Paintings, Photographs and Video

We have included paintings, Photographs and Videos because we want to demonstrate the blogs potential and also provide creative writing tutors and teachers with stimuli for sessions.

Brian Lewis paints pictures some of which are ambiguous, from one angle they show landscape and from another a river goddess. One is Hanuman from another angle his sadu. There are also preparatory drawings. More are on the Gujarat-Yorkshire Blogspot.com







Jake Lewis presents images from both the source of the Aire at Malham and the site of Benedetti pedestrian bridge Castleford. More images of both sites are on Reinhold Behringen's Gujarat-Yorkshire Blogspot.com

Jane Weatherby provides an extensive catalogue of images which relate to urban and rural life in Gujarat.

Reinhold Behringen and Asha and Porl Medlock are currently creating videos and a set of interview relating to individual writers who have an interest in translation and/or river locations.

Jake Schuhle-Lewis - Malham
Jane Weatherby - India
Reinhold Behringen – Malham and India

Prose Pieces

The three prose pieces come from a variety of sources. The first two are records of river workshops, the third tells how a newspaper campaign eventually forced the relevant authorities to clean up Yorkshire's River Aire and the final one is an account of the relationship between places and intangible Heritage.

At the Mahi

Falguni Bharateeya

The workshop on the banks of Mahi (19-10-2008,9.30-5.30) took on its own shape. We started with some MANTRAS of the Rigveda and a song,sitting in the vicinity of the river-a temple of Lord Shiva. Having introduced the theme of Climate change and culture with reference to the rivers in Gujarat,we read some parts from a book on Mahi-available in translation-EARTHEN LAMPS-This book has some sketches on the river that facilitated the painters.We read a touching story by Sundaram which focused on a woman character and it creates an image of the river too.After the introduction the writers and artists tried to do something creative till the lunch hour. We were lucky to have some folk-singers who sang for the river. In the afternoon we went to a more beautiful,rocky spot where we had discourse on folk-literature,Mahi's several aspects and the creative writers read their compositions and the painters shared their paintings and sketches. I was the co-coordinator of this workshop and with the help of Atanu and others I could somehow manage it. I remembered you time and again while the work was in progress.If you need some more information,I'll provide it later.Please let me know how do you find this.
Remembering you
Falguni


At the Sabamarti

Jane Weatherby

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. Both 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.
Later, I tell Rachel I was sorry not to have been able to go down to the 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.


The River Aire Campaign

Peter Lazenby

The River Aire campaignran for 10 years. The YEP picked it up and continued for four years until it was won. I think it was 1990 to 1994 or thereabouts. I was the sole reporter involved. I'll try dig out the launch article but it may not be on computer file.

The campaign was called Eye on the Aire, the name of the campaign group which brought together 30-plus organisations. 
We started it something like this:
The River Aire starts its life as a healthy Dales river flowing from beneath the limestone cliffs of Malham Tarn. 
It supports sensitive wildlife including grayling, mayfly and dragonfly. 
But by the time it has passed through industrial West Yorkshire it is little more than an open sewer. The river is dead. The cause of its death is the sewage effluent dumped into the river from sewage treatment works along its length by Yorkshire Water. At times of low rainfall as it flows through Leeds the river comprises just 30 per cent own water and 70 per cent sewage effluent. And on hot days it stinks.
The sewage effluent destroys the river's oxygen content. Without oxygen river life cannot survive. 
The first dose of poison flows into the Aire from Marley sewage treatment plant at Keighley. The plant deals with the waste of the wool scouring industry, which produces some of the filthiest by-products of any industry in the region.
Despite the Keighley pollution the river recovers as it passes down the Aire valley, re-oxygenating itself as it passes over weirs and shallow shoals.
Then it reaches Esholt, which processes the industrial and domestic waste of the textile city of Bradford. Esholt is one of the biggest sewage treatment plants in Europe. Millions of gallons of effluent are dumped into the river daily.
Below Esholt's outfalls no wildlife can survive. But the resilient Aire recovers again, at least partially, from this massive dose of pollution. It flows over more weirs, such as that at Kirkstall Abbey.
But then it hits Leeds. Knostrop sewage works handles the domestic and industrial waste of Yorkshire's biggest industrial city. Among its industries are chemicals and textile. Industrial waste is added to the human waste of a city of 650,000 people, every day, day in, day out.
The river is now dead, and continues its journey lifeless towards the North Sea. 
We visited the river in Leeds city centre with a technician from Leeds University. He donned sturdy rubber gloves before throwing a bucket attached to a rope into the river to take a sample. He didn't want a single drop of Aire water to touch his skin. And swimming in the river? "Don't even think about it," he said. As if to emphasise the point, as we spoke a number of dead fish floated past.
Downstream from Knostrop only one strange form of wildlife can survive. The ring-tailed maggot breathes through its anus, which it sticks through the surface of the water to take in oxygen, because there is none in the river.
Remarkably it is not the quantity of the effluent pumped into the river which does the damage. It is the quality. 
Campaigners say the treatment given by Yorkshire Water to the sewage it dumps in the river is insufficient. Basically it involves two levels of filtration to remove or break down solids.
What the campaigners want is a third form of treatment at the bigger sewage works, a system known as tertiary treatment. This involves filtering the effluent through layers of different pebbles and sand. They say this process would remove most of the damaging materials, the ones which kill the river.
Brian, I assume Yorkshire Water's abuse of the river continued at that time as it passed further south through your neck of the woods. The polluted contents of the Calder would also be added. I did have figures on the number of cubic metres of effluent going to the Aire from the different sewage works. If I find the original article I'll give you them.
We continued the campaign on the YEP for four years, after which the Environment Agency, with Government support, ordered Yorkshire Water to spend over half pf the cash it had earmarked for environmental work for the region for one year solely on the river Aire. It amounted to tens of millions of pounds.
Yorkshire Water installed a tertiary treatment plant at Esholt. I think at the same time the Marley effluent was improving because of a reduction in the wool scouring industry. Improvements were also already under way at Knostrop. From Leeds' point of view the Esholt work was most important. Yorkshire Water had to go to the US to find the right treatment system - one developed to deal with the waste from the steel industry. When completed it worked a treat. In fact the quality of the effluent produced was sometimes better than the Aire's own water. The plant manager had an aquarium through which samples of the cleaned effluent flowed. He kept goldfish in it.
The effect was not just a rapid improvement in the river's health and a return of wildlife. Leeds city centre had a vast and mainly derelict waterfront - warehouses and office buildings dating from pre-railway times when the river and its linked canals were the main form of industrial transportation for the city.
They were crumbling and badly in need of investment and change of purpopse. But who would invest with a stinking open sewer flowing past the window? Well the improvement in the river coincided (if it was a coincidence) with a heap of investment. The riverside buildings have since been restored into offices and houses. New flats have been built on derelict land. There are riverside pubs, restaurants and markets in the city centre. There is even an annual river festival. Ironically the Yorkshire Post building is likely to disappear in a couple of years time, and its riverside site sold off for development of some sort.
Eye on the Aire involved leisure groups such as canoeists and anglers, conservation and wildlife organisations, local community groups, riverside employers, Leeds City Council and individuals. Tetley's brewery was among them.
After winning the battle of the Aire the group turned its attention to tributaries and storm overflows which continued to cause occasional problems. The group wound itself up two or three years ago, its job done.
There are now herons and otters in the river Aire, even in the city centre. Coarse fish are of course abundant. Salmon are trying to get back up too, but work is needed to create fish passes on a number of weirs which they cannot negotiate. Once that is done - and there is a campaign going on - salmon could once again reach their former breeding grounds below Malham Cove.
The river is now at its most healthy state since the Industrial Revolution.

Folk Lore And Climate Change

Brian Lewis

The folk tale, depending as it so often does of a narrative and a moral, offers a structure which could well carry the debate about climate change forward and attract a broad audience which includes children, students, singers, painters and writers.

This thought came to me very forcibly one evening in November 2008 as I sat in a boat rowed by a young boatman across the River Mahi in the State of Gujarat. My companions, three women and a man - a poet, a scholar and two teachers - were involved in a conference which took as its theme rivers, climate change and how to restore old balances. I was from England and had published a book about the summer flooding of a local village. My Indian colleagues were local people from a nearby university town and they had been partticularly concerned about the shortage of water in the Sabamarti. the design of the waterfront in Ahmedabad and how the building a new shoreline had changed the face of the sixth largest city in India. This renewal programme had destroyed homes and displaced people.

The area where we had parked the taxi was very polluted though beautiful. It was a beautiful evening though for the time of year had been over hot. Was this a possible consequence of climate change​ There was a temple and a steep flight of steps which led to the shore and three boats. They were moored close to another smaller temple and a delicate ancient whitewashed pavilion.

Mitali Baxi, a young teacher, someone who did not seem especially religious though I may be wrong, immediately we got there said, ‘Look a Kingfisher welcomes us to the boat’ It was perched on the rough mast of an ancient boat which stood ready to take us across the river.

The Kingfisher, a native of both Gujarat and Yorkshire, was doing what a bird does. It sat perched high up so that it could look at the surrounding environment. However Mitali understood something more. She saw him as a fellow creature wishing to engage with us in its own way. She was not speaking in a rational way but extending our understanding, referencing a truth which have been sown and harvested by folk poets and story tellers for thousands of years. She was suggesting that people and other creatures are all capable of communicating with each other.

I do not know anything about the symbolism of the King Fisher in the Indian folklore tradition, though I suspect that it will nave made its presence felt, because it is such a strong and distinctive bird. In the European tradition its colouring and its habits have been subject of a lot of comment. It catches the red rays of the sun on its breast and the blue of the sky on its back. The Greeks named it Halcyon, a protector of good health. Regal it sits still reflecting days spent in fond memories, the Halcyon days. To be greeted by a Kingfisher as we crossed the river Mitali suggested was auspicious and comforting.

The boat was anything but that. How old it was was difficult to judge. It was long and flat and although we were told that if could carry fifteen passengers that number would have been brave to venture forth. We picked our way gingerly to the front and perched in the bow. The decking planks were weathered to silver, planed but otherwise rough cut a bow and stern..

The boatman's name was Sanjay and as he propelled us with a long pole out of the polluted waters of the south shore to the clear northern one Adam and Falguni – the poet and the scholar - questioned him about his family, life and response to living close to the river.

He said he thought that he was fifteen and knew little about his ancestry beyond his father and had been born close by. One answer was especially interesting. When asked what he would do about the pollution which was very obvious on the receding bank, he said that that the Goddess of the river would know what to do. He had a deeply held belief that if Goddess Mahi was displeased She would act and punish the evil doers, doing this in her own time and in her own way. Mahi was very real to him and she would act on her, and his, behalf. To him the local deity, what in the European tradition we might have called at an earlier stage of our civilisation 'the spirit of the place', (genius loci) was very real.

Falguni knew about the underlying traditions of this part of the river. It was on the spot on the opposite bank where the pavilion stood that Chandra the Ocean coupled with Mahi. At first the Ocean had rejected her for her skin was too dark but in the end they had become lovers and according to tradition he still visits her twice a month, once on the night of the full moon and once when there his no moon.

In India preferences over pigmentation and the rejection of darker people shocks me for it seems so out of touch with tomorrow's world and is against India's democratic community spirit and usual tolerant values. Found in marriage advertisements I find it quaint but at a personal level repulsive. It is a primitive throw-back to a complex anthropological past, like a gender preference which favours sons, dowries and an acceptance of abject poverty, it is one of those things I find difficult to swallow for I know it will impede India's progress. Yet there is a difference between fresh water and salt water, and stressing this through symbolic language in this folk tale of the marriage of the ocean and the river the story told in the folk tale accommodates the differences.

As the sun went down Chhaya's nephew, Shyam having finished skimming flat stones into the river, a universal childhood pastime, climbed back into the boat and, raced by a faster one, we made back to the polluted shore. There we paid the boatman and disembarked close to the side of the temple. The sun was going down and as it did the emerging moon took on a hint of gold. Slipping off my lace-up shoes, a most inappropriate footwear in India where you enter homes and temples barefoot. With the others I mounted the whitewashed steps to a second floor balcony and looked through a small window at two figurines who represented Chandra and Mahi. On the wall there was a sun symbol which resemble the swastika, a symbol tainted in Europe. Having walked over it on more than one household threshold in the last week where it welcomed me I was coming to see that symbols are what you make of them. In one place a wish for good luck, in another a symbol of genocide

Shyam, the young boy, leaned through a glassless window and pulled on a bell rope. A small bell hanging from the ceiling tinkled. Later in another temple I would see him moisten a finger and touch the vermillion paste which covered the feet of Lord Ganesha and apply the colour to his forehead. Rituals are a establish parts of the folk lore and religious traditions. In Catholic churches in England, when the host, representing the body of Christ is elevated by the priest, a boy, or more frequently these days, a girl, rings a handbell. Worshipers coming into church stop at the Holywater stoop and use its water to make a cross on their heads. Here they apply colour to the part of the face the English call 'the temple'.

As we stood Falguni told me that on the festival of their Gods' wedding villagers from the very poor local local villages come to this shore to eat, dance and tell stories.

The experience of the ritual, story telling, bird lore and folk tales in an environment which cried out to us because of pollution, water loss, climate change and community poverty was as wonderful as it was strange. The setting made me see the extent to which a mighty river could be laid low by filth but the overall impression I felt there was one of optimism. My companions, with the exception of the Muslim poet Adam, were younger than than me by forty years and I could sense that given a chance they could do more than they thought possible. That night I started to to seriously think about where folk lore fitted into the climate change agenda.

I had come to India partly because in England there was an impression that whatever we did to combat climate change in our country the people of India and China would undo it in their rush to industrialise and modernise. At the time I was writing a book on public buildings, construction practices and low carbon footprints therefore I was beginning to take the issue very seriously indeed.

As a writer and I saw myself as someone who had the sort of contacts who might at least start a small debate in a receptive area of India, the university English departments of Gujarat. I also did not agree with the general analysis found in the West. I did not see India as a negative force. It was undergoing rapid social and economic change and in the short term there would be casualties. However there needed to be a developed critique. We all had to keep up the pressure to find alternatives to concreting over land, deforestation and the irresponsible irrigation practices.

I reasoned that the flooding and climate change could be the subject of study and that the development of creative writing which took climate change as a subject. If love poetry and books which tell love stories why not creative compositions which set out to celebrate the balances of the natural environment and the part it plays in the 'good' life and attack the evils of pollution. When I explained my views Professor Falguni Bharateeya she suggested a way in which the strategy was strengthened. Instead of tackling such a universal theme we should focus on rivers and in that way reduce the subject area but leave ourselves enough content to look at the spiritual and creative as well as the scientific, socio/economic and political implications of the slow erosion of our living space. It was a master stroke. In minutes we were getting down to the specifics, talking real rivers: the Gujarati Narmada and Mahi and the Yorkshire Aire and Don.

She would take responsibility for conducting workshops on the banks of a number of Indian rivers and I would do the same work in England. Neither of us had any money, though we felt that in India at least we could rely on the support of the HM Patel Department of English and fraternal colleges, in England the only money we could find came from a small Ruskinian charity the Guild of St George. Coming as it did with £500, with no strings attached and a lot of faith, it was enough help with the costs of air fares for the freelance writers who made up the English team. It was agreed would return in November 2008 with a small team - accommodation free - and we would work together. This was the conversation in the guest house of courtesy of Vallabh Vidyanagar University took me to the banks of the Mahi.

That night we began to hope singers, musician's. photographers, film producers, philosophers, poets, storytellers, creative technologists, workers on the world wide web scientists and seers would take their inspiration from the rivers and their banks on both sides of the world and work together to restore something closer to the old environmental balances. On river banks the spiritual, technological and the pragmatic might come together.

At the beginning of 2008 I was looking at major public building projects and their relationship to the environment, by its end I had a new book commission. Called Castleford on Aire it was about how Wakefield Metropolitan District Council set about using public consultation, government money and design to regenerate a Yorkshire town which had been hit by trade recession. Using regional and national grant aid local government had moved a market place, built a town green, designed children's playgrounds, and most importantly for the Gujarat Rivers Talk To Yorkshire Rivers project, built a new pedestrian bridge.

To understand why Wakefield, one of the small Yorkshire cities, was prepared to chance many millions of pounds on this project you need to understand current attitudes to funding, spacial awareness and 'pride of place.' If a district council was prepared to match regional government money twice the amount of money would be available for projects. There had to be a willingness to build or renew buildings in a town in such a way that the structures were challenging and enhanced the existing urban environment. Their designs had to be adventurous and come with the stamp of community approval. This process was called the Yorkshire Renaissance initiative. Central to the main agenda was need to nourish in its community a 'pride of place'. To do this an understanding of local heritage was fundamental.

In England we are in the middle of a debate about heritage. Some in government and the heritage agencies support the further promotion of the 'tangible heritage' while others explore the 'intangible heritage'. Tangible Heritage focuses on the architecture and artefacts of the past and present to produce an heritage that actively acknowledges pride of place and educates people for the future by actively embracing the lessons and experience of the past. Tangible Heritage is about those remains from the past that still exist to be looked at, touched and studied.

Intangible Heritage, is not passive, it is about learning and then doing. It can be scholarly but in a different way. It is not just archive and archaeology based. Its agenda is broader than Tangible Heritage for it embraces theatre, singing and playing, writing and publishing, art, citizenship, formal and informal education and street celebrations. It is not unscholarly, dedicated library studies matter but it does not stop there. It is about the active engagement of local communities with their past and animates local people and requires them to examine their town's present needs and create a vision for the future of their community.

Although trained as a social historian with a good general knowledge of the 'tangible heritage' found in buildings and museum collections, my interest in community development and the arts drew me toward 'intangible heritage'. The recognition that this was where my enthusiasms lay was enhanced in India. On the banks of the rivers Mahi, Narmada and Sabarmati I found that I was more interested in how I felt about the experiences and how I could represent them than the pavilion of the Goddess, the new dam and the Gandhi ashram.

Following a visit to see the Narmada Dam and a visit to a shallow bank where we dipped our feet in the tepid waters of the sacred river next day we travelled by taxi to see evidence of tangible heritage at Dabhoi. There we touched, photographed and studied the town's tangible heritage. Its sites are important for several reasons. It is a major fortified town and its four gates are covered with wonderful carved brackets showing sculptures of elephants, nymphs, warriors and pilasters portraying Lord Vishnu. For anyone visiting Gujarat, who can afford the taxi fare, and is interested in architecture, military history or the way figurative art is used to decorate building, Dabhoi is a must.

Yet it is not to the ruins which my mind and imagination return when I think about that strange morning but the stimulus offered by the town itself and the 'intangible heritage'. As a writer who has spent thirty years of my life working with actors, story collectors, writers, drummers, banner makers, musicians, social commentators, as soon as I turned my back on the Great Gateway and walked down the street towards the shops I saw a need to create and sing the song of Dubhoi. The writer in me wanted to write a short story in which the central character was a plain clothed drunken policeman on a bike who wanted to impress the visitors with his importance. As a painter I wanted to depict the shrine where you went if your child had measles. Jane, a photographer was drawn to architecture and textures, to fruit, cloth and jewellery. Jenny looked for small intriguing corners in courtyards, Ruth odd pieces of handed carved decoration.

'Would you like to see the inside of someone's house,' asked Falguni. Some saw this as odd, she knew no one in the town, but soon we were talking to an old gentleman on a swing and within minutes, sans shoes, we were meeting his wife in her kitchen. Soon we we moving along the road towards the town centre and the inevitable statue of MK Gandhi, striding purposely towards the char vendor's. At the stationery shop, to prove that we are one world, I phoned home. There, having sold me a devotional card of Kali, tongue out festooned in a garland of men's heads, its owner of the Shriji Stores gave me a calendar in Gujarati and indicated that if I ever came back there was his address.

On the return journey I thought about our tour of Dubhoi and tried place it into context. I and my colleagues had come to India with a serious purpose, to examine with people living on another continent the need to combat climate change and cherish rivers. This could have been a mechanistic process, we could deliver facts, figures and strategies, and in time we intended to that, but we were in the process of doing something else. We were trying to cherish and develop other aspects of the creative spirit. We wanted to borrow metaphor to draw out the energies found in the intangible heritage. We only days into the project but we already had poems, stories, paintings, photographs and videos which allowed us to examine problems associated with climate change. This approach allowed us to build a strong network of friends in Anand who wished to be identified with the project.

We had also managed to transmit to Yorkshire and seen Yorkshire faces, and heard their poets' voices coming from the side of the River Aire as we sat in a university conference room. The two hour transmission with primitive technical equipment was conducted by two skilled operators, Professor Reinhold Behringer of Leeds Metropolitan University and Jake Schuhle-Lewis the Pontefract Press. The link kept breaking up and we all agreed that it resembled Marconi's first broadcast rather than the BBC at its best but we had shown what was possible and had a model to build on.

The November the experimental creative writing workshops, under-developed in Anand and probably in other Gujarati universities but common in Leeds, had been a success. We had passed beyond the 'this is what we would like to do' to the 'this is what we have done' phase. New minted poems had been read and images transmitted in real time. Friends were seen and made. We still had no money to develop the British end of the experiment but we went back determined to make links with interested communities in Bolton, Birmingham, Bolden, Barnsley and Batley, with the rest of the ABC coming on fast track. The newspapers were taking up the story and headteachers in Castleford and Doncaster were in touch with Indian teachers.

Two local authorities in Yorkshire had responded and a residential community college was seriously thinking of using its overseas development agenda to host a regional conference on the Arts, Science and Climate Change. The team we had taken knew how to unlock doors. I had also decided to return in January 2009 and use the material collected two months before with lecturers and post-graduate students at a translation conference. I would also take the newly minted message into schools.

At some point in the morning of the transmission day, having done most of the work, we decided to try to explain to each other what were were doing and place on record our Aims and Objectives. Some would see this as a topsy-turvey way of doing things. I don't for I believe that the 'general' must follow the 'particular' in a creative agenda. You cannot know what is possible until after you have followed your instincts Strategic programmes are usually stuffed with buzz words that when analysed don't mean a lot. For instance the word 'culture' gets used without much of a definition and it is not alone. However close to the beginning of the discussion one of our Indian colleagues used a word which I have never seen used in such a no noesense strategic document before. She said that we should be driven by 'the spirit'.

Exactly what that meant I am not sure. I have never been the sort of person who wanted to come to India on a hippie trail to 'self realisation'. I had come to Gujarat for technical reasons. I arrived to help out at a translation workshop two years previously and kept coming back because I enjoyed working with the students, meeting scholars and eating Gujarati food. However when the word 'spiritual' was used it resonated and even though I did not completely understand it, I knew it was central to what we were doing. The more I thought about it I could not see how we could succeed if we were not driven by things which emanated from deep within us and defy too much analysis.

Canto Four of the Train to Gujarat

At the January 2008 translation workshop I presented in First Daft book format the first three poems of the 'Train To Gujarat. During that two week period I made notes for the forth, fifth and six cantos. The content was partly driven by an interest in work climate charge and the ways in which the Surat floods of 2007 related to floods that took place close to my home, ten miles away in Toll Bar village, Doncaster. I called it Talking Rivers.

Talking Rivers



Brian Lewis

Surat is of little interest to the tourist except those with a
fascination for urban decay, noise and pollution.
If Ahmedabad is bad in this respect Surat is horrific.
Avoid it like the plague.

The Lonely Planet Travel Survival Kit




January 2008



Prologue

Take note! This is Ram and Sita's story but set
in modern times. So she or he who quietly reads
this Ramayana must relax the rules of place, let
fancies follow where rhyme and rhythm leads.

Sometimes we'll wander through the mango trees
other romp the limestone caves in west West Yorkshire
When dealt a prial of aces remember that three threes
deliver most in Brag.
We'll tell of water, speak of fire.





S1
Upon the second day they struggled far into the night

Upon the second day they struggled far into the night
without a minute's break.
Ram: 'The Tapi Dam will over
flow and things become much worse. Within an hour Right
will be Wrong.'
Then turning to his wife, his dutiful lover,
'I do believe the centre where we stand we cannot hold
and chaos soon will come upon us and confusion reign.
Since I am God related I have prophetic powers. I've been told
on good authority filth will spew forth from sewer and from drain.'

Of course because of caste they could have gone to heaven,
but didn't. They carried furniture upstairs and waited. Remember
Sita was a natural woman before the forest years so even
if you say her human fire had ceased to burn one ember
smouldered.
India was her womb. Each month she bled.
Some waters were black bile and earth, some waters red.

S3
These three heroes battled through.

These three heroes battled through. Tired, hungry, knee
deep in filth and water. A neighbour drowned. As in a play
when tragedy strikes the lights were dimmed.
Key
cross roads in the city were now lakes and railway
lines their graveyards.
The poor will suffer for being
poor is their karma. With houses simply made of mud
their lights go out immediately and they end up seeing
only darkness. They have no drink and very little food.

A palm outside the family door was covered in kites,
a symbol of lost freedom. Most were soaked through,
they'd never fly again or mount the wind, height
climbing to the stars, or sing, 'Regenerate, Renew'
as they swooped at the earth. Plastic sheeting wrapped
itself around a banyan tree.
The infrastructure snapped.

S4
If the poor of India were forced against a wall of water

If the poor of India were forced against a wall
of water that washed to Bollywood would a starlet
with a silvered bucket bail them out? Would the fall
of Ravna in some distant tale be quite sufficient, a set
of Akbar's court made in used plywood be enough
to hold a wall of people. The shepherd herding sheep,
street sleepers selling garlands, the woman taking snuff
as her children beg at crossings, will they keep
still and watch or will they rise and help to stop
the water rising? Who knows for who can know?
There are hidden Empires. When doctors start to mop
their floors and as they wade through water show
a solidarity with workers nothing will be quite the same
again. That happened in Surat when the rains came.

S5
Architects made shelters out of cardboard boxes

Architects made shelters out of cardbord boxes. High
born ladies slept upon poor people's floors. Caste
lay with caste beneath old carpets.
Sita to Ram: 'Why,
oh why must this be so, nature is disturbed. It cannot last.'

Twelve with one straw sipped water from one glass.
Eleven in one family died and floated with others, each
one stinking, each untouchable. A scheduled class
woman processed before a brahim - she sought to teach
him what she knew of death. What was understood: caste,
gender, age, here meant next to nothing. Computers crashed.
From a threshold Ganesha finally spoke, 'This cannot last'.
His rat was on his lap and both were tired. Rain lashed
against the window pane with fury it broke the glass
'This is the worst it's ever been but it will quickly pass.'


S6
As well spiced food flows through your finger tips

As well spiced food flows through your finger tips
the water entered through the walls and floors
Concrete could not contain it. Faces grew thin, lips
became swollen, bellies distended. The house doors
would not open they were locked by tonnes of rain.
Although a dry State there were whisky glasses
in that whirlpool. Rack and watery ruin pushed drain
covers skyward. Old Fiats floated under under passes

Above the diamond merchant's house the storm
clouds gathered. These workmen lacked a basic wage
so they kept grinding at every diamond face. Harm
might come if one face was not ground. The page
in the book of life for each and everyone was wet
and torn. If they travelled then their route was set.

S7
Some say that Hanuman was to blame

Some say that Hanuman was to blame. Tired
of watching Lord Ganesha across the threshold
he left his temples and he walked abroad. Hired
as a rickshaw man he moved amongst the poor, told
stories without humour then in a massive fit of peek
told the rain to fall.
(It's in the Vedas, difficult to find
but there).
He said, 'Rain for at least a solid week
and do not stop.' Rain listened. Gujarat was undermined.

He was a Brhamchari. The urge for passion was not
in him. Cold and calculating like constant falling rain,
he made his presence felt.
Sita's clothes began to rot.
She was dressed in bark once more, each rotting stain
was not removed as stain can be if soaked immediately.

Humanan cried, 'Come tell me now exactly who is free?

S8
He'd always worried Sita.

He'd always worried Sita. He had been helpful when
in Lanka but now he was a bore for he would only see
himself as the great exotic hero that he was. But then
who can be helpful all the time. 'He' the Almighty 'He'.

The water now was thickened by stinking, febrile mud
and ever present litter . Carpets, clocks and wooden bowls
crashed into walls like new untethered ships. What could
break loose here did.
What dowries will buy victim's souls


When a child he'd leapt and caught and held the sun
He'd pushed his face against hers, felt her breath
had seen her eyes up close, touched her ordered bun
of fiery hair, and whispered quietly, 'Are you Death'.

His was a steely grip and as he balanced on the brink
of the heliocentric universe he had some time to think.

S9
What did Hanuman think

What did Hanuman think as he hung far above the
earth? How can we know? Sadus, renowned seers
might say they understand but can we trust them? We
think we know what caused the Surat flood but as years
pass we haven't got a real clue. There are those
who say that government failed to see the dam was full.
Others that Hanuman in righteous anger choose
to wrench the plug from our humanity, many said the pull
of the moon after the monsoon rain and extra heavy water
sent the water into a tumbling whirlpool which sucked
us towards oblivion, into one black hole. Son, daughter,
cousins and everyone you've ever met became one mood.

'Hanuman give us here our daily bread, give us our food.'


S10
Aditi could have scorched him

Aditi could have scorched him to a sun blessed crust
with carbon edges, cremated both his eyes, the tail
that swung the noble army into a charred rope. Dust
and ashes be all there was to know him by.
Fail
to make a clear impression on the Sun and you will
certainly regret it.
Instead she gave him gifts. The mace
that Shiva used before he got his trident. His skill
impressed her. He would tell her how in every place
on earth women waited for the sun to shine and dry
their clothes, how poets wrote of her by moonlight,
other writers sat in the sunshine and how they by
and by would fall asleep and dream of her. You see
his father was the wind and so he'd stir the sea.

S11
She listened to the monkey boy and smiled

Of course she listened to the monkey boy and smiled
politely yet she remained untouched by the boy's words
though they were beautiful.
She was the Sun and whiled
away each day wanting to hear unvarnished truth.
Swords
clashed for her but even warriors never spoke their mind.
Gopi girls upon the river bank watched constantly, poured
water from their hands in salutation but never would unwind
their tangled thoughts of love with her. Oh how they all adored
her.
They also feared the Sun. Her passion burned beyond her
and it ever would. She burnt them into blushes.'You lie with me
she said, 'I'll never easily lie with you nor will I even share
the time of day or a blue grape. I am the glorious Sun and free
to roam. My daily routine is to travel out both far and wide.'

He looked gently at her as if in pity.
That's when she cried.

S12
He did not stay to watch for he knew Aditi knew

He did not stay to watch for he knew Aditi knew
his whereabouts and when anger turned to pride she
would seek him out and have him for her sacrifice.
True
to the way of monkeys he made for a nearby banyan tree
and swung about inside the net of hanging roots.
He was wrong
for she still wanted him. He did not lie with her and his fine
curiosity had captured her. She wanted a resolute, strong
man and through her tears she saw him. Wanted to say, 'He's mine,'
and mean it.
She needed him, part man, part beast, to share her life
Reserved, mundane and yet someone to live here or there about,
Someone to chatter through the night with, to be his Gopi wife
with children and a cooking pot. To bang around and shout
at and often kiss full mouth.
She loved routine, not chance.
With him she'd swing on a domestic swing and do the Garba dance

S13
Are you saying the psychology is to blame

Make it crystal clear. Are you saying the psychology is to blame,
a difference between a monkey and the Sun, for this foul weather?

Possibly. Something was.

Better blame morality and same
sex marriage than these thoughts. There's no single reason. Its neither
one nor any other, all contribute. It is the Sun there's no doubt of that
but also the concrete on the Bharuch Road, how we thread air
through buildings and our notion of revenge, a cocaine shot
into the upper arm with dirty needles, stimulants; all share
the blame though not in equal parts. There never is one, a lot
of variables have a part to play in blame .
Yours is a pretty tale
told on that rainy night. One Sita told to Ram who told
it to Ganesha. When it came down to us it was at best a stale
sad story told to distract us as we struggle.
Some truth lies in old
stories but it isn't good enough to simply tell them you must act.

Sita looked him in the eye, then muttered, 'Yes, act with tact.


S14
'Give me my mobile phone,' said Ram.

'Give me my mobile phone,' said Ram. 'I know a man in far
Mumbai who'll help us. Patel owns a company that is prepared
for such emergency. I'll simply say, 'Repair the Bentley car,
and get here pronto. I'll simply say we three have have shared
our food and now we're ready to depart'
He did not take the call
The lines were down, he could not hear and if he could
why would he answer. Others more deserving were on-line, all
called for help. Ram was not of his caste. He had hewn wood
and dug the village well. Caste was post Dravidian, the gods
and heroes were about before his time. A forest person, living
in cardboard hut has his own local gods. Poor, always at odds
with the establishment, their icons speak to them. Striving
to survive with others, an unsure Hamlet: To be or not to be.'

You did not pass him by, you gave a coin, a five rupee.

S15
The poor are always with us

The poor are always with us, their bodies float
before us on the oily water. Hidden underneath
a card board box a woman and a bird. Last-in-boat
souls they cling and they are dragged along.
Teeth
tell their a story. Disfigured teeth betray them
to themselves and others. Yellow, twisted, a real sight
for sore eyes. Not glittering like a starlet's sari hem
at her cousin's wedding, never milk or coral white,
but broken well beyond repair.
This ragged cavalcade
floats past and shivering Sita watches it and thinks
of nothing in particular. Should she? She's played
her role and made the story known.
The corpse stinks
and all the Ulay soap in Bollywood wont wash that
smell away, it is ordained. What's what is always what.

S16
Sita will stand again upon the platform of the Spring

Will Sita stand again upon the platform of the Spring
and watch the constant season's roll in studied order?

Say, 'Systems must return. I'll find the diamond ring
I thought I'd lost in a safe place. Remember arid border
lands can move on seawards and form as fields. They will,
it is ordained. Land generally turns to silt. It will slake
its thirst on salt and then form land
It won't be long until
some wallah comes with sweetened char and we wake
up to normality we've known before. Like a nasty dream
that seems so real this is a wonder world of bits and bobs
made up from yesterday and childhood fears, my ream
of consciousness has turned to butter milk where gobs
of nonsense float up to the surface.'
That is what
Sita believed when sitting drenched. It was like that.

S 17
As well spiced food flows through our finger tips

As well spiced food flows through our finger tips
the water entered through the walls and floor.
Concrete nor sandbags could not contain it. Lips
became swollen, bellies distended. Then the door
would not open. All was still. Even the ritual ablutions
were denied. The world that had seemed endless
was a place of doom. There had been plans, the solutions
talked of came to nought, all was strain and stress.

Above the diamond merchant's house the storm
clouds gathered. Workmen who lacked a basic wage
continued grinding elegant diamond faces. 'What harm
can come of this,' they say, as they grind on. At the stage
where something could be done there wasn't much to do.
The climate is changing there's much here to renew.

S18
Today brown clouds, tomorrow clouds as white as cheese

Today brown clouds, tomorrow clouds as white as cheese
given as an offering to the Brahma of Sojitra. The word
'sustainability', conceived but not yet born, is like a breeze
which passes through the grinding shed. Overhead one bird
and then another. In a flock one goose peels off to lay an egg.
As it does we should remember our slow birth. It is absurd
to think on Brahma and not that.
Shiva balancing on one leg
before the dance knows what birth means, for he has heard
'Push, push', seen a head appear a trillion times.'Regeneration
follows from destruction', Shiva says. The lordly Krishna also
speaks. He plays a strange lament and weeps.
'On every station
on the long line North listen to my flute its cadence will flow
to the Narmada's source to seek solutions and there stir sand.
Its final note the earth's reward, no carbon footprint on our land.'

Photography from the Gujarat trip

Check out the photo's from the Gujarat trip here and here.

Brian Lewis's Poetry

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.

Siobhan Mac Mahon's Poem - OPENING PRAYER

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.