Malashri Lal is not just a daughter of a very successful and renowned man, she is also a respected professor, critic and a bestselling author who is known for fiction and non-fiction books. However, her accomplishments extend beyond the prose. Her recently released book of poems, ‘Mandalas Of Time’, has proven that she is a master of the verse as well.

Once while talking about the IAS officers of Rajasthan origin not going to central government on deputation, the common refrain that emerged was the poor standard of English in the IAS officers of Rajasthan origin was the main cause for the poor representation in the set up in Delhi. There were of course some exceptions like D. R. Mehta, Jagat Mehta and Bhawani Mal Mathur. But of these three, two studied outside and not in Rajasthan. So, when a local lass made it big as the professor and the head of department and dean in the Mecca of English in north India, i.e. Delhi University , it was a matter of exceptional pride for the people of this feudal desert state. It was like a domestic tiny sparrow flying high in the ionosphere on the strength of its wings alone.
Beauty, brains and poise- Malashri had everything going for her since her schooling in MGD, graduation in Maharani College, M.A. in Rajasthan University. In the 60s, St. Xavier’s School Fair was the high point in the social calendar of young people, when the girls from MGD used to visit the fair.

Remembers Dr. Gautam Sen, the venerable cardiovascular surgeon of Jaipur, probably the first of its kind in Jaipur (he in mid-eighties now and probably a decade senior to Malashri) that Xavier’s boys and alumni used to wait for the MGDians to descent from their bus on to the fairgrounds. Even amongst the 20-30 MGDians who came to the fair, Malashri stood out shining beautiful and poised. The doctor’s reaction was also the response of most of the senior Xavierites of seventh and eighth class onwards attending the fair.

These Xavierites now in their 60s remember most about her after her beauty was charm and poise, she exuded, probably inherited from Mohan Mukherjee, her father who also happened to be the chief secretary of Rajasthan, still remembered for his gentlemanliness, politeness and patience. He was a person to go to for young IAS officers when faced with knotty situations which was often in revenue matters and other administration where laws and procedures were almost copied from UP or Bengal governments and not evolved in the legislative assembly after long discussions and deliberations.

One aspect of Malashri’s personality which probably most Xavierites and Jaipurites were not conversant with is the academic excellence and poetic depth of Mohan Mukherjee’s daughter as is reflected in the ‘Mandalas of Time’, a book of 75 poems she has presented to the literati. Here Arbit is making an attempt to showcase these in its columns.
The word literati is deliberately used because though Jaipurites were not fully aware of the academic and poetic heights of Malashri’s pen, but to the literati of Delhi and abroad, it was no secret. In fact, Bashabi Fraser, professor of English and creative writing, Edinburgh, Napier University writes, “Malashri’s poems are a lifetime labour of love, embodying and resolving the dichotomies and different loyalties and loves that the poet has carried with her through her life.”

“One the one hand, the poet has the memory of watching and listening to the Bhopa singers accompanied by the dancing folk epics in her home town of Jaipur in the 1960s, performed by the roving artists against the light of the oil lamps in the Jaipur mela. On the other, there is the deep resonance of her heritage, finding a voice which is steeped in Rabindranath Tagore’s atmosphere of Bengali culture and literature and cultural freedom practiced at Shantiniketan.”
As Malashri puts in one of the poems:
“The feudal heritage of my childhood
Fights with the reformist Bengali lineage,
My troubled feminism struggling
Between the Poshak and Purdah.”
The awareness of today’s threat of climate change as Malashri writes reassuringly , “the moon is so far from the earthly pollution” in spite of the “footprint of human ego.”
In the poems, Malashri proves herself to be a consummate wordsmith who combines in her multifaceted self her multicultural identities bringing world’s together through telling imagery in compelling rhythms.
The poet recalls the lessons learnt from Tagore:
“…I learnt from Gurudev,
Emotions have no fixed language.
The merit has no physical limits.
Music resounds in the open sky,
Dance is the joy of a free spirit anywhere”
Bashir Fraser writes, “Mandalas of time is the expressive voice of a true free spirit who creates harmony through her voice. These poems sing of “life renewal” affirming a “beautiful certainty.”
Another “fellow traveller” friend and well-known literary critique writer Ranjit Hoskote writes thus “The sensuous abundance of the natural world pervades Malashri’s Mandalas of Time. These poems celebrate the arboreal and the floral. They evoke a profusion of trees, shrubs, fruits and flowers. But, nature to Malashri is not a grand theatre that enfolds to its own music offering to delight but rejecting our participation. On the contrary, she approaches nature as an intimate, integral party of a continuum that includes the human realm with all its discontent.”
It is a fact even as nature infiltrates our consciousness in subtle ways we exert a claim over nature through language and scientific scrutiny. Malashri’s poems record, intuitively, the process of pull-push that results from this, our own desire to carve and the resistance on the part of the things we seek to name.
And yet, Malashri celebrates the colours and flavours, the aesthetic surplus and memorable inner success of Indian culture, she never loses sight of all the elements with the tradition that calls out to be confronted and critiqued.
The joy in the textiles, the vistas and the epics of Rajasthan is balance by her elegiac awareness of female infanticide in that region. Her poems never shy away from revealing the suppression of female will and desire that often serves as a foundation for the myths of the feudal patriarchal order.
She interestingly asks when the mountains have brought low by global warming, the forests denuded, the rivers poisoned, where can the gods live now? In the same breath her poems urge us to ask: how do we live, by what rules, by what canon of conduct towards others -human and more than human- with whomever we share the planet? Shall be merely survive or could we yet relearn to flourish and learn to flower with, and not flower at the expense of. Let us learn from “the supple leaves” that:
“Flat and curved
Cradle the flowers that have no other family.”
Malashri herself quotes Khalil Gibran when talking about her poetry, “Poetry is a dash of joy, pain and wonder with a dash of dictionary.” She also quotes Andre Horde
“ […] Poetry is not a luxury. It is a vital necessity of our existence. It forms the quality of light within which we can predicate our hopes and dreams towards survival and change.”
“In the larger context of my life narrative, I have come to believe that poetry is a balm for the troubling dislocations that are an inevitable part of the experience. The biographical aspect drowns under the issue of transition and transformation that poetry hopes to articulate.”
“Only poetry captures the inner dialogues, the cracked mirror of troubled consciousness, the silent cry of those who travelled beyond tears. Its value resides in principle of integrity, and genuineness.”

According to Malashri, “The inner transition too and these poems are perhaps the most challenging. Every poet and novelist in every language from time immemorial has carved stories from a store of emotions. My personal poems are droplets in the same ocean of desire for an immutable world while coping with the angst of its forfeitures that dawns the realization that bereavement, heartbreak, betrayal is both individual and universal.”
She remembers Tagore’s anguished call, “when I stand before thee at the days end, thou shall see my scars and know that I had my wounds and also my healings.”

Looks come from genealogy and grace and poise from upbringing given by parents. But your achievements are your own, acquired through your hard work, determination and honed talent. One creation of hers that in totality, embodies different aspects of her creativity is called “Ardhanareesvara”
The poem shows her philosophical sensitivities, her comfort level with mythology and folklore and her sympathy, sensitivity leading to rebellion against patriarchal society and values. She seeks equality and fairness between man and woman and leads to the ultimate equality i.e. Ardhanareesvara.
Ranjit Hoskote writes, “The dyadic interplay of opposites- the dvandva, in classical terms- forms the ground rhythm of Professor Lal’s poetry. Nature and human kind are one such pair; Shiva and Shakti another; Radha and Krishna yet another, each incomplete without the pulsation and presence of the other. Krishna’s flute, cast aside in the Vrindavan of his teenage years as he goes away to Dwarka, adulthood and kingship never to return- Radha picks it up and preserves it as a keepsake, but it will never be played again, a mere reed emptied of affect and significance. Shiva cannot achieve his fullness without Shakti and the poet evokes them as an inseparable composite, the Ardhanareesvara. Such ideals of communion, to be regarded as at once sacred and worldly- for these, too are a dvandva in Indic thought, not binary poles- emerge in Mandalas of Time, from a world of seasonal festivity and cultural expression offered in dedication to the Cosmos.”

//Ardhanareesvara
“Indivisible unity, Parvati and Shiva forever entwined.
Women and men interdependent,
Infused with traits of each other
A softer left lineament draped in finery,
a muscular right stretched over taut skin
Artistry overlaying a deep philosophy of a shared destiny
Symbols associative of power and grace
But not attributed to a dichotomous gendering.
Sages, sculptors, storytellers knew the eternal truth
That form bellies essence much of the time
Masculinity and feminity are the same word,
Read in reverse
To denote the other
That too is an illusion
In Creation there is only One
Ardhanareesvara
The God who is both woman and man
Ubiquitous, limitless reminder of equality.”//

To be continued…

This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on Wednesday 24th April 2024