Mother and the shiuli blossoms

She had been a professional nurse. My mother. Sefali Ghosh was her maiden name before she got married to my dad and changed it to Sefali Dutta. Quite interestingly Sefali is the name of a flower found in this part of the world which blooms every autumn. So come autumn , I go into a different mind, a difficult mind too, if am I to say so, for it is like revisiting my childhood and having glimpses of my mother who happily went taking the stairs to heaven.
That year too the autumn had been awesome. The festivity had been all around. I took her for a ride around the city. Being a person who knew how bodies work, how diseases spread, she perhaps guessed something about her illness. She had a heart which had erratic beats. I remember she telling me all the time while we were having a tour of the city, through its lanes and bylanes, watching people and the trees and cars and all that are the usual part of the cityscape, that it might be her last tour with me. I laughed.
But then , she was a nurse. She knew it. Like she knew how my eyes had an inexpressible medical condition of being wet with salty water at that time when she said those words to me. She knew it that I was trying to be brave. Her brave boy.
And she climbed those stairs easily. Without making even a groan. She just slept and woke not.
Next year, I planted a sefali / shiuli tree just on our small piece of land by the car shed, beside that patio. It was summer. A full grown horrid Indian summer. The sun blazed hot and cruel. But I had to save that sefali tree. Every morning, that summer, even before the sun would turn like a scorching red hot ball of fire, I would wake up and water the tree. And every time I did that , I just prayed with all my heart that it survived that summer. The sultry boring lifeless summer of that year. With all my heart , nerve and sinew , I took care of the shiuli tree. If I would find its leaves turning yellowish a bit , I would check the soil, rake it, apply manure and water. In the evening, I would go near the tree and touch its little branches and leaves. I thought of myself as perfect gardener perhaps then. Caressing it. Loving it. Not that I took no care of other trees. Of course I did that. But that shiuli tree was always under my scanner. Once I found a worm crawling at its body. I took it and threw it far away. But before that I took and snapshot of it and searched the internet to find its genus and species. Once finding that I with some kind desperation like that of a medic, found out the measures to be taken to save the tree from onslaught of worms and pests like that.
That time I thought of myself a nurse too. A nurse to a tree. The shiuli tree.
Then came the monsoon. It rained for hours each day that monsoon. I had to take a spade and create a nullah or a makeshift channel on the ground to prevent that particular spot from getting waterlogged, knowing accumulation of water could weaken the tree at its roots.
That time I felt like a construction worker. A sewage cleaner also.
And then, the monsoon also passed, giving way to autumn. The delightful autumn.
For the first few days of the season, all other trees bore flowers. But that shiuli tree had none. I was worried. I talked to my wife. She went with me to that small garden we had beside the car shed. Our son went there too. We checked for buds. The tree though had grown taller and greener, had no signs of buds.
Butterflies!
My son suddenly quipped.
Yes, we needed butterflies to carry pollens and to make the tree bloom.
So again I searched for trees which attract butterflies most. Found some. Brought them and planted them.
That time I felt I was like a priest. Purifying the earth praying with all my heart for its beauty to arrive.
Praying those trees which attract birds and bees and butterflies to grow faster.
They did. Butterfiles arrived. Bees too.
The smell of flowers wrought my senses with joy.
I felt that time I had become half of that garden.
Only that shiuli tree.
I waited.
We all waited.

Then one fine morning, as I went near the tree I found them. Those white shiuli blossoms with an orange core waving to me from the branches of the tree. They had bloomed overnight!
I called my wife and son.
We three stood under the tree.
The air around it had that unmistakable fragrance of shiuli blossoms.

That time I felt perfect like a nurse.

Kumortuli

One of the most talked about spots of the city of Kolkata and often visited by tourists and photographers is ‘Kumortuli’ as it is so called because of the residences of clay image/ idol makers which congregate here.

Situated in ward number nine of Kolkata Municipal Corporation, between Ahiritola and Shovabazar, by the banks of river Hooghly, this place accommodated potters and clay idol makers after the British East India Company decided to create separate districts for ‘ the company’s workmen’ as can be found in the orders of John Zephaniah Holwell who succeeded Robert Clive as the Governor of Bengal. In accordance with those orders different ‘ districts’ were formed like ‘ collotollah’ ( quarters for oilmen), ‘ chuttarpara’ ( quarters for carpenters), ‘ ahiritollah’ ( quarters for cowherd), ‘ kumortolly’ ( quarters for potters and clay idol makers), etc;

From then on till date , many families of potters and clay idol makers , have not only been living here, but also have been keeping alive their profession of making idols and pottery items.

A visit to this place around this time of the year would be a fascinating one for any art lover or photographer.

For in the lanes and by lanes of kumortuli we could see how the artisans and clay idol makers work on to give shapes to the idols. They spend most of their days and nights in front of the idols they are busy creating. The creation of the idols, a time consuming and fully labour intensive process ( as there is hardly any use of machinations ) often takes months and most of the artisans who work there, keep on working under time constraints, around this time of the year, for come rain, come shine, they are supposed to deliver the idols of Durga and her sons and daughters within the stipulated schedule and there is no way of moving an inch away from it. So they work on.

On my visits to this place, everytime I am left amazed by the sheer, should I say, devotion of these workers who, not by any stretch of imagination, getting hefty pays, simply work on in cramped places, often covered by tin roofs or tarpaulin. They work there and often take their naps on the floor of those tents or sheds before they wake up and start again with their works.

I have found how women folk of the area also join in their male counterparts in helping them with making ‘adornments’ made of shola or thermocol as they are called.

Though idol making had remained by and large a male bastion, in recent years , many talented women have made forays into that. With the advent of theme based puja, the demand for traditional idols of Devi Durga have perhaps dwindled but still, many idols are being made and sent from here to different parts of the state and also outside. Kumortuli has its own Durga Puja as well which got started way back in 1933.

Woman and Her Muse, a review

Woman and her muse

Author: Lopamudra Banerjee,

Publisher : Authorspress, New Delhi 110016,

ISBN 978-93-88008-42-6

Musings are part of every poet’s journey to writing. Without musing how can a poet write, dream, nurture words and embellish them to make them express his or her thoughts, beliefs, wanderings, religiosity, essence of being?

Lopamundra Banerjee has put her womanhood at the centre and like a flower , spreading petals, out of that centre are spread her poems and prose and once they spread they reach varied dimensions of both space and time. Divided into six sections, namely a) Five weird musings, b) Kolkata, the poetry I breathe , c) Bon Voyage , d) Portrait of a woman as the artist, e) The Durga series and f) cinema musings , this book of poetry and memoir brings the reader to the realm of poet’s mind and how fleeting things of life cast their impressions upon it. Being a collection of different poems and prose pieces written at different times, the work , quite naturally traces back and forth, the poet’s journeys, both on the physical plane which is real in the most real terms and that flight of mind which is the inseparable part of any poet and writer.

She has made it quite clear in ‘ Woman and Her Muse’ , the poem included in the first section ( pg 23) :

‘ when she speaks poetry/wordless walls stare/invisible, foamy dreams./cardboard boxes of memories/childhood/scattered ashes,frozen in time.’

Yes, she has drawn a rich tapestry of her mind and its richness lies not in mere weaving of words so to say, for it puts the reader into a wider perspective. How much wide it is?

Well , for that the reader will have to believe in her ‘Writing in cursive, Melancholic letters’ :

‘First , a cursive a, then two swaying p’s , then an expectant l floating with a languid e;’

Never it has happened that apple, the fruit of knowledge, has been so deciphered! The children learning cursive handwriting can well do that on their exercise books and here is Lopa , doing the same thing but on a larger scale. She is taking from her notebook , the proverbial notebook of a poet, those writings which stirred her and also which came out of stirring, and putting them one after another like canvases being put before the eyes of the discerning reader to grasp their meanings, texture, tone and variety.

And that is why, the cover page has probably that pair of eyes of a face ( a work of art done by Sufia Khatoon, a poet and a painter/artist).

A pair of eyes that stare at the reader and at the same time, as the readers stare back at the book, its pages, at those printed alphabets arranged in forms of poems and prose, they find how seasons, places, people, photographs, come and linger and cast an unforgettable mark upon them.

If the city of Kolkata, arrives through ‘ the hungry salt of tears/ pelting on a window…’ in Tilottama , at Jorasanko it is not only ‘the red brick building ‘ but a building having ‘ the images illustrated. Kadambari, Mrinalini sing still, gazing from the white, lingering void’.

And then College Street:

‘I am a bystander in your serpentine lanes in the crossroads of my journey…’

And finally , Princep Ghat:

‘I know some evenings

Your breath brushes past mine,

And we are kindred souls,

Burning in each other’s fire.’

And Rowing : The Boat Song:

‘Tonight, I am in need of your mast and anchor,

I am chased by endless wafting.’

And when the city of her birth comes so, there should be as always, a tribute to the greatest bard.

And there, I find myself not as a mere reviewer. Reading her humble homage to Tagore, is like finding the true meaning of all writings and all lives we live. There she surpasses her womanhood. There she reaches to find where lies that touch of divinity which Gurudeb had left for all to find solace and comfort.

So she finds comfort in Tagore as she tries to come in terms of her Homecoming while rearranging her old study room all alone.

If places take up a part of her mental space , invariably there are people too.

If Between the Folds and Pleats : ARoseate Sonnet ( invented by Dr. A.V.Koshy) takes the metaphor of the sari and extends it to find where lies the agonies and hurts of a woman or all women, a memoir written for Get Bengal during Kolkata Book Fair, brings into fore her longing to cross paths with long lost friends.

Bon Voyage, the next section, is all about traveling and finding beauty and meditative contemplation. Be it By the side of Table Rock Lake, Missouri, or Kerala: a series of vignettes, or To The Grand Minaret, Qutub Minar, she finds how each and every place opens up vistas leading to her past and shaping her present.

Those vistas, are they sought like Joyce? I was asking myself the moment I moved to Portrait of a woman as the artist.

Is there Stephen in everyone of us , trying to come in terms with the intellectual awakening that we face in this world?

May be , and for Lopa, being a mother who is also very much part of Indian Diaspora, putting The Topography of the Mind, is the most sensitive and subjective work to do and she has done it with that candid tone which can not even be found in Joyce, primarily because Lopa is not following any Joycean repertoire, she is not adhering to his theme or his narrative technique.

She is doing it with her own characteristic elan. And so she can claim easily :

‘Crazy girls, listen, the topography of a fertile adult mind of a woman , turning middle aged and forlorn, is a queer one’.

She does not weave a folklore, she does not take circumlocutory ways. She is blatant. She holds no bar while she puts into paper her mind.

And so she resurrects. She finds Laxmanrekha: The pangs of Freedom and also Na Hanyate:The Resurrection. She responds to love poems of Kamala Das and let loose the fiery breath of a woman while going beyond cage following Maya Angelou.

She becomes Panchali and with fullest devotion, calls her Sakha, Krishna before laying open a bruised woman’s heart to Partha, Bheemsen, Dharmaraaj, Nakul and Sahadev and Karna.

The Durga series, inspired by paintings of Monica Talukdar and other works is eclectic as it should be and what takes this segment to its height of humanism is that belief of a poet and writer to allude Asifa Bano to The Goddess who Dies.

Cinema Musings begins with For Charulata and the Broken Home, which is quite logical given the fact that she has translated ‘Nastanirh‘ ( The Broken Home).

Next comes Durga and Apu and then invariably Apu and Aparna.

From there as we move, we find ghazals, Gulzar , Geeta Dutt.

The sufferings, the dreams, the journeys- all that make her life and make her a poet and a writer, are put with unabashed honesty and the culmination of that honesty is her tribute to Julie Andrews, the last but not the least one included in this incredible collection of poems and prose and this time, she generates her sound of music with profundity.