Yashodhara and Siddhartha---the Prince who became Buddha, the Enlightened

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Sushama Karnik

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Yashodhara and Siddharha-- Who became Buddha, the Enlightened

That was the night of a cold embrace
as though a shadow, not a spirit hovered over my body
fearful of touch and speech..
Not a word was spoken as you left
in the dead of the night as I slumbered by in the night
bewitched by a  secret spell that destiny cast upon me.

The magical river called Time
floated with me and my child
in her arms,
while you were treading a path
that beckoned you with an inexorable  certainty :
Yes, a certainty known  to me and recognized by you.
But it beckoned you like a star
as it struck me with the stark clarity of a doom.
Were you a pilgrim in search of peace and grace,
or a warrior of God caught in the battle between
 desire and lust?

That night had a dimension of an abysmal dark
because it revealed the word of a verdict you cast upon me and the child
and chose your freedom to walk alone.

I know the man in you had no hesitation
in walking away.
But did the father in you not linger in pain for the child that was born from the warmth of your loins?
O Prince who beggared us both
as you disappeared into the unscripted and unread saga of our life.,
I ask no questions and demand no answers.
A day might come when some hand I do not see and the language I cannot follow,
may reveal to me the meaning 'of why I was born
unto a sacrament of an oath
which was a burden to you and a redemption of an unknown curse for me.
Till then, silence will be my script and  scriptures will cover our truth.
O prince who abandoned  a child, abdicated a throne and dispelled the illusion of love for a wife.
I am trapped in silence
as you unravel the mystery of the sacred word.
Trishna is the cause of suffering, you said.
Trishna, the hunger and the thirst,
Trishna, the beguiling mystery of our misguided journey,
a misguided search for our roots and branches.
You axed the branches and walked away
leaving the roots in the soil without a succor.

I am waiting without a hope ,
but with a dumb wish that one day my saga too
will begin its tale and end in a reminder of a truth you will be reborn to explore.

What Are You Seeking? 20 May 2014

What Are You Seeking?

"What are you seeking? Do you really know?"

I know and do not know.
I really would not have known
that there are red barns
somewhere on earth
that is my earth too,
that somewhere there are rivers
which have known different climes
and yet know how to find their way and the flow
just like the rivers which I call mine.
that the red barns in the lands I have never seen
hold secrets which I can only somewhat read and cannot read
that somewhere in the land I cannot reach
there is a song which I cannot sing.


I am seeking
to relate to something which I could never say I lost
because it never was
 mine.

Under the Shade of a Roof 20 May 2014

Under the Shade of a Roof

Under the shade of the roof
live the dead and the living.
The living has gone away.
Perhaps the dead are still living there,
an Impression of the image.


The living have found their shade abroad
and may never come back to the land of the dead.
The purpose of a house is to sing the song of the dead.

Who will hear it, how and when,
No one knows.
The house will be gone as sure as the time's command.
The roof will have flown away.
Sentimentality is a vagary,
and the products of vagaries never stay.

And yet the songs will be sung, set to music and fade away.

Proust Forgetting and Remembrance

“We know that in his work Proust did not describe a life as it actually was, but a life as it was remembered by the one who had lived it. And yet even this statement is imprecise and far too crude.  For the important thing for the remembering author is not what he experienced, but the weaving of his memory, the Penelope work of recollection.  Or should one call it, rather, a Penelope work of forgetting?  Is not the involuntary recollection, Proust's mémoire involontaire, much closer to forgetting than what is usually called memory?  And is not this work of spontaneous recollection, in which remembrance is the woof and forgetting the warf, a counterpart to Penelope's work rather than its likeness?  For here the day unravels what the night was woven.  When we awake each morning, we hold in our hands, usually weakly and loosely, but a few fringes of the tapestry of lived life, as loomed for us by forgetting.  However, with our purposeful activity and, even more, our purposive remembering each day unravels the web and the ornaments of forgetting.  This is why Proust finally turned his days into nights, devoting all his hours to undisturbed work in his darkened room with artificial illumination, so that none of those intricate arabesques might escape him.”

Walter Benjamin, “The Image of Proust”, Illuminations

Exposure and Sunshine

Exposure and Sunshine

A time is there when the sunshine is a need
and a time when the exposure takes away
the leafy green shade of the tree.

The trees ,bare, open to the sky,
it's raining heat and fire.
The forest cries, its roof is taken away.

Underneath, the dwellers of the forest are waiting to leave
for better pastures where the winter is kinder and the summer is without the fire.

How much the things depend on the rain,
the forest, the nest and the bird.
The lavishness,and the lustre gone,
the days of waiting,
waiting for the rain

A Storm

A Storm

Sushama Karnik

Sounds of a distant storm
gathering on the horizon
can be soothing when you hear them
sitting in the cabin on your distant shores.
You watch the horizon, look for the drama of the black and the grey alternating, swaying the sky between a black doom and the blessing of the light,
silencing sounds and spreading the sign--
a storm is coming, a storm is coming. Be on guard; watch your roof or watch from your tower
everything fade, and there is a swinging of colors between just two shades of grey.

The white is banished and the black does not invade.

The sky plunges to fight the waves and the waves, hit by the rage, rise and break, rise and break

Till they quieten; their moment spent as they reach the end

 and merge with the shore, while there is still a storm raging somewhere far in the sky.

The storm is still far away. It may or may not reach the shores.

The waves breaking here at my feet are familiar. They speak my language. Let the storm rage, while I speak to the waves caressing my feet in love to say

That they have escaped the storm and are here to play

With me swaying on my feet

With the memory of a storm seen far away.

Help me O God By Neena Dighe Translated By Sushama Karnik

Give Me a Hand, O God

By Neena Dighe

Translated by Sushama Karnik

You who are the savior of this world,

You are the pillar of the three worlds,

You who are the essence of the Vedas,

You who are far beyond our human understanding,

And yet accessible to the ones who dedicate their life to the pursuit of that understanding,

You shower your grace and love upon them.

The whole world is merged in your love. You are the love and the passion for those with wisdom and knowledge of you in their hearts.

You are the fountain-head of Truth, Wisdom and Joy.

You have neither beginning nor end;

You are the Invisible Hand behind the script of life.

You are the one in whom Meera saw her beloved who could move a mountain.

You are the one who answered Sudama’s call.

You are the one who incarnated for Radha’s realization of love on this earth.

To each of them you threw open the gates of your wealth of love.

When those who could see the world and yet had no eye to see you,

 The otherwise blind Tulsi could see you with his mind’s eye.

There is no end to the magic you play/

You are the essence at the heart of this world.

I need your helping hand.

Help me cross the ocean of this life and take me to the shore O God.