Mar 31, 2016 Climate Change is Real!
Climate Change: Day 10 of my Part-Shared, Mostly-Lone Vigil
©March 31st, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
I took a day off from doing the vigil on Wednesday, since Warren returned from India on Tuesday afternoon, and I wanted to sleep in while he returned to his vigil. Today, having rested a little, I resumed my post at the Intersection. I wanted to be there earlier, but decided that I would join Warren towards the end of his time there.
We overlapped for about five to ten minutes, singing together. Warren showed me the pattern he’d been working on in Raga Gunkali (a very cool one, which he calls an “anchored palta”) – I loved it, so I sang it for half an hour after he left, before I moved on to a lovely bandish in Raga Kafi (Kahe Chhedo Mohe Ho Shyaam). Our vocal teacher(Guruji)’s voice in my ear-buds sounded bell-like, and his incredibly mellifluous singing made me yearn to be back in the past, sitting in Muktangan with Warren and him, just singing and singing for hours in 1991 and 1994.
It was very nice to stand there with my husband, drinking good coffee, singing, and watching traffic crawl by. I remarked to him, while we stood together, that it was very liberating, very freeing, to be out there, seeing the slow flow of humanity. I felt as if I were detached from all of humanity. I didn’t care what the people in their cars thought of me. It was a wonderful feeling. [The only other times when this occurred were when I was delirious with a fever in 1983 or 83, and years later, when I was in the hospital, ready to birth my daughter.] When I shared this (the feeling of liberation and detachment) with him, Warren speculated that it was like being god-like, but I didn’t necessarily feel god-like – just not part of the human race.
People come and go, and there’s an endless sameness about it, as well as endless variety. The cages we come in look pretty, yes, but they’re still cages. The people look the same, all bipeds with eyes in the front of their faces, noses in the middle and moving mouths. I do celebrate all our different colored eyes, hair, skin, width and heights that they have, but wouldn’t it be wonderful if some of us came whizzing by with triangular faces, eyes on the sides of our heads, and little forked tongues in square mouths? No? Ah, well. Must be my tiredness speaking.
Speaking of cages and sameness, this song comes to mind, although Malvina Reynolds wrote about houses, not cars:
Little boxes on the hillside,
Little boxes made of ticky-tacky,
Little boxes, little boxes,
Little boxes, all the same.
There’s a green one and a pink one
And a blue one and a yellow one
And they’re all made out of ticky-tacky
And they all look just the same.
I know that I’d look like the same as everybody else to someone standing on the roadside with a sign, possibly about wanting food or money or work. I wonder whether those other sign-holders harbor resentment or love in them when they see me going by in my car. I wonder whether they’re too beaten or hungry to care to feel anything else.
And I wonder whether becoming homeless (as some do, by choice) also yields the same feeling of freedom that I mentioned above. Would the last bonds and restraints (shame, embarrassment, mortification) fall off? I’m not ready for that kind of liberation, though. I like the ties that hold me to my world. I like my cage.
Many people at this later hour (8:40-9:40) who drove by smiled, waved, honked, gave me thumbs-up signs, and were VERY nice – no harsh words or negative comments marred my morning. One man leaned in my direction from his car, and asked, “What can WE do?” I couldn’t hear him at first, ear-buds obstructing sound, so he repeated it. And I stood there, like an idiot, unable to answer with a sound bite. I said, “Look it up!” because traffic was slowing behind him while he waited for me to answer. When I called up Warren, and told him how sad I was that I could not respond quickly, he was helpful. His suggestion was that I should tape a list of suggestions behind the sign, with phrases like ‘Eat less meat,’ ‘Consume Less,” etc. I shall definitely do this.
I’m still tired today, but it was a warm morning. The sun shone prettily. The sky was a beautiful lake-blue, and there were a couple of stray clouds, all looking very idyllic. Birds sang in chorus – I’m sure their singing is not all that lovely in bird-tongue, since it’s all very functional, and all that, but to my ears, their singing is deeply moving. I’m grateful, every day, for birds.
But the gasoline fumes began to settle in the air, and while there were no black fumes as might be found in India, they were still detected by my throat and lungs as unfriendly additions to a beautiful morning.
Coughing a little, I made my way home, still detached. As I descended the hilly green-brown slope towards my house, the sight of our seven or eight lilac bushes coming into their first green leaves cheered me. My purple, yellow and white crocuses are still bright against the light, still blooming and lovely. Soon, the lilacs will bloom like pale, purple ghosts on our bushes, and their delicate fragrance will temporarily cleanse my soul.
[I am one of those for whom daffodils and birds bring a temporary joy, Climate Change notwithstanding.]
Beyond this rambling, I have no thoughts, no humor, no wisdom, not observations, no complaints, no wondrous revelations, no nostalgic thoughts, no words of praise, no analogies or poetry to share.
Thanks for reading.
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #ClimateVigil, #Hindustani classical vocal music, #PreservingThePlanet, #PreseveringMusic, #RagaGunkali, #RagaKafi
Mar 22, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life
Climate Change is Real: Day 4 of my Lone Vigil
©March 22nd, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
So, today:
Woke up at the sound of the alarm. Groaned. Hit the snooze. Woke up ten minutes later. Didn’t make coffee. Made chai instead. Let the dog out, then back in. Reached the Warren Intersection at 7:44. Not bad. Perhaps, I’ll actually make it there by 7:30 by the time Friday rolls around. All I have to do is stay up all night. Right! Oh, for the fashion-watchers out there, I wore old, baggy sweat pants over leggings, two pairs of old socks, purple T-Shirt, blue sweater, pale blue jacket, and an unnaturally bright purple beach hat. I even found a minute to slash on a smear of lipstick and streak some eye-black on. Got to give the commuters a little colour, at least!
The sun was a beautiful lemon, the sky shone a blazing blue, the clouds looked nonplussed by all this cheerfulness, and stayed away. The drivers drove by, looking stolidly ahead, unwilling to make eye-contact. I didn’t want to look at them, anyway, since I was fussing with ear-buds (I hate those things!), and adjusting them. Then, sipping my chai, I sang with our beloved teacher’s voice, an echo from 1994, when he was alive. Raga Bhatiyar was on today’s menu. I’ve adored Bhatiyar since the first time I heard it on a Ravi Shankar record, when I was a teenager, and studying the sitar. It’s a grand raga – I picture it as a Being dressed in deep gold-fringed purple raiment, moving solemnly on the horizon, lighting lamps. I love the leap from Sa to shuddha Ma, and the turnaround from Pa to Ga, and then that inevitable Pa Ga re Sa, and then that haunting, eerie Ma theevra taking us through Dha, Ni, and high re, misleading us into thinking we’re in wilds of Marwa land, then deftly taking us back to the paved roads of the Bilawal thaat.
Sargams, aakar, gamak taans, and then, Hari, Hari Nam, Le Tu Mana Mere, a beautiful composition urging the listener to “Say the name of God, and in so doing, cut away all the accumulated sins of a lifetime. While taking God’s name, cross the ocean of life. Tell your heart to take this advice.” Transliterated from Hindi, it reads:
Hari hari nama le tu mana mere
Ja su katata saba paapa ghanere
Nama leta bhava paara utarata
Yaha updesha kara hirade tere
Hearing my Guru (Shreeram G. Devasthali)’s voice steadied mine. It’s uncanny. I started out with a horrid, raspy voice, not much improved by a few weeks of poor sleep. By the time half an hour passed, my voice rang like a bell, and I could feel the restraints falling off. He’s still teaching me, though he’s been gone for fourteen years. Thank you, Guruji.
By now, the cars were slowing down, as more and more of them clogged the roads. Now, I got a few smiles, nods, waves. Nice. It’s nice to be acknowledged. I saw a small van go by which proclaimed that it was a “White Glove Domestic Services” vehicle. White Glove, indeed! If anyone worked at growing food, or cleaning up the mess of the world, they’d need millions of those. Instead, why not just get dirty while cleaning up, then wash up? I saw another small truck that said it was some sort of plumbing and drain company thingy. I’m afraid my morning mental fog hadn’t dissipated, and I read it as “dumbing and brain.”
I could relate for a brief moment.
Then, I’m embarrassed to say, a man drove by in an SUV, rolled down his window, and said something. At first, I didn’t catch it, because I was singing, then I realized that he’d asked, “What’s that for?” To my horror, I couldn’t explain it in the second or two I had, because he was still driving, so I said, “It’s hard to explain it now!” And he drove on. Damn! I lost the chance to say, “Look it up,” or “Our actions as humans are contributing to a climate catastrophe, and we need to change our way of life, and our habits as consumers,” or, “Do some research on Global Warming, and find out how scientists are predicting terrible consequences of our human activity not just a hundred years in the future, but in a few decades,” or …
But no, I stood there, and lost the chance to speak! (I hope he comes by tomorrow – I’ll have a response prepared. I’m still new at this. Wish Warren had been there!)
Another man drove by, gestured to me, rolled down his window, and tossed out … YES! A CHICK TRACT! Hurray! Having heard Warren’s account of this chap, I’d been hoping to see him, and lo, here he was! He was sent my way to prevent me from going to hell (snark!) Yay! I restrained myself from pouncing on it with unseemly eagerness, and picked it up after he’d driven off. I put it in my pocket, to read it later. Am going to take a look now. Hang on a moment …
… Wait! It’s GONE! Where did it go? I swear I put it in my pocket! Now, I’m doomed. (Sigh! I hope he throws me another one soon.)
Another fat car rolled by, with a large man chewing on, get this, a CIGAR! An apt analogy for our dying planet.
Almost every car that went by had someone looking at, or speaking into, or fumbling with, a cell phone. Yes, we are profoundly distracted, but many are all also profoundly lonely. I had a brief vision of how different it would be if our dwellings looked something like this:
A town surrounded by trees, and surrounding a vast farmland and meadows, with a school and a big playground at the edge of the fields. Bicycles and electric cars. Children playing, and grown-ups and children working on the farms, or tending to animals. A potters’ row, a builders’ row, some smithies, a cooper’s row, a gymnasium, a hospital. Solar panels on all the roofs of all the houses. An outdoor performance stage which can convert into an indoor one with movable walls and tent. A lake nearby, or a big, singing stream of clear water. I picture something that would look like Sturbridge Village, combined with modern eco-friendly innovations. A highway connecting the different towns. Trading in kind, not cash. A little TOO Utopian? Ah well, one can dream, can’t one?
Okay, I’ll stop dreaming.
So, the cars went by, and I sang on at the top of my voice, and then, like a vision from a dream, two cardinals swooped around and around an oval space of trees, like flashes of scarlet, singing all the while. While it might have been young love, or lust in springtime, I’d like to think of them as hope. I continued to listen to the honey-and-gold voice of our teacher, and felt at peace.
It was time to go. Still singing, I picked up the sign, my travel mug, and my visions of the future at 8:44 precisely. I made my way back home, and then, the day’s work and my daughter’s schedule claimed me until now, at 6:40 in the evening.
This music, as Warren says, connects the past with the present. We’d love to make a bridge for it into the future. Music is not a luxury, even though it can be considered so, especially when we know that those who toil day and night can ill afford to spend it on practising music. But singing is for EVERYONE – no one should feel it’s the prerogative of a privileged few. Singing is breath. And breath should be free.
Thanks for reading! Peace out, as OPOL of DailyKos would say.
P.S. I FOUND my Chick Tract! Yay!
P.P.S. realized after my exchange with someone on FB that I must clarify that I actually DO know what a “White Glove Domestic” is – and the concept behind that (having encountered it for the first time my former school in some discussion that someone had about wanting to form a committee to ensure spotlessly clean classrooms, so clean that a white glove swiping at a counter would not pick up any dirt). I just wanted to put my own tangential interpretation on it in this piece.
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #ClimateVigil, #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Music as a bridge, #Pandit S.G.Devasthali, #Warren Senders
Mar 17, 2016 Climate Change is Real!, Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings
Climate Change is Real – And I Won’t Give Up
©March 17th, 2016
By Vijaya Sundaram
By Vijaya Sundaram
It was a pearly-gray morning, and the moisture in the air was gentle, not threatening. The sky was rich with bird-song and Spring-tones.
I woke up duly at 7:00 (feeling a little sad about having to wake up so early after a later night than I’d intended), and got ready to keep Warren’s “Climate Change is Real” vigil – I’d promised him I would keep the flag aloft, so to speak, and I wanted to be good about it.
I don’t know how Warren gets ready in half an hour. I could not. Made the coffee, let the dog out, let her back in, dealt with this and that in the kitchen, and was finally out of the house around 7:48 or so.
The morning air was still damp, but promised sunshine, and many (but not all) of the bulbs I’d planted in the fall were poking their heads out in the front yard, but they looked still sleepy, as did I.
A sense of déjà vu, came over me. About nine months ago, I was still getting up at 6:15 in the morning, and getting ready for school, which I’d reach between 7:00 and 7:20, depending on the morning. And I’d envy, but not begrudge, my husband and child their sleep (the former began dropping me off at school, since we have but one car, and he needed it, but I’d wake him up just before I needed to leave, to allow him some snooze-time).
Nowadays, it’s Warren who gets up early, while I snooze. In any case, after seventeen years of not sleeping, I haven’t learned my lesson still. You’d think I’d have stopped being a night-bird, but alas! That was not to be.
So, here I was, climbing up the median hill-strip, to cross Roosevelt Circle, and take up position at what I like to think of as “Warren’s Intersection.”
I was a little nervous, never having done this on my own (the few times I did stand there in the fall of 2015, I’d been with him, so it had felt fine).
In any case, I didn’t have to worry. Nothing really happened. Great!
Cars drove by indifferently. I got a thumbs-up from a Bernie supporter, some smiles and waves from some YMCA girls in a YMCA car, a smile from some pretty young women in a sleek car, a couple of unintelligible shouts from young men in a truck, and curious or indifferent looks from others. Nothing much to report, thank goodness!
Drinking my steaming hot coffee in 45 degree weather, I found myself relaxing after a bit.
Singing is what we all do at home, so, inspired by Warren’s example, I began to recapture my Hindustani vocal musical self, harking back to the days in the 1990s, when he and I would sing together, and take lessons with our Guruji, Pt. Shreeram G. Devasthali who would teach us in his rich, mellifluous voice for hours on end.
I have to say this: I had sorely neglected this side of myself for the past seventeen or more years. Multi-tasking school work, house-work, writing, running a Drama Club, then a Poetry Club and an Environmental Green Team at my school, and bringing up our daughter, nurturing her fully, and home-schooling her when I got home from school – all these things took it out of me, and music suffered. Yes, I sing every night with my family, and used to play guitar and sitar quite a bit up until the time my daughter was a year old but even those took a back-seat as the years went on.
Now, music calls me back.
I remember our Guruji expressing some regret that I wasn’t practising in the few years before he died. He reminded me to sing, and reiterated that he was very happy that I was a teacher of English (as he had been a teacher of language in India), and that he approved. He was anxious that not just Warren, but I would keep the music he gave us alive.
I tried for a while, but could not keep it going during my school-teaching years.
Now, it’s time. I have to keep a promise to our Guruji and to myself.
Sohini is a beautiful, but simple raga in the Marwa thaat, full of soaring uttara-ang angst, full of inexpressible longing. I’ve always gravitated to it, even before I sang Hindustani khyal music (when I was a young teenager, I used to love singing the Hindi film song, “Kukoo, kukoo, bole koyaliya,” and later, I played it on my sitar. (I studied sitar in Chennai with Pt. Janardan Mitta, who is a disciple of the late great Pt. Ravi Shankar – and yes, I plan to practise my sitar again, now that I’m getting back into music. Thank you for teaching me sitar, dear Guruji – Pt. M. Janardan!).
So, I sang Jiya so lagi peeta tori, a beautiful Ektaal composition. I followed this with Guru charana sharana kara manu jaye, which exhorts the mind to surrender itself at the feet of the Guru (which was so apt and fitting at that moment that I felt tears welling up). After that, I sang Kaise beeti sari raina, piya bina, also in Sohini. Kaise beeti sari raina piya bina speaks, very aptly, about the lover saying, “How will I pass the night without my beloved? I sit here without rest, counting the stars.” (Come back safely home, Warren!) And as I listened to our vocal teacher teaching us, and hearing our voices blend together in this miraculous device, I was grateful for my semi-new i-Phone, in which I’ve stored some of our music-lessons that we recorded back in the nineties, and which Warren transferred to our computers (magic!). It’s at times like these that I am utterly grateful to technology in general. I ended with Rum Jhum Barase Meherwa, which is a romantic song about two lovers getting drenched in the rain.
This last moisture-steeped song seemed to match the damp morning, but thankfully, there was no rain. It was hard to believe on a morning like this, a perfect March morning, which is getting sunnier by the minute, that Climate Change IS Real, but Real it IS! Just check your Boston’s weekly weather forecasts going back a month. It’s scary. But I shall not dwell on that for now. Today was my first day out there (since the fall when I went a few times with Warren), and it was the music which dominated.
The cars crawled by at our overpass Intersection, and flashed by below on the Highway, and I was self-conscious and awkward at first, but soon found I didn’t care what people thought, or what they might say, or do. It’s extremely liberating, in case you’re thinking you might want to get out there with a sign of your own.
I propped up Warren’s sign, “Climate Change is Real,” and felt that I was contributing to the cause in my way. Warren’s idea of being the lone person out there since September of 2015, braving the elements, hammering away at his message is consistent with everything he does – which is with single-minded devotion, including his devotion to us, his family. He left for India last night, and we miss him.
After an hour or more had passed, I wended my way back home, and though I’d slept little, I felt refreshed. Spring was in the air, and a spring was in my step. It’s hard to feel gloomy when it’s beautiful outside, and the birds are in full-throated vocal mode.
And I refuse to give up hope. Call me Pollyanna. Yes, there is awful news about the planet every day. Yes, Climate Change is real. I still believe we can do something about it – not change it back to how it was, obviously, but do good work to impede its hurtling route towards disaster, and preserve our beautiful planet, its beautiful music, its beautiful creatures, and its beautiful (but not always so) people.
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Tags: #ClimateChangeisReal, #For the Planet, #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Keeping Vigil, #Man with Sign, #Singing, #Sitar, #Warren Senders, #Woman with Sign
Oct 24, 2015 Daily Life, Ramblings and Musings
I am sitting with a cup of coffee at my kitchen table on this chilly fall day, listening to the late great Hindustani vocalist, Padmabhushan Gangubai Hangal singing Raga Prabhat Bhairav. Her voice is raw, uncompromising, full of pain and triumph, and not at all like the very high, pretty, curlicued vocalisms usually practised by classical female singers in India.
And I am in tears.
Here is a woman from the shudra caste who rose from outright poverty and deprivation to the heights of fame later on in her life, a woman who’s sung in front of Mahatma Gandhi, a woman who lost her beloved teacher (Sawai Gandharva), then lost her Brahmin husband whom she served devotedly and supported, who, despite his being a lawyer, lost any jobs he held, and was not financially capable. Then, she lost her daughter, Hindustani vocalist Krishna Hangal, who succumbed to cancer to 2004. In 2007, aged 97, Gangubai Hangal passed away after pledging that her eyes, still good, would be donated to the Eye Bank run Dr M.M. Joshi Eye Institute. Her wishes were carried out by her remaining family.
I have to thank my husband, Warren Senders, for playing this recording, and of reminding me of her. Here is his post on the life and times of Padmabhushan Shrimati Gangubai Hangal: In Memoriam: Gangubai Hangal, 1913–2009
Warren is himself a great and impassioned vocalist, musician and teacher in the classical Indian vocal music called Khyal. (He’s also a jazz bassist and composer of Indo-Jazz fusion, with the group called Antigravity, in which I played guitar — sadly, we don’t perform much anymore, being too caught up in the nowness of our current life, which is full of music at home, and homeschooling our daughter). He is also a huge and highly informed Climate Change activist. You can read more about him here, and about the blog he started to further Climate Change awareness (through the use of music from around the world), here.
Thanks for reading!
Love,
Dreamer of Dreams
Tags: #Hindustani classical vocal music, #Warren Senders, Gangubai Hangal, Khyal