PEATC Diary: 29 January

Dateline: January 29, 2015
 
During morning PT walks, we hold a 'request session.' Those who can sing are asked to perform a song each. One among us sings Lalon's songs beautifully. I asked him to perform "The Moon Has Touched the Moon." The song is not easy to perform. He did it, and did it well. In my opinion, this is Lalon's most difficult song. The meaning of the song is extremely elusive. Who knows if it's the most incomprehensible song in Bengali! There's even debate about whether the song is actually Lalon's at all. Let me share this song with you.

The moon has touched the moon,
what shall we think and do?
The mother's birth is in the daughter's womb;
what will you call her?
 
There was a six-month-old girl
who conceived in nine months;
in eleven months, three children—
which one will take to the fakir's path?
 
There's a house with no door,
a person with no speech.
And who provides him food?
Who lights the evening lamp?
 
Fakir Lalon reflects and says:
When the son dies, if the mother touches him,
unless one grasps the meaning of these words,
one cannot achieve fakirdom...

Read the song a few times! Do you understand anything? Charles Capwell has translated the song; let me share it. See if the translation dispels any of its mystique:

One moon has touched the body of another,
what shall we do, having thought of that?
The mother's birth is from the daughter's womb;
what do you call her?
 
There was a girl of three months;
in nine months she conceived.
In eleven months there were three offsprings;
which one will the fakir take?
 
Sixteen arms, thirty-two heads;
the child speaks within the womb.
Who are its mother and father?
That's a question to be asked!
 
There is a room with no doors;
there is a man who doesn't speak.
Who furnishes his food:
who lights the evening lamp?
Lalon Shah, the fakir, says,
" If the mother touches, the son dies.
He to whom these words have meaning,
to him, indeed, belongs fakirdom.

After studying Lalon somewhat, I think the song's meaning could be this:
# The fetus has been conceived in the mother's womb. Here the first moon is the mother, the second moon is the fetus. Every mother calls her daughter 'Ma.' So the mother becomes her own daughter's maid, meaning the daughter.
# Now for the months' calculation. It takes at least 6 months for life to stir in a human fetus. Another 3 months are needed to take the complete form of a human child, 9 months in total. In 11 months, the human child passes through three stages. What are they? One: The first 6-month stage. Two: The next 3-month stage. Three: In the following 2 months, the child is born and also learns to lie down, turn from side to side, and such things. Lalon designates these three stages as three phases of the human child, and at the end of this stanza asks which phase carries more importance?
# The mother's womb is called a room that has no doors. The child is there, who cannot speak, meaning it has no speech. The mysterious contribution of the great Creator in the child's development and creation of life force is mentioned here.
# When a stillborn child is delivered, all blame falls upon the mother. Yet there can be many reasons behind delivering a stillborn child. With the last two lines, Lalon alerts his followers to this social superstition, saying that a seeker who believes in superstitions cannot achieve success in their spiritual practice.

Let me return to the diary. The walking song session continued with songs of various flavors. Nearby, I saw colorful fancy papers cut and pasted with glue onto strings across the field, apparently for some competition. After seeing this, you don't need to tell anyone—there's a festive atmosphere all around. When I used to go to the village house for various festivals as a child, I would notice this colorful array of papers. Walking along, I saw an empty water tank filled with dew-soaked fallen leaves in heaps. From a distance, it looked like a broken bamboo platform. A little later, I saw a half-finished house. In its small front courtyard, two children were playing while dry leaves fluttered here and there. On one side of the courtyard, three cane chairs were arranged. Right beside the house was a radish field, and towards the back, a cabbage garden caught the eye. On the other side, tender bottle gourd vines were climbing through the gaps in the bamboo trellis. Mist seemed to be trapped in the holes of the house's roof. Just two steps from that house was a park. In that park, mist and dust shared an ancient friendship. A few swings were scattered here and there. The thorny henna bushes seemed to hint at various English letters. Around the swings were four see-saws. On the narrow paths around the park, the existence of night's frost-kisses on the dry leaves was clearly visible. The sun had already begun its relentless effort to erase the last traces of those kisses. But can the marks of innocent love's blissful union be erased so easily?

Sunlight was falling on our eyes, faces, and entire bodies through the gaps in the krishnachura tree's leaves. If you gaze at it for some time, youth comes and serenades you. There's the ambiance of 'Ananda Ashram's' 'There was hope, there was love' in that spot; humming the song, some melody of separation comes from somewhere and overwhelms you. We kept walking in line. Some suddenly break into a run, just like that. Hearing the instructor's scolding, they fall back into line (literally!). Today during PT, I lay on my back on the tennis court and gazed at the sky for at least 5 minutes. This is a childhood game. As you keep staring, you begin to feel you're gradually disappearing into that vastness, fluttering about with those flying birds. Ah! Today the entire sky came and nested in this small body and mind! When you extend your gaze in that direction and look for some time, you feel somewhat intoxicated.

PATC also teaches swimming. Since it's winter now, that's postponed for the time being. I heard about someone from the last batch. Apparently, they couldn't even get him into the water. The sight of water would drain his life away; he would tremble with fear. He even dreamed of drowning. According to Richard Craze's The Dictionary of Dreams and Their Meanings, having such dreams means that person is entangled in internal or external conflicts. People can also have such dreams due to excessive or deficient personal, familial, or social emotional needs. Without going into that analysis, we're broadly assuming that gentleman was terrified of water. It was from that fear that he had those dreams.

Today a teacher taught whose speech defect was saying 'eya' between words. "Your next class will be on eya," "You'll have to do eya in the exam," "If you do eya like this, then you'll have problems in your eya." I thought, let me see how many times this happens. I methodically tallied the teacher's speech defect in my notebook. Total: 97 times.

The class before lunch was on research methodology. The teacher was quite an amusing person. He asked, "Well, tell me, with one rose, what's the maximum number of people you can make happy?" I thought to myself, "Why sir? Is the price of roses very high?" I learned some interesting facts. In Afghanistan, boys propose to girls by going in front of the girl's house and firing into the sky 13 times in succession. If the girl comes out of the house during this, it's understood: Love accepted! (While he was saying this, I was thinking, if you just drop one bomb on the girl's roof, the whole thing would be settled. The girl would have to come out of the house!) On an African island nation, to express love, the girl goes to the boy's house and bites his hand hard. The harder the bite, the greater the love. (God save us!) The teacher said something amusing. When someone marries in the style of 'what I got, I don't want; what I wanted, why don't I get it,' for the first couple of years, looking into their spouse's eyes, they spend time imagining the old one they didn't get. Acting happy this way, at some point they actually become happy. With the arrival of new love, old love naturally fades according to nature's law as time demands. The teacher was asking our opinion on how to prepare good questionnaires for research work. I'm in the 'how do you sing so well, O talented one, I listen in amazement' group in class. I never say anything. Today I really felt like saying that good questions would be like: "Do you still beat your wife like before?"

The post-lunch class was on various aspects of Singapore's civil service. An Indian-origin Singaporean citizen came to teach. He's an expert in this sector. I learned some good things. For instance, Singapore's civil service has three core principles: Integrity, Service, Excellence. In Singapore, teachers are paid the highest salaries. They say, Teach. You will be amazed by the difference you can make. Looking at their police department, people say, If I were born again, I would join the police force. His concluding words were: Love yourself, because YOU MATTER!

While returning from class, sitting in the coffee corner and leisurely sipping Nescafé, I saw the weeping deodars facing downward, as if crying. Today they've enrolled in the 'melancholy' group. The thuja trees are truly sparkling in the sunlight. The radiation of deep green has created a magical ambiance around them. The warm steam from the coffee kept merging into that magic, dissolving away. I felt a strong desire to spread a sheet there and spend this Magh afternoon eating steamed rice cakes filled with coconut and date palm jaggery while chatting with someone. Let it play in my head... that sun-soaked day near Poush, will it ever return again...

Almost everyone goes home on Thursdays. At PATC, you have to submit an application in a common format for this weekend leave. You have to inform the mess committee which meals you won't be taking.

I returned home. Home means... room.