When God is Dethroned

 WHEN GOD IS DETHRONED

After Rabindranath Tagore

"There is no God in this much disputed temple", said the sage

"In fact, God was never here to begin with", continued the wise one 

while the walls were freshly haunted with the dismembered wails of a pogrom.

"What, no God?!", inflamed the King who was found huddled beside his precious glittering throne

Amidst breath forsaken poverty and covid.

"You are sounding like one of them. A dissenter", further preyed the King from his scorn frothed mouth.

"Everything I do is always and only in the name of God. The absolute One. How dare you say no God?!", proclaimed the King amidst blood gushing like the molten red river of his people's hearts.

The wise sage calmly replied, "I understand all this too well. But God is a traveller now. This is only because all that you say you do is nothing but an act of overthrowing God. You've dethroned God when you stole the voices of your people, of democracy, of truth."

"The very founders of modern India knew

democracy to be for the mature among us.

But alas, you, steadfastly cling to adolescence. Nafz."

Overcome with Krodh, the king growled to say,

"Nafz? An Urdu term? How you have the pluck to utter an Urdu word in my presence! Our Hindu scriptures are rich with terms and stories for you to resort to. Isn't that enough? And to think that you call yourself a saint!"

"But again, you are mistaken. I am no saint. I am merely a sage. There is a subtle difference between the two. 

And you continue to further prove what I just said. Your Regal Self, your ego, your Nafz blinds you."

"Nafz is the only virtue blazing with life here. 

You've sent God to exile. 

You've maimed the constitution. 

And you are resolutely deaf to the truth that monarchy doesn't exist in this land anymore.

All truth, all that can bring us together is

Banished, buried- snuffing out all the lights. 

Relegating your conscience to your dungeon.

All, in darkness.

And in the process, you've been castrated Of truth. Of God.

Truth is in Kashmir, O'King

Truth is in the colour Red."

"I see you want to ambush me too", remarked the sage, gently.

"Do not take yourself too seriously, O'King. Remember, God hasn't forsaken any of us and that includes you as well", the sage wanted to add but where blood and breath must be flowing within, 

now also flows without.

Democracy is the sun gone ominously cold-

a Blue Sun

a Pale Fire

Time to take the ride back home

a poem everyone must read

In the time of the Great Plague
We miss magic
Deep magic, dark magic, cosmic magic, simply magic
We forgot all about magic

We were dreamers archealogically
We are dreamers still, somewhere
this element is flotsam in the deep black lake that is us

Sun sweet potion bathed our room
- the earth trembled in all its languid kerala sensuality under it-
As i typed this poem
i wasn't alone in this room
there was definitely the child
Also, there were the many invisible beings around us
the presence of which i am subliminally aware

Do you think the earth is doomed
i bring this question alive, out loud
The kid is distant, out of my reach even
travelling some other world
Dreaming
while keeping at her drawing
And yet some bit of her still lingers here
Earth is beautiful, she pronounced
But we are doomed, she adds

i think sometimes god speaks through children better
than they speak through us
i think somewhere children are better accessible to gods because
they are willing to stay mystical and mythical than we are

Such big things we are
Such little things we are
And yet we miss magic

We forgot
to whisper love spells into the heart of a bashful tree
We forgot
to hug a dainty flower in our palms to remind her that she is alive in the admonishing wait of the rain wind
We forgot
to bless unicorns back to life from narwhals
Did we forget so we remember again ?

What will it take in us to take part in our mystical again ?
What will it take in us to meet the blue shadows of ourselves ?

The other day, the child asked me;
quite innocently, how we are so certain of names we offer plants and trees and bees, of their bodies and organ parts.
How are we certain that the nostrils of a leaf is called a stomata, Amma
How are we certain that humans are called homo sapiens, Amma
How is science so certain ?

The trick i tell her ~
Myself an engineer of a past life,
Is to not be too certain, is to not stay too clever
And then; per chance then, you may see that the leaves
the flowers
and the stars
Might have spoken through us and willed of us,
Used us
To name them...

Isn't this a possibility too ?

Navigating empirical explicability in equipoisical distances with elusive uncertainty of the material and the immaterial-
both worlds

Isn't it healthier to revive subtlety into our lives?
Subtlety like the air we breathe

After all, what is love
but the bone spun song of the moon the children know as wisdom
What is love but the deep ochre concoctions of the sun's tassels
Upon which every leaf blade remembers to meet
What is love but dreaming visitations of iridescent mermaids
born to fly
carrying the nine studded heliocentrism
on their tail span

We are dreamers
You and i
We dream in Magic
And
We are dreamt in Magic
chants the child

Love is met in Magic

i wonder, are children brought upon this world so you learn to love yourself again

So you learn you know nothing
that you become nothing
Empty naked and new
Only to begin again
as birth begins with new death
always in Love

So the darker depths of your enchanted lake spills open long festering wounds
Out of courage, while fear keeps a low key
Only so you tend to it chanting love utterances into it
Letting it go into the lustful barbarious air of the universe
And then you realise faith is alchemy

True revolution is to look at love with love
True revolution is Mohabbat
Love saves love saves love saves
And
We become a treasure together

When was the last time your sea of dreams met the aubergine skies of heaven ?

Have you met yourself in love yet again ?
Have you walked yourself home yet ?
Speaking anciently, have you ridden a child's wolftime of magic yet ?

Time to ride back home

The Great Vigil

We finally met in the obsidian truth of the mural                                              i was blessedly crazed
in golden light

Murmurs of wild gods like old persian poetry 
mingled with the sensuous indian rose incense smoke

Spreading heavily in precious prana around us

Around myself and the child

A brass nilavilaku; a Kerala oil lamp, was alit sacred  

A ceremony to adore a Beloved goddess

Everything around us was at once normal

and mysterious.

The air seemed exotic and yet it is the very breath that carries you and i

Beside me sat a nine year old Sumerian goddess of her ancestry

With trinkets around her neck and on the parting of her hair

With watercolour cake dust,                                                      borrowed from starsongs and phoenixes, smeared upon her face and as eyeshadow

Like a lithe Bhakti poet of      paint                                                                    

cosmic dancing                                                                                     she began stroking poems of the small gods upon the awaiting wall.

The wall breathed differently like a crucible returning a painting to life

This slow burning ritual like a candle sprightly kindled    Beckoning me to its otherworldly glow like a moth               i felt anointed enough

Anointed enough to weave spirits upon the longing canvas with my bronze skinned fingers and palms

Time did not bully us anymore                                                  

In fact, its elemental nature became experiential

We became children who must chase lost songs.

We became the earth.

The earth became us.

Everything contained in us was slowly revealed                                  

Contained in everything were we

The colours kept telling stories with the earth turning in it.

Ablution sun love was met in the belly of her carnelian            

Azure portals in fluids and aventurine lands were thus cradled                                                

several riverine skies                                                                                    a couple of dandelion fluff moons                                         
in an almost frescoed world upon this wall

Something began to stir, shift and awaken

These days an emoticon i belovedly use is a blue tea rain soaked green umbrella                                                           to convey the present temperament of a Kochi sky

For a pilgrim of colours                                                          in this late evening, the sky brought out the Adambhara lapis lazuli of the oceans above to celebrate its becoming                                                                 

And dangling from its grey karkoondhal; the malayalee serpentine coiled wealthly coconut scented tresses, 

is an Amethyst piece of the moon that sheds its shadow to begin anew                                                   

in the island of her amniotic sac

Along with the Midsummer’s Mazha; the quintessential Malayalam rain                                                                                                       the kochi sky wailed like a banshee                                                       

Ergo, liberating itself in its divine tears

Mazha

And here i am

Beholding it all –

the colour of petrichor                                                                         

the song of scattered incense smoke                                                 

the many secret lectures around me- 

Consecrating the mural with my trembled coursing tears

I’ve been seen                                                                            is it not a blessing?                                                                       i did not seek                                                                                                          and yet we met                                                                                           we met in the obsidian truth of the mural                                                             

i was blessedly crazed                                                                                            

because                                                                                                                             I felt the tug of the golden umbilical cord

What does it take for us to remember the Great Memory?                                                                                            When will we sense the hundred throbbing inheritances around us?

And while the small Sumerian goddess; kneeling beside me in prayer

spoken in tongues of colours                                                                        Truthtelling her way to paint                                                                             

And while everything was held between grace and gratitude                                                                                        kneeling before the wall painting                                                                   

as if in an act of libation                                                                                       i rove, i see                                                                                            Truth is in the colours

Crowned with small gods whispering  from all the cardinal directions                                                                             

i was made not only of human breath and animal skin 
               

i am just as much made of flower kissed songs that will be lost if never paid love

And alchemical verses of long forgotten deities of antiquity

                                                                                

Will i ever comprehend the colour of my offering?                                          Or was i merely dreamt myself?  

What can i give back to myself these days?     

Only this i see for now                                                                                                                                                               The Great Vigil becomes the only truth i can submit to at the altar of my silence.

Lament for us humans

   

Sun's fleeting poem on a child's wispy hair

world at large is grieving colourful
And many of us, many of us
haven't woken up to the sight.
cosmos at large is breaking down
to emerge anew
And many of us, many of us
haven't woken up to the call.
Is the world peopled not in its right frame of mind ?
Is the country peopled not in its right frame of mind ?
Are the peopled families not in their right frames of mind ?
Am i not in my right frame of mind ?

i am tired of the world in general
But not the earth mulch.
i am tired of this country
But not the tree songs for children.
i am tired of its people at large
But not the skies that house mountains
i am tired of myself
But not the river's love verses to the moon
i am tired of all
But the sun love.

What does it take for humans?
What does it take for humans to remember ?
What does it take for humans to remember themselves ?
Their briefly graceful breaths ....

Cirque Du Soleil

"A girl in a rainbow sky", puts a description to this painting, the kid.
In her sweet voice she enquires, "Does my hair look a little old, Amma ?"
Little old ? What do you mean by Old ?
"Old in the sense poor", she apprises me.
Her forehead; molded like the sun-
my soleil,
comes to my mind even when she is away
in the other room
Everything runs thin like skimmed milk these days. My inability to read and smuggle words.Time.
Days breathe as slowly as they come
Like memory.
Even love is a debt i learn to pay off these days
To survive. no, to live.
Why doesn't the sun get tired of being the golden orb, ever ?
Even the coruscating iridescent skies the kid drew take a break from their concerts. Don't they ?
i measure a sky's emotion in the billowings of the window curtain in my room but
How can i gather fidelity from all the sun love - the first love i receive every single morning ?
Some allegiance, this !
We don't need love, mused a woman i paid my ears to once.
Why do we need it anyway, what good is it came her rhetorical questions to me.
i see now that they are birthed from pain, an inner churn of grievance and fatigue....
All i meet is dejection these days
Dejections that curdle to resignation
Even a sky seems to be shaking me up in Kochi evenings with god kindled flashes encroaching our spaces
Surround sounds richer than Dolby
containing some heaven sent cipher
And i find myself asking again and again
How many times do i undo the stitches of my patchwork heart ?
How many times do i relearn to receive, to become part of the sun again ?
If everything i knew and felt and memorised were to be effaced from memory
surely the kid's forehead sun bulge-
my soleil,
i will remember. always.

Mohabbat as an address

I scratched my hair in raving fury as
we lay in bed
Side by side
Enough distance between us...
One coiled into a pillow while the other flat on back awaiting in the patience of a dog
Side by side
Breath wise.
Our selves facing the open french windows to an April evening's alluvium winds-
hungry as the rains-
whipping the naive room fan air out of its living daylights.
Snapping from the universe of her mind she gazes my way
and announces tentatively
"I want to cut your hair. It will help you get rid of the lice like you did to mine."
i smell the petrichor in the air and say nothing.
She gets up from bed, advances toward me in careful steps
And just as slowly as she arrives
i growl upon her with a sudden pounce
To this drops her plan and her face and she runs away with pure cry in her voice
A dog barks somewhere. Incessantly.
Portending something ?
She returns a few minutes later with a huge bed cushion- a shield
Like an ambivalent warrior on formidable terrain.
"Why did you do that to me", laments she
A benediction i offer to her spirit, her pluck. To return.
"I wanted to strike fear, no, caution into your heart so you never bother me with that idea again", i reply with a kind maliciousness.
i become the serpent one seeks out to court.

But the beautiful girl falls on my lap, laying her hair black sea tangle
Always and again and says," Why did you cut my hair. Look if you hadn't done that i would have had this much hair."
There is sorrow in her voice as she states this.
Stroking her wild curls gently, i hear the thunder and i remember her.
All this while all the skies could do is dream up cameo lightenings like
madness descending upon us sometimes.
Inevitably.
"God spoke to me yesterday Amma. And I don't know what god told me but I want to cut your hair"
No you cannot, i say one last time with my eyes
This is when she mutates into a storm goddess,
a little goddess,
casting a wrath tossing the cushion, stomping off  in seared steps with a gale close on her heels
from my room to hers.
My ears catch her stirring watercolours in jars- elixiristic potions, under the aegis of the
rain which marries the Kochi earth outside.
i recall that her eyebrows smell of incense sticks because she believes they will help thicken them.
With the tempering of time, she makes an appearance with a spiritual toughness and offers me-
"I am not your friend because you are love", a libation.
Always waiting on my breath
Forever knowing our breaths are interdependent
In other words, Mohabbat....

Into the break of waves

INTO THE BREAK OF WAVES...

In these times, dystopian, it becomes clear to me that
its all about tracing hearts
Like the sigh of the Ha in Mohabbat.
Ha, so singular
So luscious with breath
So contained
encompassing love.
Love, made from the cloth of god
And yet Ha is just another fibre
in the Maha weave of Mohabbat;
Like the Alif.

In these times, unsettling,
Like the earth closing itself in
with a Covid virus and other many ecological synonyms-
(past, now and tomorrow)
it is for us too, to close into ourselves-
To draw oneself out.

i understand you, O' Goddess of waves, only because i begin to understand myself.
i learn the tenderness we need to plant into our soft selves
for ourselves
for others.
Because we are alone
And because we are still together
Entwined
Interlaced
Fluid like the intricate Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, in the vicissitudes of life,
i write epitaphs in gold
on our insidious invasion (by whom i wonder)
And as i do,
i who lived to survive the curse,
await it.
The waves.
No. i do not mean to thrust myself into its searing beauty
the blinding waves of nirvana.
i simply wait, hope, remember
as the wave comes, eventually,
To draw me out
that there is no need to seize me
For i am here.
Waiting, hoping, remembering
like the sorcerical Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, when everything may seem innocuous tomorrow
Our hearts will still remain
Waiting for memory
for love
To exercise it to strength
You see we are pieces of waves
always on the edge of an impending doom
But while we are at it
Take care to remember
that we are birthed in a continuum
where the waves can be us
where the turquoise cerulean becomes us.
Is us.
And like all other matters of the heart
this too is impalpable
yet discernible with that hidden passage from
the eye to the heart
Like the Sun golden Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, now and tomorrow
when all that the waves want
is to meet the earth,
to hug it
for the sea;
Always interceding on behalf of one or the other,
To meet
Again and again,
in Love.
To further harvest Love
like the mystical Maha weave of Mohabbat.

In these times, when all we want is
to extricate ourselves from
becoming the wave
i greet the wave, the Great Pralayam,
Writhing with life to take on me.
Because nothing can anchor one like the waves
Reteaching my heart the ways
of Expansion and contraction
Reteaching me attention, creation and release
Reteaching submission and letting go
Reteaching me on how to oxygenate
Reteaching the sublime threads we all are
a part of the alchemical Maha weave of Mohabbat
Reteaching myself that this all Me.

i've had my Proustian moments in life.
Now to see new ones
in a world that is briefly illusory,
briefly godly
briefly gorgeous                             
briefly malevolent
containing nothing but
invisible love

Undestroyed by time
Because i love more than my own self , me.
And so i am retaught,
even if it were for a moment,
that we are truly mirrors to each other
Always helping one another,
showing one another                                            ways
to remember ourselves.

Toward me come the paving waves
A pure exaltation.
Waves, translucent like life
Coming at me with a sound that shimmers like laughing stars
i listen like a being learning how to Be.

With pleasure, i too shall be that brief wave.

~

Illustration by a dear friend, Kripa Bhatia