“Dhruba”

Written on January 11, 2020

I feel like a small child squatting,
tucked away in the corner of this page.
How am I supposed to honor the grandeur of a guru,
accompany a song already sung?
Reducing his teachings to black and white shapes spewed across the page resembles an oil spill more than a eulogy.
I would never rewrite Bach’s fugues
or sell Van Gogh broken crayons,
the ones from the bottom of the carton, half chewed.
Could you imagine
instead of The Starry Night,
a blurry night with chubby clouds
and a blunted sun?

How can I show you the infinite wisdom he radiated?
To try to box the sun feels like a crime.
This giant could laugh with the planets –
teasing gravity,
tossing musical phrases back and forth,
playing catch with Saturn’s rings,
joking with Pluto.

If I could play you the film rolling inside my head,
I’d invite you upstairs and show you to the best seat in the house.
There would be no intermission
(you’d just have to hold it).

Thirty-six strings awaken one thousand colors in mid-bloom.
Sweeping over the last rows,
enveloping the room,
bursting through the concrete walls,
and illuminating the city streets.
With each peg twisted and tuned,
he lured the mind into a landscape of forgotten palettes.
Every finger curled into alignment,
dancing towards Truth.

Each note intimately knowing its neighbors,
above and below,
the loud woman upstairs who cooked with too many chilis
and the nine-year-old boy below who often recited faraway tales
in the soft glow of his lamp,
when he thought no one was awake.

We sat like young boys at a ball game
eager to catch the next rogue ball,
freezing in the dark, concert halls of Bombay,
oblivious of the overly enthusiastic air-conditioning,
waiting on the edge of our dilapidated, lumpy, springy seats, 
ready to receive the prizes we knew would come.

What a minuscule entrance fee
to witness this great artist draw his bow across the strings,
shaping worlds from nothing,
birthing epic tales, roaming great distances,
convincing a setting sun to rise on command.

How did we become so lucky,
stumbling upon these hidden currents,
revealing secret forces orchestrated below?
He would guide us around turbulent tides
and shifting buoyancies.
Always attuned to tempo’s inner impulse,
he felt when to let certain notes wash over him,
when to open his palm to grab one rushing by,
and when to release the day’s catch back into the abyss,
to ripen until next time.

We’d stammer out of the hall,
drunk on all the gold we’d caught,
our pockets heavy with sas and pas and every note in between.

The water goddesses applauded,
wagging their fins in delight.
How could such a mortal converge sea into sky,
and the heavens into land abundant?

In every lesson he would welcome me home,
teach me to reach inside my glowing embers,
and carefully unfold quiet, inner knowings.
He’d let me wrap them in my hands,
turn each malleable note in between my fingers,
feel the wet earth of the womb, long ago.

He’d sit me down at his table,
serve me a sweet ginger chai,
and make me feel whole again, sip by sip.
He taught me to feed myself,
help me collect all the pieces of belonging that I must have
missed.

In his parting embrace he must have slipped a golden night’s star into my bag.
It whispered to me one evening:
Stillness lies in fullness,
and fullness rests in emptiness.
Never hurry, nothing is undone.
Timing unfolds quite differently for masters;
forget your aspiration of becoming,
and merge into your masterhood.
Yes, I replied to the star.
I am no longer a small child hovering in the corner.
I know how this page unfolds,
I see far across the horizon hugging the sky.
The soil shakes beneath my feet,
like little motors churning,
propelling me forward into tomorrow’s grace.
I carry inside of me the light of one thousand suns and the mark of you.