We are Chhinnamasta

 

 (Click on image to enlarge)

 

2020 was a year of creative collaborations. Such collaborations were a respite from the depression and anxiety which the COVID-19 pandemic pushed us into, and also helped me to deal with the pain of losing a loved one.

It was the year I lost my mother. She had been confined to her bed for more than 6 years after she suffered a cerebral stroke. Her left side was paralyzed and she never recovered completely. She suffered another stroke in 2019 which left her in a comatose condition. She could only open her eyes and stare blankly at us all. Nothing more. We could not tell what was going on inside her. We did not know if she could hear us. Her body did not respond to touch. She was with us in this condition for nearly a year. She passed away on 23rd August.

During that time I got introduced to this wonderful human being, James Strazza through Instagram. James is a talented musician and poet, who is battling disability and chronic illness for a very long time and he has been mostly confined to his bed and room for most of his life. His creativity has kept him afloat. His poems are thick with raw emotions and deep thoughts. 

The struggle of my mother and James, their fight for survival provided me with strength and made me realize that the confinement I was facing due to the pandemic was a minor discomfort compared to what my Ma had to go through or James has to withstand every day. It made me painfully aware of my privileges and helped me to make peace with the emotional turmoil inside me.

All this was instrumental for me to revisit the theme of 'Chhinnamasta'. It was meant as an illustration for one of Jame's poems, for the book 'Lyrical' which is a collection of his poetry. But of course it evolved beyond that and became a symbolic representation of what the eternal mother was teaching me through all the pain and suffering. 

We are Chhinnamasta! Each one of us.

Oedipus

12x16 inches; Watercolor, Pen and ink on acid free textured paper (Click on image to enlarge)

Tragedy

Have you lost hope along with your eyes?

When you dug them out with your bare hands

Like cadavers from the depth of their graves

Rendering yourself blind, did you also dig up the guilt?

Had your eyes witnessed too much?

Had they...had you sinned?

Was it all your doing or was destiny your foe?

Or was it your father who set the ball rolling?

Were you not born to kill your own father and be the king?

The father, who driven by fear for his own life,

Had wanted to end yours by snatching you away

From your mother’s suckling breasts and tossing you out,

Out into the wilderness...

Years later, you killed him as a stranger

At the crossroads of your destiny and his.

Was it not poetic justice? Was it not sweet revenge?

Did he not want to cheat you of your destiny?

Did he not think he had erased the cause

And so, the effect?

Do you wish now that your father had not failed,

So long ago, to kill you as a babe?

Should we not compare moral codes and measure

How heavily it inspires guilt to torment our souls?

Take your mother for example.

Society would have her strangle you with your umbilical cord

Knowing that you will grow up to kill her husband

And sleep with her as a lover.

She did not. She could not!

Was that her sin? Did her love for you as a mother,

Stop the milk in her breasts from turning to poison?

Did she love your father any less?

Or did she just resign to her fate?

She did not know you when you came to marry her.

Was that her blame, the inability to identify her son?

Your father did not know the same.

Did she love you any less as her husband?

Why could you not recall her to be your mother?

Did you not know the smell of her breasts

While you kissed them? Could you not sense ‘déjà vu’?

Could you not remember being inside her once

When you were inside her again?

When you saw her hanging in death, did you call out to her?

‘My queen, dear wife, my love, darling... mom...mother...’

What appellation did you find proper to call her by?

For whom do you mourn the most – a mother, a wife or both?

Or do you mourn only for your own tragic life?

Don’t you wish now that the cunning Sphinx

Had riddled you with this instead – ‘Tell me gallant youth,

How does a son love his mother after he has taken her as his wife?’

You would not have known the answer clever one,

And she would have made a meal of you then.

But that was not to be your fate!

Is there any tragedy without the fall of the great?

- Rudra Kishore Mandal

Narcissus

12x16 inches; Watercolor, Pen and ink on acid free textured paper (Click on image to enlarge)
SOLD. In private collection

Narcissus

Reclining by the pool’s end,

You stay lost, gazing at your own face.

Your mind unable to spend

The reasons for such beauty to grace

This unworthy world around...

No, nothing is worthy of you,

No one is good enough for your love!

Trampled they lay like the dew,

Hurt and broken like the arrow shot dove,

Scalded by disdain in you they found.

A love sick sigh escapes, coral lips

Parted in a moist need to kiss the twin

Reflected in the dark pool which sips,

Licks and nibbles at your heart to ruin

And bleed vanity out aground.

Does remorse strike you now?

Remember Ameinias... Echo, you recall?

Feel the sweat gather on your brow

While you await the torment to befall,

Same as a stag cornered by the hound.

No matter how many times

The sword of Ameinias opens you up

Or your cries echo like the chimes,

Your love will not fill your empty cup

Or in your embrace be bound.

You slip into the watery bed

Imagining love waits there with open arms.

Tears of pain and rapture you shed

While being consumed by the siren’s charms,

A flower floats ashore and kisses the ground.

- Rudra Kishore Mandal