Join us for the exhilarating launch of "Wild Women: Seekers, Protagonists, and Goddesses in Sacred Indian Poetry" at the Jaipur Literature Festival 2024! Dive into the mystical realm of Indian poetry as we explore the untamed spirit of women through the ages with Arundhati Subramaniam and Malashri Lal.
#JFL #JaipurLiteratureFest #JFL2024 #JaipurLiteratureFest2024 #Jaipur #JaipurDiaries #Book #WomenEmpowerment #AuthorTalks #Oneindia
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#JFL #JaipurLiteratureFest #JFL2024 #JaipurLiteratureFest2024 #Jaipur #JaipurDiaries #Book #WomenEmpowerment #AuthorTalks #Oneindia
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NewsTranscript
00:00 Good afternoon, everyone.
00:06 This is a book launch.
00:08 And although I have been reading the PDF copies, this is the first time that any of us is holding
00:15 the published book.
00:17 Congratulations to Penguin.
00:21 Congratulations, Arundhati.
00:24 So, Arundhati, let me start by talking about the title of the book, because when the audience
00:40 was asked if they want to see wild men, I don't think too many people raised their hands.
00:46 But when they were asked if they want to see wild women, almost everyone in this room raised
00:51 their hands.
00:52 Okay.
00:53 So, when you talk about wild women, and you associate them with seekers and sacred poetry,
01:02 it seems to me that there's a kind of a paradox there, because within the Indian tradition,
01:10 we have often talked about the divine feminine in terms of Shakti and Prakriti.
01:17 But when we talk of them, we think of the sacred rather than the wild.
01:22 So what is the sense in which you've used that word, because it sort of suggests a kind
01:29 of dangerous possibilities.
01:32 Did you have that in mind?
01:37 That's a wonderful question, Mala.
01:39 And I just want to say how delighted I am to be in conversation here with you again.
01:43 We were last in conversation around a book called Women Who Wear Only Themselves.
01:49 And in some ways, I see this as a continuation of the same exercise.
01:55 Why is it dangerous?
01:56 And is there danger?
01:57 I hope so.
01:59 I hope so, because that is really what this book aspires to do.
02:04 The business of...
02:05 Let's look at it in three ways.
02:07 I think the business of poetry, by definition, is dangerous.
02:12 Because poetry is about questioning ready-made language of any kind.
02:19 So in that sense, it is always a molten, mercurial, unpredictable utterance.
02:28 And then when it comes to women, the fact is that I was very aware quite early in my
02:36 life that the license to have a body is a very recent right for women.
02:44 The license to have a voice is also a recent right.
02:48 And so, as a young poet, I was uncomfortable with the idea of women on sacred journeys,
02:55 because it seemed to me that it involved turning into some kind of ethereal sprite, turning
03:02 into some kind of disembodied voice, bloodless voice, anemic voice.
03:12 These were not going to be women with hungers and hormones and appetites.
03:17 And I wanted to read about women with appetites, with an appetite for this world, and an appetite
03:24 for more, for an appetite for all of it, for life itself.
03:29 That's the kind of woman I wanted to read about.
03:32 And then I discovered, as my own spiritual journey unfolded and took on a certain momentum,
03:39 I was deeply nourished by male mystics.
03:42 And I'm very grateful to all of them, all the male mystic poets from St. John of the
03:47 Cross to Hafez to Tukaram to Kabir.
03:53 But my question constantly was, where are the women?
03:58 Weren't there women who made these journeys into these uncomfortable parts of the self?
04:02 And did they not leave behind any testimony to that journey?
04:07 And I discovered then this paradox, that we have two kinds of women.
04:13 There are just a handful that are celebrated, and I'm talking here about women like Mirabai,
04:20 whom many of us are familiar with, or Andal, or Akka Mahadevi, or maybe Lal Dede.
04:27 And even here I found that these are women who have been prettified, sentimentalized
04:36 into calendar art.
04:38 And I couldn't smell the danger in them anymore.
04:44 They seemed to have turned into plaster saints.
04:47 And then there were the other women whom I began to uncover in the course of working
04:52 on this project, which really became a very chastening project, because I kept discovering.
04:59 And all these women I discovered were largely unknown, certainly unknown to me.
05:06 Sometimes there were people in that particular region that knew of their work, but they were
05:11 largely ignored.
05:13 And I realized that religious narratives have either flattened out women into these cardboard
05:18 cartoon shapes and forms, and then there are the rationalist narratives that ignore these
05:24 women altogether.
05:26 And both ways we lose them.
05:29 So for me, this project was about sniffing out all that makes them scorching and alive
05:40 and relevant even today.
05:42 And that brings me to the third level of danger, since you brought up the word which I love.
05:48 Society is a dangerous business.
05:50 Clearly being a woman is a dangerous business.
05:53 It's inconvenient, which is why so many have been silenced or erased or just ignored or
05:58 trivialized.
06:00 But the business of the sacred brings us to another kind of danger altogether.
06:06 So that's a third level of risk involved, because we are talking about the terrain that
06:12 is so uncharted that every woman who walks it has left behind a whole litany of questions.
06:23 And to give you a sense of those questions, here's Akka Mahadevi, the Kannada woman mystic
06:30 of the 12th century, who says, "Take these husbands who die, decay, and feed them to
06:38 your kitchen fires.
06:40 Give me the immortal one."
06:42 That's the kind of danger we're talking about, not the kind of woman you want to spend an
06:46 evening with, certainly.
06:48 A difficult woman, a strange woman.
06:52 And then there is Lal Daid who says, "I pestled my heart in love's mortar.
06:58 I roasted my heart," she says in another poem.
07:02 And you wonder where is all this pestling and roasting taking place?
07:07 And you realize it's happening in a kitchen, but not the kind of kitchen you want to be
07:11 a part of.
07:13 This is a dangerous, sacred laboratory where the woman is a powerful alchemist, and she
07:21 is the subject of her own experiment as well.
07:24 So it's a scary place to be.
07:27 And there are so many others.
07:29 There's the 14th century Dalit woman mystic, Sohra Bai, who says, "If menstrual blood makes
07:35 me impure, show me who wasn't born of that blood."
07:45 Later there's the 18th century Tamil woman mystic, she is a Brahmin widow, and she questions
07:52 every taboo around religious ritual impurity, menstrual taboos, and even the idea that saliva
08:00 can pollute, the word for saliva and the pollution that's caused by saliva is yechal in Tamil.
08:08 And she says, "If yechal is such a big deal, then creation itself is the yechal of the
08:16 creator.
08:17 The first form is yechal, the first sound is yechal, and the four Vedas are yechal,"
08:27 she says.
08:28 So this is a kind of audacity, I think, which took my breath away.
08:35 It really took my breath away.
08:37 And maybe this is the right time to read a poem if I can find it.
08:41 And maybe while I look for it, I found it.
08:44 Okay.
08:45 Otherwise, I was going to hand the mic over to Mala for a moment.
08:50 But maybe before we move on to your next question, I thought I'd read this poem by Janabai.
08:56 Janabai is a 13th century woman mystic, and she's a maid servant in the house of a celebrated
09:04 poet, Namdev.
09:07 So we know her caste and class antecedents.
09:10 She is of lowly antecedents, traditionally, that's how she would be viewed.
09:15 But this is a woman of such impunity that when she's tired, she asks her god, Vittala,
09:22 to come and do the dishes.
09:24 And she says in her poetry that Vittala obliges.
09:27 And when she's even more tired, she asks Vittala to come and wash her hair.
09:31 And Vittala obliges.
09:33 And he even delouses her in the process.
09:36 So this is the kind of god who reminds you of a very intimate relationship that is possible
09:43 with him.
09:45 You no longer have a divide between the servant and the master.
09:49 This is a relationship of extraordinary equality, as is evident in this particular dangerous
09:58 utterance by Janabai, translated by Arun Kulatkar.
10:04 "God, my darling, do me a favor and kill my mother-in-law.
10:13 I will feel lonely when she is gone.
10:16 But you will be a good god, won't you, and kill my father-in-law?
10:21 I will be glad when he is gone.
10:24 But you will be a good god, won't you, and kill my sister-in-law?
10:29 I will be free when she is gone.
10:32 I will pick up my begging bowl and be on my way.
10:37 Let them drop dead, says Jenny.
10:41 Then we will be left alone, just you and I."
10:44 Isn't that dangerous?
10:48 It is.
10:50 It's deliciously dangerous.
10:54 Going to your introduction to the book, Arundhati, you talk of the connection between the spiritual,
11:02 the sacred, and also the sensual.
11:06 And I was very intrigued to read the poems by the courtesan poets.
11:12 For instance, I'm sure everyone here knows the story of Amrapali.
11:17 And yet, the inheritance that we have of that story is of this beautiful courtesan.
11:24 But you have a poem by Amrapali where she's old, and she's talking of her shriveled body.
11:31 And then you have other such courtesan poets, including Piro, who took refuge in a sacred
11:41 place to escape a certain kind of persecution.
11:45 Would you like to tell us more?
11:46 Because we don't often think about courtesan poets writing sacred poetry.
11:53 I'm so glad you mentioned these, because there are several courtesan poets in the book.
11:58 There's Amrapali, 2,500 years ago.
12:02 There is Piro in the 19th century.
12:05 There's Kanopatra.
12:07 There is Sule Sankave.
12:09 There are many poets.
12:10 But what excited me about Amrapali, I think many of us have grown up, I certainly did,
12:17 watching that film.
12:18 There's a famous Hindi film with the beautiful Vaijayanthi Mala.
12:23 And I think that was a lasting impression for me of a woman who is not just beautiful,
12:29 but a woman aware of her beauty and famed for her beauty.
12:34 And then there is the Teri Gatha that offers us this moving poem of a woman who later became
12:42 a Buddhist nun, the courtesan who became the Buddhist nun.
12:46 And you have this poem about Amrapali looking down at her body and surveying the ravages
12:53 of this body.
12:56 It's a poignant poem, but it's also to my mind not just a wisdom story about all bodies
13:03 decay.
13:04 She's not just wagging a cautionary finger at the perishability of the body that we all
13:10 need to remember.
13:12 I believe she's also reminding us of her immortal moment of beauty.
13:18 So I like to read a boast built into that poem as well.
13:24 But you know, you're right about the sensual Mala, because I find that perhaps what I was
13:30 in quest of when putting this book together is I wanted women who acknowledged their bodies
13:37 in some way, not women who wished away or spiritualized their bodies or told us that
13:44 it was an illusion.
13:46 I was looking for those poems that acknowledged the body.
13:50 There are the women renunciates who talk about the fact that the body is perishable.
13:56 There are the householder women, and there are many in the Gujarati tradition.
14:01 There are many in the Kannada Vachana tradition, many of them who had partners and who saw
14:07 their partners as spiritual travelers, fellow travelers.
14:12 But even this is a triadic relationship because there is the woman, there is her partner,
14:17 and there is the presence of the sacred always.
14:21 But these are women who acknowledge the body as a possibility, not as a liability.
14:28 And there are the wonderful women on tantric paths of self transformation, who see the
14:34 body as a stepping stone to the beyond.
14:39 So the breadth of engagement to my mind just reading them, it took my breath away because
14:46 there's Amrapali looking down at the aging body, there is Avvaiyar, there is Karekkal
14:53 Ammaiyar, two major Tamil women poets, one of whom chose the body of an old woman.
15:00 The other we are told chose the body of a demonic ghost.
15:05 Both women rejected decorative ideas of beauty.
15:10 Later we have someone like Akka Mahadevi, the 12th century woman mystic, or we have
15:15 Lal Dede in the 14th century, who cast off all clothing, at least for some time in their
15:20 lives, cast off all clothing and walked the world naked, clad in the light of the sky,
15:28 as they say.
15:30 And then there is someone like the 18th century Telugu woman poet, Tharigonda Venkamamba, who
15:37 although she was widowed early, chose to wear colored apparel, chose to wear a Mangal Sutra,
15:44 chose to wear vermilion, chose to wear flowers in her hair, refused to bow down to any of
15:51 the male religious pontiffs of her time.
15:54 We are told the elders asked her to bow down and she refused.
15:57 She asked one of the pontiffs to rise, he did, and then she bowed down to the seat.
16:03 And a glorious legend tells us that the seat went up in flames.
16:09 And that's when the pontiff realized, this is a dangerous woman.
16:16 I think what is interesting to me is that despite all these varied relationships with
16:21 the body, these are women who see the body not as an impediment, but they see it as an
16:30 integral part of the, an instrument of the divine, not as a barrier, but as the basis
16:39 of the spiritual journey.
16:41 To me, that makes them exciting.
16:42 Indeed, very right.
16:46 But the other aspect of your book, which I found fascinating, is that there are men who
16:52 are writing about women sacred protagonists.
16:56 You have a long section on Jaydev's Geet Govind.
17:02 You have citations from Bhole Shah.
17:06 Now even if you were to take only two of those examples, the creation of Radha, for instance,
17:12 and I have a deep interest in that subject for the book that Namita Gokhale and I put
17:16 together in search of Radha, in finding Radha.
17:20 What is your take on how men portray women who have a sacred identity?
17:26 With Bhole Shah, it's cross-dressing that I'm interested in because you capture the
17:32 moment when Bhole Shah wears gungroos and female clothing and braids his hair and dances
17:40 before his master.
17:42 And those are your examples of protagonists and seekers.
17:46 So it's not only women writing sacred poetry about women and female body, but there are
17:52 several men who are featured in your book.
17:56 I'm glad and I'm glad we are moving to the wild men.
18:01 But the wild men, to my mind, turn wild, at least in this book, when they channel the
18:06 female voice.
18:08 So I'm very glad you also mentioned your book on Radha.
18:11 For those of you who haven't seen this particular book, it's a book I'd recommend.
18:16 It made me particularly glad to be in conversation with Malishree today because it's a book that
18:20 was important to me.
18:23 But I wonder whether I may, just before I turn to men, because I don't want to turn
18:27 to men too easily.
18:33 But we don't have too much time, but I have to have just one poem by a woman poet.
18:38 This is a lesser known, I want to have some lesser known voices.
18:42 I want to read a very short poem by Liral Bai.
18:46 Liral Bai was a 14th and 15th century Gujarati woman poet, and this is her talking about
18:52 the body.
18:53 So the body is not just about...
18:55 These are not just women who question taboos around the body that are religious and cultural
19:02 and social.
19:03 They're also talking about the body as an incredible site of self-discovery.
19:10 I just want that note of rapture in this reading as well.
19:15 Liral Bai, translated by Neelima Shukla Bhatt.
19:20 Who styled this brittle body?
19:24 Why was it fashioned so frail?
19:27 And yet, within it are the moon, the sun, and a million stars.
19:36 Within it are the hammer and the billow that shaped the self.
19:42 Within this jar are the tree, the fruits, and the reaper.
19:47 Within it, the orchard, the tree bed, the water, and the wind.
19:53 Within it, the lock, the key, and the locksmith.
19:59 Within it flow the Ganga.
20:01 Within it flows the Yamuna.
20:03 At Guru Gamshi's feet, Liral Bai proclaims, "Here I have found the precious true word."
20:14 I wanted this note of inner discovery to enter as well before I move to the male poets.
20:20 I'm aware of the time.
20:22 And I will say this, that I think what makes the male voices exciting to me is what happens
20:28 to them when they start speaking of women protagonists, or when they channel the female
20:34 voice.
20:36 And I think what happens here is that in some way the female presence becomes an invitation
20:46 to becoming a channel, not a custodian.
20:51 These are not men who become custodians of the divine.
20:55 As soon as they speak in the female voice, they become a conduit.
21:01 That shift happens.
21:03 And suddenly the relationship with God becomes much more mutual, much more reciprocal, much
21:10 more erotic, much more playful, much more egalitarian.
21:16 So when you have Namalvar, the 10th century Tamil poet, he has this mother talking in
21:22 one of her poems, and she says, "What on earth has happened to my daughter?
21:27 Ever since she was touched by the divine, she started talking like a sage."
21:34 So there's a look, there's utter incredulity in her voice when she talks about it.
21:39 If there's time, I'll read you one of those poems.
21:41 This is a translation by A.K.
21:43 Ramanujan.
21:44 Then you have the poet that Mala touches on, Jayadeva, in the 12th century.
21:52 We know that Jayadeva's Krishna pines for his Radha with the same intensity that Radha
22:00 pines for him.
22:02 It's a relationship of that kind of mutuality where both know they will be incomplete without
22:09 the other.
22:11 The divine needs the human as much as the human needs the divine.
22:16 In the 15th century Gujarati poet, Narsi Mehta, we have the Gopi tying Krishna's arms to the
22:22 bedpost.
22:24 You know who has the upper hand in that erotic adventure.
22:28 We also have Krishna dressing in a sari in Narsi Mehta's poems and sitting on a swing,
22:34 all to please his beloved.
22:36 In the 17th century Oriya poet, Sale Bega, we have Radha kicking Krishna out of bed.
22:43 All this is only because it's a relationship of such intimacy that you're reminded that
22:48 the closer you get to the rising temperature of the bedchamber, which is the site of sexual
22:53 union as a metaphor for spiritual union, you're reminded that all identities now, all hierarchies
23:01 now are in a state of flux.
23:04 You don't know where the woman ends and the man begins.
23:07 You don't know where the human ends and the divine begins.
23:10 You really don't know who's who, as one of the poets says.
23:15 Who is the man and who is the woman in this festival?
23:20 So I think oppositions becoming a festival rather than a battle is what the women poets
23:25 invite us to.
23:27 And I think it changes the timber of the male voice when they start speaking in the female
23:33 voice.
23:34 I want to just read you one poem if I may.
23:37 It's my favorite and I've often read it, including at Chetan Mahajan's workshop in the Himalayas
23:43 not so long ago.
23:45 He's somewhere in the audience, I think.
23:47 There you are.
23:48 This is the 15th century Telugu poet, Annamacharya.
23:53 And Annamacharya, when he speaks in the male voice, has these imploring, beseeching poems
24:00 to the divine.
24:02 Fairly predictable, wonderful, but predictable.
24:05 But when he speaks in the female voice, something shifts.
24:09 And this female voice belongs to a woman who is no ordinary woman.
24:16 She is the goddess herself.
24:18 And she is the goddess Alamelumanga, speaking to the god Venkatesha.
24:23 And she says, in a poem that is as romantic as it is existential, it's a playful poem
24:30 where she's constantly saying, "He's the boss."
24:34 But you always know what she really means.
24:38 Here's the poem.
24:41 He's the master.
24:44 What can I say when he says I'm better than the others?
24:47 I don't even have to ask.
24:49 He takes whatever I say as a command.
24:52 Why should I brag?
24:54 My husband is under my thumb.
24:56 He's the master.
24:59 I'm always in his arms.
25:00 He's always laughing with me.
25:02 He's the god on the hill.
25:04 And I, I'm Alamelumanga.
25:08 Do I have to make a statement?
25:10 He's my slave.
25:13 He's the master.
25:16 That's the kind of in-betweenness that these poems invite us to.
25:20 So why would Bulleshah not feel free to dress as a woman?
25:25 Why would Krishna not feel free to wear that yellow sari and sit on a swing?
25:31 Why would all these states of liminality not occur?
25:34 Because that is really what sacred poetry is inviting us to.
25:38 It is inviting us to those places where all definitions melt away.
25:44 [applause]
25:46 >> Thank you, Arundhati, for that beautiful exposition on your book and the question of
25:58 identity and in-betweenness and liminality that makes us rethink the idea of the sacred.
26:07 I'm sure there are lots of questions from the audience here, and we do have time.
26:13 Somebody will pass the mic around, please.
26:16 Someone here in the first row, and then somebody right there in the back.
26:26 >> Great session.
26:27 So my question to you is you might have come across many female poets while you were doing
26:36 your research for your book.
26:37 So were there any female poets whose opinions did not sit well with you, whose views you
26:44 totally opposed?
26:47 >> That's a good question, actually.
26:48 I'd say I really don't know.
26:50 You know, I'm interested in these women's poems above all, rather than their politics.
26:56 I'm interested in what their poems say to me.
26:59 And I will say that there are many women in the book who are just so diverse, I'm not
27:04 sure they would get on with each other.
27:06 But that doesn't really matter to me.
27:07 I see them as an integral part of this book, because plurality is such an integral part
27:13 of this book.
27:14 There's a whole section at the end of goddess poems, and goddesses only survive where there
27:22 is plurality.
27:25 Because goddesses represent all the aspects of creation, all those that seem oppositional,
27:31 the fearsome and the beautiful, dark and light, they throw every one of our snug definitions
27:37 into disorder.
27:40 This is the reason why when cultures turn to very dogmatic ideas of one answer to every
27:48 question, when they turn to those kinds of ideas, the goddesses vanish.
27:53 I just wanted all of them to be here, as many as possible.
27:57 I'd have liked the book to be 300 pages longer, but of course Vaishali Mathur and Penguin
28:02 would have been even more concerned that they already were.
28:07 So I wanted that diversity.
28:09 I wanted that plurality.
28:10 I wanted that mess.
28:12 I wanted it to be a baggy anthology.
28:15 It doesn't matter whether we agree with everyone, does it really?
28:18 It doesn't matter.
28:19 For me, this is the sisterhood, in a sense.
28:23 Whether a woman is a devotee, or whether she's a Sufi or a Buddhist or a Shaiva or a Vaishnava
28:28 or a Tantrika, doesn't really matter.
28:31 Whether she belongs to this century or 2,500 years ago, doesn't really matter.
28:36 These are women who ask...
28:44 I think we all feel a need, a deep thirst, whether we are men or women, we feel a deep
28:50 thirst for a less lopsided, more inclusive heritage of spirituality.
28:55 We all feel it.
28:57 Whether we articulate it or not, whether we are aware of it or not.
29:01 I think what to me constitutes a sisterhood is that these are women who asked for deeper
29:08 answers and dared to ask deeper questions and wouldn't settle for anything else.
29:15 Let's take another question.
29:19 Yes, there's a person here in the third row who's been putting her hand up, please.
29:30 My audible.
29:31 Yes.
29:32 It was an incredible session and I would just like to begin with saying that it's very inspirational
29:37 how passionately you talk about your work.
29:41 Moving on to the questions, I actually have two questions.
29:45 First of all, you talk about this concept of a female voice.
29:49 So pardon me for my unintentionally being dense, but what exactly is this female voice?
29:57 And secondly, I don't know if it's a bit controversial, but would your female protagonists have this
30:05 amount of freedom that they do when they're projecting their spiritual identity as compared
30:12 to their religious identity?
30:17 The second part of your question interests me, but I'm not sure I understand it.
30:21 Would they feel as free to do that?
30:24 Yeah.
30:25 I think there's actually greater freedom on the spiritual journey because for one, it's
30:29 an inner journey and you are articulating something that is deeply indefinable, actually.
30:37 You're attempting to do the impossible.
30:39 So there are many of them, many of the verses here are just deeply mystical verses that
30:44 embody all kinds of paradoxes.
30:46 That is the domain of the mystical, where you don't settle for this or that, either
30:52 or you talk of both.
30:55 And that is the invitation of the goddess, as I say.
30:58 It's the invitation to the number three, not either, not or, both, either and or.
31:04 To come to the first part of your question, you're absolutely right.
31:07 What is a female voice?
31:10 You know, we can go deeper into this and I'm not sure we have time for it, but do I, am
31:15 I just talking about biological womanhood here?
31:19 And I'd say no.
31:21 To my mind, there are many biological women in here too and there are many men who speak
31:27 as women protagonists, you know, speak of women protagonists.
31:32 But I think what is most interesting to me is that it is an invitation, as I said, not
31:37 to just wear the female body.
31:41 It is an invitation to what the female body represents here as a metaphor, a metaphor
31:46 not for aggression, but for attunement and alignment, not about, as I said, becoming
31:53 a gatekeeper or a custodian, but becoming a conduit.
31:57 I think this is the deeper invitation, which we might perhaps call the wisdom of the womb,
32:04 that sees that everything is not about doing.
32:07 It is not just about becoming.
32:09 It is also about being.
32:11 And that is something deeply embedded in these poems.
32:16 Thank you.
32:17 Okay.
32:18 Hi.
32:19 You were talking about Amrapali and then how we all watched the film and that character
32:24 became so familiar.
32:25 So when I was growing up, I watched a film called Chitralekha.
32:28 She's a courtesan herself, Chandragupt Maurya, I think.
32:31 And I don't know if she was a poet herself, but in the film, she sings a song that Sahir
32:38 Ludhianvi penned.
32:39 It's exactly what you said.
32:43 The song goes, "Sansar se bhaage firte ho, Bhagwan ko tum kya paoge."
32:47 She's talking about this tyag, the importance that's given to tyag.
32:51 And then she says, "Ye bhog bhi ek tapasya hai, tum tyag ke maare kya jaano."
32:57 And then somewhere in the song, it also says, "Yug me badalte dharmon ko kaise aadarsh
33:05 banaoge."
33:06 So I think men have also been inspired by women to write brilliant poetry.
33:12 And while we're talking about missing goddesses, where was Lord Sita when, you know, "Siyavare
33:19 Ramachandra ki jai" is what we've always said.
33:23 She seems to be missing today.
33:30 Thank you.
33:31 I don't think I need to say any more other than the fact that I think somewhere this
33:35 touches a chord deeply in us all.
33:37 I feel even without being aware of it, many of us, and it doesn't matter what gender we
33:43 ascribe to, many of us have felt this lack.
33:47 Many of us have felt this imbalance.
33:50 And many of us have felt, perhaps needlessly, the pain of inhabiting a world that would
33:56 have us believe that Samsara and Nirvana are at war with each other, when they don't need
34:01 to be.
34:02 The body and the beyond are not at war with each other, which is what these women remind
34:06 us of.
34:07 Thank you.
34:08 Arundhati, there's a question that I've been thinking about.
34:14 The mother goddess chapter that you have at the end of the book, so when we're talking
34:19 of the poems addressed to her, do you think the Kali poems, or Kali as the supreme feminine,
34:27 does she represent the kind of primordial energy that you associate with the wild women,
34:34 or would you like to modify that?
34:36 Well, I think Kali had to be part of the book, Mala.
34:40 And you know, there are other goddesses implicated there.
34:43 There are tribal goddesses and folk goddesses and iconic goddesses, you know, from all the
34:48 ones that we know.
34:50 But Kali is impossible to ignore because she fascinates all of us.
34:57 And she fascinates us because she is fearsome.
35:00 I had a very deep, many years ago when I first read of Ramakrishna Paramahansa talking of
35:06 this image of the goddess nursing a child at her breast, and at the same time an image
35:12 of the goddess crushing an infant skull in her hands.
35:17 I knew then that I had to somehow try to understand this archetype and try to make sense of it
35:24 for myself.
35:25 And so I grew fascinated with the Kali poems, and I found that we have a wealth of them.
35:32 And I'm thinking particularly of the 18th, 19th, and 20th century Bengali poets, from
35:38 Ram Prasad Sen to Kamalakanta Bhattacharya to Qazi Nazrul Islam, who were able to see
35:45 Kali as ferocious, but also as a mother.
35:49 Not the mother you meet when you emerge in a maternity ward, but the mother you meet
35:54 in the charnel ground, the mother we will all meet at the funeral pyre, that mother.
36:01 And that to me spoke deeply because these are poets who are capable of an intimate relationship
36:10 with the mother.
36:11 They quarrel with the mother.
36:12 They can play with the mother.
36:14 That's the intimacy that's possible.
36:17 And they remind us that this is a mother who takes apart only to make whole.
36:25 Nothing is terminated in her fantastic laboratory.
36:29 It is only transformed.
36:32 And the last illusion that she must divest us of is the illusion of separateness.
36:37 And that is terrifying, but that is also her compassion, very deeply her compassion.
36:44 So those poems remained with me because those are the poems that reconcile these seemingly
36:50 irreconcilable opposites.
36:53 And if there was time, I would read you those poems.
36:56 I'll read one?
36:58 Okay.
36:59 Kamalakanta Bhattacharya having...
37:02 This is a playful relationship, as I said, with the goddess.
37:07 And of course at that moment, the poem will elude me.
37:12 But as I prepare for it, let me tell you that this is someone who says about...
37:20 Maybe it's not meant to be read because I can't find it.
37:22 But let me say about, talk about it for a moment as I hunt for it.
37:26 Kamalakanta Bhattacharya tells us that Kali who comes to him clothed in nothingness, he
37:36 asks her, "Yes, you're my mother.
37:38 You're the compassionate mother.
37:40 But surely you can have a better dress sense.
37:46 Surely you can put something on and make me a little less embarrassed."
37:51 So here's Kamalakanta Bhattacharya with a warm, playful relationship with his Kali.
37:57 He says, "Who's this dressed like a crazy woman robed with sky?
38:02 Whom does she belong to?
38:05 She's let down her hair, thrown off her clothes, strung human hands around her waist, and taken
38:11 a sword in her hand.
38:13 Her face sparkles from the reflection of her teeth, and her tongue lulls out.
38:19 Her smile on that moon face drips heaps and heaps of nectar.
38:26 Mother, are you going to rescue Kamalakanta in this outfit?"
38:34 And there's just one stanza that I want to read from Mae Sarton, the 20th century American
38:40 poet, because Kali doesn't belong only to this subcontinent.
38:44 She belongs to everyone, everywhere who recognizes her.
38:53 It is time for the invocation to atone for what we fear most and have not dared to face.
39:00 Kali, the destroyer, cannot be overthrown.
39:05 We must stay open-eyed in that terrible place.
39:11 Every creation is born out of the dark.
39:15 Every birth is bloody.
39:18 Something gets torn.
39:21 Kali is there to do her sovereign work, or else the living child will be stillborn.
39:30 [applause]
39:33 That's absolutely beautiful, and the right note on which to conclude this fantastic session.
39:43 Thank you so much for opening up the vocabulary, the vocabulary of what we mean by wild women.
39:52 Sorry.
39:53 Oh, you want to ask a question?
39:57 Oh, please go ahead.
39:58 I'm an eight-year-old girl, and in any of your poems, do they have any messages for
40:05 me?
40:06 Oh, that's so sweet.
40:12 You know, the wonderful thing about the goddess poems is that the goddess can come as a full-grown
40:20 woman, the goddess can come as a very old woman, and the goddess can come as an eight-year-old
40:25 girl.
40:26 [applause]
40:28 So that's...
40:34 I'm so glad you intervened, because that's what I was saying, that this book has opened
40:39 up the whole vocabulary of how we understand sacred poetry.
40:43 If you've redefined the terms, redefined chronology, and you've brought us to the passion of the
40:50 utterance of the sacred.
40:52 Thank you very much, Arundhati Subramaniam.
40:55 Thank you for your poems on the book.
40:57 And thank you for a wonderful audience.
41:07 [BLANK_AUDIO]