Kashi: A Mandala Poem

Book Review: RAJNI SINGH

Charu Sheel Singh. KASHI: A MANDALA POEM. New Delhi: Adhyayan Publishers, 2007,pp.xii+92, Price Rs.150/-, ISBN 97 8-81-8435-029-6.

The historiographical narratives on Kashi are immense but a meta- narrative exclusively on this divine city was missing. C.S.Singh’s seizural quest for the mystical secrecies could pave a way to “a poetic avatara of Kashi in English”, with his latest volume of poetry – Kashi: A Mandala Poem. The present book, under review, not only gives an authentic narrative of the story of Kashi but also goes on to the extent of envisioning this cosmic city from a newer perspective and in this creative process, generates Kashi as a Sri Cakra, a mandala which has several entry points and all the points are the different doors to eternity:

Kashi, Varanasi, Avimukta,

Antargrahi are twenty-four

fold, sixteen-fold and

eight-fold interiors of

Shiva leading into the bindus

seed of all creation. (p.83)

The poet brings in every detail of the configuration of the mandala. The exteriors of twenty-four Kashi petals are shielded by ghats “which are the monumental bodies of Tirthas”(p.88). The pragmatics of Sri Yantra is explained thus: “Sri-yantras are made out of/the ashes of the dead and the naval/is the ultimate burial ground”(p.69-70).

The poet sees Kashi as the body of Parvati, and life and death as the twin Parvati sisters, thus making Kashi the crematorium ground that foregrounds in one’s consciousness the temporality of all existence. In his ultimate acknowledgement, made to Lord Shiva, Singh says that it was Lord Shiva who made him “articulate death and life as the twin Parvati sisters simultaneously in temporalities that cross their own sublunary regions of consciousness.” (p.vii)

Singh defines Kashi as “the endless Pranava”: “a thought less/eternity where terrestrial heights/and brutish sea-deeps equivocally/meet and evaporate”(p.45). Singh in his foreword says that the poem is “ death in motion of life. We cannot escape the concentricity God has transcripted us into” (p.xi). Love for the divine is the only route to the divine, which in itself is full of hurdles; in Singh’s words it is ‘Veebhatsa’. This veebhatsa is nothing but a rendezvous with death that Kashi generates: “Kashi’s genetic/productions of veebhatsa continually/burns our bodies into evaporations/that nurture skills of torture/in the cuckooing pranava of an/endless game” (p.3). And the eighth place in the mandala is the Mahashamashana, the centrality of life that seasons “for all of us to cook on fire”, a ritual that celebrates eternity:

The burning

pyres mail bodies to eternity

in songs whose melody is the

fine itself renewing life again

and further more and ever so

again. (p.20)

The union of the temporal with the eternal is presented realistically. When one witnesses the splintering sparks of fire rising up from the funeral pyre at the burning ghats, one comes face to face with the eternal truth- the temporality of our journeys in a handful of dust. And Singh says that this “consciousness of death in life inaugurates another era within us.”(p.xi)

To Singh Parvati and Kashi are “alternate/designs of Shiva’s thought- process”- “Parvati is the kumbhaka inbreathing/while Kashi the rechaka out breathing”(p.45). He further goes on to say that Kashi is Goddess Parvati Herself. In his foreword the poet avers, “I have visualized Kashi in the form of a Sri Cakra which is the body of the goddesss inhabiting Shiva within. Kashi, therefore, is a mandala, and the mandala is the body of the goddess”(p.ix). With Shiva’s marching into the mandala, the text of texts i.e. Kashi blossomed.

Singh presents the tale of linga and creation into the epic modes of incredible reality. He narrates the theory of the bursting of the ‘Hiranyagarbha’, the cosmic egg, which was in the shape of a linga.

Supreme

Shiva bore His body into a

luminous linga sprawling its

nuptial designs into conch-shell

mantras ever reverberating unto

Eternity. (p.61)

And-

It were saints by the Ganges

who envisioned the blasting

dove of light divine; they called

it Kash! Kash!, and the oozing

corners of the globe gathered

into a luminous fold that was

Shiva as a jyotirlinga. (p.61)

He also makes a reference to the “panchakroshi yatra”, the area that is a mini-cosmos in itself. Towards the end, Singh says: “ Kashi tales are samadhi postures/that ever gesture renewed forms/of a panchganga confluence/enshrined in internal sentience” (p.92). Shiva, Kashi, Samadhi, Luminosity is all one. The state of samadhi in which all sorts of dualities dissolve into absences, gives way to realization of the emptiness of being which further leads to the understanding of Kashi and its luminosity, and this knowledge of luminosity means the realization of Shiva/ truth.

Singh leaves no stone unturned in marveling the scriptures on Kashi, which is quite evident from his acknowledgment made to a wide range of books. The present volume is a perfect blend of history/tradition and creation. Singh adds a dash of zing to history and creates a new metaphorical imagistic repertoire of Kashi.

When the present day poetry abounds in momentary thoughts and feelings; descriptions of petty experiences; the social and political problems and confines to the particular environ, a poetry like C.S.Singh’s Kashi: A mandala Poem stands apart, almost, making one reminiscent of Tagore or Aurobindo, for its spiritual, intellectual and aesthetic qualities/features. Certainly, Singh deserves to be commended for presenting a new holistic view of Kashi through his mandala theory.

An elegantly printed cover with a picture of Lord Shiva being seated on a lotus i.e. the mandala/ Kashi, the book is a sane voice from the mystic arena of grandiloquence.

Reviewed by:

Rajni Singh

Assistant Professor of English

Dept. of HSS

Indian School of Mines University

Dhanbad, India