Sri Sarada Math, Dakshineshwar

Went there yesterday. Had a desire to do Jagadhhatri Puja,this year. Easier said, than done. It is an impossible feat for a person to pull off alone. It is a huge undertaking requiring very elaborate preparations and execution. Just me, Rita, Kamala and Maya, could not have pulled it off.

Had gone to Matri Bhavan a few days back with the intention that I would give a small offering there for the Puja at the Math. Some years back, 2013, I had dreamed of Jagaddhatri Puja at the Math. That's how I knew I had to go. Priya was there with me that year. It was the 16th of November. She was very sick. Standing in the line at the Math, with the wind from the Ganga blowing, she got sicker. I remember I got off at Shyambazar, to buy paper plates and spoons with which she could eat the prasad. Priya and I have rare continuums. Must have known her in my previous life.

Saw a nun in my dream. And a chalchitra, from the side.

Had no idea that I would go yesterday to the Math at Dakshineshwar, which  I avoid nowadays because it is so far away. In any case, i had to pay the Centre driver 580 for taking me there.

Suddenly around mid-morning a resolve grew. Why not? the voice said. Why can't you go? Why is it impossible? Then I decided that I had to go. The Math celebrated Jagaddhatri Puja. It made sense for me to go there.

Sarada Math is a pure place. The calm, the tranquillity, the serenity and the purity, are genuine. i felt I had to make it my inner space. i had to. This was the only way to put all inner upheavals to rest. To reach that point of calmness, 'the still point' on 'the wheel' is our goal in life. To inhabit that beautiful and utterly giving calmness. To own it. To claim it. To make it my own. There is no other way to go.

'Gaya, Ganga, Prabhash-adi, Kashi Kanchi ke ba chai?/ Kali, Kali,Kali bole amar ajapa jodi phurai'. 

This is an article which has been published today: On the 'themes' of Durga Puja, 2018. In Windows on Travel:)

http://www.wotweb.com/wot-article/many-themes-durga-puja-2018/?fbclid=IwAR0j2EaYWuF4ILxeeC9-ttnBcfnhynOjIBrgx26lmur59MD88yBNtnz9O34

        https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pINiqOrlXEI&t=20s : KALI PUJA IN MY FLAT, TODAY


Essence of the Ramprosad song:

Look, Mother, you have done a lot for me,

My prayer to you now, is that please let me go in a blaze of light

Excerpt from The Kathamrita:

Thakur tells everyone (October, 1884):

Look, pride comes from ignorance. Get rid of pride. Whether you are a judge or any other person in a high position it will go one day. It doesn't really add up to anything [if we are looking at Time, especially, my interpolation]. There was this crazy guy who looked at a bedecked Durga murti and said to her, 'Look Mother, no matter how much you dress up, they are going to throw you into the Ganga, soon!'

Ma speaks on the eve of Kali Puja, 2018:


She said that Kali Puja did not appeal to her. Ours is however a very Shakta family. My father worshipped Kali throughout his life. I worship her. Have always been deeply drawn to Mother Kali. Love her songs and sing them. I once saw at Music World, while Ajoy Chakrabarty's 'ida pingala nama/sushumna monorama/tary moddhye gantha Shyama/Brahmasanatani', Kali singing. I saw her singing. Fair Kali and then that image became Bibhatsa. Year 2004. I  used to go to Music World frequently, those days. From Basanti Devi. From home. It was my way of finding happiness. For my 44th birthday, I remember buying 2000 worth CD's. 4 on Zakir Hussain. There was a special series brought out by RPG on all his famous jugalbandis.

So, Ma said, she did not believe in Kali. She always used to criticize the Ramprosad song, 'Boshon Poro Ma'. She said she disliked how it went on and on during Kali Puja. In the video I took today of her, I said, 'Well, Rabindranath is Shiv, Kali and Durga, all rolled into one for you?'. She raised her hands in a namashkar and said 'yes'.

She said she waits for my son to come home. She loves him most in the world.

We sang Maharaja eki shaaje and Amar milan laagi tumi, together.

I told her that Rabindranath had told Einstein, that 'there was nothing outside what the human mind could conceive'.

As I turned on a Netflix film Allied, I felt that to be human meant to explore the limits of one's strength and to keep pushing and pushing towards greater and greater excellence. In that would lie self fulfillment, self-expression and self-realization. We are really quintessentially divine. 'Koto lakkha janam ghure ghure peyechhi bhai manav janam/e janam chole gele aar pabo na' ('after having traveled a million births, i finally have a human birth, if i lose this one, i will lose it all'), sang the Baul poet. May be he is right. Lesson for all of us to take from his words. 

When Ma met Baba for the first time: (1958)

Theirs was an arranged marriage. Nothing surprising about that, of course. Dadu and Attama ( aar ekta Ma?)lived in Gangtok. Attama (my maternal grandmother) had come down from Sikkim (Gangtok), rented a house on Sardar Shankar Roy Road for a year, and done all the marriage preparations there. Such dedication. Such committment to beauty. No one in my father's family had seen such an elaborate wedding in a long time.

Baba lost his father (a doctor) when he was 19. They used to live in Warren Hastings's house in Howrah then. Thakurdada was a Civil Surgeon. He died at 50. Had problems with alcohol. Reckless man. Once my father and older uncle ( Jethu) had seen him vomit after he came home. They had sworn that they would never touch alcohol in their entire life. Baba kept his oath. Jethu didn't . According to my parents my father's brothers, particularly, Jethu and Sejo Kaku didn't like Baba because of his extreme strictness. But he had a demonic temper. And that is a terrible thing. I find it hard to forgive him for certain actions, words and attitudes.

Anyway, when Baba came to 'see' Ma (kone dekha )for the first time, she sang, 'Chokher aloi dekhechhilem chokher bahire' which translates into 'When my eyes had light, I only looked outward'.My esteemed father heard 'bahire' (outside) as 'baalire' or 'sand'. We all know that sand pricks the eyes and is uncomfortable.

He came home and fussed and fussed over that word till I think they looked it up in the Gitabitan (compendium of Tagore songs) and realized that the word was 'bahire' and not 'baalire'.

Once Ma wore lipstick for an evening's outing together, and he just broke it up (cancelled it) and came home. How extreme, unkind and ruthless! I've never asked her how she felt about this. I've just heard about the incident.

He used to walk before his sisters when he went out with them, lest anyone think that he was hanging out with girls. :)

My birthday, yesterday: Do read it. It is interesting. Not just 'Song of Myself'.

My birthday yesterday had a couple of radiant moments.

A colleague at Presidency demonstrated a good attitude and reflected a side to her character that I liked. It never hurts to say 'sorry'. A lot of healing and a lot of development and positive change may come if that one word is said in a heartfelt manner.

Met Purnima for lunch. I love her house, 6/1 Wood Street, house of Gujarati Jute business folk. Magnificent, elegant but requiring a level of maintenance that is not possible by the family now.

A heritage house, almost, with mahogany staircases, very high ceilings, incredible architectural elegance and spaciousness. It is a privilege to live in a house like this. It would have so many stories, so many individual and interwoven narratives, as Gujaratis (as many Bengalis up until the 80's of the previous century) lived in big joint families. A bahu (daughter-in-law) of this house was my classmate years ago at the Alliance Francaise de Calcutta. Harsha Tulsidas, so incredibly beautiful, tall, classically elegant, fair, with lovely features. I had a picture of her writing on a desk in the classroom where Monsieur Gimeno taught. What a teacher!

He had once signed  off a card sent(given) to me for Christmas/New Year, 'tres amicalement a vous' or 'in a spirit of great friendship with you'. I had treasured those words. I was eighteen years old. My friend Padma Mahadevan (first in class to my second--we were such good friends--she became a Probationary Officer in the State Bank of India, later), and I went to his house in Padmapukur, stood around giggling in the courtyard (I was  16 and Padma, 21), but he wasn't home.

I would have never ever written all this down. All these rich experiences would have died with me. So writing the blog is a good thing even if there are strains of narcissism in it at times.

I hope enough of the world does step in, does come in and embrace you into its wide, wide fold. 'Jagate ananda yajjne, amar nimantran'. 'I have been invited to the great feast of joy in the universe'. Rabindranath emphasized 'ananda' or 'joy'. 'Ananda' is happiness, delight, joy at its most sublime, most delicate, most refined, most magical and most miraculous. It is the golden light of the morning, the blue sky, 'the round ocean' and the mind of man', 'a motion and a spirit that impels all thinking things and all objects of all thought [Wordsworth, Tintern Abbey].

I didn't start quoting Wordsworth consciously. My words mingled with his, naturally evoked his. I doubt Rabindrath ever acknowledged Wordsworth. But the impress of the latter poet's thoughts and cadences are very obvious to me, an English Romanticism afficianodo, teacher, etc. Love British Romanticism. Mother's milk. Grew up on it.

Sreemati at 19-21 is Wordsworth (primarily), Shakespeare, Jane Austen and Coleridge. She is. English Literature is one of my Gods. It has shaped, guided, formed my imagination and sensibility. Provided aesthetic norms and parameters. Taught me to look at the world, frame experiences and seek interconnections and overlappings. It has shaped and formed me. I am grateful to it and love it. My literary first love. Nothing will ever replace it. Nothing. No matter how 'decolonized' I try to become or how much I process and internalize the message of British imperialism into Culture.

So, if  i have a stepmother or a stepsister or a foster mother, what is wrong with that? It is giving me life in helping me to create and connect and teach my methodologies which in turn is creating traditions and continuums of pedagogy, teaching and nurture. My students at Basanti Devi College still tell me that they loved being in my classes. I think they are being sincere. They tell me that I 'shaped' and 'formed' them. I listen with utmost humility.

Poornima, who I met for lunch yesterday , wrote in a letter she gave me:

'I believe fully that if a pure- hearted person seeks His help [ God's ], it always comes. The help I want you to seek is the power to throw out of your mind everything that disrupts your peace of mind, and focus on things that make you happy. I believe you have this power, but it is dormant. It will awaken, and strengthen, as you pray with all your heart and with complete faith.'

I will hold on to these words like I would to scriptural text.

My mother's wishes on the eve of my birthday:

I have a slight, narcissistic fascination with my own birthday. Love to be wished on this day and made a little fuss of. If I do nothing, then I feel very sad. Only child. Cheerless childhood, more or less. Very little money, inspite of living in an elegant house. Parents with sad, slightly worn out expressions. Neither of them smiled very much. Ma looked sad most of the time.

I remember she got me a doll for  my 6th birthday. You know one of those expensive 'foreign' ones? From New-Market. I remember liking the doll very much. For my 8th, it was a small doll. Very small. I remember her coming through the gate. I was sitting on the staircase with Thakuma. I was very close to her.

The tears well up in my eyes as I remember. Ma tried. She tried to do the honours of motherhood with very little money.

I believe Baba was also very sad when he couldn't buy me the long playing record of Sound of Music which we had gone together as a family to see. At the Globe which is shut down and in shambles today. So decrepit with a story of waste, neglect and digital revolution repercussions, written on it. The waste of civilization; the passing of the old and the inevitability of waste and destruction. Fading away, losing relevance. Change that leads to death.

It broke his heart (I believe) that he could not spend 33 rupees to buy that record.

Am too emotional, now. So, on the eve of my birthday (turning 58 tomorrow), here's to my parents for bringing me into this world.