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Sri Purnachander
On a large blue table cloth, in streaming cream light,
a golden man
sits,
this evening by courtesy of Herbs and Roots Ayuvedic Treatments, Raha
Orthopaedic Spring Mattresses (The Power to Dream) and The
New India Assurance Company (Drive Safe –
Save Life), none the less
he sits,
owns this place
and utters a sound. Rising
like a heron, he gently coaxes out form from the ether,
tubes of glass-like nothing curving and swooping, swirling
in a vast formless everything, and sets it dancing
like a puppet to the fluttering, clattering,
thigh slapping agitation of
the mridangam.
His kind eyes roll
to left and right;
he leads us up the
ladder of raga
as close as
we might
to God.
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| June. I read your description with great interest and am delighted my poem merited your attention. I think worded descriptions of things of the spirit always fall short of the mark, like the 16th Century explorers' images of one legged men, men with no head and unicorns were the best they could do to describe what was beyond the words available to them. I ask myself how dare I, a non musician, an Anglo Saxon and someone who failed miserably at meditation and yoga, say anything at all about the art of Sri Purnachandra. I feel there are things that will always be beyond my reach, but when I listen to Mehndi Hussan, Joshi, Jasraj, Hariprashad Chaurasia, Jayaraman, I'm both mesmerised and startled like I'm suddenly adrift in the cosmos. I suspect in my culture only Bach ventured there. |
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Uhmm... coaxing form not from the Ether first, but deep down from the interiors of his navel...and then gradually it swells up and suddenly with full force onto the space and then filling it up (from ether)and touching the whole gamut of the stubborn corners of the universe. One just sits numb, soaked and drenched intoxicatedly there.
Lovely. J |
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| Our Western culture largely sprang from Greece. The shock for us is to find that India is her own Greece. You can’t listen to South Indian Karnatic music with the same ears as you listen to, say, Beethoven or Charlie Parker. Reading about ragas and talas doesn’t help, because it’s more a question of how you ‘’look” at the music. And when, after a lot of exploration, you somehow “see” it, you find the experience defies words. In this poem I tried to present things that went through my mind during this very good recital in Oman, with a bit of scene setting: how the music did seem to rise up out the chaos of advertisements for sponsoring businesses and their banal slogans (and I don’t knock that. There’s no point in imagining the music should be set in a forest temple with elephants and lotus blossoms in a nearby pool – that’s the kind of crazy thing Westerners imagine, creating their own virtual India as they have always done. I was listening to Karnatic music in the 21st Century. The audience was mostly Indian oil professionals). The metaphors, the tubes of glass and puppets, fall pitifully short of the essence or flavour of the music, or of my experience. Maybe one day I’ll write another poem that might capture a tiny bit more of what can only be approached without intellect, words, or any preconceptions arising from my Western mind. But like so many things Indian, it can only be approached indirectly. |
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| Picture perfect! I haven't been able to go out much in this place of unemployment and winter - because I feel a lot of poetry comes from what you observe in people - specially people who are in other places. Scottishsong is right - your piece really takes someone there. It is so exclusively pertinent to India, though, that I don't quite know what place "the golden man" is in. The cultural elements escape me: what are those tubes of glass? And why are they in the same place as the mattress? Is this a man in a meditation room - or a puppet? Or is he an artist, a dancer? Sorry for my ignorance - I know I need to travel more... if only time and money allowed... |
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| This piece really takes me there. |
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