Reading Ramayana in the Roaring (Twenty) Twenties

Ramayana and Mahabharata are two great epics from the Indian subcontinent. Many of the thirty three million Hindu gods and goddesses make guest appearances in these two epics. Some like Vishnu gets to play the main characters in his two popular avatars, Rama and Krishna, in these two mega mythological texts in Sanskrit. Bhagvad Gita, the best known Indian scripture, is a part of a section of Mahabharata called the Bhishma Parva.

In my mind Hinduism is the contemporary of Greek religion (Hellenism) and Indians worshipping the million gods is how West would have been, had it not been won over by the trinity of Jesus, Allah and Yhwh. Both Hinduism and Hellenism are polytheistic featuring their main players in two opposing teams - Devas and Asuras for Hinduism corresponding to Olympians and Titans for the Greeks. 

Like Hades, Zeus and Poseidon, Hinduism has Brahma (the creator), Vishnu (the preserver) and Shiva (the destroyer), a slightly different yet similar take as the Greeks' dividing the Big 3 by assigning them the three realms of the heavens, the oceans and the underworld. If the monotheistic Abrahamic religions had not overrun and relegated Greek and Roman gods to the mythical pavilion in the western world, I am sure we would have wished Zeusspeed instead of Godspeed.

Why are we talking about these epics now? Recently in my search for coffee-table books, (that is what I mainly use the local library for these days,) I chanced upon an illustrated Ramayana. The last time I heard Ramayana (def. Sanskrit: Rama's Journey) in full was when my mother narrated me the whole story every evening over several months during my grade school days. Two score years seemed to be the right interval for a refresher.

The Illustrated Ramayana published by DK is a well written, well put together, well illustrated book, suited for both the advanced Ramayana scholar, who can find plenty of things to nitpick or for a beginner like me.  The illustrations which range from Raja Ravi Varma to Pahadi to Mughal paintings to glorious temple art from South India or Angkor Wat to Indonesia to performances and native art forms by artists from Thailand or Rajasthan(India) or  Nepal, makes every page a visual treat leading the narration forward.

Like every great epic, there are thousands retellings of the epic in every region and every language South-East and East Asia. The book also draws from these alternate story paths and present them in conjunction with the original narrative, supposedly written in Sanskrit by sage Valmiki. Valmiki, known as the first poet (adi kavi), because Ramayana is the first poem, like Alfred Hitchcock, has a weakness for cameos. In Ramayana he is a an important character in the seventh and last canto (or kanda in Sanskrit) called Uttara Kanda and he is also present in Bala Kanda as the narrator and the live-in tutor for Rama's twin boys - Lava and Kusha.

The oldest retrieved manuscript of Ramayana only contains 5 kandas and are missing the first kanda - Bala Kanda and the last one, Uttara Kanda. Because of the stylistic differences and narrative contradictions many scholars believe that these two were later additions to the epic and therefore Valmiki didn't write himself into the story. The five kandas, excluding Bala Kanda (1st canto) and Uttara Kanda (7th and final canto) are Ayodhya Kanda, Aranya Kanda, Kishkinda Kanda, Sundara Kanda and Yudha Kanda. 

Almost every religion that started in India - Hinduism, Buddhism, Jainism, Sikhism have their versions of Ramayana. So does almost every country in South-East and East Asia, except perhaps Vietnam. Every one of them highlights the same ultimate and supreme ideal Rama stands for - "Dharma"  which is what every human being should try to achieve - the right way of living through moral and virtuous conduct. Practicing dharma is the only way to get rid of our karmic baggage and attain salvation. A heavy message, nevertheless, a beautiful book.

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Chidambara Smarana : A review of Balachandran Chullikkad's memoir

Balachandran Chullikkad's memoir Chidambara Smarana (pub. 01/2001) reads like a struggling young man's journal entries from 1980-90's India. Characters played by Mohanlal, Sreenivasan, Mukesh and co. in the late eighties and nineties' Malayalam movies would be Chullikkad if they were devoid of their trademark humor and had overdosed on pathos. The glass seems to be half empty or almost completely empty through Chullikkad's lens/pen whereas Dasan and Vijayan saw it half full, almost abrim with the invisible possibility of more water that may fill and cause an overflow of good fortune at any moment. None of that optimism can be seen in Chidambara Smarana (literal transl~Memory of Chidambaram.)

Balachandran Chullikkad was a fire brand young poet in the eighties and nineties Kerala. Although I was a reader of Malayalam poetry during those days, somehow I seem to have missed most of his poetry. I had read some of his contemporaries like V. Madhusoodanan Nair, Sugatha Kumari and Kureeppuzha Sreekumar but the only poem I remember of Chullikkad is Ghazal. Over the years Ghazal had become a personal meme of sort which we would bring up any time there is a Hindustani singer in the frame, in front of a predominantly Malayali audience, "there goes Ghulam Ali, singing his wail of a ghazal."

A disturbing undercurrent I noticed in Chullikkad's writing is his sterile, almost impaired depiction of women. He might be afflicted with what could be the opposite of Oedipus complex -  utter hate towards mother and motherly figures. According to my armchair psycho analysis conducted a couple of minutes ago with the aid of YouTube, this was probably as a result of his strained relationship with his mother and grand mother during his formative years. He never recovered, and not only that, there is a lack of remorse or wisdom that comes with age, quite unlike what you would naturally expect from a sensitive poetic soul like him. Not all poets are made equal, some are made like James Dean, Balachandran Chullikkad is Malayalam literature's OG rebel without a cause.

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The Tale of Four Pegs & Other Poems : A poetry review

The Tale of Four Pegs & Other Poems is the debut poetry compilation from Anand Haridas, a journalist turned writer based in Kochi, India. The poet is a friend of a friend. Two degrees of separation, not distant enough to divert incoming friendly fire after a scathing review that I had in mind.

The book is available on Amazon. You can buy it here and I won't get any commission from the sales.

I do not have any idea how to do a poetry book review. I ended up going through each poem and composing my own new poem stringing together my take on each - few words or a line per poem. It seemed to be the only way to do justice to a versified creation. Although if you have not read the book the review below would not make any sense to you.

Here goes,

We get a peek into your think pad, it is honest and clear, though at certain places

metaphors are muddled or similes reckless, you could have taken out the traces

of construction equipment – conjunctions, explanations crowd your unpretentious core

diluting the profound and the mindful down to just another garden-variety heart-sore.

We partake in your pegs¹, the fourth as you had predicted shows a sapient promise

traveling from you to you, we stop at the traffic light caught in the night rain’s fuss²

run over by a wagon train of your thoughts, in a deluge of imagery laden droplets

a few-thousands-more-than-needed hoofed histories, albeit all well framed surrogates.

You give us a lift on your bike,³ your glasses accidentally misplaced,⁶ no worries, forgettable

is the scenery if not for the mongrel and the shawl wrapped figure.³ The bonsai is noble⁴ 

for a tree stunted, lonely and lost, finding its way through the symbolism of your words

nonetheless we lose our bearings on a bridge to nowhere⁵ where a fog of memories girds

your night. Fatigued we take the last flight on the wings of your migratory books,⁷ the ride

up, unexpectedly unusual,⁹ wormholes into Che’s OBE hovering over your death side⁹

where surreal verses sideswipe with singular views,³ you’re reborn in a tearful glass of wine¹⁰

we meet your muse and the sailor’s mermaid at the ship wrecking yard,¹¹ as if by design

the sailor is at sea (still) stateless¹¹, short on memories the forgetful lighthouse beacon

beams a glassy-eyed calm,¹¹ unsure whether we can handle another reincarnation season

we get shimmered in your monsoon pale, sunny raindrops pelt glitter - dramatic¹²

not so the scantily scaffolded summer splintering flecks of winter,¹² they’re radio static.

Smoke rings taunting death pass us by incognito,¹³ on their way to meet your demons¹⁴

we recede silent to make room for your vapory journey, yellow meteorites even wee ones¹⁵

can’t beguile us back, we team up to enumerate the foliage, with your pied piper traveler,¹⁶

to be preserved for after, much after the ambulances are done collecting fare from the maker¹⁷

on the home stretch, the gutted nest is mournfully moving,¹⁸ the blue god’s ominous dance

paints anticipation,¹⁹ broken reeds and spoken Nos²⁰ leave us without any redeemable chance

at a befuddled bank where grounded boats wait for ferries²¹ to take them to light (for real?)

let the unease gush, wounds scale healing word wines, do a twice-over, heart the unheal.

Notes:

• the part of the poems I liked are italicized; 
• reference to the poems are denoted by numbers,^superscript their order as in the table of content;

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Rehashing old blog posts: My favorite poet, once upon a time when I used to read poetry - Rod McKuen

This is rehashed blog post, (not much of a rehash other than changing tenses to match the changed lives and times,) first posted fourteen years ago in my now deleted LiveJournal.

The only readers of poetry are angsty teens, wannabe poets or desperate lovers sniffing around to make off with a verse or two. In the early nineties I gained entry into the first category and started to write...poems! Thereby getting admitted to the second category as well.

I must have just crossed in to my teens. I could be often seen thumping through the pages of yellow moth eaten slim volumes of contemporary poetry, before deciding which one to take home, at our city's public library. Some of these were as recently published as in the summer of '69, which more or less marked the end of the period called contemporary at this historic place of books and learning. That was as current as I could get in 1990s without straining my pocket.

And then I met him….. in a lonesome city, listening to the warm – Rod McKuen. Here was a man after my own heart. A poet singing of love, loneliness, angst and all things in between. Reading McKuen was the closest I came to reading paperback romances, but it does not undermine the value of his works nor do I regret reading them, I enjoyed every secret bite I took of his poems. He was my first girlish crush in the world of words and had a permanent seat in my altar before T.S.Eliot unseated him some years later.

This former rodeo cowboy, lumberjack, cookie cutter, railroad worker, surveyor and US Army infantryman in Korea (wonder whether they still make such renaissance men?) had sold 75 million copies of his books, translated into 28 languages world-wide. A poetic mouthpiece of the sixties flower children, McKuen had recorded 215 albums of original music, 67 went platinum and 115 gold. McKuen’s songs have been recorded by hundreds of artists from Frank Sinatra to Madonna and from Barbra Streisand and the Boston Pops to The Kingston Trio.(Thanks, Wikipedia)

Rod McKuen at Stanyan St., SFO.  Photo by Ralph Crane

Critics said he had no rhyme or rhythm, it was prose faking as poetry, cheap kitsch for the unrefined masses. Who cared, back then I enjoyed it. I hate the maze of metaphors, or in the present day, the overuse of thesaurus. Poetry should be simple, understandable and from the heart. If someone blamed McKuen of being self centered, for pimping his life, I pity him/her – isn’t a person an agglomeration of his experiences and some scattered leaves of memory in someone else’s scrapbook when s/he is dead?

Looking back, most of the McKuen stuff I had once liked with their recurring love-loneliness-sex themes seems cheesy for my now evolved, refined senses(ROFL, who am I kidding), but once upon a time they served my girly teen spirit just right.

Turned out that the first city which became my home in the US was also a favorite muse of McKuen and his place of birth (Oakland technically.)

Here’s a McKuen poem about a familiar street (to me,) at the corner of the hippydom’s Mecca in San Francisco's Haight - Ashbury dist., there’s Stanyan Street and other sorrows….

And now unable to sleep
because the day is finally coming home
because your sleep has locked me out
I watch you and wonder at you.
I know your face by touch when it’s dark
I know the profile of your sleeping face
the sound of you sleeping.
… I have total recall of you
and Stanyan Street
because I know it will be important later.
It’s quiet now.
Only the clock
moving toward rejection tomorrow
breaks the stillness.

-Rod McKuen, from Stanyan Street and other Sorrows 

Not earth shattering, not even poetry by many people’s standards, but somehow those lines got me started on writing and have led to this day that you’ve to endure my blog.

McKuen was still hale and hearty when I had made the original post in 2006. I had assumed he was still alive. Today while checking upon him on the internet after ages, I found that he had passed away four years ago, this month at the age of 81.

Rest in peace, my dear poet and thank you for your songs.

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