyre was lit, and the flames rose to the sky. Nivedita noticed that no one was talking to her. No one had offered her any consolation. She was an outsider already.
Hours went by. The sun changed from a white-hot blur to a ball of fire that resembled the dancing flames on which Nivedita’s eyes were fixed. Suddenly she felt a warmth, a melting in her ice locked heart. Startled, she looked down. A piece of the shawl she had wanted as a keepsake had come flying from the pyre, grazed her breast, and fallen into her lap.
Aruna Chakravartihas been the principal of a prestigious women’s college of Delhi University for ten years. She is also a well-known academic, creative writer and translator with fourteen published books on record. Her novels Jorasanko, Daughters of Jorasanko, The Inheritors, Suralakshmi Villa have sold widely and received rave reviews. The Mendicant Prince and her short story collection, Through a Looking Glass, are her most recent books. She has also received awards such as the Vaitalik Award, Sahitya Akademi Award and Sarat Puraskar for her translations.
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PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
Light of mine, O light, the universe is filled with your effulgence,
My heart is yours; my eyes drown in your refulgence.
….
The sky awakens, the breeze flits, the Earth laughs.
As luminous currents surge, thousands of butterflies take flight.
— Aalo Amar Aalo (Light, My Light), Bichitra, 1911, Rabindranath Tagore
There was a time when lights were a part of joy and celebrations as in Tagore’s poem above. Lighting lamps, people welcomed home their beloved prince Rama on Deepavali, who returned after a fourteen year exile, and during his banishment, killed the demonic Ravana. On the same day in Bengal, lamps were lit to ward off evil and celebrate the victory of Kali, (the dark woman goddess wooed by Tantrics) over the rakshasa, Raktabeeja. In the Southern part of India, lamps were lit to celebrate the victory of Krishna over Narakasura. The reasons could be many but lights and fireworks were lit to celebrate the victory of good over evil during the festival of lights.
In the current world with lines blurred between good and evil, while climate crises seeks smoke free, coal free energy, flames of fire or fireworks are often frowned upon. In these times, we can only hope to light the lamp of love — so that differences can be settled amicably without killing the helpless and innocent, infact without violence, greed, peacefully and with kindness, keeping in mind the safety of our species and our home, the Earth. We invite you to partake of our content, writings that light the lamp of love —
“Light festive lamps, make bright the night,
Shine your own lights, illuminate the world.”
— Tagore’s Autumnal Nights, translated by Professor Fakrul Alam
Courtesy: Creative Commons
Celebrating and reinforcing the victory of the human spirit over darker forces is a cathartic experience in a world reeling under the impact of senseless wars, depression and economic crises. While the Earth too upheaves changes to create new lores, we draw comfort from the perpetuation of rituals that have solaced us over centuries. These festivals are celebrated in different ways across the world on different days. But, the festival of lights has become a major one, celebrated by a diaspora across all continents. The rituals were varied but the celebrations include lighting of lamps across the board.
The Combat of Rama and Ravana (late 18th century) Courtesy: Creative Commons
Lamps were lit to celebrate Rama’s return home after destroying darker forces as Diwali among North Indians. Among those from the South and West, it was the victory of Krishna over demon Narakasur that warranted the celebration of Deepavali. And yet those from the East, celebrate Kali’s victory over the rakshasas with lamps, sparklers and prayers. The Jain and Buddhist communities also have their special observances on this day.
To bring to you a flavour of these festivals, we have writings by Farouk Gulsara from Malaysia on the celebration of Deepavali during his childhood; Debraj Mookerjee on Kali Puja celebrations in his ancestral home and a sample of Bibhutibhushan’s stories on the darker tantric practices — intrinsically linked to the worship of Kali along with Basudhara Roy’s review of the translation of his book by Devalina Mookerjee.
We begin our selection to jubilate this festival of lights with a translation of Tagore’s poem on light and another by Mike Smith.
Title: Taranath Tantrik and Other Tales from the Supernatural
Author: Bibhutibhushan
Translator: Devalina Mookerjee
Publisher: Speaking Tiger Books
The book decides to arrive on a crisp Friday morning, its sunshine so keen and abundant that any thoughts of the supernatural can only be merrily chuckled over. The cover, however, is strangely disconcerting. It takes me time to mark that the brilliant art on it actually depicts skulls. Not ordinary enough to be dismissed as mere biological specimens, the skulls seem to represent, in their complexity, vibrancy and the silhouette of birds that haunt them on every side, a text that is both hauntingly familiar and eerily not so. Bibhutibhushon’s short stories exploring the supernatural and tantra, a practice associated with dark forces and the Goddess Kali, translated by Devalina Mookerjee from Bengali — could not, perhaps, have been showcased better.
Bibhutibhushan (1894-1950) was an eminent Bengali writer whose best known works are his novels, Pather Panchali (Song of the Road) and Aparajito – both immortalised into films by Satyajit Ray, Chander Pahar (Moon Mountain)Aranyak (Of the Forest). Some of these books can be found in translation.To one even remotely acquainted with Bibhutibhushan’s oeuvre, his stories offer a definite assurance of being in good company. In reading , Taranath Tantrik and Other Tales from the Supernatural, however, what the reader might fail to bargain for is the almost complete obliteration of the physical world by the world of the book, and by the time the journey through the nine translated stories therein has been made, one is no longer sure where one world ends and the other begins.
It takes time to step out of the frame and to express admiration for the conduit that has led to this extraordinary experience in fiction – the translator. To transcend spatiality and temporality and conjure these tales again for an entirely different readership in an entirely different language is likely to have been a project fraught with its own pointed challenges. Mookerjee, however, seems to have successfully met them all, so much so that in the context of the English language, these spooky, unsettling tales offer not the slightest semblance of foreignness, even when they deal thematically with something as acutely local and specialised as tantra. The language is sparklingly contemporary and in its inflections, energy and dreaminess to allow these nine narratives to carve their own particular niches. The pace of the collection stays heady throughout and the atmosphere is completely overpowering.
Of special significance is Mookerjee’s nuanced and insightful twenty-seven paged ‘Introduction’ to the collection that calls upon the reader to visualise concrete connections between social justice and the genre of the supernatural. Mookerjee writes: “Seen against the background of what people are capable of doing to each other, stories of ghost may be seen as corrective mechanisms in the scales of justice. A person who has been wronged returns to tell their story, perhaps to wreak havoc on their tormentors. A disbeliever sits in a séance for which the medium is clearly not prepared, and chaos ensues. We have a word for this already. We call it karma.”
The ‘Introduction’ serves, also, as a brave attempt to place Bibhutibhushan’s writing in current socio-cultural perspective, and to bridge the disparate worlds of rural Bengal that birthed these stories and that of the contemporary English reader of these tales who could belong to almost any geographical space on the global map.
The first two stories of the collection are centred around the protagonist after who the book has been named, a dabbler in the dark arts, Taranath Tantrik. The remaining seven stories are each unique in their own ways as they chart their individual journeys into the terrain of the invisible and the occult with remarkable skill and clarity. “Human beings have historically shown very little need of support from the otherworld to behave in perfectly horrible ways with other people. This is the point at which the darkness of the uncanny and the darkness of people converge,” avers Mookerjee, pointing out how the surreal is often only another dimension of the real revealed in a disjointed spatial-temporality.
Not all of the nine stories strike with equal power. If ‘The Ghosts of Spices’ appears quite facile and juvenile in its description of a march-past of spice sacks on the deserted nocturnal streets, ‘A Small Statue’ appears rather simplistically cinematic in its dream presentation of the tableau of the monk, Dipankar’s life. In the most evocative stories of the collection like ‘Maya’, ‘The House of His Foremothers’, ‘Arrack’ and ‘The Curse’, however, the quiet, intricate weaving of setting, psychology and idea dazzles in its brilliance, leaving behind a sense of both fracture and healing.
Bibhutibhushan’s poignancy is at its unsurpassable best in his delineation of place and in his exploration of links between physical place and human placed-ness. His most unforgettable stories are those in which people and places interact with each other organically and without inhibitions, creating a documented identity of both being-in-place and place-in-being. In ‘Maya’ for instance, the house acquires an identity of its own as its past inhabitants gently draw its present dweller/s into the folds of its mystery and inexplicable self-sufficiency. In ‘The House of His Foremothers’ similarly, the ghost-girl Lokkhi mourns for the bereft house more than her lost family and consistently haunts its silences in the hope of resurrection for the house which, unlike her, still lives across the family’s generational lifetimes.
To allow one’s imagination to be overpowered by these stories is to experience a strange welding of the probable and the improbable into the arc of the possible — to be awakened to a new dimension of being in which while vision remains at par, the other senses experience a heightened participation with what is positively undefinable but utterly undeniable.
Taranath Tantrik and Other Tales from the Supernatural, by thus placing the reality in the larger context of a world that still evades the cartography of reason, becomes a portal to a widened, heightened and more enlightened worldview. It helps remind of the intersections between our own human finitude and the infinite world with its geo-historical consciousness incapable of forgetting and thoroughly unable to forgive.
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Basudhara Roy teaches English at Karim City College affiliated to Kolhan University, Chaibasa. Drawn to gender and ecological studies, her four published books include a monograph and three poetry collections. Her recent works are available at Outlook India, The Dhaka Tribune, EPW, Madras Courier and Live Wire among others.
After welcoming the dark half of the year with Halloween, we light lamps to observe yet one more homecoming festival — that of the legendary Rama. Though Diwali or Deepavali is interpreted variously in different parts of India, in the North, Rama’s homecoming after fourteen years of exile and victory over various demons is celebrated with the lighting of lamps and fireworks. Simultaneously, in Eastern India, they celebrate the victory of good over evil with the worship of Goddess Kali. In the Southern part, the victory of Krishna over a demon or asura known as Narakasura is jubilated. This festival is observed as a national holiday across a dozen countries now. There are a dozen different rituals, Gods and Goddesses correlated with the festivities. But victory of good over evil is a concurrent narrative along with prayers for prosperity and well being of the world. Both of these themes are a felt need in the present times.
In keeping with the theme of light, at Borderless, we celebrate this season with stories and poems connected with lights or lamps along with narratives around the festivals themselves… all from within our treasury.
An exhaustive account of the inception and the fruition of the Kali Project by Co-Editor Candice Louisa Daquin
At the beginning of 2020 …
I had a conversation with Indian surrealist poet Devika Mathur about an anthology of Indian women poets. I had just edited Devika’s first poetry collection, Crimson Skins (Indie Blu(e) Publishing), and been reintroduced into the world’s love affair with Indian poets. Devika being so young and gifted, inspired me, along with Aakriti Kuntal, another trail-blazing Indian poet whom I have worked with many times, to approach successful Indian/American editor/poet/blogger Megha Sood about co-editing an anthology.
The purity of my appreciation for Indian poets writing in the English language, and their astounding ability to do this better than most native speakers, had struck deeply and fortunately. Megha Sood was as passionately interested in putting together a representative collection. We both agreed, given the current news reports of girls still being raped and molested in India, this would be our starting point and this gradually evolved into a fully-fledged project, with a book at its center. As soon as we put a call out, we were literally flooded with interest, and this is still the case. Not a day goes by when I do not get someone asking if they can write for The Kali Project, though the submission deadline closed in October 2020. That’s a fierce testament to the level of interest and need.
When my colleagues at Indie Blu(e) Publishing agreed to publish us, Megha came up with the unforgettable and utterly perfect name The Kali Project, and Kali was reborn! I felt confident, working alongside someone of Megha’s caliber, we couldn’t fail, but it was nonetheless a daunting task for myself, a French/Egyptian immigrant to America, I needed to further educate myself on Kali and what the women of India experienced. I was very lucky to find and befriend a huge group of Indian women poets and artists who through their generosity and knowledge, more than filled my head with relevant information and ideas. They are literally a whirlwind, a force to be reckoned with, and it only left me aware of how hard Indian women work.
We wanted to ensure we had a true mix of talent. It is never sufficient to invite only famous, or notable poets, but to consider all; all kinds of voices, all levels. The Kali Project has authors and artists as young as nine and well into their eighth decade. Those just starting out, those who have been doing this a long time. Kali is not exclusive to women. It is imperative men access The Kali Project and the reception we have received from our male readers thus far, has also been very positive. What good would it ever do to alienate the entire male gender, just to get across the point, gender inequality has to end?
Inception: Indie Blu(e) Publishing gets involved
Christine Ray and Kindra Austin, the women who created Indie Blu(e) Publishing, have actively sought to publish marginalised and oppressed voices from the very inception of their company, and it has remained their primary focus. Combining incredible authors with edgy, raw writing is the core of their mission as publishers. When they saw some of their Indian sisters speaking out about another atrocity of rape and murder of a young woman in India, there was no question they had to be involved.
As Christine Ray, Editor-In-Chief of Indie Blu(e) said: “The Kali Project is another example of setting alight the inequality of women in India by sharing their talented voices with an English-speaking audience. We wanted to introduce to our Western readers, those talents within India who speak with the same fierce voice and share the same goal of equality and an end to oppression. Indian writing has gravitas and brutal honesty that has existed for millennia, influencing poets from around the world.”
Poetry lovers may be familiar with how gifted Indian writers are, but an entire collection of women writers from India, sharing their experiences is a powerful cohesion of all aspects of oppression and defiance. From the very young to experienced, renowned writers, The Kali Project brings together the voices of Indian women speaking their truths. Be it infanticide, family violence, the emerging LGBTQ community in India, or the marital inequity Indian women face, these struggles are penned in exquisite poetry to enlighten and further awareness.
The Kali Project was born from a deep appreciation for Indian authors who write so beautifully in English despite it often being their second or third language. The craft and ability of these incredible writers is furthered by their passionate, vocal understanding of caste systems, familial inequality, subjugation, sexual assault, and ultimately, survival. It is important to note, those women at the extreme end of marginalization are harder to locate for an anthology edited and published in the West in English and we wish we had been able to access their voices because they remain, the most subjugated and continue to not have enough direct attention.
India is set to become the largest populated subcontinent in the world and already influences the West enormously with their art and eloquence of feeling and expression. Western readers can now appreciate an entire anthology devoted to Indian female poets, and their voices rising as one, for equality and respect. The Kali Project is an umbrella for all woman in India who have needed the strength of ‘Maa Kali’ during their life and speaks to every woman worldwide, who can tap into the fierce energies of The Kali and what she represents.
Indie Blu(e) Publishing continually offers the urgent subjects that matter most but are often overlooked by the mainstream. It has long been their mission to be that voice for indie authors and beyond, and they are delighted to offer The Kali Project a safe space to flourish. Having received over 1500 submissions, The Kali Project speaks to Indian women’s growing influence and power in the world, they are truly a force to be reckoned with, and Indie Blu(e) is extremely honoured to publish this collection. www.indieblu.net
Project Outcome
As The Kali Project is the most ambitious project Indie Blu(e) Publishing has published, in terms of size, we also had to address the elephant in the room; Is it appropriate for a Western press to publish Indian authors? Some had thought it wasn’t and didn’t submit for this reason, as is their right. This is how we saw it: Movements succeed when all groups of people support them. The original movements in the sixties here in America would not have succeeded as much, had people of all walks of life not joined them. Therefore, there is no exclusivity to the support of a movement. Where one has to be careful is in the handling of subjects beyond one’s experience. Hence why, even with the best intentions in the world, you would not publish a book about Black Lives Matter solely by Anglo authors, it just wouldn’t be representative or speak directly.
It felt publishing and editing a book of this magnitude required cultural knowledge and sensitivity, and we were lucky enough to have Megha Sood on board for The Kali Project. Born in India and of Indian heritage, Megha could speak directly to the experience of women in India. She also is a highly accomplished editor and writer in her own right. Additionally, we tried to be as receptive and responsive to concerns raised along the way. Of course, with any large project, it is impossible to please everyone and there were those who walked away from the project because Indie Blu(e) Publishing is an equal rights publisher, promoting feminism and LGBTQ themes.
The project was very positively received and the support and enthusiasm from the community we became a part of, has been a life-altering experience for us all. One must be particularly aware when working with a culture different from your own, but with the right team, and listening to the community, this can be achieved. The important thing is to put the people first and let their truths be heard. No wrong can come from that.
Another consideration was the graphic nature of some of the poetry received. Indie Blu(e) has not shied away from publishing graphic works. Be it in response to the #MeToo movement (We Will Not Be Silenced), the LGBTQ community (Smitten, This Is What Love Looks Like), or the recent #BLM, #Trump, #Covid-19 year of hell (As The World Burns). As a small press, we feel our social conscience is our touchstone.
Women of India have boldly addressed subjects of; rape, sexual inequality, racism, casteism, and femicide and despite some daunting obstacles, not least the threat of violence and retribution, Indian women’s courage has lent their voices an unparalleled power. The Kali Project identifies, acknowledges and emboldens that change, and aspires to act as a vehicle of social change. The graphic nature of say, a rape scene might be blatant, but it was decided that, as with most art and expression, this shouldn’t be dissuaded.
The balance of classical poetry, alongside more modern themed works, and art, lends the project a fluidity and relevance that fits the inauguration of the first female American Vice President, Kamala Devi Harris, of Indian and African heritage. We are experiencing a cultural and gender shift in how women and different races are perceived and what they are able to do in society. The poets and artists of The Kali Project are an expression of this galvanization toward complete expression and freedom of thought.
With a President in power for four years, who many women felt, didn’t speak for them, and many immigrants felt, didn’t support them, we now see the potential for change that could begin to open more ways to utilize art and language for social progress. As much as social media is invaluable, the true grit remains on the streets, with the people. Print books have gained a massive resurgence. Paper is still powerful. Maybe coming off 2020 the hardest year in a while, we’re primed for social action like never before.
All along our intention was to utilize The Kali Project as a tool for change, not simply a book. It was always our intention to effect change through increasing awareness in the West, as we had with, We Will Not Be Silenced, which was Indie Blu(e)’s inaugural publication. We were founded on the principle of equality and enlightenment. What we have personally learned from this experience has been momentous and the outcome of the project has only just begun. By opening up taboo subjects, we enable marginalised and frustrated voices to speak about continuing inequality. Indian women have done so much already but it cannot hurt to continue to highlight this in any way we’re able.
We wanted to contribute to a bigger picture. Start conversations. Shift thinking. We regret not being able to reach those most affected in India and were aware how difficult it would be to reach the most rural and poorest Indian women who do not have access to computers, who do not speak English, who cannot be easily reached on social media. As much as possible, we solicited contributions from women of diverse ages, gender identities, sexual identities, social class, oft-published writers as well as writers and artists who had never been published before. Is Kali completely representative of ALL Indian women? It cannot be. Can any anthology be completely representative? It’s a challenge. We do our best, despite knowing we omit some of those who still desperately need to be heard. It doesn’t negate the value of the project, but it’s a regret.
It should be mentioned, The Kali Project doesn’t resonate as ‘negative’ and ‘bad news’ at all. Of course, there is the reality, and the reality can be very painful. It can also be joyful. This must not be forgotten. The love, enriching strength, and joy of Indian women is also borne out in The Kali Project. We were particularly moved by N. Meera Raghavendra Rao’s poem ‘My Mother-In-Law Surprises Me’, an account of the author as a young bride, and her positive experience “When two women understand each other / And feel at home with one another.”
It is just as important to show all sides of being an Indian woman, for every atrocity, there is hope, and strength, and this is why Kali was the perfect Goddess to represent the project, she is multi-faceted and both nurturing and powerful. “Kali / embodies the / boundless freedom / epitome of Shakti / of strength and power / standing unbound from all / restrictions.” Mehak Varun, ‘The Kali in Me’.
Balance is everything. For every negative, there is a positive and we tried to reflect that balance throughout the collection, with hopeful poems, even on difficult subjects: “Do not call me Lakhi meye (good girl) / And tell me I’m an angel / When you only try to teach me wrongly that love lies camouflaged / within your dominant behavior” …“Stop saying I am not enough, not worthy, not great / Because I know I have conquered mountains and moons, flown / across the skies, over the waves / I have danced and taught and painted and calculated and done / everything you told me I could not.” Mandrita Bose, ‘Do not call me Durga’.
Other Influences
Just the other day I watched Rama Rau’s fascinating documentary, The Daughter Tree (2019), and was struck again, as I have been throughout time, to the necessity of speaking up for women. In the region of Punjab, 1000 boys are born for every 750 girls. The documentary is about a midwife in Punjab state challenging the tradition of aborting girl babies. There are other causes to care about, as a person of Sephardi Jewish descent, and LGBTQ I know this acutely. But we gravitate toward those who capture our hearts. In my case, equality.
I hear many times that equality for women is ‘complete’ and there is no need for feminism anymore. That simply isn’t true. There are countless examples of inequality persisting and those who say feminism is dead or should be dead, you wonder what the real motivation is behind that desire to shut it down? How can equality exist with statistics and realities saying otherwise?Take The Great Indian Kitchen, anIndian Malayalam–language film written and directed by Jeo Baby (2021). The experience of many Indian women and other women worldwide, is that of submissive, chained-to-the-kitchen wife, who is ‘unclean’ when she menstruates. With realities like this, women’s move for true equality cannot be diminished or ignored.
I’ve always wondered, if someone wants to shut feminism down so badly, what do they get out of that? Where is the benefit? And what is the harm in being a feminist, which only means, believing women and men can and should be equal. This is a lengthy subject, but I speak for many women in saying, as long as a woman is paid less than a man for doing the same job, as long as a woman’s reproductive rights are controlled by a system and not by herself, as long as she is told whom she can love and whom she cannot, as long as she is derided for her age, appearance, sexuality and gender, then feminism is relevant. And feminists are not man-haters. They are equality makers.
The Daughter Tree provoked a consideration I have had ever since we first talked about creating The Kali Project, which is; How do we speak directly to those most affected, and are their voices heard? I would have to say, no, the most affected voices were not heard either by The Kali Project or anything else, and that is the real problem. When you have mass poverty, illiteracy, control of female populations, then how can you speak directly to the women?
The poetry and art in The Kali Project is in part, an indirect observation of, rather than a direct experience of, for some of the authors. That’s because in India, those who are bilingual, with regular access to a computer and have the time to write, are invariably a higher income than those most affected. It is not to discount the suffering of all walks of life, but we did regret not having some way to engage with those whom we couldn’t even contact, because we are English speakers in a foreign country. Yes, that is a regret. But what do you do? Do nothing because you cannot do it completely? Or hope that by starting a dialogue you are making inroads? I would say the latter.
That said, it is our wish always to be inclusive, to show all sides of something, to give everyone a chance to speak. It was a frustration watching The Daughter Tree, not to have been able to reach those women and girls who cannot write, nor speak in a foreign language, nor have access to a computer. I would dearly have liked to have their stories and shared their views. Because until we do, we risk having a very selective approach to a multi-facetted, complicated subject. As The Daughter Tree points out, there are reasons for some of the traditions enduring, there are factors of consideration and outcomes borne from no better option, and until we address all of those, maybe nothing will really change.
But with awareness, comes progress, and whilst many girls are still sold into marriage or married very young and denied choices and education, the shift comes in all directions and we hope The Kali Project will contribute to this shift. As women, we all know there is work to be done in every country, India is not alone, and that was the point, to ensure Indian women knew, their sisters in other countries were watching, they heard them, they stood with them. Just as when Black Lives Matter movements occurred in the USA, they were taken up by people in all countries. It is that universalism bequeathed us by technology, we can harness and run with.
Finally, the financial considerations related to The Kali Project were long discussed. It has never been our goal to indiscriminately profit from authors, as anyone who works in publishing can attest, this is a lofty goal at the best of times. Indie Blu(e) has actively sought to promote affordable, worldwide publications that can be purchased by everyone, hence why we publish in Kindle and print. The Kali Project’s contributors are primarily based in India, as such we harnessed Pothi, who are based in India, to be another more affordable option for purchasing. In addition, we are set to produce a hardback version of the book for collectors.
For some, a poem’s title alone will stand as testimony: “Disrupting boundaries / Challenging the forecasts / Mocking at man-made wonders.” (Kaikasi V. S., ‘Why are Cyclones Named After Women?’) Others are simply universal in their gendered strength: “I have all the light I need; you’re here, stuck with me.” (Himangi Nair, ‘light & dark’). Some poems just resonate with rebellion and honed fortitude: “No one looked into our eyes with love. / If they had, they’d have heard our souls talk. / Instead, all they said was / She’s hysterical. Women are like that, / especially when they menstruate, / especially when they stop menstruating, / especially as they approach death.” (Anna Sujatha Mathai, ‘Hysteria’). It is truly rare to find a book at 600 pages where you keep going from one incredible read to another.
Kali as received by others
Of all the anthologies I have worked on, I have never seen such an enthusiastic outpouring and this included the terrific reviews we received. I share but a fraction with you:
“Featuring poets from India and the diaspora, creating the bond of shared experiences across continents The Kali Project draws in the voices of women as women, and women as professionals – teachers, mental health workers, writers, doctors, lawyers, bankers, social workers – adding newer dimensions and a sharper understanding of the inner realities that are sought to be silenced by the patriarchal structures which society, religion, community, and class sanction and sanctify.”
— Charanjeet Kaur, Former Chief Editor and Features Editor of Muse India, and currently the Contributory Editor for Indian writing in English of MI. Consultant Editor of the SPARROW (Sound & Picture Archives for Research On Women)
“From my love of history, I was acquainted with the basics of the Hindu faith and one of their goddesses, Kali/Devi. It was immediately apparent, reading The Kali Project, why Kali had been chosen to represent this poetry anthology. To many in India, irrespective of faith, the depiction of Kali is a sign of a woman’s strength. Whilst Kali is both death and goddess, she has a strong nurturing/mother-figure side with the possibility of compassion. In this, we can contrast her with the Christian Virgin Mary. Kali exceeds the potential power of any idol, because she has an active persona, her ‘shakti’ (feminine energy) is a reality and she has several expressive incantations that give her a wide range within the Hindu faith. Thus, it is no wonder Kail became the natural spearhead of The Kali Project.”
— Dr. Belinda Román, Economist/Researcher/Historian
“Fierce feminine energy of Kali is rising today so that we can save ourselves from total annihilation. This volume is a sublime expression of that emergence.”
— Dr. Neela Bhattacharya Saxena, Professor of English and Women’s Studies at Nassau Community College, USA. An academic expert on Kali, Dr. Saxena wrote our detailed foreword and continually supported this project of women speaking their truth.
Disclaimer: The opinions expressed are solely that of the writer.
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Candice Louisa Daquin is a Sephardi immigrant from France who lives in the American Southwest. Formerly in publishing, Daquin is now a Psychotherapist and Editor, having worked in Europe, Canada and the USA. Daquins own work is also published widely, she has written five books of poetry, the last published by Finishing Line Press called Pinch the Lock. Her website is www thefeatheredsleep.com
PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL
the wild creature formed from night and blood and the pale gleam of stars edged with steel a whirlwind of darkness darker hair and a tale of lolling tongue as destruction spirals into a force and form not woman at all or a she shaped before the elements known to the night stalkers plea of mother ending in a whimper the calm I cannot find within the storm
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Anjana Basu is a writer based in Calcutta, India. She has 9 novels, a book of short stories and two anthologies of poetry to her credit. Her byline has appeared in Vogue India, Conde Nast Traveller India, and Outlook Traveller.
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