Introduction
We believe whatever we have seen from childhood, no no we believe whatever people have narrated stories of God in our childhood. In addition from childhood we grew up with stories. Stories of Krishna, Ram, Ganesh, Shiv etcetera ( obviously there are less goddesses, whose stories I have heard). For us some people these are Gods and others are antagonists or bad gods. But, this is only one side of the story, the other is remaining. There are always different perspectives to see events, situations, persons or things. Movingfurther, for children the story of Ganesh can be a moral story( to worship parents and obey them, this is what people have taught me to learn from him). For me Kartikey was not a good son ( as per narration what I have heard) but for some people he is their God. As being a north Indian I didn't know it before I came across a poem by Sahitya Akademi Award winner Arundhati Subramanian, and the title is 'Wondering about Kartikeya/ Muruga/ Subramania, my namesake'. There is no intention to prove who was right and who was wrong, who is God and who is not. The intention is only to see the deconstructive reading of a hindu myth.
Here, I am going to respond to one of her poems as a task given by Prof. Dilip Barad. It is designed as a Sunday Reading task.
Before responding here are some statements made by her for the reading of poetry. For her poetry is a soul, dance and music, which we respond to before we start understanding.
"Poetry is a kind of verbal dance to which we are all capable of responding even before we start understanding what is going on"
Arundhathi Subramanian
Arundhati Subramanian is an Indian English poet, who recently won the 'Sahitya Akademi Award' for his collection of poems 'When a God is a traveler'. Moving further, in one of her interviews or speeches she says the above quotes, in which she tries to say how to respond to poetry. In addition she says poetry is a Sensuousness, if while responding to a poetry we lost it, then we lost the poem. Moving ahead, Poetry is not just for singing the song of glory and pride, there are some poetry which raise questions very rationally to the society and to the power. Poetry also works as a tool to aware people from bloodlines. But why these days there is less importance of poetry than prose? Because as Arundhati Subramanian says, when we can't understand a poem, we often give two reasons...
I can't understand the poem because I'm dumb or I can't understand because maybe the poet is being deliberately obtuse. Either way the result is the same, we turn away from poems.
Arundhati Subramanian
And like this, we turn away from poems nowadays. But here is one poem by this poet, and that is 'Wondering about Kartikeya/ Muruga/ Subramania, my namesake'. If one wants to read different cultures, then this is a fine example. And here is the poem.
' Wondering about Kartikeya/ Muruga/ Subramania, my namesake'
Arundhati Subramaniam
Trust the god back from his travels, his voice wholegrain (and chamomile),
his wisdom neem, his peacock, sweaty-plumed, drowsing in the shadows.
Trust him who sits wordless on park benches listening to the cries of children fading into the dusk,
his gaze emptied of vagrancy, his heart of ownership.
Trust him who has seen enough— revolutions, promises, the desperate light of shopping malls, hospital rooms, manifestos, theologies, the iron taste of blood, the great craters in the middle of love.
Trust him who no longer begrudges his brother his prize, his parents their partisanship.
Trust him whose race is run, whose journey remains, who stands fluid-stemmed knowing he is the tree that bears fruit, festive with sun.
Trust him who recognizes you— auspicious, abundant, battle-scarred, alive— and knows from where you come.
Trust the god ready to circle the world all over again this time for no reason at all other than to see it through your eyes.
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