Nabanita Sengupta
BOOK REVIEW
Title: Mandalas of Time
Author: Malashri Lal
Publisher: Hawakal Publishers
Pages: 133 (Hardbound Cover)
Price: Rs. 500/-INR
The word ‘mandala’ has a deep connection with spirituality. Through a circular diagrammatic representation mandalas signify a journey from the outer to the inner core. It is an understanding of the self. Poetry too is a similar journey through words, in search of the inner core. To enter Mandalas of Time through Prof Malashri Lal’s poems is to enter a world of values – of empathy, harmony, love and compassion. It is a world of symphony between nature and humans where rustle of soft verses bring one close to origin.
My interaction with Malashri Lal has always been as an academic, a critical thinker and a feminist scholar. So while reading her poetry, the reader in me kept looking for the critical in the creative. In order to be truly creative one needs to be critical and vice versa. The poet in Prof Lal wears all these hats and more. There is a seeking of truth that an academic engages with even in her poetry. She looks beyond the obvious, peals through layers of conventional meanings to arrive at an understanding of the primordial values. This is best illustrated in the poem, ‘Manthara Dasi’ where the mythical character of Manthara, the conventionally archetypal sinister, power hungry woman is observed through the lens of motherhood –
What wrong did I do in protecting my child? Doesn’t every mother dream of a princess, a queen?
The shunned servant of Queen Kaikeyi is redeemed through her daughter-like affection for Kaikeyi and for desiring the best for her child, albeit through means that did not go right.
Motherhood remains a dominant theme in this anthology. It is celebrated in the poem ‘Sita’s Rasoi’ too where the queen mother Sita, in her exile kitchen, serves equal portions of food to her sons and an orphan boy Bhakha. The mother in her wins as she leaves the mathematics of distribution to the ‘Father, Priest, Teacher’ – the men who rule. In her world, maternal affection does not make any discrimination between children.
In a poignant verse, ‘Dreaming of Ma by the Sea’, the poet moves from the myths to the personal. Remembering of her own mother who had been fighting ‘an uneven battle with the rough cells’ the poet discovers her ‘between the black night and the bright star’.
There is deep empathy for the marginalised in Malashri Lal’s poems. In the poem, ‘The Woman Migrant Worker’ we meet the pregnant migrant woman undertaking a journey of a thousand kilometres by foot in search of ‘a mirage called home’. The apathy towards the would-be mother’s pain point at the general indifference that the society has towards a woman’s concerns –
The mother’s shrieks of pain by the roadside Took none by surprise. Touching mother earth and believing in her God, Shakuntala took an interval in the long walk home.
Shakuntala from the Mahabharata merges with the identity of this migrant labourer mother, both abandoned at childbirth, and then trudging thousands of miles alone in search of an elusive ‘home’.
There has been a rich use of myths and history in these poems, using the timeless tropes to connect the past to the present. In a mandala like pattern, these tropes keep moving in circular fashion cutting across time and space.
Nature is another significant aspect of this anthology. Malashri Lal’s engagement with nature is not one of a consumer and the producer. The poet harmonises with nature by being a part of it. Unlike the Romantic poets, nature for her is not just a healer or an awe-inspiring phenomenon. Rather, there is a deeper and closer engagement as she tries to understand life through her interaction and observation of natural phenomena. Nature for her is an inevitable part of existence and her poems speak of a mutuality between the human and the non-human components of it. In the poem ‘Autumn’, the poet looks at the process of aging – true both in the world of flora as well as humans –
Age refusing its brownness Youth refusing maturity Time suspended, laughing merrily At the mismatch of desire and age
‘Amaltas in Summer’ speaks about the amaltas as the guardian spirit watching over ‘troubled strangers’. While the amaltas roots can reach deep into the underground in search for water, humans in their limited capabilities cannot. Thus – ‘Dried bauries, wells and drains/ Arid, caked with the blood of dried garbage’.
One of the most interesting poems in the anthology is ‘Bougainvillea’ in which the plant becomes a metaphor for the colonial rule which India had to suffer for two centuries. Bougainvillea is seen as a ‘migrant’ who comes to our soil and dominates the indigenous varieties –
Our land is host to this migrant And its imperious authority The gentle chameli vein is shattered The harsingar is pushed to the corner.
It is a unique way to look at the dynamic ecology with its changing plant demography due to both human and natural causes and then equating it with the way human migrations have led to political dominations across world. The use of the word ‘migrant’ also highlights the contrast between the migrant labourers and the migrant rulers – one who is pushed out of home by necessity and the other due to greed.
Rivers have always inspired creativity. Being the cradle of earliest civilizations, they have been inspiring poets for ages. For the poet Malashri Lal, the confluence of rivers is a coming together, but not at the cost of losing one’s identity. In ‘The Rivers’ she says,
You mingle at Devprayag We foolishly think waters lose their identity in unison.
Another significant aspect of the poems included in this anthology is the multicultural consciousness of the poet. Traditions of Rajasthan and Bengal, along with an urban cosmopolitanism enriches the poet’s understanding of her surroundings and is reflected in her verses. She writes about the illustrious Maharani Gayatri Devi who had been a lasting influence upon her. Another poem is addressed to Rabindranath Tagore. Both these poems become bearers of her cultural heritage, the two divergent rivers that have found a confluence in her.
Multiculturalism also finds expression through her poems on various places or locations. A place becomes significant through its associations with culture and people. The poems ‘Bellagio, Italy’, Godhuli in Delhi’, ‘Howrah Bridge’, ‘Kashmir One Morning’, the two poems on Shimla and a few more bring out the cultural nuances associated with each of these places. The poem ‘Song of the Forest’ is a paean to Santiniketan and the heritage of Tagore –
Shantiniketan’s music flows through the Sonajhuri trees Oblivious to the rickshaw horns And the chatter of a Sunday market Simple acacias renamed by Gurudev in harmony with His abode of peace.
In the ‘mandala’ of time, one cannot avoid birth, ageing, illness and death. While she celebrates the birth of a granddaughter in the poem ‘Prayer for a Granddaughter’, she also talks of a ‘Geriatric Paradise’ in which
Wheelchairs in orderly circle frame The words of past ardour Running offices and corporations Now forgotten by those Outside the wheeled circle.
There is a conversational tone in the poems of Malashri Lal without any overt activism or loud proclamations. The poems carry deep meanings and multiple readings open up different layers within a single poem. This is one of the magic of meaningful poetry. This review has been indicative of the richness that this anthology holds, but to do full justice, the readers need to go through each of the poem carefully, uncovering newer meanings along the journey of reading.
Nabanita Sengupta
Nabanita Sengupta is an academic, creative writer and translator with multiple publications to her credit. Her latest anthology of poetry is In-between Selves. She has so-edited two volumes of critical essays – Female Narratives of Protest in South Asia and Understanding Women’s Experiences of Displacement. She teaches in an undergraduate college in Kolkata and is a member of the executive council of the Intercultural Poetry and Performance Library.