Malashri Lal believes that poems help in healing one’s self because when a poet writes pure emotions. She feels that everyone is a poet though everyone may not be Kalidas or Valmiki. To her, Bhopa singer dancing in Rajasthan is as much a poet as a person who is reciting poetry in the by lanes of Shanti Niketan.

Malashri Lal has been writing poems for decades. She feels that poems help in releasing all the emotions on to the paper and letting go.

How does poetry help in healing the heart?

I have been writing personal poetry for a long time. Poetry helps in healing because you write your emotions out of yourself. When you look for words, it helps and then you need precise words. So, if someone is writing about losing a friend, he will not look for a word like sorrow which is quite common place but he will use words like angst or anguish or trauma. In doing so, I think you actually enter the premises of healing. A prose needs narrative but a poetry doesn’t. It just needs images and phrases. Personally, I think every one is a poet in some way.

You seem to be very fond of Sita. Many poems in the book talk about her.

Sita has seeped into my consciousness ever since Namita Gokhale and I wrote “In Search of Sita”. It was the first of our Goddess trilogy books we did. When we were working on our book on Sita and we were looking at her as a figure of strength, intelligence and decision making, she sort of became a part of psyche. We were getting into her mind and thoughts and therefore giving her dialogues, conversations and scenarios. I wrote this poem at a time when there had been a fair amount of discussion in the newspapers regarding Sita’s rasoi which was an area which was found during the excavations in Ayodhya. It struck me at that time that generally we think of rasoi as being the centre and the heart of the mother’s domain. Sita in my mind stood for equality, fairness and justice, I could just imagine her sitting and making rotis not only for her two children but also for a third orphan child who would be a playmate. There was a mix of what I had grown up with that you play with the children your age, doesn’t matter what caste or community they come from. That is what I had seen in Jaipur. The notion of mathematical equality is very different to woman’s idea of equality because emotions always have a part to play and that is what I have tried to portray in this poem.

//Sita’s Rasoi

“Maternity calls
for justice,
no favourite child.

Sita’s rasoi, a stone slab on which
warmed single mounds
of flour rest.
Rotis dance into a shape,
flat, brown-edged, uneven rounds.

Take one each,
Little Bakha, you too.
Be sure it’s an equal share,
not a morsel must
exceed anyone’s due.

What did you say—
the rotis are not exact rounds so
what is an equal share?

That puzzles a mathematical man
Who may know enough to solve this query.
Uneven jagged edges, uncertainties they might mull over
as Father, Priest, Teacher. “//

But Sita seeped into your consciousness so much that she even followed you to Italy in the poem Bellagio, Italy?

I don’t find that strange at all. You see, Namita Gokhale and I had a joint fellowship at this place called Bellagio which is a residency run by the Harvard University. It is fully funded, month-long residency. We got the opportunity because we had finished writing our manuscript (“In Search of Sita” and we were now editing it. When you are editing, you need to be together much more. We applied for this residency and we got it. It was a huge, beautiful estate on the banks of Lake Como. So, Sita was with us in Bellagio. It was February, the trees were covered with snow. They had icicles, some of which had melted while some were still suspended on the trees. Sometimes, the sun would sparkle through these icicles. We found a grotto there during one of our daily walks. Interestingly, no one knew what it was or who it was for. It didn’t feature in any of the material that we had read about the place and history. So, we did our own research and came upon the history of this Celtic Goddess whose name was Belisama. She, like many ancient goddesses including Gaia was linked to the earth. It was then that this link happened between Sita and Belisama in my mind.

//Bellagio, Italy

“Belisama’s shrine and Sita’s exile,
Met strangely on the hilltop of an ancient manor house
Villa Serbolini, Bellagio, overlooking Lake Como.
“How did I come here?” asked the prisoner of Ashoka Van
”Was it the power of a writer’s pen that propelled this journey?”
“A Goddess lives beyond time and geography,”
Said the deity of the Lake
Remembering hoary Roman times
Celtic chalice of stone and water from secret wells.

Sita of my imagination followed me
Through the snow-clad landscape of pines
Pendent with glistening drops of ice
Sita murmured to me of her travails and her choices
Sita was completely at home in what I thought was an alien space
For she and the Celtic Goddess had a common sisterhood
In Endurance and in Hope.”//

Your poem “Hawa Mahal” talks about some latent desires.

I wrote this poem for two reasons. One it was such an obvious tourist spot. Second, the from the very childhood, I had always wondered why would any one put up a façade with nothing behind it? Then I used to talk to my father about the architecture and purdah since he was history person. Purdah is not just about certain clothes, there are different types of purdahs like there is a Janana Mahal and Mardana Mahal where you have segregated domestic spaces. Then I realized that it was made so that women could sit behind those jalis and look down upon the procession that happened along the Jauhri bazaar road. I imagined this whole idea of a very restricted childhood and adolescence of girl children growing up in traditional Rajput homes. You see all this traditional pageantry, this beauty on the walls of the havelis where there are so many paintings. So, you see a lot of romance depicted around you but it is prohibited in your life till you are married off to someone who you hardly know or don’t even know. A lot of my MGD classmates were Rajputs. So, this whole idea of watching from behind the veil with desires playing up since you are young woman. You dream of romance and see so much of it depicted around you like the Rajput paintings. It is all about of longing and desire.

//Hawa Mahal

“Who sits behind those tiered windows
Arched like Ram’s bow
Waiting to tremble into action
For a hunt yet to start?
A princess in royal blue
The colour of Diwali
Peers from the shadows
Looking eagerly at the carriages below
Thirsting for a paramour
Not yet known.

Cloistered girlhood,
Guarded puberty,
Controlled womanhood
How did she learn to dream
Of love and desire?
Was it from the legends of Krishna
Intricately drawn on the walls?
Was it her prayers which held hidden meaning
In pursuing the call of the flute?”//

Shila Devi to me is a metaphor for migrant identity. Actually, at one time I was seriously thinking of doing a book on the link between Bengal and Rajasthan. Shila Devi is one of the earliest examples of how a stone image from Jessore came to Raja Mansingh in a dream (as the legend says). Along with her came the cooks and the pujaris who were and still are Bengalis. Half our school teachers in MGD were Bengali. Many doctors were also Bengalis. All of these came because of their jobs and settled here. Both the worlds (Bengali and Rajasthani) existed together. Shila Devi came to me as a migrant divinity and therefore legitimizing migrant movement as something that was positive. Personally, I needed that in my life. For a long time, I had a very split identity which I have written about and spoken about where I was from or who I was. Today, I can say that I am from Rajasthan but I am a Bengali. That time, I used to console myself thinking that even Shila Devi came from Jessore to Rajasthan.

//Shila Devi of Amber

“Gilded silver doors encase me now
with a retinue of priests
who determine my hours
of shayan, darshan and bhog.
I think of my freedoms in Jessore

In a marshy pit, I lay hidden
When Mansingh found me
as a black miracle stone.
I travelled to the golden Rajasthan.
Honour, glory, wealth was mine,
but what happened to my companions
in the marsh?
The dolorous fish, the raucous frogs,
the earth-hugging worms?
Did they find adoration too?”//

You have dedicated your book “Mandalas of Time” to the poets under the Pilkhan tree. What is your relationship with the Pilkhan tree?

The Pilkhan tree is a humongous tree in our garden which is three storeys high. Ours is a bungalow in the heart of Delhi. When we were house hunting about eight years back, the tree in this place somehow spoke to me. I don’t claim that I have any mystical connection with objects of nature but I think I am attuned to them in a way. We often organize Pilkhan poetry sessions under this tree with a group of 20 people. We celebrate being together, reading poetry and books and finally we cut a cake and have eats. I believe the Pilkhan tree is almost like a witness to whatever is going on in the house. It keeps listening quietly to everything. I spend a lot of time sitting under the tree.

//Another New Year

“The Pilkhan tree nods its farewell to the year.
Its squirrels scamper looking for nuts left over
From Christmas festivities
And the days of social revelry
The Pilkhan is tired of hearing
Scandal, gossip, jokes
Of the young
The worries and health bulletins of the old,
The strategic plans of family and builders
OF knocking down the old house
For commercial profit.

The Pilkhan tree thinks of its many years
Of shedding leaves, bearing inedible fruit, of losing limbs
But smiles at his troubles being far less
Thank of unfortunate humans
Who kill each other in word and deed
But gather around the tree each Christmas
With fulsome gifts and vacant smiles
To bring in another New Year.

Concluded

This article by Shailaza Singh appeared in Rashtradoot Newspaper’s Arbit Section on April 28th, 2024