Magnolia Grandiflora

I once had a tree of Magnolia Grandiflora growing in my yard. Everything about this particular tree was unbelievably dramatic, opulent, sophisticated - from the deepest green satin leaves, to its golden velvet calyx which held most breathtaking and deeply sensuous, fragrant white perfect blossoms.

About eight years back, when I went scavenging for plants, seedlings, pods in the IISc quadrangle,  I found a tiny sucker growing next to a medium sized, but a non blooming Magnolia grandiflora tree. I brought it home,  with great care put it in a pot and kept it alive. Recently, after moving to my new home, I put the plant, still only a foot tall, into my sunlit yard. Over the last week, I have watched in excitement, a bud emerge tentatively, swell and break open - into a large and a perfect white flower. In an instant deja vu, I am transported into my youth of perfumed and starlit indigo nights, with walks along boulevards lined with ebony shadows and moon blossoms.


While no photograph can ever capture the touch, feel, smell or the soul of perfection, nonetheless, here are some images from a besotted gardener.

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I am Free

When I was young, I had romantic notions of freedom. I aspired for personal freedom - to be me - whatever that be - a current fad or a specific choice. I did not realize then that this was a very privileged kind of aspiration for one who already enjoyed many freedoms and was guilty of many others.

Today I realize that I am already free in a variety of ways. Let me list these:
I am free from hunger, free to have a shelter, free from ill health. I am free to travel, free (more or less) to protest, free also to know my rights. I am free from self doubt, and free to a large extent from individual fear. I am free to be greedy (in so many many ways), and free enough for intense self criticism. I have an independent conscience and am free to express, especially moral outrage at all wrongs and perceived wrongs - within or without.

I wrote all this as I traveled on a bus to the site of Ejipura demolitions and realised that no society was truly free where basic rights of all were still not secure. Today, I realise that I no longer aspire for freedom - but I strive intensely instead for justice - for All.

The Other

Ever since the recent heinous gang rape in Delhi and its aftermath, I have been thinking.

I have been thinking of what causes such senseless violence, what causes people to fill streets, only sometimes, and what causes their blood thirsty screams for vengence, castration, and killing. And in each of these cases, I come upon an 'othering' - her and them, her and us, us and them and so on. In fact, now when I stare at the world, I realise that all social behavior relies on this fracturing duality of identifying and separation.

Kabir confronts this separation and rejects it when he sings:

"Ham sab maahin, sab ham maahin
Ham hain bahuri akelaa"

I am in all, all are in me
I am alone and together

or,

"Chalati Chakki dekhkar, diya kabira roye
do paten ke beech me,sabat bacha na koye"

Watching the two grindstones, Kabir cries,
between the to stones, no one survives (from here)

referring once again to the harsh dualities of this world and their grief.

In a similar vein, Advaita Vedanta is based on the realisation of unity of all - self with the universe and the concept of "you are that"; while Lao Tsu in his famous Tao Te Ching talks about a life of harmony when the dualities get unified following the Path. In fact, his successor "Chuang Tzu felt it was imperative that we transcend all the dualities of existence. Seeing nature at work and the way in which it reconciled these polar opposites pointed the way to the Tao where all dualities are resolved into unity" (from here).

I suspect, more and more, that it is this separation between the internal and the external, the within and without, good and bad, man and woman, natural and manufactured, separations of class, caste, language, region, food, culture and every possible fragmentation that we create, which also creates the violence filled society that we see today.

So in the dawn of this yet young year I resolve:

I am both a man and a woman.
I am a harijan, banya, kshatriya, and a brahmin,
I am a hindu, muslim, sikh, christian, jew, jain; I am a believer and also a seeker
I am the rich and the direst poor
I am oppressed and oppressor; victim and the violator, sovereign and the subject;
I am both profound and the profane,
Infact, I am all the other while I am also Me.

Let me live in awareness of this.