Latest news with #Ritusamhara
Time of India
27-06-2025
- Entertainment
- Time of India
Unabashedly Romancing The Monsoon
The monsoon brings with it the promise of flirtations and romance, creative imagination, poetry and music, musings and reflection. The pitter-patter of falling rain and cool, caressing breeze could rouse the dormant poet in anyone capable of finer feelings. What comes to mind is Meghdoot, The Cloud Messenger, by Kalidas, a lyrical narrative of a yaksha's yearning for his dear wife. Separated from his bride due to his master Kubera's orders, he pleads with the cloud to carry his message of love and longing, and the resultant 120 stanzas are an outpouring from a monsoon-inspired Kalidas. As a pluviophile, who enjoys rain, clouds, and even the darkness that comes with a looming monsoon, with perhaps thunder and lightning flashes, this is the perfect season for finer thoughts, to curl up in a cozy corner facing the window and read while listening to music, and generally let one's imagination run wild with passion. And Kalidas provides the perfect atmospherics, as he narrates the story of an exiled man pining for his bride, who is at home in the Himalayas. As eight months pass, the lover, emaciated, finds his gold bracelet slip down his wrist onto the floor. He asks the cloud to carry his heartfelt message to his wife, saying: "Though thou be pledged to ease my darling's pain, Yet I foresee delay on every hill Where jasmines blow, and where the peacock-train Cries forth with joyful tears a welcome shrill; Thy sacrifice is great, but haste thy journey still." In another verse from Ritusamhara (The Seasons), attributed to Kalidas, the poet speaks in the voice of the lonely lover pining for his lady love: To you, dear, may the cloudy time/Bring all that you desire, Bring every pleasure, perfect, prime/To set a bride on fire; May rain whereby life wakes and shines/Where there is power of life, The unchanging friend of clinging vines/Shower blessings on my wife. Rabindranath Tagore wrote that when it rained, his heart would dance with joy: My heart dances today - Dances like a peacock. A heavy downpour falls on the new leaves, The garden quivers with the chirrup of crickets. The river has crossed the bank and approaches the village. My heart dances today - dances like a peacock. In religious traditions, Chaturmas, between July and Oct, has special significance. Vishnu is said to rest for four months on his serpent bed in yog nidra on the milky ocean, for the cosmic order to reboot itself. This is also believed to be when during samudra manthan, churning of the ocean, Shiv swallowed and held the poison in his throat and came to be called Neelkanth, During Chaturmas many Hindu festivals are celebrated, including Janmashtami, Navratri and Deepavali. Jain monks don't travel during Varsh Yog, the rainy season, to avoid hurting insects that may not be visible to the naked eye. The season is utilised for prayer and reflection, studying and discourse and they also observe the Paryushan festival . My favourite account is that of Alexander Frater, who, in his Chasing the Monsoon , says: "As a romantic ideal, turbulent, impoverished India could still weave its spell, and the key to it all - the colours, the moods, the scents, the subtle, mysterious light, the poetry, the heightened expectations, the kind of beauty that made your heart miss a beat - well, that remained the monsoon." Authored by: Narayani Ganesh ganeshnarayani@ Why Arjun Was Chosen: The Untold Secret of Bhagavad Gita Chapter 4, Verse 3
Scroll.in
31-05-2025
- Climate
- Scroll.in
‘The umbrellas are on a protest march': Bishnu Mohapatra's poems on rain for a desolate May
It is May. And May has its darling buds. Palash and hibiscus. Zinnia and marigold. But this May is not the month of flowers in the Indian plains. It is a parched month of pining. For compassion. And for the rain. The open beak of the sparrow and cuckoo, the dry petals of marigolds and zinnias, the paws of cats and the dogs, and the desert of the mind and the heart all wait, panting for the rain to descend. So do the poems of Bishnu Mohapatra's book, Rain Incarnations. It is rain in its many (in)carnations - the euphoria, the nostalgia, the awakening of the rain, as it arrives, as it seeps in, as it sponges in and caresses the soil and all life nestled within. Paeans to rain and the monsoon are not new in the subcontinent. Kalidasa's Ritusamhara offers resplendent rhymes to rain, a Sanskritic canon that Rabindranath Tagore was very fond of. His early work Bhanusingher Padabali carries clear signs of how immersed he was in both Kalidasa and the rains. In between these two maestros of monsoon came the mythologies of rain, the rhymes and the lores, and the poetry of Mas'ud Sa'd Salman, Mirabai, Surdas, Kabir and even Mirza Ghalib. When Tansen sang Megh Malhar and Desh, he could bring rains to the dry and wry lands of the northern plains, it is said. In recent years, one can remember Arundhati Roy's The God of Small Things invoking, in her way, the wetness of Kerala; or Alexander Frater's Chasing the Monsoon, which the critic Rukun Advani called 'a literary monsoon mania' which made 'a religion of rain'. Rain is in our music, our food, our travels, and indeed, in our tongues. Clearly, no one – no poet, no wanderer, no romantic, no raconteur – could be immune to the subcontinental samhara of the monsoon. Mohapatra, who is a senior professor of politics at Krea University and an acclaimed Odia poet, is the latest literary devotee of the rain. Rain Incarnations is his elegantly published volume of mostly short poems translated eloquently by Aparna Uppaluri and are accompanied by a set of minimalist, mostly monochrome, atmospheric, abstract art by Gauri Nagpal. It is a petit volume in every sense of the French word. A note on the original Odia volume, Barshavatar, by Uppaluri perhaps best captures the mood of the original. The rain of Barshavatar, she writes, is 'the rain of the ordinary man, the ordinary woman, it is the rain that ripens mangoes; here, rain is a witness, rain is time…lost love,…God's gaze; rain dances, sleeps, transforms, glides, flies and sinks'. In keeping with the mythical origins of the title, we see, among others, the dancing rain in 'Raasa Leela', and the departed rain in 'departure'. Then there is the troubadour-like lonely rain with whom a chance meeting is valued on a deserted night on the street; or the shifting relationship with the rain during the pandemic, or when one is faced with the idea, if not the actuality, of death. In 'Blame', probably the most touching poem of the volume, rain bears the cross of all human adventures. These themes are perhaps to be expected in the lines of a poet who invokes the rain as muse. But what is genuinely telling are the poems in which the political scientist in Bishnu peeks from the behind the poet in him, in poems like 'Rain thinks of Socrates' or 'Rain in the Footsteps of Ambedkar' – in the first, rain 'representing' the suicidal thirst for knowledge, and in the second, the source of ablution. Most poems in this wonderful volume would call for a reread; the first time to comprehend, then to soak in them. In this country of the present, without the slightest touch of compassion, dry in heart and isolated in hate, may rain inundate us all. As it should. This May. Blame Tonight the moon's youth is squandered. For this, we can blame the rain. The salt of love we hoarded for years, has been washed away into the ocean For this, we can blame the rain. The black mole on my lover's breast slips slowly to her belly. For this, we can blame the rain. Flouting all orders, the umbrellas of the city are out on a protest march. Demands, slogans, and speeches fill the streets, police break their barricade. Even for this, we can blame the rain. In the Irani café in Bandra, Sarveshwar while cleaning the tables, remembers the moist eyes of his mother. A few drops of his tears fall into a teacup. For this, too, we can blame the rain. Rain thinks of Socrates I am not an imitation, nor an image of my own being. I am not a diminished body, nor its broken reflection. You will not find me, even if you look for me. My ideal form is not in your heaven. I have wandered for long around the world, fatigued, with muscles tired, heels cracked and broken, soles of my feet, drenched in blood. I have walked the world. Whether you know it or not, I live life caught in my own questions. From the womb of my answers, questions emerge like dark butterflies and scatter across my sky. That day, you drank hemlock surrounded by your friends, your disciples, your lovers. Your feet, then fingers, then your thighs and your abdomen, finally your heart – slowly turned to stone. I loitered in the city-square for a long time, everything was quiet – only the untimely cawing of the crows. Your toga came flying, a pack of street dogs tore it to shreds. I rolled over those tatters till they moistened and mingled with the earth. I will tell you a truth. I too intoxicated the young. Made and unmade known and unknown Gods. Like you, I know Life is familiar – Death, intimate. Raasa Leela Look, look – at that ecstatic dance of rain, like Sri Ramakrishna swaying, or avadhootas with ashen bodies whirling in abandon. Rain appears still, at times – like a note held in raag Malhar, or like Manguli the peasant, rapt in love for his wife. Rain, an unruly cow in the city forages, feeding on everything. Torn clothes, pajamas, hawai chappals, polythene bags, crumpled newspaper, computer CDs, condoms, and old bottles of homeopathic remedies. Everything whisked together and gulped. Still, much remains – like the broken arm of Jesus in Kandhamal, like severed limbs of workers of Kalinganagar, or the duplicity of our statesmen. The deep sad sigh of those whose lands are taken by force, their bulging anger, our blind intolerance and the torso of broken dreams. In these turbulent times, the times of war – Where does the rain get such courage? To dance wildly on the high streets of the City? Rain – melting moonlight pearl fallen off the stars horses let loose from the stable dove flown away from its coop first touch and the stirring of breasts intimate flicker unseen face of the world rumble of drums naked water lily green melody. 'Rain does not deceive, has no alibi' Who says this? Who flatters rain? Look, look, again – at this ecstatic Raasa of Rain Its Leela And the wild laughter of its sycophants all around. Sayandeb Chowdhury teaches literature at Krea University, Andhra Pradesh.
