Waiting for Arjun ....

My FB friend Vithal C Nadkarni  is a senior consultant with the Times of India group. He writes the Cosmic Uplink column for The Economic Times edit page three times a week. 

He posted this wonderful photograph of the Shami or Purple Bauhinia, showing off is blossoms. Trees , per se, are an endangered lot in Mumbai, and so it feels good to see a tree like this , which he had actually picked up as a sapling from the Tusli lake Forest environs as a young man, and planted and later transplanted  to a larger area.

 Known variously , as pink butterfly tree, purple orchid flower tree, purple camel's foot and in Indian languages Bauhinia is called Mandar, in Konkani , and Rakta Chandan in Marathi, Deva Kanchan in Kannada, Kaniyar in Hindi. 

  As per the epic Mahabharata, the Pandavas were five brothers who fought against evil forces (in the form of the unscrupulous and cheating 100 Kauravas) with a set of their divine and distinctive weapons. They abandoned their weapons and went into exile for one year. They, led by Arjun,  hid their weapons in a Shami tree and found them at the same place when they returned from exile. They then worshipped the tree before going to a battle, which they won and this epic is also observed with the celebration of Dussehra festival, which we just celebrated . People symbolically exchange with each other, the leaves of this tree at Dussehra.

The Shami tree
has come
a long way
in body and in mind....
 
In ancient times,
the tree
proudly
standing with friends
in a forest
was an almirah
for shade,
nuts,
oxygen,
nests,
weapons,
maybe even messages.

Today,
it stands,
massive and stoic,
watching
all the weapons
perforate in society,
a scarcity of oxygen
due to the avarice of a a few,
and so many of its relatives
destroyed
by those nuts
addicted to concrete nests and money.

Continuing ceaselessly
to give shade
waiting
for an Arjun or Krishna
to appear again ...

Aaj ka Arjun......

My blogger and FB friend, and prolific chronicler of interesting and out-of-the-way places to drive to, on road trips across Maharashtra, particularly in the Sahyadris, Priyadarshan Kale, gets so immersed in photos of mountains, rivers, rural roads and greenery, that sometimes a bunch of backpacks (his own) strewn on a green plateau, makes for an interesting composition.

Riding his Zen, through forests for extended periods, before returning back to the intrigues of civilization, made him remember the story of the Pandavas, retrieving their "weapons" from the Shami tree, after completing their banishment to the forests and the incognito-one-year, before returning to face the Kauravaas...,  to face the realities of life .....

Inspired in Marathi , then an effort in English....


(photo by Priyadarshan Kale)

सह्याद्रीच्या कड्याकपारीतून
"झेन" मनस्थितीत फिरताना ,
अचानक काळेकाकांना
आपली खांदाशास्त्रे
शामिवृक्षा ऐवजी
दुसरीकडेच दिसली ......
हिरवे कडे, खोल दरी ,
दूरवर दिसणारे कौरवी गाव ,
त्यात फिरणारी लाल दिव्याची गाडी...

निळ्या आकाशाकडे कटाक्ष फेकत ,
त्यांनी  खांदाशास्त्रे उचलली ,
सुंदर प्राणवायूचा दीर्घ श्वास घेत
मान हलवत रथात मागे टाकली ,
आणि साश्रू नयनांनी
सौंदर्याचा निरोप घेतला...

सोमवारी हस्तिनापुरात
जाणे अनिवार्य होते .....
अज्ञात वास संपला होता आणि
ट्राफिकवास व  डीझेलवास  
सुरु  होणार होता !

 Traversing
the exalted green
of the Sahyadris,
on an incognito weekend.

He stops
the Maruti Zen,
to stretch his feet,
and looks for his usual goodies
in his shoulder bags.

Double shouldered bows
with no arrows,
he is Arjun
retrieving his stuff
from the Shami tree.

Immense plateaus,
green valleys,
Boring civilization in the distance
and a  red beacon car
advancing
a few miles away.....

He sighs,
and throws his stuff
in the back
of his Zen chariot,
bidding the woods goodbye.

He must be at Hastinapur-Mumbai
by Monday...

It is now time to
to give up
the mountain spray,
and meet up
with
the perfume of traffic and diesel
once again.....