Poetry as Sanctuary – A column where we explore poetry as a means of expression for voices of the South Asian Diaspora.
(Featured Image: Lalit Kumar skydiving)
I am fascinated with adventure sports and I happen to like poetry. While adventure sports push us out of our comfort zone to experience the euphoria that lies beyond fear, poetry helps us to explore the world in a more vivid way.
Adventure sports provide personal growth and renewal through physical energy.
Poetry is a mental work-out, rejuvenating the soul to provide an enhanced capacity to experience all the beauty in this world.
The famous mountaineer, Edmund Hillary said, “It’s not the mountain we conquer but ourselves.”
This rings true. When exerting oneself for any endurance sports like mountaineering or long-distance running, the first battle one fights is in his or her own mind. Despite the pain or fatigue, if one decides to press on, the physical challenges of distances or mountains are not impossible to be conquered. I feel that mental courage and fortitude can be easily cultivated by reading and writing positive/affirmative poetry that gives wings to your dreams, power to your vision, and courage to your mission.
Reading and writing poetry has provided me with numerous hours of pure joy and the right ambience for self-contemplation. A poem can capture the most complex emotions and distill them down to few words that are pleasing to the auditory senses, apart from being appealing to the ‘thinking’ brain. I have been scribbling verses in English from my high school days. After spending more than a decade in the Bay Area and outside India, I find myself equally drawn to the inexorable charm of my mother tongue, Hindi.
During this ‘lockdown’ period, I found myself gorging upon the books and the writings of Hindi stalwarts. In the process, stumbled upon the beauty of Urdu ghazals and sensibilities (‘janib’). I was drawn towards the natural imagery and auditory pleasure of Urdu words, especially when reading or hearing ghazal and shayari. It seems that the Urdu language is meant for writing and reciting poetry. As an Indian / South Asian immigrant, perhaps I have found my sanctuary in reading, writing, and hearing Hindi/Urdu poetry after losing touch for almost a decade. English comes naturally to me, but I realized that poetry in other Indian languages leaves an equally profound impression on my mind. And this feeling snowballed into a love…
In a moment of creative burst, I find myself unwittingly scribbling in Hindi, like:
आरज़ू थी, ज़िंदगानी रहे
जीएं तो शौक से।
ज़िंदादिली मिली , हम बदले
अब जीएं तो बेखौफ्फ़ से।
– ललित
(Translated in English)
I used to wish, to live a life of luxury
I met my passion and I changed,
Now I wish to live a life of fearlessness.
Perhaps, it has a tinge of my new-found passion for adventure sports, who can tell!
This love for both poetry and adventure found its outlet in a creative verse that I penned a couple of months back, called, ‘The Second Mountain.’ We all want to be successful and happen to get into the career rat race with the hope of reaching some mythic destination and we start climbing that mountain – probably for most of us, our first mountain. But when we get there, we don’t find happiness and fulfillment to the extent that we dreamed about. So we look for the second mountain, which is symbolic of climbing the mountain of a ‘Cause’ that is larger than the self, the irony is that until we get to the top of the first mountain, we usually don’t realize that.
Metaphorically speaking, while climbing the mountain was a calling for my ‘adventure seeking’ soul, penning down this idea in relation to finding my ‘Cause’ was a calling for my ‘poetry loving’ soul.
Image taken by Lalit Kumar
The Second Mountain
Driven, ambitious and passionate
He had ascended the mountain peak
Striving relentlessly, with a singular obsession
To climb, to strive and to reach to the top.
The panorama was striking from his vantage point
He felt like the conqueror who defeated all
The wave of happiness swept like the breeze,
Invincible he felt, superior he thought in his mind.
As the breeze calmed down, he felt an eerie silence
Loneliness gnawed at his heart, the emptiness echoed in his viscera.
What was the point of it all? He thought to himself
His singular achievement meant so little to others.
Contemplating to himself, he narrowed his gaze
And saw the second mountain across the valley.
And lo and behold, it was teeming with people all around
He hurriedly climbed down and trekked across the valley.
As he approached nearer, he saw people helping each other ascend the mountain
Together they climbed and took the tumble together, negotiating the sharp bents on the way
He soon realized, it’s not what you achieve individually
But joy is in how you give away your energy in the pursuit of affecting a positive change.
Joy is in helping, in giving, in supporting
The Cause that deeply moves you
And making it larger than
Just your individual self.
So climb the first mountain, if you must
To check your fitness on the way …
But remember, it’s the second mountain
Where your impact will pave the others’ way.
The language of poetry can touch one’s soul and spark a sense of creativity. I advocate for everyone to read and write poetry. You are invited to join the group calledPoetry of Diaspora in Silicon Valley, which hosts a weekly poetry reading.
Lalit Kumar works in the Technology sector but retains an artist’s heart. He likes to read and write poetry, apart from indulging in adventure sports from time to time. Recently, he started curating famous works of poetry (and occasionally his own).
The 2020 US elections were not just about differing political views. People’s lives were impacted on the basis of their skin color, their gender, their sexuality, or their religion.
It bred uncertainty and fear in people who had been targeted for years.
Human beings should be respected for just that, being human. There is no other clause or addition to that.
Here is a poem dedicated to those that felt weak. Rather than offer a solution of light in the darkness, I offer a hand to hold in it.
Oil painting by Author, Swati Ramaswamy (crashed waves/clouds dissolving)
This pandemic is the most collective experience we have been through as a generation. And yet, it is also one of the most uniquely individual experiences. Its effect on certain people, families, or businesses, and even countries is so particular to their circumstances, responsibilities, responses, and coping mechanisms. In spite of the stimulation of endless input from technology, this time has caused people to look within, into deeper places where they have not been before. A feat that was unthinkable in the old normal where we had no time to breathe, let alone reflect.
And if we have listened, within these deeper places we humans have found a playground of emotions and revelations. For me, the biggest observation has been of my own fears.
Fear is one of the most private emotions. Unlike sadness, anger, and grief it is not a very visible one. We rarely see a physical display of this deep-rooted emotion. But during this time, we have seen fear on a large and collective scale. With its seed in the fear of the virus, this mass unfolding of fear became a mirror for my own garnered fears that were unrelated to the pandemic. Shocked at this discovery and its parallels with the current world situation, I realized that if I did not address them in a healthy way, I would be paralyzed from moving forward just as the world currently is. And worse than outer lockdown is inner lockdown! In the case of my own latent fears, there is no medical research or promised cures, I had to find my own solution. Propelling me to realize that solutions even if supported by external forces, must come from within.
I have always looked at the wisdom of Indian philosophy to provide answers. As a Vedanta student of many years, when in doubt one turns to the Bhagavad Gita. The Gita or the Divine Song is known to be a text that can answer any questions. The Gita is a sermon of courage to the despondent, a manual of duty and dharma through which one can get to the goal without incurring any bondage. The Gita takes place on the Battlefield of Kurukshetra where the cousin armies of the Pandavas and Kauravas face each other in the battle to claim the throne of Hastinapur. The Pandavas have Krishna, while the Kauravas have the royal armies and all the skilled and respectable teachers. On seeing his kith and kin: uncles, brothers, and teachers, the illustrious warrior Arjuna sees the battle as pointless, he starts to think in the moment that it would be better to live on alms than to murder those that are his own. He drops his weapons and says that he will not fight. To his utter surprise, his Lord and friend Krishna says, “Yield not to this unmanliness, O Partha, it does not befit you. Casting off this mean weakness of heart, arise O Parantapa.” (Chapter 2, Verse 3, Bhagavad Gita, translated by A. Parthasarthy)
The profound message of the Gita is not to freeze, not to be paralyzed by the circumstances but to stride through them with courage, fortitude, and a sense of duty. Duty is higher than the envisioned concepts of right and wrong, likes, and dislikes. This would of course mean different things to different people according to their dharma in life. This time as I read the Gita, once again it did not fail to pick me up from the shambles and inspire me to arise against my inner obstacles.
In the same thread, I was reminded of Swami Vivekananda’s messages on courage and fearlessness. Swami Vivekananda was the first ambassador of Vedanta in the West and he became known for the bold messages that evoked a sense that we are full and complete because we are part of Atman, therefore all is well and we have nothing to fear. He said, “Freedom can never be reached by the weak. Throw away all weakness. Tell your body that it is strong, tell your mind that it is strong, and have unbounded faith and hope in yourself.”
If it were not for the pandemic, I could not have dwelled deep in my fears and allow myself to be inspired by the great leaders of my culture and faith. While we all continue to stride through the storm, may we remember that how we face this in our own lives is a choice. While being informed and precautious, may we approach our unknown New Normal with courage, acceptance of what we cannot change, and most importantly, without fear.
Rashmika Manu is a freshman in high school. She enjoys writing poems, playing volleyball, and traveling. She visits India often and has a desire to help the poor and needy in the future.
Swami Ji Harish Chander Puri was walking down the street wearing his traditional religious clothes in Glen Oaks, Queens not far from the Shiv Shakti Peeth temple around 11am last Thursday. A man came up from behind him and started beating him.
Eyewitnesses say the attacker shouted “this is my neighborhood,” during the incident.
Puri had to be rushed to the hospital because of his injuries.
This incident happened just days after President Trump tweeted about the four women of color Congresswomen known as “the Squad”: “Why don’t they go back and help fix the totally broken and crime infested places from which they came. ” Just days after that, crowds chanted “send her back” about Congresswoman Ilhan Omar at a Trump rally in North Carolina.
“There will be no end to hate violence unless we disrupt and dismantle the racist narratives and policies leading to this violence. This should start from the top, but instead the highest levels of government are encouraging this violence,” said Lakshmi Sridaran, SAALT’s Interim Co-Executive Director.
Racist political rhetoric from this administration is dangerous. It has a direct impact on communities of color across the country. SAALT’s Communities on Fire report found that one in 5 perpetrators of hate violence in the year after President Trump was elected cited Trump’s name, a Trump campaign slogan, or a Trump administration policy while committing the act of violence.
