Meera and Krishna II

I wanted to title this ‘Muddled conversations with Meera’ or a more proper ‘Conversations with Meera’ or maybe, with apologies, ‘Conversations with a muddled Meera’ – but this has to be titled the way it has been. The following is a continuation of the previous post:

Do I see him even then? – You ask me. After he leaves – you mean? – Do I feel him? Can I hear him?

Yes. I do. I feel his presence in his absence. Is that strange? Is that madness? I feel him, sense him, hear him, and even when I try not to or experience ludicrous doubt about my experiences or am miserable or angry or even try to be very composed and reasonable. It is his voice I hear streaming through the breeze. It is a glimpse of him that I glance at when I see the blue of the sky kissing the green of the leaves on tall trees. It is his eyes that I chance upon when the storm rips the sky and black clouds gather billow upon billow over the lonely white sands. It is him I see laughing and winking at me when I see an iridescent river flowing by even when I, very solemnly, try – to think of other things. It is his touch that undulates within me when an impatient gust of air slows down upon meeting its very own loved one. It is him I see as the raindrops finer than the tiniest shards of glass pierce my skin and become one with my tears. It is his smile for me that I see when I live and die a little every day as I breathe in and out. So I suppose I see him, and then, I suppose, I do not see him always? Or do I? I do not know what to say – I am sorry. I do not know everything. I told you I am not a saint. I feel him unless I am too full of anger, resentment or spite or misery to notice.

You look shocked and discomfited and nonplussed – all at the same time. Why? – You ask me. Why what? Why do I feel resentment, anger, spite and misery? Do you think I must not feel such lowly emotions because I am a saint? Or do you now see me as being not so saint-like? I have a twinkle in my eye –? I am tickled to see you now wondering what I am: a saint or not-a-saint but then, 'what is she'? I am supposed to be a bhakti yogini, am I not? Not a gyana yogini. The latter are far more composed and rational and very reasonable. So are the karma yoginis. I imagine I can be all-in-one – but I fail.

Yes, yes – I have fallen silent. I am gathering my thoughts, am I not? I want to be clear, do I not? You have been trying to look at my thoughts for a long time but you can never pin them down to see the whole picture. You get muddled in your higgledy-piggledy head. You listen to something I say and not to other matters because they do not fit your pretty but imaginary picture of “the beautiful and blissful and beatific Meera”. You get all garbled and then you go around bellowing and yelling from the rooftops about love! You do not?! Of course you do. Almost every year for so many years. Haha. I have noticed. That is not about me and Krishna – you say? That is what you think. Now quiet! Stop your chatter. Let me tell you what I have to say, and listen and look carefully – if you can – without interrupting. Otherwise we will be conversing till kingdom come. Do you have nothing else to do apart from talking with beings in your head – you silly girl!

Yes – so where was I? Yes – those emotions. I feel all those emotions and more. He loves so many – do you not see? Do you not know anything – about history? He has his favourites. And he has his second and third lists and fourth lists of favourites and many more, and on and on. So I rage and am filled with dumb and angry resentment and angry tears right when I imagine I am far above such lowly sentiments. And I wonder where or when exactly I went wrong. You are tittering? I am jealous, you say? I am mean-spirited and small-minded, you say? I am mindless, you claim? I am like a little imbecilic, sad simpleton who does not know about expansive love webs? I am spoilt, pampered and mad – you say?! How dare you?! – You silly girl. You said none of these things? – But you thought all of them and some more. You imagine only you can espy thoughts? – I am none of those things. There you were calling me a saint, now you are calling me all this, and in the middle you wanted to pack me off to a loony bin?! Tsk-tsk. No, he does not love me – do you not see? I am nowhere on his list of sixteen thousand or sixteen thousand and three! I am not even on his – what do you call it? – waiting list. I do not care whether I am contradicting myself! You can go away now. I do not want to talk to you. Of course it irks me! Not you, you silly girl! Him. I could smack or bite or scratch him or embrace him and cry against him now and then – if I could. But then when I can hear him or he does appear – my rage and resentment – all – disappear. I cannot even cry when he is there in front of me. It seems pretentious and fake to cry when I can see him or hear him. I weep later.

Why can I not cry, you ask me? I answered that already. Why does it feel pretentious and fake? – You ask me?

He glows like Life which is real and matters. I cannot cry when Life stands in front of me. He is dark, you see. But he is light. He glows with his changing moods – sometimes darkly, and sometimes through the dark – lightly. Oh, of course he is mine – you silly girl! So what if he is God and everybody’s God? – He is still mine. No, you cannot have him – that is why you cannot see him. There – I have answered your second question.

Why are you smiling?!

Am I his? – No – I am not his – you pesky girl pestering me with presumptuous questions. That is so because he does not want me and is not fond of me in such a way. And do not ask me what I mean by “Such a way”. I will not tell you.

Yes, yes. You can ask me other questions. – Why does he visit me then if he is not fond of me?  

That is how he is – is he not? He knows all there is to know – does he not? He knows Meera loves him and has forever loved him and always will unless Meera stops being born and dying altogether and enters into some state of oblivion that she cannot imagine. And he is sometimes – what do you call it? – suffused with kindness and compassion or maybe pity, and so he blesses his lonely and useless devotee by dropping in or by calling in to – .

What, now?

 – Of course, I am useless! I have not won battles. I have not conquered lands and people and ruled over with a benevolent, just but canny hand. I have not created grand empires with my wit and guiles and wiles. I have not created and amassed grand and almost endless material wealth, and then given almost all of it away. There have been powerful and stunning queens who have gone to battle and even a young peasant girl – so I hear or did I dream of her? Anyhow. I do not lead a many-dimensional, many-tiered, busy, grand, great life – do I? He glowers at me for looking at him sometimes or for trying to talk to him or for asking him questions. It irks him. So what do I really do? – I sing. I compose poetry. I dance. I worship him. It is all to give voice and form to my love for him and because I cannot help it – and I wait for him. I am not beautiful – so beautiful, so full of breathtaking grace, exquisite finesse and innate talents that I can enchant him with my very being, shy smile and limpid eyes from behind a veil. What is it that you say? – I am? Beautiful? – Why, thank you. There are more than thousands and thousands and another thousands like me and they all love him. I often wonder how that is possible – do you know? To be singularly enchanting – what else? No. I see. Of course, you would not. I am grimacing? No, no. It is nothing. I certainly did not say or think your ugliness is revolting! The things you imagine! What - ? Oh, okay. It was only a passing, insignificant thought. Forget that now. There, there. Stop moping – it does not matter how you – look. But you were saying I sing, were you not? – I do sing. Did you not yourself hear me, at least once – maybe faintly but clearly – so many years ago? That is what I can do and so I do what I can do.

I write poetry? – You ask me? Yes, I dream up poetry – because I must and I can and it is a beautiful act. I forget what I am at. I am with him or some disembodied being of pure consciousness floating about, skimming about, coursing the universes with him – even when the poems are angry or measured or full of abandoned passion or I am disconsolate or I have perfect clarity or I am yearning for him. It is as if there are two beings when I am writing poetry – one physical Meera who is here and another Meera who is there with him laughing and making him laugh with wild abandon.

Of course I love him. So do millions – do they not? – He does not want me around. He appears when he does – fleetingly, in snatches – and he leaves just as unpredictably. Bad? – You ask? What is bad? Bad to need him? Bad to love him? Whom would you need then? Who else would you love if not him? What would you need if you do not need him and his love, and for him to accept you and your love? 

– but, what?! But what do you do after loving him and needing him? – You ask me, again?! Are you deaf and silly and forgetful? – You do whatever it is that you do and keep at it! Did I not say that a hundred thousand times already? – That is what you do. Whatever you can and are able. I too do what I can, do I not?!

Easy? – Who said anything about it being easy? Did I say it was or is easy? Do people imagine that that is easy? Why should it be easy? I am not a cow. A cow has a fairly easy life – I would say. A cow may disagree with me and may grumble and moo, and sadly say that I know nothing about being a cow and how difficult it is being a cow. There is nothing wrong in being a cow and maybe the life of a cow is very difficult in a way I do not know about – but I did not come to the world as one of his cows which he used to love. I came here as a human being. I did not come here to win trifles as a human being. That too would be easy. Maybe. Many people will disagree with me and so I shall add – maybe not. What do I know? – Maybe it is very difficult indeed to win and hoard trifles, and preen and prance and dance about flaunting trifles. Indeed, maybe it is exhausting and very difficult. What do I know? – Maybe their trifles are very important to them or mean everything to them, and they will take those trifles with them when they die and they will look upon their trifles after they are dead, and feel jubilant. What do I know? – Maybe the Lord will love them always for being who they are. Let them be. I cannot be one of them and do not want to be. So, no. It is not easy. And no, I do not ‘move on’ – whatever that means. But it is terribly simple sometimes and I am made to move along sometimes despite my obstinacy.

What do I mean? – You ask me? – I am being difficult and contradictory?! 

Is it an adventure, you ask me?

Now which question do you wish for me to answer?! 

Oh, I am being called. I have to go now. Why? I have to go attend to the preparations for the Sravan palace celebrations. I am in charge of some of the preparations – am I not? The staying arrangements, the accommodations, setting up the palace grounds and the competitions. I am a participant too. In what? – archery, horse riding, sword fighting and a few of the debates. Who will be attending? – all kinds of people from distant lands and people from our kingdom too. Yes, yes – princes and queens and ministers and teachers and courtiers and singers and philosophers and merchants and writers and painters and performers of all kinds and silversmiths and blacksmiths and wandering minstrels and more. Sing?! – No, of course I will not sing. Are you quite mad?! – The prince is calling me. I must go now. You go do something else. – Do you not have any work? Do you not have anything else to do? Oh, stop looking like a glum goblin, you silly girl. Do you not believe in God? – And even after yesterday?  – There is a time and place for everything – do you not know anything? I will talk to you some other time, maybe.

Meera and Krishna

Krishna and Meera have been visiting my mind, now and then, for quite some years now. It was 18 or 19 years ago – I cannot quite recall; the two years (1998 and 1999) seem to have become one in my mind – when they first appeared and with Fimh and my best friend. After a few years of semi-silence they appeared again and now it’s been a decade and a half with a few missing years, here and there. I used to imagine at some point that I could write a whole book about Meera but I can’t. Yet Meera and Krishna have appeared in very odd dreams or as very tantalising images - or maybe it’s all a delicious piece of imagined reality or my delusions? I don’t really know but I don’t really think that’s what it is. This year too Meera visited and I kept asking her questions, and it was Krishna’s Birthday, and Fimh absolutely insisted that I write about what transpired. So here is a part of it:

Janmashtami 13^th/ 14^th  August –

There is a time when silence is sharper and clearer than any possible sound. The silence rings away in my ears and thuds away with my heartbeat – especially when I am waiting and waiting, and waiting some more to hear what I want to hear, to sense what I wish to sense, to feel what I want to feel and some of what I do not know and cannot expect  – the footsteps, the embrace, the whispers and his voice murmuring near the nape of my neck, the sense of touch from The One who has caressed my mind and soul, the whispers through the night, listening with my very being so as not to forget later, fighting, arguing, laughing, teasing and being teased in turn – and I do not care then about weeping with the departing strains of his voice and the fainter notes of his flute as I see dawn riding in through my windows and hijacking my dream – or was that my reality? Was he here? Was he not? Did I not hear him? Did I not feel him? Why was he here, and why did he leave?

What? – What is it that you’re asking me? Do I see him? – You ask me.

Yes. I do.

Why can’t you? – You ask me. To that I’ll give you different answers depending on my mood.

…because you do not have the eyes – I will say. Because you have not tried hard enough. Because you think you can see him with the same eyes that you see the world. Because you think you can hear him the same way you do your listening in the world. Because you are too full of what does not matter. Because you are blind and maybe deaf? Oh, I am so sorry – I have offended you. Well it is because you have not loved him like I have. Because I love him – I see him. I see now that you are all teary-eyed and you are hurt and you are angry and offended – all at the same time. There, there. You love him? Maybe you have not called him loud enough? Any louder and you’ll sound like a tuneless foghorn? – You say. Oh, no! – I do not think you should sing. Well then, maybe I sense him because I am mad, and utterly deaf and blind to the world. And so I feel him in communion with my body, spirit, soul, mind and everything about me – till there is no space or place that is private or “just” mine or me any longer. I do not know what this “me” or “I” is apart from that which recognises him, knows him, adores him and worships him. I do not know of any “I” or “me” which does not adore him.

Just seconds ago you were relieved – and almost smugly happy that I had called myself mad – how do I know that?  – I could see it on your face! – and now you call me a saint, you silly girl?! Would you rather have me be sick and mad or are you calling me a saint?

I am no saint.

I am evil and cruel and depraved and a wretch in more ways than you or anybody else can count, and many have counted and told me why I am disgusting and they have seen the better sides of me. Oh, it does not matter if I have not acted upon every terrible thought and feeling in this life. They are all there in me from other times and other places, and the selves and voices - which carry them - erupt from within me like macabre monsters and self-righteous angels and demons and they are all in me. I am not stupid, you say? - Oh, I am stupid, vapid, inert and mindless in so many countless ways too. You would be horrified to see all the selves and parts of me which move around about me and which I know prowl about in me with their mangy bad breath trying to spit at this “me” which you see (which you want to be – and only because I see him and can sing out my love for him) and which want to consume me with their evil.

What is evil? – You ask me?

That thing which feels no love and senses no love and which knows no love – that is evil. That thing becomes evil. It becomes putrid. It rots itself, and it tries to rot and corrupt everything else that comes close to it or that which it sees as easy prey. There are worse things than just murdering a person – even yourself – with a sword or dagger. It is to rot from the inside.

What is love? – You ask me? Why am I smiling? – You ask me? Love means different things to different people. I smile at what different people call love. But you called me a saint, not seconds ago! That is what I am saying too. I am not a saint.

Lust, greed, sloth, avarice, rage, resentment, anger, apathy, violence, mindlessness jostle about for space in every other cell that I carry in me. They are imprinted in me. They flow like sudden poisonous, malodorous lava spewing from ugly volcanoes lying dormant, which I think are dead and they catch me unawares, and right when I am convinced that I am holier-than-thou and deserve my Lord. Did you know that?

You call me a saint?!

“Who is this person?!” – I scream at myself.

“Who are you?” I ask myself in a whisper.

It is me.

Yes. It is.

And yet - He saves me from myself – from those mangy-breathed monsters I carry within me, which want to feed upon me and leave me to rot with no love or memory of love. He with his flute and with that insouciant feather and humour and everything else that makes him him. Each of my cells of terrible memories, each of those horrible and twisted strands that carry the tides and imprints of evil, malice, resentment, spite and vicious rage – all of that upon which I have acted somewhere, sometime – aeons ago, ages ago, many or more summers ago even – it does not matter – but even those, even those horrors and the numerous insipid, petty, ghastly vulgarities and inanities in me are washed over by gigantic, tremendous and complete waves of love and tenderness for him and from him.

Which comes first? – His love or mine – You ask me? – I do not know that. How does that matter, you silly girl?!

I lose myself in him. I find myself in him. I melt with him. I am cast asunder from him. There is bliss – infinite, ineffable, eternal, and there is the utter and absolute agony – of the sort you maybe cannot imagine in separation, in estrangement, in abandonment – in being tossed aside like a tiny, insignificant, ugly, cheap, unwanted raft by the mighty, expansive, gorgeous and churning oceans. And there are in-betweens too, are there not?

How does he love…? – You ask me?

I wonder too. He stands before me. He smiles. He speaks. He sits. He teases. He is cold. He allows an embrace. He is vulnerable. He ignores. He is aloof. He talks. He laughs with his eyes. He banters. He is brusque. He listens. He responds. He is quiet. He laughs. He is silent. He thunders. He shoots lightning forks at you which are beautiful and can burn. He reaches out his hand for you to touch – maybe once or maybe twice – and that is what you want to remember. He quarrels. He sulks. He talks like the adorable young boy he once was about his loves. He is insouciant (yes, like his feather! – You remember). He is naughty. He is wicked. He is irritated. He plays his flute. He talks of the heavens and earth. He shows you glimpses from his universes. He makes you laugh. You carry that laughter, that beauty, that love and the memories through strange days and stranger nights as time spins about like a spinning wheel. He caresses with a caress, like no other and the only one you want or will ever desire. He tells you about dharma, artha, karma, kama, karuna, gyana, bhakti, prem, moksha, shanti…You want to know more and more, and everything about him. He looks at you with those deep eyes almost mirroring your love, tenderness and bizarre desire.

What, then? – Then what?!

Then – he is gone. He leaves. With not a backward glance. He leaves you bereft. Shaking, screaming and wailing, and out of your mind. What? – No, of course not. That does not make him cruel. No! Are you out of your mind? Why would he want to be with me all the time? Can you not be reasonable? He has many things to do and he loves many  – do you not know?! And even if he wants to be alone? Is he not allowed to get bored by me and my prattle and my love? What about the Gods and Goddesses? – You ask. Speak up, you incoherent girl – I cannot hear you when you mumble beneath your breath. Hahaha! Shiva and Shakti, Vishnu and Lakshmi, Rudra and Tara - they do not get bored of one another! That is what you say? - You must ask them. I am not Lakshmi or Parvati or Durga or Tara. I am Meera.