Apr 12, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Ramblings and Musings
Climate Change is Real: Day 14 of My Part-Shared, Part-Lone Vigil
©April 12th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
Today was an extremely long day. Finally, I sit down and try to recapture my vigil from this morning.
Yes, I went out today, after a gap of two or three week-days to face with some degree of resignation a wildly changing weather and an unvaryingly boring traffic flow. Having already had my coffee and a good night’s sleep, I was somewhat awake. Of course, there’s no such thing as being fully awake at 8:20 in the morning, despite the fact that had I been teaching at school (as I’ve done for seventeen years until last June), I would have been well into teaching my first class period of the day, and would have been scattering good mornings! and cheerful smiles in all directions (except if I’d pulled an all-nighter).
As it was, I had to face no one but the traffic (which, being the vast, faceless entity that it is, as it snakes through the roads, cares not one whit) and my husband (but he’s pretty forgiving).
The signs were already in place, and Warren greeted me with a beautiful composition in Raga Desi, which he had been singing. I’d forgotten how transcendentally beautiful this raga is, and it displaced Raga Adana (which is beautiful, as well), to which I’d been listening on my way to the vigil. I joined Warren in singing the teentaal bandish in Desi, Pritam prita lagi naa bhulaana, which our Guruji had composed. Filled with sweetness and a sense of pleading, it’s laced with the unspoken fear that the singer’s beloved might/would forget the singer. Forgetting a beloved may be sad, but even worse, is the fear that I suspect many of us share – the fear of an eventual loss of memory.
I have forgotten much in my life – names, people I’ve met, movies I’ve seen, places I’ve been, stories I’ve read, and things that happened to me – sometimes, I think this is a form of self-protection. At other times, I think the mind can hold only this much, and no more. Yet, at the same time, I cannot ever forget the hurt I’ve caused someone. I cannot forget that I’ve wasted time. I cannot forget that I’ve been wasteful of resources and of whatever talent I’ve possessed.
This, I will not forget: That our time on Earth is short, that the harm we’ve done it is lasting, and the good we can still do can prevent the worst. As we fight to save our planet, we need more songs, more stories, more spoken-word poetry to keep our collective memories aloft.
.
And we need to remember this Earth, our Mother.
Warren left after we overlapped for fifteen or twenty minutes. I stayed on, and sang along with Guruji’s voice in my ear-buds, as he took me through “Naiya More Bhayi Purani,” an absolutely heart-breaking composition, which translates thus:
Naiya More Bhayi Purani (My boat has become ancient)
Khewata sada matawaro (The boatman, aka God, is always intoxicated, whimsical)
Aughata ghaata mein (At the difficult,inaccessible steps leading to the river)
Sujhata nahin (I don’t understand what’s happening)
Aana padi majhadhar (I have arrived at the eddies of the midstream)
Our teacher explains the whole thing as “rupak” or metaphor (India is the original land of metaphorical thinking).
Yes, and of course, we can apply this song to all of us as we age, and to our planet, as she ages. Many don’t understand what’s happening, and those of us who do, do so in a frightened, boat-whirling-in-midstream manner. A couple of days ago, I read about how melting ice sheets are changing the earth’s axis. It did not make me very hopeful about the future. Sorry.
On a happier note, I LOVE revisiting our time with our teacher through these recordings we have of our lessons. Even his speaking voice takes on the notes of the particular raga which he’s singing as he explains the poetry of the bandishes he teaches us. He is musical to the very core of his being. To me, he’s not dead – he’s always here, his voice still magical.
There were no real interactions with anyone today. A few waves, a honk, a thumbs-up … that was all. We were, all of us, wrapped in our own internal worlds.
The clouds were grey, the wind gusted from time to time, and the sun moved slowly through my forty minutes out there. The sun-saturated air beyond the pearly grey sky made my eyes hurt, and I squinted, unseeing, into the slow crawl of cars, as I sang. No stories suggested themselves to me. A horde of schoolchildren waved from a schoolbus that trundled by. I waved back.
Soon, it was time to go. I saw a beautiful woodpecker fly off into the woods behind me, as I picked up the signs, and allowed the wind to push me this way and that as I crossed the bridge. Below me, the cars crawled in one direction (towards Boston), and flashed by in the other direction (northwards).
I was glad to go home. My daffodils, crocuses, and a narcissus and hyacinth plant were perking up, greeting the morning. All those dire warnings of a catastrophic future resembled science fiction at that moment.
For here, now, was beauty.
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #ClimateVigil, #Music-making and bearing witness, #Pandit Shreeram G. Devasthali, #Raga Desi