Haiku No. 1

A river so swift
When it paused to think;
Drowned in itself. 

Basecamp

Had a good dose of inspiration last weekend and decided to write after a long long time!!

The flap of the tent lies open

Snow on the mountains have stopped their fall
A new adventure lies ahead
Yet I sit inside—content, straight and tall.
Gone are the goals of being on top
No more excitement to be the first
What has happened to my ambition
Where have they gone, my hunger and thirst?
How right was Rodin when he said
Meditation destroys the arms and the legs
Now the biggest battles I want to fight
They are occurring only inside my head.
I know not what else to achieve in the mountains
I am not sure of what I want to find
Do I simply need a dose of divine inspiration
Or is my fate locked in my thinking mind?
There is no fear of the untaken path
All the tools I need are beside me
But there is such peace in this moment
Of not bounding out to see.
The clamouring bees are up and about
Wind-braving pines begin their morning call
New discoveries and trails with all their promise
Yet I sit inside—content, straight and tall.

Kuari Pass Trek, Day 3, 2011

The Road Not Taken

Thoughts on the play, One Day in the Season of Rain

“Two roads diverged in a wood”, the great Robert Frost once mused in lines I have read since I was a school boy , “And I took the one less traveled by.” A four-time winner of the Pulitzer, he ended his poem with a sigh and with the timeless assurance, “And that has made all the difference.”

Where Frosts’ timeless words egged on many confused souls like me to the gates of individualist adventure, they hid the very human conflict even the most spirited souls experience after taking a tough decision.  It is this conflict that Mohan Rakesh explores in One Day in the Season of Rain enacted by Dubai based amateur drama group, Backstage, over the last weekend.

Fittingly, Rakesh centred his work on the great Indian poet, Kalidas, who is forced to choose between remaining in the mountains with his beloved Mallika or walking the path of greatness by joining the King’s court in the city. Kalidas is initially haunted at the prospect of leaving the familiar; but goaded by Mallika and in a Frost-like moment of inspiration, he embarks on a journey to vast wealth and fame.

Rakesh follows Kalidas in his journey through the proverbial woods, exposing his steadfastness to remain on the path despite numerous temptations to turn back and examining the loneliness of his accomplishments. Backstage’s Asad Raza, who is slow to get into Kalidas’ skin at first, convincingly makes the heart-wrenching confession in the end for how his greatest poems were inspired by his longing to walk the road not taken. At the pinnacle of his career, Kalidas appears more lost and miserable than at the start of his journey, rueing the emptiness of his victories in the absence of Mallika.  The play provides no answer for how one should choose between two roads that appeal equally to the heart. Where I had regarded Kalidas as a self-centred and a flawed hero at first, I quickly realized the flaw lay only in his inability to make an impossible choice.

At the epicentre of Kalidas’ dilemma lay the introverted Mallika, played by Priyanka Johri. There is no doubt Priyanka had large shoes to fill as the lead character (something she did well by appearing on stage bare feet). She ultimately held off the fray of being on stage for the first time ever with unusual composure, managing to even create a lump in my throat in the wee hours of the production. Contrary to popular opinion, however, Mallika left me incensed instead of emphatic. While she thinks like a modern-day, independent woman in love (choosing love in an age of arranged relationships) she appears weak and helpless to the point of timidity in her actions (not learning how to support herself financially). Mallika’s conversation with Kalidas, where she encourages his move to the city, made me wonder if there is such a thing as being too selfless. At what point does one fight for what they love and at what point do they let it go?

As rain pitter-pattered over the speakers in the final minutes of the play I could not help empathize with Mallika’s mother, Ambika, played spectacularly by Jennifer Turkington in the most resounding performance of the production. Ambika depicts the age-old saying “if youth but knew, if age but could”, predicting the disastrous series of events about to unfold in Mallika and Kalidas’ life. While it is easy to mistake her for a pessimistic hag, her character provides the critical but unheeded direction that Mallika’s life craves. Ambika brings Frost’s lofty ideas crashing back to Earth by injecting them with the bitter intricacies of realism. She points to the loneliness confronting Mallika very early as she does to the painful decision of loving a man with an impossible choice to make.  It is painful to realize that the only way Mallika could grapple the gravity of Ambika’s relentless counsel was by experiencing it first-hand when it was too late to turn around.

Why was this play so close to me?  Why did it stay on my mind for many days?  Why did I identify with it so closely? Perhaps because I too struggle with making my mind up like Kalidas or that I find myself as helpless as Mallika ever so often. Maybe it was the sound of rain I have grown to love morphed into a scene of separation and struggle. It is the clarity that comes with writing that helps me answer this question.

One Day in the Season of Rain weakened the pillar of unwavering trust I had built up in Robert Frost’s words since I was a little boy. When confronted with a seemingly impossible decision today, I will look more carefully at Frost’s optimistic lines and ask myself: was Frost’s sigh at the end of his poem one of self-satisfaction at a path well-lived or one of regret for the path that, like Kalidas, he missed taking. And which should I choose?