The American Brush - Guest Post by American Painter Kathryn Myers

As I write this on the train to and from New York, it occurred to me that, in India, it would be unfathomable that I would spend time on a train looking at my computer screen rather than out the window.  In India, even the most seemingly mundane or incidental activity could be cause for active engagement, a chance to frame and share the experience. Facebook, which I had not regularly used before, became a daily diary that allowed me unfold my story slowly, morning by night, day by day.  Usually, I come home and people ask “how was India?” and I want to say, “Do you have six months to sit and let me tell you?” Away from my regular responsibilities, in India, the internal dialogue that is often detached from what is actually occurring around me, muted by familiarity and routine, became sharpened with a refreshed and heightened attention to the present. 

 

 Without constrictions of time, I could follow unlikely paths that beckoned, or wait out a storm in a tiny chai shop not annoyed at being lost or frustrated by a seeming waste of time.  I could see everything as an adventure, an opportunity, a chance to talk to a stranger, a chapter in time which, until nearly the moment I left for home, seemed filled without end. Without reason, destination, or errands to run, mostly relying on my feet than my car, I would go out to just look, and to look again, enjoying creating categories of imagery in an attempt to organise the uncontainable. Some of these, such as the palimpsest of layered signs, something I became aware - upon my return - does not exist in the US, where a “post no bills” sign actually is obeyed, have developed into upcoming projects for my studio art classes.
 

As I continue to deepen my knowledge about India and Indian art, inspired and motivated by the Indian art course I teach at UConn and the paintings and videos I create as a practicing artist, what  I am drawn to falls  into places both rooted in prior experience and seen anew. Recognising that my students have been particularly drawn to my sense of connection with India, I began to create a series of short videos of devotional activities that I lecture about in class, things I have seen dozens of times on prior visits.  An Aarti in the Swaminayaran temple in Ahmedabad, the haunting plaintive call to prayer at the Jama Masjid in Delhi, or a lyrical sacred song sung on Ganges. In these simple pieces, I am able to speak about history and tradition as well as how I experience it, primarily that which is so unusual in the Christian tradition which my students are most familiar with - the overlay of the sacred and every day, the ghats being shared with dhobi walls, chai vendors and pilgrims. How the Adhan or call to prayer envelops the bazaar neighbourhood of Old Delhi, how generations of people, aunties and young women with cell phones, gathered for the intense body-enveloping sound of the ringing bells of morning darshan.  They also allow me to recapture in a more abstract way, the sensations, sounds and sights that arrested my senses before my intellect that, opened doors to knowledge as well as the deeper recesses of my heart and soul. 

 

The sense of the mythic and ancient that many travellers are initially drawn to in India has always been paired, for me, with the intense force of the present.  As I engage more fully in the contradictions and coalescence of past and present, I no longer find them as uncomfortable contrasts, or interferences, as I once did. In Orissa, my long anticipated view of Chauthyogini temple, the goddesses’ sacred space of power invaded by a bevy of workmen, disrupted my long sought out and perhaps naïve desire for a “moment of transcendence.”  My feelings shifted from annoyance to amusement and, in the end, it was a far more memorable experience as a marker in my own time, rather than the mythic time of the monument.  By contrast, my visits to the tiny Chausatti Devi in Varanasi hidden away on a side alley in that teeming city where one never expects to experience anything in solitude, feels like my private temple, and has to my gratitude, grounded me in times of need. It is then that I find myself exceedingly drawn to India for reviving my lapsed Catholic ability to experience the occasional moments of serenity, wonder and transformation that, in India are often just an instant away from earthly chaos. 

 Returning to places I know well, such as Varanasi, Ahmedabad or Goa, offered the comfort of familiarity, spending time with friends that have become family, enjoying shared memories and the most recent gossip over Goan feni, Indian rum or countless cups of chai. The familiar in this sense allowed for a needed sense of “normalcy”, the chance to sustain a regular structure of work time, writing, painting and video editing that, countered the exhaustion, numbness and jadedness that extensive travel can cause. Starting from a place of familiarity pushed me to look beyond what I thought I already

knew, to a deeper level of experience and observation or to look at the familiar in a new way.  New adventures such as my road trip with Pradosh (whose family so enthusiastically embraced “auntie,”) from Varanasi to Bhubaneswar on to Andhra Pradesh, through painted villages, family porches, storms and two rainbows, kept alive the addictive sense of the unknown and unpredictable, as well as contending with contradictory feelings about that which is so rapidly changing with that which seems impervious to change. Delhi is my new New York, things always going on, with an art scene I feel like I have known since its awkward adolescence fifteen years ago and have seen grow into something quite astonishing that I feel connected to and proud of.
 

Along with unstructured time to absorb, collect and create, was the sense of purpose that has driven much of my work for the past two years, my “Regarding India” video series www.regardingindia.com.  With several rewarding opportunities to show this work, I overcame a sense of caution foreigners often have in India, of seeming naïve, patronising, or “out of it”. Rather I was moved, encouraged and energised by the response to my work. With concern in respect of adding to the bulk of still unedited work, I still added a few new interviews to the series. Perhaps it was faith in my ability to sustain this work and an increased sense of confidence for I enjoyed the process more this time. My inquiry was more focused and I felt as if the artists I met - Dinesh, Waswo, Meera,  Heidi and others - had become friends.  I enjoyed as much reconnecting with people I met for the first time during the interviews, spending time with Ravi and Dorothea, and Jyotibai and Jyotsna.
 

 I felt a significant shift as India ceased to be so much about place this time, and more about people. Surprisingly ambivalent with my decision to travel north, trips I so much enjoyed in the past, when it was time to depart, I started regretting not sitting out the May heat in the studios and kitchens of friends rather than negotiating the challenges and loneliness of solo travel. Loneliness used to be my frequent and comforting travel companion in India. I grew used to weeks of internal dialogue, but now I can choose not to be alone.  Even in the very last hours before I left for home, suddenly sick with a new flu, friends came to visit me, Shelly and then Sundeep, and the night before I had experienced a convivial gathering of friends and a studio visit with Gopika, the beauty of whose work can only truly be appreciated up close, and I felt grateful for the opportunity to have this and other friendships grow.  

 

It would have been tragic to not want to come home. When it was time to board the plane I was really ready as there is always a desire to unpack the experience, to regroup and plan for the next time.  Nobody can live vicariously or virtually in another world. I have friends, family, a house, garden, job and history that I love, and love to come back to.  But through my ability to come and go, I am inspired to try and make the best use of my dual sense of belonging by bringing what I can of India back here, and what I can bring from here, back to India, including art, friends, and the excitement of ideas.

Kathryn Myers is a Fulbright Scholar, a professor at University of Connecticut [UConn] and a painter, who has been a regular visitor to India, working on a video documentation of Indian Art and Artists. The video series can be see at www.regardingindia.com
Kathryn's paintings can be found on her website-
www.kathrynmyers.org

 

Not Drinking Chai in Kutch - Guest Post by Australian Artist and Writer Maggie Baxter.

Zurra Village, Pakko hand embroidery is done here.

Or anywhere.

 

My ideal black, unsweetened coffee sits at the opposite end of the taste bud spectrum from the powerfully sweet and milky chai of the Kutchi palette. But here I am at Gopika’s invitation to Garam masala chai (and she knows my preference) to share my experience of working in Kutch

Young woman doing Maggie's embroidery

Twenty something years ago, I had never heard of Kutch and for those blog followers with the same question mark in their heads, it is the district with a very singular identity that sits at the northern end of Gujarat, next to the Pakistan border.

Neither did I have a burning interest in the craft sector – just a vague idea that traditional Asian textiles could be an interesting platform for contemporary art.

 

My induction into and subsequent fascination with the textile traditions of Kutch came about from a chance meeting in my home city of Perth, Western Australia with Indian designer Kirit Dave. He suggested I go there, and without much forethought, or research, I did.

Kutch is not an easy climate and terrain even now, but back then it was much more rigorous. The roads were poor, the electricity was off more than on, telephones barely existed, and travelling was in old Ambassador cars well past their retirement age.

 

 

Luckily I had travelled regional Australia. If I was hot, bothered and dusty, I was used to being hot, bothered and dusty in Australia too. If the village water was dodgy, I had thrown up on bore water in Australia too. But, at certain times of the year, Kutch is just one bit too challenging.

What draws me there? I have joked that it is like in being in a slightly dysfunctional long-term relationship. Old diary entries tell it all: the good, the bad, the endlessly frustrating, and the much-needed tranquillity.

The Good

Kutch has an amazing confluence of textile crafts stemming from centuries of migration from what are now Afghanistan, Pakistan, the Middle East, and other parts of India. There are weavers, printers working with four types of block printing and at least 16 different styles of embroidery done by different communities.

 

 What first intrigued me were the endless possibilities inherent in block printing – not within the existing traditions of exquisitely accurate registration of patterns, but more in the way of reproducing an abstracted form of drawing: lines and marks floating without symmetry on the fabric. I am still as excited by block printing, as I was when I started. It took me longer to decode embroidery and work out how to connect it with my linear mark making.

Monday 22 December 2003

‘Grid forms, and lines contained within grids are where I am starting. I have also used some photocopies of the structure of Japanese cloth as an impetus.

As I was drawing I started to think about using the blocks in simple, but strong graphic black and white, with a large border of brightly coloured embroidery. Maybe this will be left to Rabari[1] women, or maybe I will do the design and get it done with Sodha[2] women in Pakko[3]. This is in keeping with local odhnis [shawls], which have fields of black wool with simple tie-dye and then amazingly rich borders.

I am also keen to explore the same design in a number of different techniques…the rug design is about to be done in Ikat…’

 

The Bad

August 1991 (My first visit to Kutch -why did I ever go in oppressively humid August?)

The horizon began to fill up with a sinister, foreboding, dark heavy purple cloud….As we left [the main city] Bhuj, a powerful wind started to pick up dirt and debris, flinging it around unpredictably, reducing visibility to an impenetrable  pale red murk…The storm finally broke….great columns of lightning and torrential rain smashed to the ground…. Our car only had one windscreen wiper.

The road to the farm was a mess of fallen branches and mud. One large tree trunk had fallen across the road. The guys got out to shift it and I started to go with them but they stopped me…I told them later that they are more chivalrous than Australian men, who would have told me to get out of the car, roll up my sleeves and push hard.

When we finally got to the farmhouse there was no food left. The rain made the air even more clammy and humid. I sat on a bench and disturbed a cloud of insects, who retaliated by swarming down my blouse.’

The Tranquil

February 2004.

‘Sunday… Very quickly it has gone from winter to summer in Kutch. Just two weeks ago there was snow on the Himalayas and a biting wind hurried across the salt marsh deserts, through our clothes and right into our bones. Now the evenings are balmy and the air is perfumed with the scent of lime trees in flower….

Since 6.00 a.m. Rimalbhai, the farmer has been coaxing his bullocks and cows to wake up. His voice is louder than truck horns on the highway and has the same tone.

[In the morning] I sat on the verandah of my bhunga[4] eating breakfast and watching the passing parade of people. The farmer’s wife Leriben made bhakuri[5] on the griddle and, to escape the chai, I have Twinings ginger and lemon tea and coffee with me.

There is a constant flow of visitors [to the farm] from nearby Bhujodi village. Some of the women wear traditional clothing…. we have nicknamed one ‘Mrs Mix not Match’ because of the astonishing arrangement of colours and patterns displayed in all her outfits.

One day it was a loudly floral orange ghagra skirt over a red petticoat. A long turquoise odni [shawl] with a diamond print hung from her head, long enough to tuck into the ghagra forming another over skirt. Above the waist she wore a purple backless choli [blouse] with turquoise sleeves and a turquoise and orange hem. A choli is shaped a bit like a brassiere with two cups in the front for the breasts….gravity had triumphed and the cups were in one place and the breasts another. Big rolls of fat poured over the sides of the choli. But she was nicely unconcerned about any of this.

The

 

Frustrating                                                                                                                                     

Production September 2004

‘The fabric that I wanted from Devjibhai was a nice cotton and silk mix with a subtle texture that would suggest parchment. But as soon as this was selected, it turned out that the silk fibre was not available.

 

Unseasonal rains came. Block printing stopped at Ajrakhpur. They have no shelter for the fabric to dry out, which seems incredible in a village that relies entirely on printing and dyeing for its livelihood….

 

Tailors suddenly went into short supply. There is a huge pilgrimage in Kutch…70,000 people were estimated to be walking through... And in amongst this throng were all my tailors. Who cares about a Delhi deadline when the Mata[6] is calling? Let’s hope that when they return blessed, they are also refreshed and ready for the challenge I want to inflict on them’.

 

But, in that astonishing and miraculous Indian way in which disaster is averted at the 11^th hour, collections do come together. What has strangely evolved over the years is that complicated, one-off pieces suitable for exhibition in art galleries work best and that is what we have been doing for the past decade.

 

None of this could happen without the extraordinary skill and willingness of all the artisans that I work with and I salute and honour them. Equally the work can only come together because of the mediation of Kirit Dave, who has over the years translated my ideas from English ‘artspeak’ to Gujarati, and his production manager Dhaval Raval, who, after I have left, ensures deadlines are met.

 

In Ahmedabad earlier this year I happened to have lunch with a group of women travellers, one of whom had taught at the Kala Raksha Vidhyalaya Design School for traditional artisans in Kutch. The exercise that she set her group was to design in response to music, letting their tie-dye or blocks flow over the cloth as the chords suggested. She told me one of the students in the class said ‘Ah, there is this Australian designer who has been coming for years and now we have designed to music I finally understand what she was doing’.

 

  Thank you, I really appreciate that you said that, and to all the artisans in Kutch, long may we continue to make music together. But it is still no to the chai.

 

Maggie Baxter is an Australian artist, writer, curator, and public art coordinator.

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[1] Members of the Rabari or Rewari live throughout the Rajasthan and Gujarat states in India. There are some Rabari families who also live in Pakistan especially in the region of Sindh. Rabaris are also known by other names such as Desai, Dewasi, Hiravanshi, Rebari, Rebadi, and Rayka or Raika. The word "rabari" basically means the "Path breakers". This is because hundreds of Rajputs migrated to the desert in protection of the Jaisalmer state against the Mughals. Since then, they were left out of the Rajput community and were later known as Rabari. The Rabari's main business has been to be raise cattle, camels and goats; for some traditional-minded families this is still the case. However, the new generation, as they become better educated, are slowly moving away from this way of life.

 

[2] Sodha Rajput migrations to Kutch started in 1971 after the Indo-Pak war. Originating from Thar Parkar in east Sindh, Pakistan they had relatives in Rajasthan, Gujarat, and Kutch, hence, they settled here and have led a contended life in Kutch. There are 32 Sodha villages in Kutch about 25,000 members of the group with 4,000 artisans among them

 

[3] Pakko embroidery is done by the Sodha, Rajput and Megwar communities. Pakko literally means solid.  The designs and motifs are very similar to Aahir, but slightly more geometric. The outline is done with a square chain-stitch, but the filling is a dense variation of a buttonhole stitch, which gives a raised appearance. Mirrors are used frequently. The original design is drawn freehand and then transferred to the cloth through a stencil
 

[4] Bhungas are closely linked to the identity of Kutch desert areas. They are single cylindrical structures put close to each other to form a house. In common terminology, each bhunga would be equivalent to a room in a house. As per one story, after the 1819 earthquake, all building craftsmen from Sindh and Kutch region got together to discuss the damage caused to the houses in the region by the earthquake. After a series of discussions, they came up with the circular house-form design of bhungas which is in practice since then. Even after the earthquake of 2001, it was observed that most of the bhunga houses survived the earthquake despite being very close to the epicentre of the earthquake, while many other constructions failed.

 

[5]Bhakri are a dense form of roti made from coarse wheat flour and ghee. They are found throughout the western states of India and can be either soft or hard. In Kutch they are hard and biscuit like and can be eaten at any meal  with sabzi,[veggies] curd and pickles. I eat them for breakfast with fruit and honey, but this is not traditional.

 

[6] Goddess

O Lord White as Jasmine [Signature line from poetry of 12th century poet Mahadeviyakka]

The previous day had been a challenging one, especially the morning half of it.  My inner disturbance was predictably reflected in what went on around me and trying to grapple with myself took better part of the day. I did however, reclaim the day. I went, as planned, to see a show at Lado Sarai and on the way did some chores too, which was heartening.  

I walked into Gallery Threshold and some bells, a rather persistent tinkling, announced my arrival. Tunty came out of her office and walked me through the ongoing exhibition by the artist V Ramesh. The first tier consisted of paintings that referenced the oneness of being, wherein there were some rather realistic, painterly renditions of fruit – jackfruit or kathal, pomegranate and bananas with a reference to the idea that their form was reflective of the human body. In ‘This is it’, a large [60 x 80”] oil on canvas, three stalks laden with bananas were hyper-realistically drawn, magnifying each  mark and detail of form and colour. On the extreme right the fruit was ripe, ready to be eaten. On the central stalk, it was peeled as if about to be eaten and on the far right, the stalk was devoid of fruit, implying that all the bananas had been devoured, picked or fallen off the branch. Part of a human skeleton, from pelvis up to the ribs, was drawn over this stalk. The imagery seemed like a metaphor for life, wherein I inferred that the life of a banana was not really that different from the journey of life as a human being. Born, ripening, sharing, giving of oneself and then upon death, only our bare bones remain, waiting to be interred or buried.  

The lower floor of the gallery, had massive, floor to ceiling canvasses that obsessively dealt with poems of the fourteenth century Kashmiri saint Lal Ded, to the ‘vacanas’ of Akka Mahadevi, a twelfth century [Shiva] Bhakti saint-poet of south India. These canvasses were more abstract in nature and focussed on a single poem by each of the poets. Somehow, Tunty expected a response from me that evoked her own passion for these works. A long discussion ensued, compelling me to focus upon the works and the one painting that stayed with me through the rest of the day was ‘Pining for an Absent Lover’ based on Akka Mahadevi’s longing for her ‘Lord, white as Jasmine’, or ‘Mallikarjuna’, as the legendary Shiva is also referred to. A large canvas, [96x72”] in dark hues of brown and black, with just a hint of white and some flower buds, was covered with these words in multiple layers:

 

“Like a silkworm weaving                 

  her house with love
  from her marrow,
                                  and dying
 in her body’s threads
 winding tight, round,
 and round
                                        I burn
desiring what the heart desires
                                                
Cut through, O Lord,
my heart’s greed,
and show me
your way out,
                                               
O Lord white as jasmine.”

 Most of the verse was barely visible; the tone of brown it was written with was overshadowed by strokes, textures and marks in black, grey and browns. The only line that was somewhat clearly visible was “O Lord white as jasmine.” [Akka Mahadevi used this as her ‘signature’ or ‘ankita’ in all her poems]. This appeared in fragments, visible intermittently, all over the large, dull and dark expanse, written in white.  On the right hand, bottom quarter of the canvas, in a burst of white, which seemed symbolic of light, the artist had painted a woman, sitting in a meditative posture, clearly in a trance, her long tresses covering her naked body. This light was surrounded by thorn-like lines and a great deal of dark colour. The rest of the canvas was cloudy, dark; with restless marks overlaying the text with glimpses of red or yellow. And then flowers were strewn across the surface as if showering the divine, but the blooms appeared only occasionally. These were painted in the same realistic style as the bananas and pomegranates I had seen earlier. This painting was odd. I did not feel reassured, or sublime. I could not respond without the intellectual process of looking, analyzing and mentally engaging with the work to find some empathy in its sense of struggle - of dealing with darkness and then lightening of this sombre mood – transcending it. The painting itself may not have conveyed much, but I came away intrigued by the idea of an artist working so obsessively on a few lines of a single verse.  When I got home, later that night, I searched my library, for ‘Speaking of Siva’[i], and read through some fifty verses by Mahadeviyakka[ii].

 The poems were evocative of her struggle with her body, being a woman and how social conditioning confined her in her quest for ecstasy. She is said to have roamed, in a gesture of defiance, with only her long tresses as cover for her naked body, seeking the love of the Lord and kindred spirits. I had bought the book five years ago in October 2007, after attending a poetry workshop organized by Caferati in New Delhi. Professor Shivaprakash, who conducted the workshop, had informed us that ‘vacana’ was possibly the earliest known form of free verse where the poet went directly to the heart of experience, to create new words for self expression. The idea had interested me then but I did not relate as much to the obsession with Siva and this has not changed. However, re-looking at the ‘vacanas’ did lead to some reflection.

The saint poets pursued their spiritual ideals by obsessively invoking ‘lord Shiva’ through their verse. Bhakti or intense love for God is an important aspect of Hinduism of the post-Vedic period, possibly beginning with the Bhagavad Gita. I was born into the Hindu tradition of idol worship and my maternal grandmother was a devout Krishna Bhakt[iii].  One would often find her talking to her two- feet tall, murti[iv] of Krishna, bathing and dressing him and singing bhajans[v] with a great deal of shraddha[vi]. I recollect one evening some thirty-five years ago, my grandfather and I had stood outside her mandir[vii] in their summer home in Shimla, listening to her sing and when she saw her husband standing there she blushed a beetroot red, hiding her face in the dupatta that was usually draped over the top and back of her head.  I could never understand this bashfulness, especially after having given birth to four of his children and neither could I relate to this devotion to a stone statue. I recollect my own mother, following the same ritual of doing aarti[viii]; singing ‘Aum jai jagdish hare’[ix] twice a day, sometimes in such a hurried way, it sounded nothing like a devout prayer.

The bhakti tradition in India encourages worship of deities in the form of murtis or sculptures, but I personally do not conform to this even as I do find myself often folding my hands in front of statues if I do visit a temple. I have a couple of them in my meditation room. They were gifts and I did not really know what else to do with them, so they lie there and I clean and use them for the traditional puja at Diwali. It’s complicated. Inherited ideas regarding faith make it complex and I find myself constantly re-defining its parameters for myself.

In that last two years a statue, being constructed by some locals in Chauma Village in the Palam Vihar region, grew to its full height of 64 feet and a larger than life Shiva, snake coiled around his neck, a Trishul[x] reaching for the skies and accessories traditionally associated with Shiva stood before my eyes. It does not face me but with its back to the East, faces West, or possibly even South west which means that I see the right side of the Shiva statue’s profile. As I draw up the blinds each morning, this is pretty much the first thing I see and often during the day, as I look into the expanse beyond it, in a moment of contemplation, my eyes rest on this bronzed cement statue. Prior to this, when I lived in Friends Colony, there had also been a small Shiva temple, constructed by Dhirendra Brahmachari, a close associate of Indira Gandhi, just two doors down. And even though I was not a devout Hindu, I took to visiting this temple each day on my way home from an evening walk. It may have something to do with the fact that my mother would regularly visit a Shiva temple and chadao jal[xi] on the linga[xii] that somehow it got passed on, like traditions do, or maybe it was the proximity of the temple and the need for a crutch that led me to doing the same for a while.

 The idea of Shiva does intrigue and looking at this visage each day has generated more than just causal curiosity. There are many stories surrounding this unusual being, typified as the God of destruction. Part of the Hindu Trinity of Brahma, Vishnu and Shiva, his place in the pantheon has had a chequered history where his innocent but angry nature has earned him much affection as also alienation. For me it is the idea of a God imbued with such human traits that endears. He loved with a passion and carried mementoes of his lost loves around his neck as a mundmala[xiii]. He was an ascetic with a volatile temper but found compassion when he finally gave into Parvati’s[xiv] pursuit of him and married her. He was brusque and not very finessed, but even so he is a prominent Hindu deity today.

 

After reading the ‘vacanas’, I went to sleep thinking about what I had read. The next morning I was sitting quietly in the kitchen waiting for some water to boil. There was no-one in the apartment, except for me. The silence of this part of the morning, of quietude carried over from a night of restful sleep and the early morning calm, is something I cherish. This morning, I tuned into the drone of the washing machine and microwave oven whirring simultaneously and wondered about objects of worship. I thought: if we can pray to a stone statue and find God or a connection with God through this, why could not these sounds I was hearing at this point, be as evocative of the same God?
 

Why is it only in birdsong and a river gushing down the stream that we think of as connecting us with God? Why is it that machines, which have been invented by men, who are also part of the same spirit, therefore also evocative of God, not worshipped? And then I remembered Vishvakarma the 'divine' engineer of the universe who is worshipped each year, the day after Diwali, when it is customary for all factory workers and craftsmen to worship their tools in his name. But is it the same thing I wonder.

I rather like the idea of worshipping everything from men, women, trees, rivers and birds to tools of one’s trade, but somehow feel that most of this is done as part of a ritual rather than any realized veneration.  In essence we need to find ways to find our connection with God or spirit through everything we do each day. In ancient India, everything was designated an art because it was not what the activity was but how it was done. It was the level of devotion which imbued everything- from cooking, kissing or weaving that made it an art. I guess the key to this would be to find the silence within, however we do, and then keep that as we go through the day, living with awareness of how everything is really just an extension of one’s own being and it really does not matter which path we walk. What matters is that we stay connected and feel empowered by this, writing poetry, walking naked in the forests or painting words on a canvas. 

What matters is not what we do, but how we experience life through it, to arrive at the ideal where everything, every experience is accepted with utmost faith.  This ultimate human endeavour is easier said than done, where as Akka Mahadevi wrote: 

“If sparks fly

  I shall think my thirst and hunger quelled
  If the skies tear down

  I shall think them pouring for my bath.
 
If a hillside slide on me
I shall think it flower for my hair.
O lord white as jasmine,
if my head falls from my shoulders
I shall think it your offering.”[xv]

---

[i] Penguin Classics ,translated by A.K Ramanujan

[ii] Akka Mahadevi [another way of addressing this saint poet]

[iii] devotee

[iv] statue

[v] Hymns/songs of devotion to God

[vi] devotion

[vii] temple

[viii] A prayer that is sung during an offering of light to the deity - a plate with lighted candles[diyas] is circled before the statue of the deity

[ix] Hail the lord of all creation/God

[x] Trident

[xi] Pouring milk mixed with water

[xii] Shivling/ lingam – representation of the HIndu deity Shiva used for worship in temples. The lingam has been interpreted as a symbol of male creative energy or the phallus and is represented with the yoni, a symbol of thegoddess r Shakti, female emergy. The union of lingam and yoni represents the indivisible " two-in-oneness of male and female, from whinc all life originates"

[xiii] Necklace of skulls

[xiv] Shiva’s consort

[xv]  Verse 65, translated from Kannada by A. K Ramanujan. Penguin classics pg 102