Puja and Prayer

The unruly wind from the land of winter drifts in by late afternoon, brushing the skin now and then. Yet the atmosphere of our city life produces a fevered turbulence, warmer and more agitated than any natural heat. On a spring evening, when that vagabond wind from the cold country touches the body, it feels as though love itself lays its caress upon all the hostile realities, the trickery, the spoiled rhythms of living. A tremor of romance stirs within. The ruined city suddenly appears innocent. The scent of palash blossoms unfurls the mind like a blooming field. Inwardly I grope for an anchor, some handhold of solace. The thought of a woman crosses the heart. And just then—the acrid fumes of burnt petrol, coupled with the demonic roar of machinery, desecrate the moment.
 
“Why do you speak so much? Be silent.
Become soundless.”
— Shankha Ghosh
 
This spring, the sunlight carries a sharpness, yet from time to time, dark heavy clouds gather in the sky. One night, quite late, a violent storm broke loose, followed by rain. At dead of night, I stood on a verandah overlooking the hushed street. The unbridled open wind hurled itself upon my body. Such a feeling I had not known in years—as though I stood at the foot of an immense sea. That single current of air raised a strange tremor in the whole being, carrying me away from life’s invitations into the tranquil expanse of a greater world. It is at such times that one senses the true worth of existence.
 
In a southern-lit studio, an artist’s retreat, a vast canvas of light and shadow comes alive. In fierce strokes of black and white, suddenly—an abyssal sunset. The painter, Prokash Karmakar, as though addressing the Great Emptiness, mutters to himself: “For three thousand years, fools have been offering only Puja. Not Puja—not Puja, but Prayer!”
 
With bandaged fingers he begins once more to paint the dying glow of the sun. On the liquid body of water, light flickers like speech—spring’s fire seems to travel into the eyes. The fire that glimmers in a lover’s gaze glimpsed from afar, the flame that kindles in the martyr’s eyes before imminent death, the supplicatory cry in the crucified Christ’s glance, the abyss of wordless wonder in a newborn’s first look—all those certainties, all metaphors, all similes and hymns, seem to flow together and suffuse the being.
 
(From Amiya Chakravarty’s poetry)
“At the daily hour of Gayatri,
Did you bring the gift of blue fire into your own home?
Do you hear the solar resonance in the throb of your chest?
What is there?
Everything—yet it roams the void.
I walk in a life of divine affluence.
On your path, distance does not exist;
after the sunset, the moonlit night draws even closer.”
 
It was his night spent in the Sundarbans that tempted him to paint this. The artist confessed, “I am shy. I could not say aloud then—was it springtime? The spring where, after twilight, black clouds surge across the sky, followed by unrestrained winds that topple arrows of love upon the bare heart, until streams of peace trickle down like water. Not Puja, but in Prayer.”
 
Prokash Karmakar leaned closer to the painting, as if to breathe the very air that rippled across the water’s surface, as if to smear upon his eyes and lips that quiet satisfaction. Then, turning toward the sweltering noon, toward the sweaty claustrophobia of civic life, he uttered with biting irony: “Nothing has happened. Nothing at all has happened to us.”
 
This spring, how mercilessly real it feels. A hawker wandering through the marketplace of beauty—as though spring itself is bound by duty to us. Friend and foe alike must be placated. But how will spring endure the onslaught of the coming summer’s heat? What a tragic last spring this is! The fleeting wind, the fleeting feeling of love, the sudden intense glance of a woman—all vanish in an instant. One longs to draw them deep into the chest with a single breath, but there is no chance. Without that unruly breeze striking the body, without the vision of that chiaroscuro canvas, one would never have realized how many springs have passed by, leaving us behind—while nothing has been done. For the one who has suffered a lifetime of not finding spring, it is only possible to whisper quietly:
 
“At midnight, when moonlight rose,
Floods broke loose across blind alleys,
The wind was mystic,
The streetlamps were downcast,
Indifference clung to the palace gates.
And yet, my own home—so well-known—
I searched and searched and searched,
And nowhere did it match.”
— Shakti Chattopadhyay
 
So has the curse descended upon us through the excess of Puja and the poverty of Prayer? The deities we worship snatched away the folded-hands of prayer. The dreadful guru-dakshina Ekalavya was forced to give—under the guise of Puja—stripped away the right to Prayer. For in Puja there is hierarchy, bribe, naked flattery, blind partisanship; whereas in Prayer there is humility, total surrender, solitary devotion. Puja swells; Prayer recedes. The language of noise has become innate to man, while silence has been pulverized to dust. *“Bow your head before the dust of His feet”—*this is utterly opposite to modern human nature.
 
It is with such a fractured existence—amidst spring’s dark clouds, unruly winds, and sunsets—that an unknown guilt overwhelms me. A piercing sorrow rises, wailing:
 
“Again and again, I am ruined.
Once make me sacred, O Lord.
If living is the chief thing, O Lord,
Then ruined I remain.”
— Shakti Chattopadhyay
 
Suddenly the artist removed the canvas of light and shadow from its frame, and in its place appeared another painting: a barren tree, leafless, solitary, against a crimson horizon. Its skeletal branches spread in strange contortions, casting a shadow that births unique melancholy and narrowness.
 
Before I could grasp it, the artist pressed his fingers upon the raw painting to feel its dryness—just as the unruly soft wind had brushed against the city’s fever and despair, scattering everything. In that same way, the canvas transformed: from a romantic sensibility, the painter had leapt directly into a meteor strike. It was noon, suffocating heat, the southern air was still, and the studio felt like a burning furnace. The imagined vision was severed in an instant. It was time for me to depart.
 
The dream of spring ended here. The artist would now immerse himself in the reality of the solitary laborer, like his guardian spirit, Pablo Picasso. He would melt raw iron, hammer it, and forge civilization’s adornments—even in this sorrow-soaked summer, beneath spring’s yearning for youth.
 
“Only in your eternal youth, sanctify them—
those who love you with the heart of a child,
and in anxiety or in error,
let their gift of genius never fade in sorrow.”
— Hölderlin (tr. Alokranjan Dasgupta)
 
Leaving the artist’s studio, out into the scorching sun, there was no trace of spring. Yet his words kept echoing in my ears—few words, but indelible: “Not Puja, but Prayer. Not Puja, but Prayer.”
 
What makes a human life precious in this world? What is its purpose? What is man’s relation with beasts, birds, insects, trees, sky, stars, and rivers? Is sorrow truly the opposite of joy? Is death the contradiction of life? Everything in human existence is fleeting, disjointed, mutable. Yet—is it possible for the transient to be touched by the eternal?
 
Man—whose consciousness is split in two, whose heart’s path is forked, whose bodily form is shadowed by the incorporeal. Love and hatred! How does he receive the touch of spring’s unruly winds? Who shall explain to him the paradox of Puja and Prayer?
 
The artist? For him, the world’s two poles—sunrise and sunset—appear alike in sorrow and in joy, in life and in death, in the perishable and the eternal, in Puja and in Prayer—both, together.