Channeling Love.

Meera, just a little wing singing to her Krishna, flying only towards Him with no care of anything else, grows in physical and spiritual beauty. She is not a tantrum teenager – she has no need to be. The light of her grandfather’s eye and one with such force of will, she is allowed to go and do as she pleases. She grows wild, but strong, a warrior skilled in martial art and the control and reflexes of a dancer. Combined with the lack of an authoritative mother-figure and the encouragement of a warrior grandfather, she is not inhibited, neither in her love for her Krishna nor in her artistic temperament. Imagine, then, how her world should have been torn apart at the death of her grandfather! Imagine how shattered and bereft she should have been! Or should she…
Meera, truly devoted to Krishna, could not but acquire some of His traits. She transcended maya and immersed herself in a different world. This is not to say she lacked love. But if she could love Krishna as though he were there with her at all times, why could she not love her grandfather in the same way? In her world, the world in which she lived as her Krishna’s servant, where she danced and sang and played with Krishna, her grandfather too existed now.
STOP.
It would ring false to say she was some sort of yogini at the young age of 19. Imagine how you were at 19. I can still remember how I was. Not a joy to be with. Meera was whiny, she cried, she riled – she ranted and raved. But, when you or I rant and rave all of the people around us, poor dears, are left upset. When Meera ranted and raved it poured forth as an emotional torrent of music that everyone hears and identifies with, and receives succor from.

That’s the trait of a bardess – the ability to project, through art, whatever emotion the listener needs to feel and then channel it. Happiness? Enthusiasm? Joie de vivre? She will amplify it. Despondence? Anger? Insanity? Vulnerability? Bitterness? All of that she feels too… but at the end of the song is a calm, serene, bliss. As a lover scorned, refusing to listen to reason, scorching the messenger with her piercing glance, hair in a disarray, eyes wide and bloodshot, chest heaving with agitated hostility is magically hushed by the sweet kiss of a smiling, loving sweetheart.
In the end, corny or not, disgustingly sweet or leaving an odd aftertaste, the reality is, that kind of love – that feeling that Meera had for Krishna – was imbued in the words she wrote and even more magically, for want of a better word, it permeates still, into the minds, hearts and souls of those who listen or read her words.
And we want it to. We ask it to. Please, come sweet love. Come into my parlor…
“Mhare Ghar Aao, Pritam Pyaara”

Cat and bird...

“Maina! Ye thothi maina!” calls young Meera.
She beckons her pet mynas and parrots to her side. They are the only companions to her soft – but not silent, for she will never stop singing – pain. She has nurtured them from the egg, teaching them to say ‘Radha Krishna’ as soon as their little voices are able to chirp, refusing them food if they will not say the name she longs to hear, whacking them playfully with a broomstick if they pretend they do not understand.
The little parrots, blessed to be able to pronounce such a sweet name – and so often! - are happy to carry Meera’s message to Krishna. They are equally happy, naughtily so, to be a party to Krishna’s teasings.
Meera’s Giridhari, that brazen moptop! The birds fly to him, carrying the message of our heroine’s love, and he hushes his flute, cocks his head to one side like the birds that speak to him, and listens carefully. A dimple peeps out from behind his curls, his eyes flash with mischief, and he whispers a secret into the head parrot’s ear. The parrot conveys the message to his companions and they fly back to an unwitting victim.
“Radha Krishna Bol, Thothi Maina!” sings Meera, promising a reward of seeds.
“Who is Radha? Who is Krishna? Why should we say their names?” ask the birds, who, having fully satiated their hunger on puffed rice and brown sugar, supplied by the very entity they profess ignorance of.
Meera gasps, eyes narrowing. She knows a prank is afoot. She is no simpering heroine, ready to fall in a faint when she is faced with the smallest adversity. She shifts sideways, towards a broomstick, keeping their attention away. “Why, do you not know? Radha and Krishna are the clouds you fly through and the trees you perch on! You must know them very well!” So saying, she clutches the broom, firmly behind her, hiding it from the birds that sought to make her a victim.
“No, no, no, there is no such person as Radha. There is no Krishna. All of this is foolishness. You are living in a dream that cannot become a reality. Grow up! All of these fantasies and fairy tales are only for irresponsible fledglings. You should know better!” The birds always, through the words of that rascal, make perfect sense and seem to speak logic and truth. But is life based on logic and sense?
“How is it that one minute you know not who Radha and Krishna are, and the next minute you speak as though you know of their stories, my pretty birds?” purrs Meera.
“We were only trying to pull you out of your insanity. Even if there is such a person, he is so very far away in the land of Brindavan, and you are here, in Mewar, how could you possibly forge any marriage? Would you forsake your country and your kin for him, princess? Would you leave your grandfather for him?!” Again, they speak words of wisdom, but where the heart is concerned, wisdom can go fly a kite.
Out comes the broom, SWISH! SWISH!
“Do you dare to tell me I am insane? I am insane then! Take THAT! I am insane with love for my Kanna. How can there be distance between us when He is in my heart? He is right here – and know this my birds! These very beatings are not coming from my hand, they are coming from His. Do you presume to think he did not know this is what would occur? Come down here and take your medicine like birds if fledglings you are not!”

The birds did come down. For though they would get beaten, they loved their Meera more than their flesh and feathers. They knew they were all she had and she was all they wanted. To be a part of the greatest romance and the most pure love in this world, they would take a thousand and one lickings and more.

Stay tuned...

Through the looking-glass, yet again

Her simple plea to be nothing but a servant was so humble and utterly devoid of ego, that the ego of that ‘I,’ the One who was fully aware of the unity of the collective soul, was brought down to the level of a lover of mortals. He swept his silken coat of breeze, studded with diamonds droplets of bansuri-magic, across Meera’s garden, gently lulling her back into his world.

"It's been a while," he whispered. She thought it was a light breeze that tickled her ear, as she lay sleeping. She stirred, and as if some reluctant residue of a dream called her, she returned once more, into the arms of sleep.

She sensed his smile before she saw it. She felt his words before she heard it. She listened harder but he was teasing her once more. Here one minute, gone the next. Just when she though He was hers, He disappeared, widening the void ever so little.

Deep within the void, the pain she had felt, the aching emptiness threatened to overwhelm her. To take the Meera in her away. To leave her hollowed and scooped out.

She peeped a little further into her abyss and thought "Kanna, would you really do this? Would you take a suffering soul and hurt her even more? Is this your karuna? Does your leela understand when a limit has been overstepped, when a wound has been opened too wide? Will your leela let you do so much harm to my soul and stand by to watch the life in me drain out?

As she waited for the wave of her own grief to sweep her away from the realms of the living, he stepped forth. Ever so radiant. Ever so beautiful. Yes, ever so impish. An adolescent awkwardness in the way he held his flute, a mature seductiveness in the way he smiled. An innocent charm in the tune he played, an adult understanding in the single glance he gave her.

There was a life to be lived yet.


Editor's note - thanks goes yet again to pb for our heroine's second foray into the world of Brindavan.

There is no Meera.

A couple of failed attempts to post a new chapter with a different style have passed. I think my sonnet does not want me to change the metre.

Why?
What was it that Meera lacked whenever that rascal was near that prevented her from chastising him? As long as he stayed away from her garden, she could tell him not to come, but once he was there, what was it that made her melt?
Was it that his smile disarmed her? Was it the mere presence of his almighty spirit? Was it the intoxicating zephyr that wafted through the air, rising from the small holes in his wooden bansuri? The laughing pearls that twinkled at her from within their coral lips?

No. These were not the cause. It was not mere infatuation or physical lust. Nor was it love. It was the thread-by-thread unraveling of the ego in the presence of the whole. The lack of ego is what brought any remote sense of anger or sadness to a screeching halt.

When we enter a temple, it is said that we should leave our day-to-day lives – the worries that the veranda wasn’t locked properly, the stove not turned off or less close to home, like the politics or the latest bombing in the middle east – all of that is to be left outside, neatly in a row like our sandals at the doorstep.
This is a voluntary action that we take or do not take – for sometimes we may enter the temple with the express purpose of lamenting to the one closest to our heart. More often… in the presence of true divinity, we are not in any position to remember what it was we were going to lament about. Nor are we able to lament, even if we do remember, for it all seems so insignificant. Think of the few, fleeting, never-enough moments in the presence of Thirupathi Mr. Venkman sir.
If going to a temple to see the earthen representation of a deity can tame the egos of ordinary people, imagine how the reaction of the ego of one so filled with bhakthi would be in the presence of that Jagaddhodharana.
Sure, he torments her, teases her, tells her he will be there but does not come. Tells her he will save her like a knight in shining armor then does not, leaving her to fend for herself in this world of sane people. He asks for her blind faith that anything he asks of her is for a reason.
Remove the ego and the pride and none of that matters or even exists in 'your' world. all that is left is a bliss that is inescapably, addictively, delicious.
Meera’s ego, unraveled, she no longer dreams of being a wife, nor even a mistress since once one is engulfed in the eddy of bliss, it really doesn't matter what your status is. All that matters is the lightness and clarity that are part of losing the pull of that gravity called ego. All that matters is having the burden of samsara lifted from your soul.
“Chakara Rakho Ji. maine chakar rakhoji.”