Thursday, June 26, 2008

Post Mortem : Minutes

1.

Husband,
wife,
parent,
child,
lover,
friend,
all-
you seek
inside,
phantoms
in head,
imaginations,
dead-
seeking form,
already wrought,
in stone;
so reality
set aside,
dissatisfied,
too worn
to share,
the world
inside-
with ones
you care.
-----------
2. Poem

When words
squirt out
in agony
spraying across
from
slashed arteries
dotting the pages
with pain
words torn
gone insane
bereft of
rhythm, rhyme,
grace,
I call it
POEM
and
rest my case.
----------------------
3. Proem

A friend wished me,
a life moving forward:
but my tangential life,
is more-
encircling,
encompassing,
embracing-
multitude selves
within and without
hoarding
experiences
in parallel
dimensionality,
irrationality,
worming
with versatility
between
separate realities.
-------------------

Sunday, June 22, 2008

Crappy Energy

Its been about a decade since I took a serious interest in biogas as a viable alternative, for cheap and local energy source, to meet the urgent and growing energy needs of a developing nation like India. The idea was appealing - to convert waste organic matter into energy and digested slurry- a good fertiliser for reuse in agriculture based systems. At that time, most attention was directed towards turning farm and food waste to producing biogas for cooking and heating purposes. I had encountered only one bio-digester in Bangalore, set up specially to treat human waste for a slum district within the city. This had been done using financial and technological support of a European nation in alliance with a local NGO. While the system was operational, I felt that the set up cost, and the corresponding energy generated, did not tally up to an attractive enough prototype for further duplication or benefit.

Recently, a friend's appeal re-ignited that interest and I spent this morning searching the net for current status of biogas digesters - technological advances, and operational costs. A google search showed up the usual meta-zillion entries including sufficient numbers of commercial providers of bio-digesters for community to family size usages. Further more, human crap definitely featured as a usable source for energy generation with claims that waste from a family of four could sustain their cooking and lighting needs via biogas generation. Of particular interest for India, was the entry of Sintex Industries into the alternative energy market, with ready-to-use bio-digesters. While the affordibility of such units is still an issue for majority of Indian householders, long term energy, economic, and health benefits, far off-set the initial financial costs, making biogas a desirable option for residential communities, health care units, educational facilities. Further details on the subject can be read here.

Friday, June 20, 2008

Nag Lingam - Monsoon Passion









Its the beginning of the monsoon season. Nature's palettes are drippy, wet greens, new neon lush greens that merge, coalesce, under monsoon gray skies. It's season, to go in search of the Nag Lingams- flowers where the monsoon passions burst forth, in a brilliant show of colors, fragrance-a flamboyance only secretly displayed and rarely seen - a revealing of a different heart, red, passionate, with a touch of fuchsia, regal pink, with an undercoat of shimmering, shaded, yellow satin. The tree itself stands silent, tall, solid, with a covering of dark, variegated brown, almost, nondescript in form. It's in this season, that its inner self is revealed, unique, dramatic, but still held close to itself. The first sure give away is the fragrance, rich, deep, heavy, exotic and mysterious. The tree is beheld first on the floor it has now painted- in impressionistic hues of reds, pinks, and raw silks of yellow, brown...a glance upwards takes one to dizzying heights all along its long trunk, now covered with hundreds of flowers-waxy, full, deep, dazzling- allure of a temptress, seductive and sure - ensnaring the blue monsoon, with her heart of red and gold.

Om Creation

Om, drones
roams
vacuous spaces
degenerating
into form
substance
interacting
colliding
exploding
within stars
spraying life
unbound
all around.

Tuesday, June 17, 2008

Moonlight Sonata

Moonlight dripping,
glinting silver
falling in icy drops-
into awaiting,
warm,pulsating,
restless heart.

Dissipating,
dissolving,
spreading pools-
cool and calm
into turbid
tropical dark.

Silver rays
light ways
in lost,
murky gray-
genius of that creator
still moves my day.

Sunday, June 15, 2008

Thank Goodness for Megh

One of the quickest and surest way I escape into parallel reality, experience its vicarious joys and pains, and travel intense inner journeys is by listening to a well rendered vocal recital of a hindustani classical raga...if that raga also happens to be Megh then the transformation into this parallel world is instantaneous, colors dark, bold, dramatic, blood pounding to rainy rhythms, heart lightening to the cracking of the thunder. As the alaap unfolds, the world changes color to dark, velvet blue-gray, lightnings send out sharp linear tinges of purples, violets-the atmosphere is overhanging, oppressive, moist - awaiting, unbearably, the pain of separation -held back tears, gazing outwards, is the mood that the song slowly builds into - and then, on the whim of the singer, a flooding of tears, losing of hope, giving in to the sorrow of lost love as the world outside crashes down and cries with you..or..joy-o-joy, the waiting is over, wishes fulfilled, and I am now the color of you, who is the color of all world around.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Biased Towards a Conscience

About a year back, I was telling my kids a story about 'living by one's conscience', and realised that neither had come across the word 'conscience'. They were twelve and fourteen at that time. I was surprised and more than a bit upset that as a mother I had failed to introduce this important concept to them. It also occured to me, then, that this word was neither introduced, nor nurtured in education systems designed to produce future generations of upwardly mobile, western imitating Indian middle class consumers - 'conscience' was probably outdated, and mostly non-relevant in the present age.

I was reminded of this incidence recently when I came across a vehemently pro-environmental argument by a youngster who worked as a financial advisor to a MNC of questionable integrity; he also stated one of his favourite hobby as playing at the stock market. It was laudable that the person spoke up for saving the natural spaces, forests, rivers, but, did he realise that his environmental interests were probably in conflict with his professional life and hobbies that were so closely tied to developing global markets, finances. It then occured to me that professional choices are seldom governed by enquiry or thoughts of right versus wrong, consistency with personal values, whether this choice impinges on other freedoms- for species to exist, equitable rights to resources, common natural heritage, questions of better livelihood, and further development? The question to ask, "If I gain, who loses?" is rarely pondered. Final choices are made based primarily on financial considerations, and future prospects by the fastest accrument of wealth.

So, have we as parents, and a society failed in someway-not provided a map, a compass, to judge ourselves and our lives by? Are the glittering towers of USA, fancy possessions, heavy real estate become our sole aspirations, a scale on which we measure our self worth? our worth within a peer group? To answer these questions-one needs to step back and ask "what is conscience?", "is conscience necessary?" and only then "why have we failed?"

Conscience, I was taught at an early age, is that little voice, your friend, who tells you right from wrong, good from bad. As a young child, this mysterious, unseen friend, was real-as real as parents' love, home security. When in doubt, I tried to listen to my friend-did not always succeed, since worldly temptations were on the rise even then-but this friend prevented several wrong doings, that would necessarily have changed the course of my life. Now I realise that 'conscience' is a social construct, a conditioning, a facilitator of decision making keeping a social perspective invisibly present. This voice was no doubt introduced and nourished both at home and school, and also the environment I grew up in.

When I was in school, we had a class every week called "moral science"-it consisted of short stories of real people-and via this clearly separated righteousness, from wrong, true from false, conflicts of personal freedom, versus social responsibility-it moralised by real examples, by separating true heroes, acts of courage. I remember both the scoff of the more worldly in the class, but also the deep impression these stories made on me. The present younger generation would no doubt call such classes or stories "lame" but how else does one teach the young to both be socially participative, responsible? Isn't that a necessary condition for the existence of a peaceful, prosperous society-to realise that one is also a strand in a social web? Even if 'conscience' is just a social construct, laying down rules for operation and growth of both individual and group, can purely individual gains suffice in an atmosphere of social strife and conflict? Isn't the larger common good, also good at a personal level-a freedom from fears, insecurities that the 'haves' suffer in societies with severe disparities of wealth and opportunities. While our individual citizens compete to hold global titles of the wealthiest, our society boasts of largest debt-deaths by farmers, shameful infant-mortality, rampant dowry-deaths; lack of drinking water is our bane, sanitation not even a priority, education a means to export children out for dollars-the choice of our enlightened.

We do not have a pause to consider, make a conscious choice-when choosing a bride, a car, a school-market chooses our career, advertisements our lifestyles. Instead of looking outward, all the time, for happiness - imitating fake pictures advertising happiness as wealth, accumulation, power, isn't it time to look closer home, at the world we have made, are a part of, all the way inwards to our heart, to our little voice, our friend?

Wednesday, June 11, 2008

Tao of Fine Balance

Is there a less abstract, more grounded significance to Taoism which expresses all life, world, as manifestations of opposites, Yin and Yang, male and female, passive and dynamic, existence via opposition, and opposing co-existing within an individual-person, quality, thing??

Such thoughts have recently been occupying my mind-abstract thoughts anchored by requiring theories be consistent with personal experience, understanding and knowledge of self. My life is led trying to find a balance between the various opposites that pull me, unable to choose and therefore indulging in both. For every interest that I have had, I have been equally enthused by its exact opposite-for example, attempting to be a " travelling farmer" is self contradictory, and has built into it occupational hazard to both the farmer and the traveller. Is the need to put down roots and to be foot loose, just Tao expressing itself within-the energy for each fed by the existence of the other? Similarly my intense need for solitude works off my great enjoyment in society, friends that are webbed into my life; my desire for silence opposes my great delight in the word; ecstasy of passion in search of a divine love makes me pirouette to sufi chants with as much need as the ease with which I sit in padmasana under giant trees, eyes closed, practicing no mind, no me. Need for simplicity drives me to extreme moves to give up possessions, ownership, while the next instance a complete incomprehensible lust for possession
makes me acquire the unnecessary; my trust in pacifism is in direct opposition to the violence and aggression that I am capable of-that I quell with arguments. Logic dominates my life's meandering course only as much as whim, intuition-my heart guides me as much as my head-often in conflict with it. Being in natural spaces most comforts me-while I thrive in heady excitement of man made clutter, jumble, chaos-music of ocean, river, brook soothes me while a raga or a violin concerto can move me to tears. Is there a choice to be made here? or accept the teeter-tottering of my unbalanced state? is this all Tao manifestation within or the rantings of a confused female?

Tuesday, June 10, 2008

Life in a Dentist's Chair

It happened first when we were in the US...I sat in a dentist's chair when Bush Sr. was the president and pitted against Bill Clinton in the presidential race for a second term in office. While I sat there in nervous dread, pain, the dentist- a die hard republican- spewed forth a non-stop commentary on his right wing philosophy, moral justification of war on Iraq, and the infestation of California by illegal migrants from Mexico. I had searing responses, liberal opposing arguments, scathing criticisms for his weak, narrow minded intellect-but, only in my head. I smiled weakly, nodded docile assents to this ass, and agreed to all his recommendations for participating in the great American dream--after all, I was there for a root canal, and he held a drill.

Since then, there have been sufficient occasions where prudence has won over honesty, and self preservation over self-expression, each reminding me of the first occasion, where I learnt this lesson-yet the pill has been bitter, hard to swallow, a realisation of cowardice in face of prejudice, hate, bigotry, and truth thus compromised, died.

Sunday, June 8, 2008

Zen of Sewing

These days I have taken to sewing...menial sewing on my tiny twenty year old machine-lines and lines of sewing-long, endless straight lines continuing on and on to the whirring of the machine, morning to night, pretty back-achingly non-stop for three continuous days. When I tell friends and family on phone "I am sewing", I get these responses,"you are so creative", "you are so industrious"-yet the work I am doing is fully devoid of creativity-and industry? well, it is work that is marginally useful, but immensely desirable in my present state of being. To focus on a straight stitched line speeding its course at the tipping edge of the fabric, while fingers guide the fabric pushing it along, requires a no-mind attention, awareness in just the moment, and the challenge of being in only-now; in other words, to do it well, is as zen a state as any I know-walking zen, sitting zen, sewing zen. I do not do this well, and I have a prompt signal-a line gone wavery, a fabric slipped away, a gaping hole where a line to infinity might have been...its like a whack of the master's stick, attention brought back, lines resumed, infinity again sought-my life is a journey paralleling the line that I stitch, as smooth and event less as that on the fabric-these days I have taken to sewing and taken it well-there is nothing else I would rather do.

Thursday, June 5, 2008

Today an Angel Descended into my Heart

Do angels people this world, on the wings of smallest breeze, riding buoyant waves, floating fluffy clouds on a warm summer day? everywhere, all the time, knowing, caring, waiting to alight into our hearts, listening for the silent screams of the forsaken, bereft, alone? Surely these angels are our ancestors- not just our forefathers, but predecessors of the entire human race, and they await with a smile, for that moment when we are ready, to awaken our intellect, illuminate our heart and enlighten our soul, with a ray of sunbeam on a morning's first dew, or a melody, pure and clear, or a smile of innocence and goodness of heart...the angels wings so brush our lives and all is again radiance, all is again joy.

Today, an angel descended into my heart-an angel brushed my life again with gold and color, an angel reminded me once again that the magic and mystery are still parts of life - but only a life alive to it.

She was my angel's messenger-Yoana Strateva, a small figure of advancing age, bright burgundy hair under the stage lights, nondescript, remote, distant, a violinist of fame from Bulgaria. She carelessly held her violin, and with a nod to her piano accompanist, began-the first clear notes rushed out to fill the hall with a hush- notes of incredible virtuosity and spirit-moving with the spirit of the composer, her master, her angel, playing notes-long, clear, hurtful-penetrating the hard shells built around our hearts - penetrating deeper, till the music was within me- all of me. Closed eyes, a life aware, levitating, higher and higher, afloat on the wings of her angel, my angel-magic of Beinsa Duono reaching out across time, space, race to make him- a stranger till now- also mine.