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Me and My Pea or My Pea and My Me
( A dialogue across space and time )
WORDS AND CENTURIES
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A house, around the house a garden; in the garden, a pea. No, let us put it this way-my heart, in the heart a house, around the house a garden, in the garden a pea. This pea a moving feast of colours comes to me wherever I am. The peahen pulls at my pyjamas. If I fail to take notice of her and remain preoccupied with reading, or writing she keeps teasing me, makes unintelligible accosting sounds, asking for something to eat, like a child asks his mother. If I throw the grain on the floor, she will not touch it, continues to grumble with sounds rejecting it protesting: only when I offered with my hands she eats, eyes full of lustre. And after she is appeased does not vanish but keeps moving about in my surroundings, now and then pulling at my sleeves to remind me of her presence because she seems to like that I should always take notice of her.
When I return home tired after my day’s work, she arrives promptly in front of me, like a rainbow into the garden of clouds. Alas! She cannot speak, she cannot express. Inside her feelings ebb like an ocean tide, waves knock at her soul for expression. Deprived of it the sea within her rebels gets enraged and furious. How torturous is this delicate bird’s; light! What inexplicable agony! How irredeemable, given even the enormous sympathy! She curses her creator for the deformity of speechlessness the foremost of all deformities.
One day I died, people were crying in the room. Lo, and behold hesitating the Peahen slowly moved towards the door, throwing bewildered looks all suspiciously in all directions. She was afraid yet compelled to come forward by something which she does not know or you people do not know, fear of death did not deter her: it means she did not care for death. Though I died, I was watching the pea come. I was greatly amused. Crowds of people were falling over my dead body and they were weeping. Guy de Maupassant"s story LOVE flashed across my mind like a lightening as I lay dead. In that story a hunter kills a female bird. She falls to the ground from the sky. The hunter tells his friend:" Look this will bring the male bird also. Soon he will bag two instead of one, without any effort" soon, exactly as the hunter predicted the male bird flew in, hazarding danger, irresistibly drawn to his mate wailing even louder, with heartrending sounds, began circling the sky over the spot where his companion lay mutilated and soaked in blood. However the hunter is a hunter, unmoved and cold-blooded, his fingers pressed the trigger and the male bird was shot as he came within the range of the gun. He too fell dead by the side of his mate. Suddenly I heard a voice of hoary past and I knew it was Valmiki. It came resounding from the vaults of time. It was now cursing the hunter of Maupassant; heard dazed in my death. This Valmiki had cursed a hunter before and was cursing another one now. Does he keep cursing all the hunters all the time? How? Is it a voice raised against brutality for all ages to come? Doesn’t Valmiki die? Isn"t Valmiki dead? Is he cursing even today those tribes of hunters who have made it their life’s mission to violate humanity and propagate hate in letters of blood? Is this voice policing the highways of time day and night to shield humanity from attacks of the brute! Great minds turn into sound and thus revolve around the universe, around the world from age to age, from country to country eternally and endlessly.
One evening in the 21st century Albert Camus and I found ourselves in the swimming pool of a park. Swimming in that blood we were like two morning suns that rose at the same time. I said"Camus, you have said no great work has ever been been based on hatred or contempt" Now what is this blood in which we are swimming? Had not this blood in which we are swimming? Isn’t this blood shed due to the love of man? Had not this blood flown, these children today would not be playing there amongst those flowers so innocently and freely; these evenings and mornings could not have scattered these hues and passions for one and all".
Before Camus spoke Kafka sitting by the side of a flowering bush nearby interjected;
"These rivers of blood are necessary but remember that there are some who ferry their ambitions in these waters reach destinations of power: their dream is to reach those exalted peaks of fame but not a thought of ushering in or bequeathing a dawn to those who shed their blood for the cause. They do not shed one drop themselves but when others shed their blood they commemorate with songs."
Little further up Plato and Bhavabhuthi were admiring a painting." this is the picture of Hanuman from Thailand’, said Bhavabhuthi. Plato said this is the message of humanity teaching us across the oceans of time."
In the meanwhile over-hearing the words of Kafka Plato intervened;"Franz, these pirates of bloody oceans are always there, these very people made my Guru drink hemlock, and these very people after his death became the high priests of his philosophy. When were dishonest people not there? One of them last year broke the ears and nose of PIETA in the Sistine Chapel. To this day the last words of Socrates resound in my ears before he empties the cup of hemlock.’wherefore, O judges, be of good cheer about death, and know o f certainty, that no evil can happen to a good man, either in life or after death. The gods do not neglect him and his; nor has my own approaching end happened by mere chance. But I see clearly that the time had arrived when it was better for me to die and be released from trouble.
"I am not angry with my condemners, or with my accusers; they have done me no harm although they did not mean to do me any good; and for this I may gently blame them.
"Since I have a favour to ask of them." When my sons are grown up, I would ask you my friends to punish them; and would have you trouble them as I have troubled you. If they seem to care about riches, or anything, more than about virtue; or if they pretend to be something when they are really nothing then reprove them, as I have reproved you, for not caring about that for which they ought to care, and thinking that they are something when they are really nothing; and if you do this, both I and my sons will have received justice at your hands".
That which Socrates drank was not hemlock, that historic tragedy is touchstone of impeccable honesty-
Mohammed Iqbal who was listening intently intercepted;"Socretes was before time and became a martyr of time. It is after the slaughter of countless stars that dawn takes birth. –
After five hundred years Socrates was reborn perhaps as Christ. A hundred years before his birth he flashed like lightening in the mind of the great poet Virgil who sand the last chapter of that divine song in eclogues (1$) Now comes the final age (announced) in the cumean (Sybil’s) chant; the great succession of epochs is born anew. Now the virgin returns; now a new race descends from the heaven on high. O chaste Luciana (goddess of births) smile upon the boy just born, in whose time the race of iron shall first cease, and a race of gold shall arise through out the world."
That is why he is known today as the Christian before Christ.
On the television I saw the face of Mac Diarmid; he was singing his Third hymn to Lenin
Michael Roberts and and All Angels! Auden, Spender, those bhoyos.
All yellow twicers; not one of them with a lithe of Carlyle’s courage and integrity. Unlike those psuedos I of-not for the working class".
I spontaneously remarked:"wll said. Shall I narrate an interesting episode?- The other day one of my books of the 19th century French Verse disappeared from my desk, over which I was very upset. I looked for it and didn’t find it. Undoubtedly somebody had stolen it and a few days later Lo and behold! I suddenly came across it in the prose-poems of a modern poet".
"Who is he? Is he a telugu friend?" queried Mac Diarmid innocently.
One night a dream entered me, a technicoloured dream, it spread over the multidimensional screen of my mind. Jean Cocteau and I were sitting together and smoking opium.
"Opium is the only vegetable substance which communicates the vegetable state to us. Through it we get an idea of that other speed of plants" Picasso who was sitting across the table rejoined." the smell of opium is the least stup9id smell in the world. The only smell one can compare with it is the smell of circus or a seaport".
Jeau Cocteau,"The smell spreads magic; flies gather round the tray and dream, the lizards with their little mittens swoon on the ceiling above the lamp and wait for the". I said; you carried opium from our continent but we do not know the secrets of opium as much as you people do-
Cocteau replied: "young Asia no longer smokes because grand father smoked, Young Europe smokes because grand father did not smoke. Since, Alas, Young Asia imitates young Euorope,it is through us that opium will return to its starting point".
As the conversation progressed, my mind began to evaporate. Like volatile camphor it melted into the air." Why am I feeling like this" I asked aloud.
Cocteau:"don"nt wake up. Once a poet wakes up he is stupid I mean intelligent, where am I? he asks, like ladies who fainted. Notes written by a poet who is awake are not worth much"." Then how does one understand the writings of a poet whose head is buried in dreams" asked Cocteau" A poet, unless he is politician’’’’’ must only count on readers who know his language, the spirit of his language, the spirit of his language and the soul of his language. It is unlike a poet to crave for masses of readers." Eliot intervening said," I entirely agree with you. A political association may help to give poetry immediate attention. It is in spite of this association that the poetry will be read If it is read tomorrow. Beacause unless the political matter is humanised and transformed into poetry it deserves to be forgotten".
"Yes unless you become an idiot you cannot become a poet. If you smoke a few puffs of opium you wouldn’t be within yourself recommend the patient to burry his head in his arms, to glue his ears to that arm, and wait…. Cataststrophes, riots, factories blowing up, armies in fligfht, floods: the ear can detect a whole apocalypse in the the starry night of the human body."
By then, time and distance disappeared in me. The symphony of sounds and oceans began to rage within me. From out of those tumultuous waves arose Pablo Neruda holding out his poem"Mcchu Picchu"…
"Arise to birth with me, my brother" his shout rent the air, stamping his feet on the waves he cried aloud-
"Let me have back the slave you buried here! Wrench from these lands the stale-bread of the poor".
The smoke of opium spread all over the room. Flies began to dream, lizards began to swoon clutching at the walls, and the mosquitoes began to float in utter abandon. Crowds of yellow dreams and full-throated voices of brown races of the earth began to speak. Ishikawa Takuboku was reciting in his deep Japanese voice.
"My character is an unhappy character. I a weakling with a marvellous sword inferior to none. I can’t stand it unless I fight and yet I am unable win, that means that death is the only possible course for me. But I dislike the thought of death. I don’t want to die! Then how am I to live?"
Love which is another form of humanity, another name of conscientiousness, fearlessness and honesty, love which fuses unknown human being together and brings the entire mankind into the crucible of history to celebrate TIME as a saga of peace and prosperity. Love which makes man brandish his iron fists in fury against the injustice perpetrated on fellowmen, Love which makes man dig his axe into the evil force that obstruct justice and make oblations in blood to the murdered humanity in our own century. In such ddays, when love is trampled and desecrated those that ignore sentiment are setting bloody trends in poetry using it as a ladder to climb peaks of fame: exploiting the blood and sweat of the dumb millions for making crowns to adorn their own heads: hycracy, theft, envy, hatred and ignorance are spreading like epidemics in the exalted field of poetry.
In such times, the man in whom peaks that kiss the skies, the skies that take into their blue arms the pure winds, the innocent winds that speak in hush voices the language of flowers; the flowers that spit flaming colours on the brute and the cheat, colours that play a gentle game of hide-and-seek, make a festival of moonlight,-that man, it is better he dies. I am lucky I died. To be alive is an ugly involvement. Dead I can see the fun of all these mean men what more do I need? What more fame do I crave?
My poetry the winds have kissed, the flowers have drunk, the birds have sung, the hills and forests echo, the rivers and the sea gasther, the sunrises and sunsets gesticulate. It is in the sounds of the pulsating universe, in the peoples of all the nations; so goodbye to the pen.
Things invisible to the living become visible to the dead; sounds become visible, centuries become visible, audible songs become visible and visible colours become audible—ears do the work of eyes, eyes the work of ears, hands take over the function of legs and the legs those of hands; like this it the functions of limbs and senses are dislocated the essence of death can be realised in life and the essence of life can be realised in death. This exactly is the enviable state that I am enjoying now.
Jean Cocteau desired to attain this by smoking opium, he says." After five pipes an idea would become distorted diffused slowly in the water of the body with all the noble whims of Chinese ink, foreshortened like a black diver…Opium enables me to hive form to the unformed……… concepts acquire volume… Opium may make us slightly visible to the invisible, may make sceptres of us to frighten sceptres in their own haunts. After smoking the body becomes thinks… the body becomes soft, flaky the body flies… the smoker has a bird’s eye view of himself".
April arrived; forest flame blossomed in the garden. I was reading Sri Sri: s letter, which had just then arrived. Coffee was brought and served to Rimbaud and me. Rimbaud was sitting with me in the garden reading a book, sipping coffee I asked the bearer "is it made with powdered milk?" He replied smiling" Yes sir even buffalo’s do not wakeup before ten O’clock in Hydrerabad."
Rimbaud laughed, and then turned and asked me;" what did sri sri write?"
I read out one line-"sense, in your poetry a search for alchemy…"
"Does Sri Sri know alchemy"querried Rimbaud."I don’t know".
You might be interested to know that I wandered across many countries, like Belgium, Scandinavia, Italy, Cyprus and Abyssinia in search of Alchemy. That was s a long time ago though"." Really? P{perhaps that is the reason why there are many words, symbols and expressions in your poetry which sound mystic and are incomprehensible, something like Vemanna.""Which poem are you referring to? It is Enfance of mine?" Rimbaud asked amused." Yes and also Sonnet des voyells"
"In sonnet des Voyells certain concepts are akin to your Tantras. There every sound has a colour and every colour has a sound". Said Rimbaud gravely still drinking, coffee.
I was stupefied. A minute of silence passed before I asked,"would’nt you like to meet Vemanna?"
" I would like that very much, where is his ashram?"
"Where shall I say it is? He has a very peculiar mind. trees and forest, all the villages are his ashrams."
"Then how do we go?" "I do not know, let’s just go, let us launch on this adventure if you are ready."
We started after coffee and entered the limitless universe, and began walking through villages, forests, fields, across rivers. Passing through cities we finally came to a small village, from a distance a man could be seen in a street, beneath a tree with one leg stretched out, with the other leg drawn inwards and over it he had placed his chin with his eyes cast on the earth. I pointed vemanna to Rimbaud, we went nearer. He had nothing on his body except a loincloth. He did not sstir, kept sitting in the same position. Would not move, did not stir kept sitting in the same position. Would not move, did not look at us. On his lips a smile appeared for a moment. He was writing something on the ground with a piece of twig.
Rimbaud asked; "Did you achieve alchemy?"‘ Did not answer. He threw away the twig and removed his hands from what he was writing. We read what he had scribbled on the earth;’HIRANYA VARNAAM HARNEEM SUVARNA RAJATHA SRAJAAM’ surprised Rimbaud asked." How did he come to know what we had in our minds?" "Thought exists in past, present and future. To think that you have conceived the thought just now is wrong. Thought is formless. The formless becomes visible to some." Without thinking I went on uttering as though someone had possessed me, my mind, my body had been talking through me.
We returned,’ it is not gold that I want I want the power which is more valuable than gold. The power by which I can hear the language of flowers, the melody of stars. I must be able to speak to the evening skies. I must perceive the boiling depths of the ocean under the blue sky. I Must see the spirit of man piercing through centuries, through the tree angles of time, see the sounds and hear the colours, and hold eternity which supersedes Time and space between my brow, so I must become a Seer’ I said.
"Yes exactly I am also in quest after the same thing."
"Then let us go".
"Where can we find him? Can we find him at all?"
The sun rose, weaving nets of time and space and throwing them upon the peoples of the world, Then again the garden. Frorest flame coffee Rimbaud-Today Seshen is introspective, plunged deep into himself, only his looks are sauntering lazily over the flowers of the forest-flame;" Come come what is this silence?" Pulled up Rimbaub,’enough’- Seshen breakout in a flood of words like some Greek Oracle." A poet must be a seer. How? Commit all sins, drink all poisons, and disorder all senses. It needs great great fortitude of mind to inflict upon oneself tortures: then he becomes a great criminal a great sage, because he has arriv4ed at the unknown. While the people submerged in pleasure stagnate, where they are, this person jumps into the flames of torture comes out like molten god." Achieving gold does not please me. I want to be gold myself."(Rimbaud possessed me.)
A flower dropped from the forest-flame. Bhoja alighted from it and came towards us. We rose up and received him and showed him to his seat. He said" While I over heard your conversation and was tempted to come, Listen, Valmiki first committed many sins, experienced many sufferings, lived the life of a wild hunter and then realised the unknwon, reached by experience the point untraceable. At that point he is the criminal and also the curser of the criminal, and also the curser of the criminal, he is the hunter and also the hunted."ITTHAM VILAPYA VIPINE DAYITHAAM VICHINWAN RAAMO NA TATHRA DHRITHIMAAN NAHI LAXMANSCHA THAADRIK VIDHAAMAPI KATHAAM KATHAYAN SWAVAACHAA VALMEEKA JANMA MUNIREVA KATHORA CHETHAAH"
Rimbaud became more immersed in thoughts and said"beaudelaire is the first seer, king of kings, the real god among men". I said," look here Rimbaud it is sunrise, that itself is a sunset for another shore. These shores, these sunsets for another shore. These shores, and sunsets and sunrises they are the magic our senses: for that man, who escapes from the net of this magic Valmiki is Beaudelaire, Beaudelaire is valmiki; seer is one who is above time".
I rose up and began walking forward leaning on the shoulder of Rimbaud, I felt a heaviness over-powering me, my"kurta" was drenched with perspiration, the shawl was slipping off my shoulders. I was advancing towards the forest-flame not knowing what was happening. Rimbaud stood aghast where he was. Behind me were coming in crowds Bhavabhuthi, Cocteau, Leonardo, Michaelangelo, Beaudelaire, Mallarme, Kalidasa, Eliot, Pound George, Santayana, Bhasa, Bhalib, Zakkana, Sauda, Mir, Srinatha, Lorca, Iqbal, Rodin, Rilke, Virgil, Picasso, Socretes, Kawabata, Cavfy, Sefaris,and multitudes of faces in waves and generations of rays and crowds of light. I was proceeding towards the forest-flame on and on, the forest-flame did not obstruct me: I no longer exist. I went into it: it took me onto itself. I no longer exist, forest flame exists and the generations of faces, crowds coming behind me gradually each merging into a flower slowly finally the forest-flame flowered in its fullness of red blossoms. As usual April_Millons of flowers opened their lips, raised their throats and began singing in one voice.:
"GO BECOME DAWNS
IN TOMORROW"S GARDEN OF ROSES
BECOME DAWNS BECOME DAWNS…………."
- Seshendra Sharma
http://seshendrasharma.weebly.com/
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