Why need i camouflage my greys?

 Why need i camouflage my greys?

Or bind tight the frizz of my mane?

Let it remain unbound or matted, 

For, there are no praises or accolades for a woman even in her braided hair or with a veiled face! 

Even if she wields a hundred ladles by the hearth 

Or bows down(to every whim) under those heavy eye lids , 

She will ever be scrutinized 

By the lens , a man's world views her with, 

 With that tint of aberration, a   judgement bias

For the most microscopic detail of error , zoomed out,

Understand, in a man's world it's never an observation error! 

But why drag patriarchy at all,

When it's women who nurture a monster under the label of a MALE lineage?

This surge to subjugate  Shakti continues when she remains the _saumya_ ( the demure 'n' domesticated) ;

The balance of polarities thus disrupted.

So Kali rises to stomp, 

Drinking blood, her matted hair let loose, 

Her dance breaks the chains of  conformity 

To restore the  balance of every microcosm of the cosmos;

Her blood-stained tongue says it all - 

That the poison of demonic power consumed, 

She reveals the gray shades of a woman in the darkest of nights,

 When I see her rising , need I  camouflage my greys, for subservience to a society so depraved?  

The burning ghats of Kashi

 How blessed it would be,

To be at the threshold of Kashi Vishwanath,

And watch the burning pyres absorbed in his aura,

The mortal residues never awaken in us - the mortality of innumerable lifetimes,

Even as the Chandala prods and pokes the last skein of the once-alive flesh

To release the prana from its entrapments - 

The illusions lie in that ash ,

The bhasm smeared on Vishwanath 

Adorns the one , who embraces vairagya 

What would spell detachment 

When Maya's mists lures us 

Weaving a web of pleasure 'n' pain 

Those threads warp me in sheaths - just like my layered body

Stifling my core, my being -  

The urjha of the para brahman throbs in me as well - 

To realize it  takes the crossing of many thresholds of Kashi 

To let my limited being annihilate once and for all

On these burning pyres,

In ultimate surrender without question, fear or regret.

The bells reverberate through the spires of Vishwanath

The river swells to carry that undying flame

Time and again the truth of Vaitharni tries to seep in

As the Chandala pokes and prods through the crackling fire 

The offering to Kashi begins 

at this threshold-

 When I hold the pind daan from the Chandala, ready for the plunge!

O' Ganesha, wherefore is my beginning?

To become the Gajanan or the elephant-faced

He let the Shiv behead the  'Aham' - 

The illusion that he was Shakti's alone, 

The power and ego - the obstacles to his core truth, annihilated 

To then be consecrated by his Father 

In an equanimity of Shiv 'n' Shakti

 the harbinger of the Shubh

the Vighna-Vinashak, rises from the fallen barriers of one's own doing. 

The Gajamukh beholds the memories of many lifetimes,

As the  soul manifests from one life form to another,  

Travailing through its karmic rites 

The Ekdanta, of universal wisdom scripts a story  about quelling the goblins

And unfolding a path beginning from the fallen walls of the mind! 

Uma

27/08/2025

Stillness

I zoned out, from the noise and the crowd,

From the world outside 

To sit in, within walls impervious 

To drown the voices of chaos 

Of disruption and delusion .

I zoned out, snapping the last wire of the grid

To escape the deluge of data and numbers 

The timelines and the timed quests, 

The hankering for hidden treasures 

I zoned out from the over speeding and the rush-hour highways

To just take a deep breath 

To feel the moment of stillness - to enjoy the suspension and the gravity of time, the floating and anchoring,

I zoned out, to be alone from a world indifferent to pain and death, 

To build my sanctum of space 

Just to pause, ponder and reflect...

In words and verses, I was the lone, wandering soul

Till  one big bang of a  universe recreates in tandav and lasya, 

The rhythms flow into my soul like music 

The expression of frozen time finds the wings of poetic ecstasy!

Uma.S 

03/08/2025

The Mahakumbh

 

O detangling the entangling Karma - of thoughts and actions -  

Would dips in holy rivers or divine consecration yield the once-for-all redemption?

Nah, not without the churning within!

The gyration of every particulate existence, to find its own equilibrium 

And leave behind only the bare core to the barest particulate -

With the stripping of every layer and straightening of loops

like tearing apart the mind's fabric - in every thread, to get rid of the accumulated lint 

 just like in the alchemy of the cosmos - the dancer vanquishes the force of disruption 

To let the quantum of existence find its way to its whole 

Then the river of life begins to flow, a trickle at first, then wild currents of energy

Seeking the confluence, to its purest, rawest becoming, -

Through manifestations of divine 'n' demonic, light 'n' dark - the dance of Natraj awaits the awakening 

To quell the daunting, doubting and digressing forces of opposites 

Then the celestial ambrosia oozes from those currents of life -

You need just one immersion to look within and realize 

 This journey of the Ganges from Shiva's crest has just begun!

~Uma 

6/02/2025