Heart on Fire – Rukmini Paatti’s Obituary

The first feeling that I had yesterday, as I went to the ice-box and saw paatti lying still in it, was of a sinking and heavy heart. One more life from that precious generation gone; paatti is, was, around 93 years - this generation I mean. I hold it precious because elders I know from this age seem to live with a sense of fullness of life… complete, whole, seasoned lives. The following sloka comes to mind as I think of this phenomenon:

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Om Puurnnam-Adah Puurnnam-Idam Puurnnaat-Puurnnam-Udacyate |
Puurnnasya Puurnnam-Aadaaya Puurnnam-Eva-Avashissyate ||
Om Shaantih Shaantih Shaantih ||

Roughly translated, “That is complete. This is complete. From completeness, arises completeness. Removing completeness from completeness, only completeness remains. Peace. Peace. Peace.”

Granted that I didn’t see that much of Rukmini paatti in recent times. It had been in the 90s that I met her a lot, going to school with her granddaughter Sathya, one of my best friends from school.  And then for about a year or so between 1995 and 1997 I saw her for a few hours every day. Particular life circumstances made it such that I spent almost all my time besides school and sleeping hours, at their house for that time period. Then as we grew up, and supposed adulthood, its daily life and responsibilities took over, my visits got lesser and lesser.  

However, I never could forget her altogether. She made it so. I went over to visit them (paatti and thatha) in their lovely Mandaiveli house from time to time, selfishly just to get her sweet blessings. And she, peace be with her soul, never forgot to call and wish me every year for my wedding anniversary, a month earlier on the same date! Every year.  We would laugh about it, she’d say, ok I have it marked right this time, and then like clockwork call me a month earlier for my anniversary the next year.

This I will remember of her the foremost – her sweetness of speech.  In all the years that I have known her, I have never heard her utter one word that was harsh, or with ill-will.  The two instances that I do remember her starting to say something that was approaching negative, she stopped herself to say “but we don’t know what it is for them” and “we don’t know their circumstances”. 

A heart, so pure and innocent, was sending out the sweetest blessings for me and for others. Wholesome blessings with utter absence of any agenda, guile or self.  It was all between Perumaal (Lord Vishnu) and the receiver of the blessings. That she was simply the almost-invisible instrument, was the implicit feeling in the way she gave her blessings. I realise that my fervent prayer as I write this is for me to imbibe this quality of hers, while also laughing wryly at the irony that the prayer itself has so much self. Whenever I gave my obeisance in the traditional way, by doing namaskaaram and touching her feet (which was every visit, to hear her blessings of course!), she would just direct me to the altar as well every time. And say, “it all comes from there”.  

I will always remember her as so active, taking care of her household and everyone in such a lively manner. Not a stray moment around her, until the last couple of years when age took over Will I think.  She knew that I loved coffee, and the first thing she would do is to give me a cup whenever I visited. I always saw her taking care that all of us, Satya’s friends, or anyone else in her vicinity had eaten properly, and insist on this. Like many elders from that generation, she would remember the significant to the smallest life details that we tell her, and ask about them. The job offer. Daughter’s school. Shift to new city, are you settled. Cold and cough a month back, how are you now.  Didn’t you say painting was happening, is it over ... Such keen interest in the sense of well-being of people around that she would glean from all this apparently “just information”.   

It is this aspect of being able to serve the well-being of others that she seems to have held above all. Way back in 1992 I think, when I first started going over to their place, there'd been a time of water shortage in Chennai.  The water lorry came when I'd been there chatting with Satya. I helped with the activity of filling up many drums and pots and stocking up water and saw it through until the lorry left, and the work was over.  She never failed to mention this as her first introduction of me to anyone, for more than a decade.  I am pretty sure that it was this one instance that warmed her to me so much. 

It has been a couple of months now since I visited. When I mentioned regret that I hadn’t been able to see her one last time and get her aashirvaadam (blessings), Sathya sent me this message: “She really wasn’t talking the last 10 days. I would hold the memory of her as the active, loving person you know, with the natural simplicity of being that many of us aspire towards.” 

By the time the rituals were completed at home, and she was taken to the crematorium, her body had started shrinking rapidly, and face had started looking bird-like. As part of the ritual, coal was placed on her heart, ghee (clarified butter) was poured on it, and it was then lit. My heart was on fire. Her body was pushed into the incinerator.  The impermanence of this physical body and the permanence of some higher energy that it houses – Paatti and others of her generation seemed to be so much in touch with this, and so effortlessly.  Maybe it is this sensing that gave Rukmini paatti her pure and good heart and her simplicity of being. What more is this body for, if not this religion.

Sathya’s words are paatti’s truest essence - her religion of the heart. It is this picture of her I will carry in my heart forever, and this slokam as her life’s blessing:

ॐ पूर्णमदः पूर्णमिदं पूर्णात्पूर्णमुदच्यते ।
पूर्णस्य पूर्णमादाय पूर्णमेवावशिष्यते ॥
ॐ शान्तिः शान्तिः शान्तिः ॥

Just Another Crow Story

The crow is cawing
on the neighbour's terrace,
trying to wake up the Sun-
And light up her dark world,
Of Disgust. 
She has been cleaning.
Cleaning and cleaning and cleaning...
Underneath pure carpets
Behind pure masks.

She can still smell the stench
Of carefully cooked food
Grinded and devoured through,
In the halls of Purity,
Until the arrival of burps. 

She can feel her skin burning,
From the sacred fire,
Carefully stoked and tended to,
By its pure caretakers-
To transform to the grey dust
that she remembers
from the crematorium. 

The beautiful chants,
that are not meant for 
dirty ears and impure minds
still reverberate in hers. 

She sees these portals of Purity 
Her mind's eyes turning Red,
As she contemplates her anger and disgust. 

With a sigh of quiet resolve,
She turns to the day ahead,
And her work of scavenging
Her eyes turning yellow and blue. 

As the sun comes up
I see the crow take wing,
And explode
Into a flurry of colours - 
Mynah,
Drongo,
King Fisher,
Bee-eater,
Roller,
Seven sisters,
Sun-bird,
Treepie...

An Evening with Ganga

I am watching Ganga. She is her own adjective.  I am awed at times by her force and strength, soothed by her gurgling and crooning at other, filled now with her tranquillity, now mesmerised by her turbulence, and feeling blessed by her divine grace.  For she is the Bhagirathi and Alakhnanda, coming straight from Shiva's locks.  Emerging from majestic

While crossing the Ganga in a motorboat, Calcutta

heights, she plays and dances whimsically with those who dare to engage with her at that altitude.  She then meanders and surges, gushes and cascades, gurgles and swirls through people's lives, making stories and songs, creating life and love. She can flow calm stretches, a balm to tired travellers, or thrash rapids, unpredictable and challenging to adventurers, or boil whirlpools and terrorise the weak hearted. She can be aggressive, gentle, can have humility and humour, she can be serious and have fun.  Other lives and stories cant help but join her.  Yamuna, and Gomti and Kosi and Ghaghara unite with her, to flow inexorably towards their destiny.  Being her, she cannot but approach her freedom grandly.  She stretches herself out and forms the largest green delta before draining into the Bay of Bengal.  And there then, there is the peace and stillness of wisdom and harmony.  I was seeped into her beauty as I watched Ganga.   

Imagine my surprise, when I am watching this scene behind closed eyelids, that outside, Shri. Warren Senders speaks of his Guruji singing once like the waves crashing at the ocean.  For the visual of Ganga, the sensations and feelings of being near this mighty river and her entire journey, all at once, was consistent throughout the performance and rendition of Shri. Warren Senders. I am no technical expert of a Hindustani vocal concert.  All I know technically is that it started out with an Alaap (Is this right?) of Raag MaruBehag and ended with a Raag Bhairavi Thumri.  However, my experience was that of being filled with the sense and wonder of the Ganga. He was accompanied by two musicians, Shri. Chandrajeet on the Tabla and Shri. Anantaraman on the Violin, who waltzed right along with all his twirls and turns, and executed their own beautiful ones too.  They were hosted by and performing at a friend's place. (Radhika Rammohan and Uday Shankar, many thanks to you) 

(I was also delighted to later find a couple of light Hindi songs with the evening Raga, MaruBehag - Tum Tho Pyar Ho (this is confirmed by Google!) I feel that Yeh Jo Desh Hai Tera is also the same Raga but am not sure.)

Just as the Ganga has many hues and colours, so does our evening's grand seigneur.  He also works actively to increase awareness of the very real danger of global warming and climate change, and suggests and promotes ways to reduce carbon footprints at individual levels.  In his brief talk with the audience, he seamlessly drew connections from his music and the relevance of sustaining and continuing the tradition of the music to taking action on a day-to-day basis to handle the environmental crisis.  Brilliance carried ever so lightly - one of the funny moments was when at the beginning of the concert, he announced that the aircraft is going to take off and all electronic devices have to be put in flight mode!   

Young At Heart or Old and Wise?

Image from hrrindia.com

Am I young or Am I old? Using this particular question and a situation, I realised I was wading through a larger, general problematique of 'tradition and modernity'.

A popular apparel brand has as part of its advertising paraphernalia, the slogan, "Stay young always".  I saw this put up somewhere recently with images of 'hip' teenagers wearing trendy, western clothes and in different poses.  We see this emphasis on youth, all the time, everywhere, and in advertisements, certainly.  It seems like only specific and niche themes want to represent the older population, say, savings and investment towards a house for retirement.  (The themes themselves, what themes target the old and what the young, is in itself a subject of examination but not within the current scope)

The obvious, first explanations for this interest and infatuation with being young are known and understood: youth is associated with beauty, vigour, vitality, strength, adventure and so on.  I believe that all this is true. 

There is also another picture of youth (not portrayed in ads as a rule* for obvious reasons) that is held by society, wherein youth also means irresponsibility, irreverence, rebelliousness, a devil-may-care attitude, brashness and so on. I believe all this to be true. 

Neither do I feel like putting a 'positive' label to the former set of attributes, nor a 'negative' label to the latter.  

The sudden indignant question that arose in me when I saw that ad took me a little by surprise: why should I always stay young?  I realised,

- I at last feel "grown up", even old sometimes;

- I feel that much of youth-time (from my experience, and also that of my peer group, close and far, that I see) has been / is a struggle with life, struggle to understand, not-peaceful, full of drama and so on and I loved most of it;

- I also feel that in my "old age" I am 'settling' to responsibility and I am loving it;

- I feel old and I feel much more gathered, coherent, and at peace with my self than ever before.

I many times see that others in my friends' circles, my contemporaries feel similarly in varying degrees and ways, though they may not use the same vocabulary.  

Then why is there this insistence on staying young?  This staying-young perspective also seems to fear words like 'responsibility' and 'settling' ('settling' is always actually 'settling down' - perhaps this is to do with putting down roots?) 

This fear I believe is the crux of the matter.  Most current public idiom of a certain kind seem to originate and revolve around this fear: the fear of old age.  Because old age means disease, and death.  The inherent fear is that of death.  And hence, none of the products and ads want to become old - a cream to remove 7 or 8 or 9 signs of aging; clothes that are young and trendy; music and technology and food and schemes to stay young all the time, these hit us 24X7, leveraging on that increasing fear of old age.  

image from nirdeshak.com

At the same time, I also constantly encounter an idiom of another kind (although it is growing lesser and lesser I feel).  An idiom, which respects and gives 'old age' and becoming an elder a certain, special place in human engagement, be it personal, social, at the work place... it takes different forms in different contexts.  I believe that traditional Indian culture gives old age a certain respect and place.  And by doing this, I believe that it demands of them certain ways of being that befits them (I sort of explain what I mean by this a little later), through its colourful and intricate tapestry.  For instance, in traditional contexts, I see elders always being graciousness and generosity personified.  And it is a taken that they are that way.  Of course in an Indian context, they are much of the time also hierarchical and authoritative, however I see my elders holding both effortlessly; one doesn't negate the other.  

At the same time, I believe that traditionally young age is also given a certain respect and place; and by doing this, I believe that the same cultural tapestry demands of them certain ways of being that befits them. An immediate situation that comes to mind is that of learning and exploration.  

It seems to me that the codes and grammar of Indian culture evolve in such a way that it is constantly reminding people of their context and station in life.  However, I hasten to add that this does NOT mean that we have to get caramelized into our respective ages such that we don't have the value for, or practice other attributes in necessary contexts.  For instance, I definitely don't think that it is to be understood as, the elderly must not learn or question or be adventurous, or that the young must not be generous. I believe that tradition does deem appropriateness and context as important factors to consider.  Everything has its time, place and context. 

And hence, old and young age, both have their right value, purpose and journey.  There seems to me a gracefulness about this acceptance of, and going with the flow of a natural rhythm of life.  And all practices, rituals, thought-systems, structures etc seem to be built around this understanding and acceptance of the natural rhythm of life and its processes.  What befits each entity is born out of this afresh all the time.  Everyone is on this journey.  

A modern context is always to gain, by its very nature of being modern, because the modern is here, contemporary, in with the changing times, and resultant advantages, an important one being that of individual autonomy and pursuit.  However it is losing out in many significant ways; one such is the loss of this acceptance of a natural rhythm and order.  And hence, the fear of old age.  

The modern inclination to stop the flow and dam everything into compartments has an interesting result.  What in a traditional context is a taken and natural process, and which the path of Yoga gives as a committed and systematic practice, contemporary writings have made into a one-time privilege that is received.  All of the discussion on "old souls" that I have encountered have clearly isolated ideas of maturity in thought, wisdom and so on, saying that there are some blessed ones who are born this way - the old souls.  While the descriptions of old souls are all beautiful, lyrical and tugging at our spiritual and romantic selves, they all seem to be saying that these ideas are available only to a few.  

image from vedicodyssey.com

So, am I young at heart, or have I grown old? :-|

I seem to be in a phase of finding tension areas wherein I simply cannot make an either-or choice; here, the constant tug of war between tradition and modernity.  And I find I cannot choose one over the other.  I cannot also give up both and say that I am beyond either of them.  I am not saintly at all.  My choice and work is in including both, and simultaneously holding tradition and modernity, and keep discovering the truth of life, herein. It is not dammed (damned?) at one point, but a flow!  I am young at heart, "not having a care in the world" as I am playing with my daughter, and completely old, having absolute care for her safety and needs and wants, as we play. 

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* There are always exceptions to rules