I paint pictures and write verse. Most these painting are ambiguous, from one angle they show a landscape and from another a river goddess. Some painting were created in Pontfract before I left, other completed in India. Only Sister Mahi was extensively reworked in Yorkshire.
The strangest of this small collection was written, although I had heard his name for the first time that day, on the night that the Gurjarati master poet Adil Mansoori died.That afternoon I heard Saroop Dhruv, the radical Ahmedabad poet read her Sabarmati epic poem.
Sabarmati - An Evocation
They named their first born:
Adarsh – ‘the ideal’ – torn,
with little choice, he married Asha.
With little choice he married
‘Hope’. She, it was, who carried
the Sabarmati – Narmada
Sister Mahi
Brian Lewis
‘She’ the black, river, 'He' a buck male
forcing the goddess, the expansive 'He'
was fair with wheatened skin. Their tale
was told by the young boatman:
‘She
comes twice each month, once on the night
of the full moon and upon a black, another
night, the Ocean takes her. She breathes in light.'
Across age this a brother talks to sister and to brother
It is a Gujarati folk tale, still powerful –
Woman/Man, Man/Woman ,- two types of water.
She resists but Chandra, the moon, will pull
them together. She is the churner’s daughter.
her mother laboured here beneath a lunar tide.
Fresh water into salt, a union made world wide
They coupled at this place, She took his light,
he Her darkness and so the river thrived.
living with nature but then the soul of night
grew tired of simply flowing.
Builders strived
to corset her with concrete, pulled in her waist.
changed her contours, rubbished her, one shore
scum, the other pure and clear. Then they laced
and fashioned her, made Her the Ocean's whore,
polluted Her. Her children went to sweat shops.
Pimps, they sold her to the highest bidder. Wasted
her till she grew thin and weak, left pap and slops
of food on Her hard bed. Where Chandra tasted
sugar there was ash, teeth gone yet she would smile.
They had forgotten that She travels with a crocodile.
Your Breast To Mine Sweet Ocean
Brian Lewis
First the hints of his presence:
a quickening
the moving of currents below my surface
a gentle shudder through myself which is myself
resignation, opening.
He is not the storm.
We lie together:
your flank touching mine,
hand holding hand,
toe touching toe,
I think on Siva,
then the earth moves.
You are my welcomed lover
I place the sun sign at the entry place
and welcome you.
Narmada – The Joy Giver
Brian Lewis
I found a stone
Crafted by the Narmada it did not conform
to the plastic sphere
Its imperfection was its strength
Shaped by water and cracked by
clashing rocks it descended to here
in slow time
sometimes driven by the monsoon,
sometimes still for centuries
these stones are signs for tomorrow’s world
In this natural shaping each stone
is a lingam sacred to the God of rebirth
and grave yards, Lord of birth and renewal
Lord Siva
Protect the speechless stone,
Protect us and all the creatures.
Mahi's Letter To Auntie Kali
Brian Lewis
Send me white skulls I need to make another necklace,
lend a mace and scimitar I need to thread men's heads on twine,
cut off their hands and feed them to my crocodile.
Filth everywhere.
Medicine packaging upon the route down to my contour.
My tongue lolls out. A god must lick this land, and clean it.
Send me some baby crocodiles.
Siva husband sleeps, a python wrapped around his foot,
this work is woman's work.
Lock Up The Poets First
For Adil Mansoori and Saroop Dhruv
‘Lock up the poets first’.
Me: 'I am angry. You lock up writers.'
She was a Maoist - we often talked of books.
Mary: ‘Do not ask questions
whose answers you already know.
Poets are dangerous’
Poets are dangerous
They ask too much.
They say I have:
my ‘individual truth’,
‘I know wrong from right!
this is a tipsy - topsy world
of Concrete, Water, Plastic.
Each one of us a global town,
They say this is a global problem
which needs renewal.
Earth, Air and Creatures
Lock up the poets
The River of Paper - Brian Lewis
Unfinished text
He did not go to the Forest at fifty
Rajendra went to the river
He said : ‘Below this flow of water,
far below in fissures opened yesterday –
far below – there is a River of Paper.’
A translator did not describe it
for we knew of the tradition
that with Prayag
there is a third river where the
fauna and flora are nouns and adjectives
and especially verbs (doing words)
these float with the tide suddenly changing
meanings and histories.
Soft-back books, news, gospels of divine love,
receipts from the Handloom Corporation Store,
the Times of India, bindi packaging but also bus tickets to Anand thrown
to the our sacred land, and lavatory paper float together
well below the Sabarmati's concrete riverside.
There when churned to mulch are enough to
block the estuary
and make the man-made plug hole
a useless dam man-made dam
'Tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow'
said the Narmada
Plastic and Concrete - Brian Lewis
He said, 'Yes, yes I know flying kites can be plastic
but plastic is still harmful, for when a kite rips
as it will, it cannot be repaired and
unlike paper will not return to earth.'
She feared concrete more than plastic.
‘It is the heaviness, even when refined water
is added, that I find it frightening.
It comes in plastic sacks, mixed with
the water from the Narmada it settles
and holds the Sabarmati in a tight corset.
I will begin again to trust
the sound of the sea calling me,
hear the answering cry
of my souls body
beating a wild response
and feel a ripple of reply
echo through me
like a prayer.
I will begin again to breath
In rhythm with the earth,
moving beneath my feet,
moaning in her ecstasy,
a psalm, written
in the body of my soul.
And I will remember
the opening prayer
of my child’s birth
moving through me
like a dark river, in a line
ancient and unbroken,
spanning the oceans of time.
And I will know you here with me
dancing to the same beat
at the same time.
Dark currents pulling us home.
Some rivers are easy going
others dour and broody
giving little of substance away
this one has been willing to concede
air above the Aire rendered fresher of late
sky-blue thinking sobered into concrete greys
raindrops on a downbeat day ruminate in silence
steel fins bristle
cantilever
equal to the stress
memory’s sustainable timbers shiver into momentary drizzle
on a morning of cold enigmas
my yearning is hard to pronounce
an agitated back and forth of froth
fringing the weir’s apron
the Sally Army band has turned a corner
children too young to remember
wilt like poppies in the chill
leaves lost in desultory traffic
are notes spattered from the trees’ trumpets
‘Lest we forget,’ a sea cadet’s fading epaulette
engulfed by the end of the street
my song is a salmon out of local water
flinging its tiny cells against indifference
stretching its scales over untold next to nothings
losing energy, heart and tune
till the quack of a dowdy mallard in the muck
arcs into sudden melody
like the very word leaping
from mud-suck and mire of language
the swan’s neck of its shaping
into silvery-airey light
catching at my hand
like a tentative toddler
tripping the whole length of the spine
of the fluent line of its footbridge.
Ray Hearne
Chris Bingham gave a talk on Eco Towns During our live webchat between Yorkshire and Gujarat
By the end of 2008, more people will live in towns and cities than in rural areas.
This by itself would be nothing to worry about. What is worrying is quite how badly we've designed these cities. Our cities sprawl outwards over the land, polluting the air and the rivers, speeding us towards global catastrophe. And they are massively dependent on cheap, plentiful energy from fossil fuels. Energy that will soon be a lot less cheap and plentiful, thanks to the twin threats of climate change and peak oil.
So what can we do? Some of the changes we need to make are relatively painless. Insulating our houses, switching to more efficent lightbulbs and appliances etc, re-plumbing our homes to use greywater and rainwater whenever possible. Doing these things may cost a little more to begin with, but afterwards they will actually save us money.
Unfortunately, correcting our utter dependency on oil will take a little more work. A house without power will still provide us with shelter. But a car without petrol is just two tonnes of useless metal. You can no longer drive to work to earn money for food, or to the shops to buy it.
But what about the much touted alternative fuels? Hydrogen and biofuels.
Well, hydrogen is not actually an energy source. You can't just go out and drill for hydrogen. You have to produce it. And it will always take much more energy to produce that hydrogen than you'll ever get back out of it with a fuel-cell. Solar panels and wind turbines provide only a small percentage of our current electricity needs, never mind producing enough extra electricity for hundreds of millions of cars. Plus it would cost billions, billions that would be far better spent elsewhere.
A massive switch-over to biofuels would be similarly flawed. We've already seen the knock on effects with the recent global food shortages, and that's before we start producing biofuels on any kind of useful scale.
Car manufacturers would do far better to invest in making their cars as efficient as possible.
But we need to stop trying to fix the car, and start fixing our towns and cities instead.
That means making them far more compact, mixing homes and shops and work places together rather than building them miles apart, making our streets a good deal more pedestrian and bicycle friendly, as well as improving public transport, and it means growing a lot more food locally.
Such towns and cities will be better for the environment. And they'll be better for us.
Continue onto http://www.ecotownZ.co.uk
By the end of 2008, more people will live in towns and cities than in rural areas.
This by itself would be nothing to worry about. What is worrying is quite how badly we've designed these cities. Our cities sprawl outwards over the land, polluting the air and the rivers, speeding us towards global catastrophe. And they are massively dependent on cheap, plentiful energy from fossil fuels. Energy that will soon be a lot less cheap and plentiful, thanks to the twin threats of climate change and peak oil.
So what can we do? Some of the changes we need to make are relatively painless. Insulating our houses, switching to more efficent lightbulbs and appliances etc, re-plumbing our homes to use greywater and rainwater whenever possible. Doing these things may cost a little more to begin with, but afterwards they will actually save us money.
Unfortunately, correcting our utter dependency on oil will take a little more work. A house without power will still provide us with shelter. But a car without petrol is just two tonnes of useless metal. You can no longer drive to work to earn money for food, or to the shops to buy it.
But what about the much touted alternative fuels? Hydrogen and biofuels.
Well, hydrogen is not actually an energy source. You can't just go out and drill for hydrogen. You have to produce it. And it will always take much more energy to produce that hydrogen than you'll ever get back out of it with a fuel-cell. Solar panels and wind turbines provide only a small percentage of our current electricity needs, never mind producing enough extra electricity for hundreds of millions of cars. Plus it would cost billions, billions that would be far better spent elsewhere.
A massive switch-over to biofuels would be similarly flawed. We've already seen the knock on effects with the recent global food shortages, and that's before we start producing biofuels on any kind of useful scale.
Car manufacturers would do far better to invest in making their cars as efficient as possible.
But we need to stop trying to fix the car, and start fixing our towns and cities instead.
That means making them far more compact, mixing homes and shops and work places together rather than building them miles apart, making our streets a good deal more pedestrian and bicycle friendly, as well as improving public transport, and it means growing a lot more food locally.
Such towns and cities will be better for the environment. And they'll be better for us.
Continue onto http://www.ecotownZ.co.uk
A poem by Falguni Bharateeya
Well,
We are Amdavadis
Money-minded people.
Aren’t you happy O River!
We have made your bed watery
24 hours 7 days.
You don’t like celebrations!
We are going to celebrate
Several festivals on your river front.
Sabarmati,you’re a mother
Of this “Walled City”.
We have given you a new look
Offering many plastic bags
That are smiling
Watching the Metrocity
From your surface.
You have grown to be a space
To accommodate all development
all calamities.
At the Sabamarti by Jane
At the Sabarmarti, I tried to look at the water, but the light was so bright, my camera wouldn't focus on the surface of the river. So, how was I to capture the Sabarmarti?
water's edge. She tells me that the gates have been closed to discourage
suicides. Each week there are more and more bodies snarling the fishermen's
nets. Men who face ruin, from what is called the credit crunch, drown their
wives and children too, because they know there will be no-one else to care
of them.
Asha Makhecha
Narmati
O, mother of mine!
Let you have your
Own water
Own flow
Own voice and music
I don’t want a step-mother.
Well,
We are Amdavadis
Money-minded people.
Aren’t you happy O River!
We have made your bed watery
24 hours 7 days.
You don’t like celebrations!
We are going to celebrate
Several festivals on your river front.
Sabarmati,you’re a mother
Of this “Walled City”.
We have given you a new look
Offering many plastic bags
That are smiling
Watching the Metrocity
From your surface.
You have grown to be a space
To accommodate all development
all calamities.
At the Sabamarti by Jane
At the Sabarmarti, I tried to look at the water, but the light was so bright, my camera wouldn't focus on the surface of the river. So, how was I to capture the Sabarmarti?
Walking along her banks, I feel disconnected from the water. Bothe the
ashram and the idea of "mother river" seem at odds with the harsh industrial
landscape of the riverbank.
Far below, a dog trots along the concrete, as if he has somewhere important
to get to. A woman is washing clothes and laying the wet slabs of coloured
cloth along a section of broken wall. Her children, two small girls and a
boy, slip through the metal gates that bar the steps to the ashram and make
a beeline for any passerby who looks like a tourist. Once a few rupees are
grasped within their small, well-practiced fingers, they scurry back down to
hand the coins to their mother, still washing clothes, far below, in the
waters of the Sabamarti.
I watch from a distance. I am distanced by space, by the gates, by a million
things more. My camera sees the tiny figures belo, but they are so far away
they seem to scarcely move. They already look like a photograph.
water's edge. She tells me that the gates have been closed to discourage
suicides. Each week there are more and more bodies snarling the fishermen's
nets. Men who face ruin, from what is called the credit crunch, drown their
wives and children too, because they know there will be no-one else to care
of them.
Asha Makhecha
Narmati
O, mother of mine!
Let you have your
Own water
Own flow
Own voice and music
I don’t want a step-mother.
Yes, I agree
I am fond of change
As change is eternal.
Well, I don’t want
This CHANGE to be eternal…
Now
I suspect the very existence of yours!
I question to myself
Am I on the bank of Sabarmati?
Or on the bank of Narmada?
Am I in the lap of my mother or step-mother?
Well, I expect eternity
To have life
More and more life
And
Not death
No never ever...
Migration by Beccy Stirrup
The birds have migrated to the wrong place.
They used to follow Sabarmati’s flow
but down below, Narmada speaks –
her sister lost beneath the earth.
The birds have stopped,
their chatter loud, louder even than
the cars, and bikes and life.
People look, and shudder, and think
Hitchcock-like thoughts.
The birds have migrated to the wrong place,
they let air currents hold them above
Narmada’s new home.
They are not confused.
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