Revisit: What's New, What's Old? (Nandini Sahu)

Nandini Sahu

The Sea of Pedigrees

True that. A bottomless embrace is the response 
even when the question is mysterious.
It transfers sustenance, security, keenness
guides and glides harmony apposite
from body to body, soul to soul.
Merging animated sans questions
charms the senses and touches your passion.
This, only this, is panacea of the cosmos, the creation. 

You whispered these honeyed words in my ears
when I bit your earlobes in a deep embrace.
I floated in the sea of frenzied dreams
and dream visions when you futilely attempted to explore
the nook and cranny--just all of it--
of my body beautiful.

It’s not easy my love
to touch the mysteries of the ocean.
And I smiled prevailing.
You seemed to be at some solution.
I looked deep in your eyes.
I could essentially see your desires of pedigrees
unfulfilled, unattended, unrequited.
Instantly I took charge of
your dreams, wishes and your subterranean passion.

I whispered, ‘take me as you like me,
it’s a complete surrender.’
You assumed I was right,
and you preferred the act of capitulation.

As I merged with you in you
and mocked to be asking for clemency
you smiled honored.
You said, ‘you ain’t seen nothing yet lady!
That was my triumph! Making you the man,
the elemental man, was my resolution.

Now the memory of that moment is my safekeeping.
Ah, I have to rather safeguard it 
lest time’s talon corrupts it
in my myriad day long mundane action.
***


Stitching a Love

I am stitching a love, clothing a camaraderie
building a door through which you can enter

walking with the wind, facing 
history and taking in my stride the time’s talon.

Our days are nourished with the needle and the thread.
Our sewing home-base is our happy abode.

Our darned love tells our cherished tale.
Striking possessions come composed, one stitch at a spell.

What I style with my needles, I bounce with my heart. 
Any day is a great day consumed by our needlepoint.

Stitching a love – it’s not just a dexterity, it’s a healing.
Love, we have to collaborate in this webbing.

I am merely a strand of it, minus you I am nothing.
Whatever you do to my web, you essentially do a therapeutic thing.

Love, stitching is symbolic of hale and hearty human features,
stitching a love, you are darning our pasts and edifying future prospects.
***


Zero Point

I am at the zero point of divine energy
in the engagement of numbers in enjoining my universe.
The muse of my life is to accomplish freedom
 and mount to sundrenched worlds.

My existence is designed to realize inner transparency
of the metalanguage and institution, and
 zero is my witness, guardian, channel and champion.

Zero is an algebraic account of Nirguna Brahman
 the Brahman sans a form and devoid of intrinsic worth. 
Nirguna Brahman is a timeless ambiguity. 
The known-unknown. So is zero.

The bodily laws of the cosmos 
do not pertain to zero.
Zero rises as a link 
between the material and the metaphysical
 between cause and conviction.

The least and also the leading of all,
 it could neither be ruined nor twisted.
 I find it everywhere, 
veiled in every other figure.
Zero is symbol of the primitive.
There is no other in order 
that can embody me at this point
with such precision and such attached-detachment.
***


These days I do only what the heart says

These days I do only what the heart says.
These days I swim in the deep waters within,
this is the vanaprastha, emotive of the jungle inside;
no, it’s not leaving living-life, it’s delving 
deeper into the verve,
gloriously singing Gloria’s romantic number
“You are too good to be true…”

These days I do only what my heart says.
I warm up my hands with brewing coffee
and the soul with the kaleidoscopic changes around.
Brooding over my own fascination, happily
parting with the ever-nourished austere Puritan gravity,
these days I listen to my spirit.
Marvelling, perhaps there is someone at the other end ---
too willing to read, waiting eagerly
for my outpourings
to show on the
screen.

These days I just let time get inundated
in the racy and energetic madness of a 
‘fleet-footed-polar-deer’.
These mornings I have the leisure to
argue over the daily breaking news,
I have the occasion to wear a confident smile
and the wish to read messages
from friends and strangers as well.
These days I am reaching a stage 
when I can dictate terms and life doesn’t
have much of a choice.
Talking only blissful things
surrounded all the time by
frolicking flowers and cool
tender moonlight and foam on a sea of frenzy.
Being quietly impatient, engaged in an eternal monologue 
smiling at the innuendo and paradox of it
living in the moments impassioned, uninhibited,
a little flirtatious, a little mischievous perhaps,
marveling at the flash of
buzzing, inexplicable joy.

These evenings I have the time to water the plants
without worrying much about the 
daily homework of my child
or about the evening menu.
I have the rider of leaving the kitchen
to the cook, the worrying jiffy to time,
and the wind to blow whichever direction it pleases--
without my approval.
These evenings
I can reach home late, after a solitary long drive
following the tinkling wind chime
and the singing birds.
Afternoons I can spend with friends 
planning home for the homeless and 
pouring life-giving manna to the bowl of the lifeless.

My friends say, these days I do nothing much
nothing worthwhile
because
these days I do only what my heart says.

Smiling glorious like the Shakespearean heroine,
sparkling wit, sharp mind, quick repartee and awesome energy
and of course, governing the scene.
Living life
of sensuous abundance
under a star-spangled sky, on the apex of the blue-green waves
with their vast vastness all around,
breathing an elating air of sovereignty and bondage.

These days I understand that no one can
affront my spirit. Can the cuckoo slur the
tranquility of the night, or the firefly dishonor the sun?
Just because they sing or smolder!!
Disallowing myself the bliss of life
I have but piled up wishes galore
in the alcoves of my being. These days my body
understands its heritage and its equitable wishes.
I know, it will no more be swindled.
Because 
these days I do only what my heart says.
My body is the judgment of my spirit;
and it is me to bring forth engaging melody
from the bemused chaotic sounds to it.

These days I do only what my heart says.
Because the heart may weary, but it would never die.

These days, I do not try not to sound romantic
as earlier
because my efforts to do so
prove futile as at some unguarded moment, 
some word, expression shows
my true inner-self and I stand revealed.
Only the heart speaks. No carrot-and-stick story, this.
No rewards and punishment theory
to induce behavior.

I am like a bird on the wing, soaring into the clouds, 
seized with a sublime feeling of ecstasy, 
in the first flush of love
and looking down at the earth below
treating everything there as apparently insignificant
compared to what my heart bids 
me do. 
Silence does not hurt me anymore,
though I realize words have their own worth 
and necessity; sometimes they don't have 
substitutes and they have to be there
in some form---oral or written.
These days I speak and listen
the pursuit of silence is over.

In this game of hide-and-seek, I am the
prime mover, enjoying
my occasional wild wandering spirits 
(a poet's prerogative I suppose).
These days I do only what my heart says.

These days I live 
in uninhibited wishes and irresistible charm
and unabashed confiding
while enjoying the occasional mood swings.
Not distinguishing between 
their quality and quantity
drinking words, mouth agape,
these days I speak and listen to life.
These days I do only what my heart says.
***

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