T.V. Reddy's Fleeting Bubbles E-Book

Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

• Herausgeber: Modern History Press
• Kategorie: Geisteswissenschaft
• Sprache: Englisch
• Veröffentlichungsjahr: 2018

Seitenzahl: 263

Beschreibung

Prof. Ramesh, with his thorough knowledge of the Western and Indian poetics, as well as the culture of the land is the right person to explain and interpret the poems of T. Vasudeva Reddy's Fleeting Bubbles. This collection of poems holds a mirror as it were to the existing social situations in India. Following an introduction, this book explores Fleeting Bubbles in six phases: Rural, Urban, Political and Social, Subjective, General, and Spiritual phases. Each chapter focuses on the aspects of a particular thematic pattern as it is analyzed and explained.
Prof. Ramesh occupies a special place, an unenviable position with his total reliance on Indian poetics, while analyzing and interpreting a poem by an Indian poet. As such with his toolkit of integrated critical background and approach, he can easily open the chambers of the concealed beauties of the poems of Dr. T.V. Reddy and make it accessible to the average reader.
The poetry of Dr. Reddy is loaded with the rich ore of ambiguity and Prof. Ramesh has successfully unearthed the hidden layers and beauties of the poems of Fleeting Bubbles and decoded the lines for reader's understanding. As one goes through this book, the reader can understand better the critical concepts of Dr. Ramesh and the nature of his critical approach in understanding and interpreting a poem.
Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya, (1947 -) is a distinguished scholar, researcher, a bilingual writer in English and Bengali and editor from Kolkata. He did M. A. in three subjects, M.Phil. and Ph.D. in English and Sutrapitaka Tirtha and has retired as a college lecturer and professor. He has written more than forty books in English and Bengali and has published hundreds of critical articles and poems. He lives near Sri Ramakrishna Mission at Belur in Kolkata.

Leseprobe

T.V. Reddy’s

Fleeting Bubbles

An Indian Interpretation

Prof. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

Modern History Press

Ann Arbor, MI

T.V. Reddy’s Fleeting Bubbles: An Indian Interpretation

Copyright © 2018 by Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyay

ISBN 978-1-61599-413-7 paperback

ISBN 978-1-61599-414-4 eBook

Modern History Press

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Contents

Foreword by T.V. Reddy

Chapter 1: Introduction

Chapter 2: The Rural Phase

Women of the Village

The Indian Bride

A Widow

An Old Woman

The Corn Reaper

The House Wife

The Snake Charmer

Chapter 3: Urban Phase

Then and Now

Birth Day Party

The Hospital

Let the Eyes Be Shut

Chapter 4: Political and Social Phase

‘In Exile’ & ‘Democratic Lines’

The Teacher

My Bare Needs

A Form of Dirge

The Cry

On the Death of Mrs. Indira Gandhi

The Kite

When I Churned Time

Chapter 5: Subjective Phase

Agony

Belgium Mirror

‘When I Churned Time’ and ‘Memories’

‘My Soul in Exile’ and ‘A Miracle’

Chapter 6: General Phase

Chapter 7: Spiritual Phase:-

Chapter 8: Conclusion

Appendix 1: The Fleeting Bubbles – Complete Text

Foreword by Dr. Georges C. Friedenkraft

Fleeting Bubbles Contents

Appendix 2: Reviews of The Fleeting Bubbles

Review by A. Russell

Review by Dr. Rosemary C. Wilkinson

Review by Prof. Sankarasan Parida

Review by Dr. D.C. Chambial

About the Commentator

About the Author

Other Works by T.V. Reddy

Index

Foreword by T.V. Reddy

I got acquainted with Dr. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya for the first time at the International Poetry Festival 2014 at Guntur in Andhra Pradesh organized by two dedicated devotees of poetry Prof. Gopichand and Prof. Nagasuseela and my acquaintance grew with my admiration for his deep scholarship in English literature and depth in Vedic knowledge. In Feb. 2017, I went to Kolkata on his invitation to give talks for six days on Indian Poetry in English and I can never forget the affectionate hospitality he gave me during my stay for a week in his house. With him I went to all the six places where I gave lectures, four in Kolkata and two in the interior places, and he introduced me to the learned audience before I commenced my speech on Indian English poetry. He is at once a great scholar and powerful poet, a distinguished writer and editor and as such wherever we went, I was extremely happy to see, he was greatly respected and honoured by the audience and the people of Bengal. Moreover as the sole captain of the Underground Literature Movement in Bengal, though he humbly calls him a soldier of the movement, his influence on most of the writers, scholars and the Bengali youth is enormous.

When he expressed his wish to write a critical treatise on one of my poetry books it was a pleasant surprise to me and there cannot be a greater delight than this happy proposal. In January 2017, he commenced the work on my third collection of poems Fleeting Bubbles (Chennai, Poets Press India, 1989) which fetched me the Michael Madhusudan Dutt Award in 1994, and after the Sankranti festival in January he wanted to meet me in person so as to get a few clarifications relating to a few of my poems and asked me to give a few talks in Kolkata. To fulfil these two activities I went to Kolkata in Feb.2017 and stayed as his guest in his house on the bank of the river Ganga near Sri Ramakrishna Mission Headquarters. The week that I stayed there in his house was the most fruitful one as we spent most part of the time in literary discussions and discourses that covered both English and ancient classical Indian literature which indeed is the basis for all Indian literatures which includes literature in Indian English too.

The renaissance in India actually started from Bengal, strictly speaking from Kolkata, with the writings of Raja Rammohan Roy, Bankim Chandra Chatterji, Madhusudan Dutt, Swami Vivekananda, Rabindranath Tagore, Sri Aurobindo and others. During my talks in various places in Kolkata and in the interior towns I was introduced to many distinguished scholars and poets in English and Bengali and I could get the opportunity to know about their culture and the contemporary literary trends. Most of them were active members of the Underground Literary Movement which in fact has nothing to do with the generally supposed underground activities usually associated with unlawful activities. In fact it is a dignified body of disciplined scholars and writers intensely humane and humanistic in their thought and heart making an earnest endeavour to spread and strengthen human values in the present society. With unflinching faith in Sanatana Dharma and Vedic values in their original splendour they sincerely make an honest bid to project these values in their writings which have a far-reaching effect on the minds of the reading public. The man behind this mighty humanistic mission is Prof. Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya, an eminent scholar, writer and social reformer of cotemporary times in Bengal.

As such Prof. Ramesh is the right person to explain and interpret the poems of the book Fleeting Bubbles which holds a mirror as it were to the existing social scenario in India. Other scholars may interpret by applying general critical norms which are borrowed mostly from the British and European critical stock and most of them are not aware of Indian poetics and aesthetics and as such they do not feel themselves confident and competent in interpreting and appreciating poems in the light of Indian poetics and theories of Rasa, Alankara, auchitya, vakrokti and Dhwani. Most of our Indian scholars still try to draw oxygen of critical concepts for their survival from the almost defunct, worn out and obsolete western theories such as existentialism, archetypal and myth, surrealism, structuralism, post-structuralism, deconstruction, postmodernism etc. woven around the web of narrow confines and time-bound imaginary lines.

While some critics speak of the ‘heresy of paraphrase’, some others speak of the necessity of ‘paraphrasable’ content in a poem. In the midst of criss-crossing longitudinal, latitudinal and diagonal lines of critical as well as pedantic jargon justice of acceptable interpretation gets delayed or denied. Most of the scholars and critics in India are totally swayed away by Western poetics with its origin in Aristotle as they are mostly ignorant of or largely prejudiced against the Indian poetics which has its firm roots in the ancient Indian epics, which were written at least two to five millenniums earlier than the Greek and Latin epics. In this context Prof. Ramesh occupies a special place, an unenviable position with his total reliance on Indian poetics while analyzing and interpreting a poem by an Indian poet.

With his thorough knowledge of the Western and Indian poetics as well as the culture of the land and with his toolkit of integrated critical background and approach he can easily open the chambers of the concealed beauties of the poems and make it accessible to the common reader. Many poems abound with cultural connotations, both explicit and implicit, and unless the reader is well-acquainted with the ancient heritage and culture of this country it may not be easy to arrive at a satisfactory understanding of the poems and relish the subtle beauty of the lines. As one goes through this book, the reader can understand better the critical concepts of Dr. Ramesh and the nature of his critical approach in understanding and interpreting a poem.

For easy reference and understanding of the reader the text of Fleeting Bubbles and the Critical Reviews that were published are given at the end as Appendix I & II.

T.V. Reddy                             

Tirupati, Andhra Pradesh, July 2018.

Chapter 1: Introduction

Among all the genres in literature, poetry is the earliest and the most appealing one, and right from the early times it has its sway on the minds of all the people, both literate and illiterate. Thousands of years before the emergence of Greek literature, the earliest epic The Ramayana was written in Sanskrit in ancient India by sage Valmiki probably 5000 years before the birth of Christ or by all knowledge even earlier and its appeal is as fresh as it was eons ago in the days of Sri Rama the legendary King of Ayodhya in ancient India and the hero of the immortal epic. About three thousand years before the advent of Christ the second great epic The Mahabharata was written in Sanskrit by Vyasa and there is no place or village in India where these two great epics are not read everyday even now. Scholars and historians of the West have totally failed to arrive at the correct date or period of composition of these two great ancient Indian epics thereby misleading generations of readers.

With the passing of millenniums its appeal is growing on the international scene. It is not only a lengthy poem abound with all the literary beauties and flourishes but a permanent work of art and a monument of ethics, aesthetics and human values. That is the reason for its unfading greatness, growing popularity and increasing appeal. In the early times after the advent of Christ, stream of immortal poetry flowed from the quill of Kalidasa the distinguished poet in Sanskrit and while reading his Sakuntala the German poet Goethe danced in joy at its poetic beauty that transported him to higher realms. Such is the inspiring spirit and artistic merit of poetry. In the same way in English literature Shakespeare has become an immortal writer with his poetic plays and sonnets of supreme quality. Can we in India forget the unforgettable lines of immortal poets such as Gray, Wordsworth, Shelley or Keats?

To this category belong a few Indian poets in English. In the period before independence Toru Dutt, Sarojini Naidu, Tagore and Sri Aurobindo wrote good poetry judged from any literary or critical standard and their greatness cannot be questioned by any sane or rational reader or critic. All of them come in the long line of Indian poets writing in Indian tradition; language may be English in which they have written, but they are Indians and they never felt that they were away from the land and spirit of India which they projected in their writings. Toru Dutt with her stay with her parents in France and England at the early age imbibed multi-cultural discipline and after returning to India equipped herself with necessary knowledge of ancient Indian epics which enabled her to write some of her best poems on Indian themes.

As a matter of fact Tagore wrote first in Bengali and later translated some of his writings into English. Sarojini Naidu, born and brought up in Hyderabad, was very much influenced by the multi-cultural living conditions, architectural beauty and harmony of the place. The process of thinking was essentially Indian as their minds were steeped in Indian tradition and culture. During her stay in England she was advised by the famous writers of the period Arthur Symons and Edmund Gosse to focus on Indian themes in her poems which she scrupulously followed. With Aurobindo, English was almost his mother tongue as he entered England in his seventh year and after fourteen years soon after the completion of his education he returned to India in 1893. As a matter of fact Aurobindo as a student in London and Cambridge did outshine his British compeers in English and in classics and he scored the highest mark in Greek.

Almost a similar feat was achieved a few years later by Sir C.R. Reddy (kattamanchi Ramalinga Reddy who belonged to the same Chittoor district in Andhra Pradesh from which the present poet T.V. Reddy comes) who outshone the British students as an inspiring orator and he was an outstanding debater and he was the first Indian student to be chosen as Vice President of the Union Society. When he was the Vice President of the Union Society, John Maynard Keynes who later rose to be a world-famous economist was the Secretary of the Union Society. His oratorical skills attracted the natives so much that Members of British parliament requested C.R. Reddy to campaign on their behalf and even as a student in Cambridge, Reddy campaigned on behalf of the Liberal Party in the Parliamentary Elections held in 1906 which swept it into power that year. Many British politicians admired C.R. Reddy’s gifts of intellect and eloquence and predicted a great future for him.

When Aurobindo left Baroda College C.R. Reddy succeeded him as the Vice Principal. He later became the founder and the first Vice Chancellor of Andhra University. While C.R. Reddy shone as an orator Aurobondo shone as a remarkable poet and writer. Though Aurobindo was kept away from the influence of Indian heritage and culture, soon after his arrival to Baroda he earnestly tried to learn Bengali and Sanskrit and succeeded in gaining that knowledge which he was deprived of. Later with redoubled vigour and zeal he presented the glory of our Vedic knowledge. The seed of his voluminous spiritual epic Savitri lies in The Mahabharata and it is hailed as a magnificent creation and a wonder in world poetry.

The same cannot be said of the poets who came immediately after the independence. This group of poets is best represented by the anthology of poets edited by R. Parthasarathy i.e. Ten 20th Century Poets in English. In these poets there is little of Indian spirit and less of Indian culture. Whenever they made an attempt to refer to Indian mythology or Indian temples they introduced the subject only to subvert their sanctity and significance. Without ever bothering to go deep into the Vedic knowledge and without understanding the truth behind the age-old institutions and traditions and with their half-learned minds they began portraying in a sarcastic vein and indulging in the game of mud-slinging interspersed with glittering laces of irony. It is true the purity of the ancient Vedic knowledge lies beneath the heaps of garbage formed of various narrow creeds and cults over a long period of millenniums going beyond the pages of history.

Is it not the duty of a poet in the real sense to clear a part of this long-accumulated dust? On the other hand most of the so-called renowned poets who manage to shine in the artificial brilliance of Awards are trying to add their contribution of rubbish to the already piled up heap. This is the irony of the present situation of Indian poetry in English. Though many anthologies of poems in Indian English have come out, it is a pity that Parthasarathy’s anthology alone, which might have impressed the minds before the Emergency period, is still being prescribed in most of the Universities. It is necessary that professors and scholars are well acquainted with contemporary and recent poets in English and recognize and appreciate the merit wherever it is.

After the period of Emergence, modern poetry in English in its real spirit commences and the poets, fully conscious of the glory of our ancient Indian culture and the present fall of values, have made an earnest attempt in presenting the existing social situation in its real colours. Poets such as Krishna Srinivas, the senior poet from Chennai, I.K. Sharma from Jaipur, I.H. Rizvi from Bareilly, D.H. Kabadi from Bangalore, T.V. Reddy from Andhra, D.C. Chambial and P.C.K. Prem from H.P., H.S. Bhatia from Punjab, O.P. Arora from Delhi, Margaret Chatterjee and Manas Bakshi from Kolkata, Aju Mukhopadhyaya from Pondicherry, Prof. Syed Ameeruddin and Prof. Radhamani Sarma from Chennai, Arundhati Subramanyam a recent poet from Mumbai and a few others deserve to be mentioned in this context. Krishna Srinivas of Chennai which was familiarly known as Madras had encouraged many younger poets, and some of the senior and well established poets now owe their popularity as poets to him.

T.V. Reddy happens to be one of them and he humbly acknowledges in his talk that it was Dr. Krishna Srinivas, the President of the World Poetry Society Intercontinental, who invited him to the World Congress of Poets held at Madras in 1987 and introduced him to the poets all over the world. Krishna Srinivas dedicated his life to the cause of poetry. And till the end of his life he saw that his international journal Poet was alive with the same quality and creative spirit. Of course many new voices have now emerged in the growing field of Indian poetry in English and their relevance can be understood by a careful evaluation of their poetry. But as we go through their poems, most of their writings obviously may fail to stand the litmus test of poetry. Regarding the quality of poetry there cannot be any discrimination based on person or gender or generation.

Observed on the touchstone of literary criticism, T. Vasudeva Reddy or simply T.V. Reddy as he is familiar to the literary world comes out with poetic brilliance. Right from his maiden work When Grief Rains (1982) to the recent collection of poems Sound and Silence (2017) the poet Reddy has been writing poems with sustained quality and it is indeed a matter of poetic joy to see him writing poems continuously for well over forty years. That he is a born poet is an undeniable fact; he started writing poems as a student in the high School and his poems were published in college magazines in the University. Poetry reading and writing is a passion for him and he undertook the writing of poems both as a joy and as a challenge; that is why he is a careful craftsman always pursuing for perfection. Moreover constant reading and teaching of poetry has equipped him with right poetic diction, and words come to him as naturally as leaves to a plant or tree. It has resulted in spontaneity of expression and nowhere do we feel the poet labouring for expression. Among contemporary poets he is the only poet whose lines run with the natural flow of music, and melody has become an integral part of his poems. And it is a rare gift, a God-given gift indeed.

Though Prof. Reddy has written twelve poetry books so far, for my present purpose I have selected his third book of poems Fleeting Bubbles, published in 1989 by Poets Press India, Chennai with the blessings of Dr. Krishna Srinivas who wrote the Foreword to his previous collection Broken Rhythms which surprises us with its unbroken rhythmic music. The first five collections till 2005 may form one group comprising the early poetry and the books published from 2008 may be considered for the sake of convenience to come under later poetry though it is very difficult to justify such a kind of division. Though the fifth book Pensive Memories was published in 2005, almost all the poems except a couple of poems were written before 2000, but the publication was delayed probably owing to personal reasons although the Foreword was also written earlier. My choice rests on Fleeting Bubbles as it is the middle one in the early bunch and even time-wise it comes in the first decade of that block period. Moreover this book, I feel, represents all the features of Reddy’s poetry as it deals with the essential elements of Indian life and culture—rural and urban life, political and satirical, social and spiritual aspects.

Man does not learn words by his own self. If a child is pent up in a cave away from human society it will not learn any language. So the impact of influence of life in a group or society plays a greater role in moulding the mind and the expression of a child or grown-up person. Man is always a social animal; all alone away from the society he cannot live and his mind refuses to think of such a solitary life. It holds good to everything connected to the mind and it is equally true in the case of poets, writers and artists such as painters and sculptors. So influence lies in the logic of composing poems and as such intertextuality and anxiety of influence could be espied in the poems of Dr. Reddy who is a wide wanderer both in the golden realms of poetry and in the material realms. And since the signifier as well as the signified of a word is arbitrary, the poetry of Dr. Reddy is loaded with the rich ore of ambiguity. Where is the text? The spirit of the text is not there strictly in the printed material. A text multiplies into as many texts as there are readers and the text of The Fleeting Bubbles has been decoded in the light of the present reader’s understanding. We allude to reader’s aesthetics.

The poet might complain that we have not been able to decode what he had actually thought while writing the poem. But Roland Boucher has rung the death knell of the author in general; and with us the poet of a text is a virtual one or a functional one. To read a poem we must separate it from other poems and to that end a poem has a poet through whom language writes. In other words the poet Dr. Reddy of The Fleeting Bubbles is not the flesh and blood poet of Andhra State alone who is a great teacher and profound scholar. And yet ironically enough the virtual poet Reddy and the real person Reddy seem to cross roads. He writes a telling poem on his wife’s critical situation that might lead to death. Of course his wife died in the self-same way ten years later and Reddy was flung into a sea of grief expanding into roaring waves of troubles. Poets and prophets are often one and the same.

All of us remember bubbles forged by our saliva hanging on our lips when we were children. We enjoyed with great joy the soap bubbles iridescent with rainbow colours. But they are fleeting and fragile. As children we did not lament for that. Shakespeare said: The earth has bubbles as the water has. And Shakespeare wondered - Whither do they vanish! In fact, whatever we perceive on earth, whatever we experience in life, is transitory as fleeting bubbles. Bubbles also stand for hopes and dreams that are often proved to be myths and moonshine; but however momentary, they have a magic about them. They serve as reminders of the charm and grace or else horrors of the present moment. Does not the poet remind us that whatever we experience in the book of poems must not be taken seriously? We must not be carried away with the experiences embodied in the poems of the book, because they are but fleeting bubbles. Be that as it may, it seems that the readers must be prepared for participating in some harrowing or overwhelmingly pleasant experiences of the poet. But the poet seems to ask us not to take them to heart. They are fleeting bubbles only.

Reading a book of poems is an experience by itself. Some of its imagery sinks deep into the heart of the reader whereas the rest vanish into oblivion, may be for a time only to recur on some unforeseen occasion in the future. In this section what remains left in the heart and mind of the present reader after the perusal of the Fleeting Bubbles is being retrieved. The name Fleeting Bubbles is itself multidimensional. Countless phenomena show up here in life only to vanish into invisibility after a nanosecond or so. Empirically we do not see the mind. But we perceive our thoughts and feelings popping up and popping out from some inscrutable void as it were. In other words we see the actors and acting, but we do not see the stage where they show up and whence they vanish. No wonder the existence is thus a boundless sea of fleeting bubbles. Every thought is here ephemeral, every feeling and emotion is here ephemeral. Every event is here fleeting, every character is here a shadow; every situation here is a fleeting one. And what we perceive in life is the momentary existence of myriads of things. They come to life in a flash and then they vanish like bubbles in the thin air like the witches in Macbeth. Are we in a charmed world? Or have we tasted the roots that inebriate? Perhaps the title of the collection of the poems The Fleeting Bubbles seems to make us aware of this plane of truth.

Chapter 2: The Rural Phase

Most of the poets in Indian English are urban-oriented and as such their poems naturally present the urban life and fail to give us the feel of village life. This deficiency is more conspicuous in the case of the first generation poets after independence right from Nissim Ezekiel and Parthasarathy to Shiv K. Kumar and Keki N. Daruwalla. Even among contemporary poets very few have attempted writing on rural life but with little success. The credit of depicting rural life in its true colours goes entirely to Dr. T.V. Reddy who has successfully filled the hitherto unfilled gap by giving a faithful presentation of village life in India. By presenting the countryside with rural scenes and sounds, situations and events he has brought the rural India into limelight and placed it before the reading community. He stands at a vantage point because he hails from a village, he has his roots in the village, he was born and brought up in the village and even now he lives in the village though it is now nearer to the growing temple town. Since his soul belongs to the erstwhile village he is able to give a faithful picture of village life with all its merits and demerits, joys and sufferings.

As he comes from a marginal farmer’s family he knows the rural situation to its roots and understands the problems of small farmers and peasants and the direct impact of the thoughtless schemes of successive Governments on the lives of the small farmers who are now facing acute labour problem and steep shooting of labour charges. He knows the problems of agriculturalists right from the stage of seeding, ploughing, planting, transplanting, weeding, reaping and harvesting. He is a regular participant or witness to almost all the social events of the village such as marriage or festival or function or funeral or some ceremony or ritual. Now he lives for some time in the village and for some time in the nearby pilgrim town and as such he is the proper person to present the realities of both rural and urban lives with his first-hand knowledge and personal experience. His presentation of the rural life is the most reliable and credible one, because he is faithful to his word, unlike our so-called celebrated writers who describe rural scenes by looking through the spectacles of books and journals.

Women of the Village

The opening poem of the Fleeting Bubbles, ‘Women of the Village’, portrays a pale peepal tree by the fast drying pond in a typical village. A banyan tree might live for two thousand years. The oldest peepal tree was planted in 269 BC and it is currently located in Sri Lanka. True, it is quite long a time in the context of the life expectancy of man. But think of the life expectancy of the earth. The scientists say that the earth will be there for another 7.6 billion years. Although life might seem too long for an old man like this author or the poet it is a fleeting bubble in comparison to the life expectancy of the planet earth. And earth is also a fleeting bubble in comparison to the life expectancy of the solar universe. Our solar system is 4.6 giga years old. In five more giga years our solar system would reach the end of its glowing life. Thus nothing lasts and nothing is everlasting. From the micro-organism in the earth to the galaxies in the sky everything and every being dies in a flash and fresh things of their kind are born in a flash like fleeting bubbles.

We are human beings and moreover rational men and women, and as such we are expected to live for hundred years. With us the peepal tree is everlasting. This is why the Hindus praying for longevity chant the mantra:

Tryambakam yajaamahe

Sugandhim pustivardhanam

Urvaarukam iva vandhanaat

Mrtityormuksiya maa amritaat.

Seated below a peepal tree Lord Krishna avows that He is the asvattha among the trees. The implication is clear. That which seems eternal is dying as it were. The Bhagavad Gita depicts asvattha as the Tree of Life which is deathless. But even the Tree of Life or that which is perennial seems to pale. In other words in the poem ‘Women of the Village’ we enter into a world where all eternal values are decadent and dying. Here divinity is dying. There is a pond near the pale tree. The waters of a lake or pond stand for consciousness, quietness, mystery and life. The waters cleanse us of our crudities. But here is a pond that is getting dried. Our consciousness is being dulled. Our life force is getting feeble and our serenity is getting scorched. And there the village women come with pitchers for water. The pitcher or the earthen pot, called kumbha, is singularly important in Indian culture. We pray to the kumbha in the mantra beginning with -

Kalashasya mukhe Visnuh

Kantthe Rudrah samaashritah

Muuley Brahmah

Kukshau maatriganah sthitah.

In other words all the gods and goddesses reside in the kalash or pitcher. The kalash should be filled with clean water up to the neck. Then it becomes the container of amrita or nectar. The creator Brahmah carries a kalash. Lakshmiji the goddess of wealth and prosperity carries a kalash. It is a pity that the womb of prosperity remains starved of water. Our Lakshmis i.e. our women folk in general are being refused the nectar of life and prosperity. Thus we are in a world where life force is on the wane. The pitchers of the deities who live on the abundance of life-force are half empty. They are languishing. It reminds us of T.S. Eliot’s The Waste Land. It focuses on the barrenness of the land where there is no water but only rock and sandy roads. See how the poem moves majestically with its appealing poetic beauty and pastoral purity:

Beneath the pale peepal tree

by the fast drying pond

in that double roasted hamlet

women stand like expiring candles.

Passively they fill

Their empty earthen pots

bending like famished cattle

that drain water to the lees.

The clear water moves

In concentric circles

like their day dreams

Snaky visages in water.

Weaving desires in the plaits

of their cobra-long hair

they carry pots of sweat;

Covering their staring breasts

with their sari-ends

they turn homeward with pitchers

and wait for their men

with flickers in their eyes.      (FB, p.1)

This poem opens with women with empty pitchers at the edge of a fast drying pond beneath a pale peepal tree. Pitchers stand for the womb. Women with empty pitchers speak of a generation where mothers are starved and where the landscape is infertile. When spiritually starved, do we not go to the water bodies for ambrosia and ablution? But alas! The pond is nearly dry, almost empty of water. In other words the women have no source of rejuvenating themselves. The ponds too stand for the womb and they are sterile sans creativity. And the pond is located below a pale tree. In Norse mythology the pale tree is yggdrasil