Artist: SC Suman, Lockdown Blues (adapted, full version below)
As the hydra of the pandemic reared its head and cast its loathsome gaze across the world, a national lockdown was put into effect in Nepal, precisely a day before my mother’s 82nd birthday. Her birthday had been celebrated by family and friends as a mark of her valiant struggle with lung cancer. Her struggle traumatized me and gave me inspiration.
Dear friend
when you ask me how I am
I think instead of my mother
incapacitated by the ‘cure’ of chemo and radiation
a rag doll in the arms of the physiotherapist
her fingers forever frozen
in the mudra of the Medicine Buddha
Dear friend
when you ask me how I am
I think instead of my mother
the horror of scorched skin
fistfuls of falling hair
nails turned toxic blue
Dear friend
when you ask me how I am
I think instead of my mother
holding bits of her own disintegrating teeth
diapered catheterized strapped
beleaguered by the paraphernalia of feeding tubes
Dear friend
when you ask me how I am
I think instead of my mother
the day she lost her speech
precious words of endearment
silenced for eternity
Dear friend
when you ask me how I am
I think instead of my mother
my Goddess seated in an asana rippling with oxygen
breathing ether, loved by her attendants
I make my pilgrimage to her side
Despite my mother’s multitude of discomforts she still radiated love as we gathered around her. It was in this state she witnessed the marriage of her grandsons and granddaughter and the birth of two of her great grandchildren. She survived the great earthquakes of 2015 but did not live to see the miseries brought on by the pandemic.
The lockdown meant that we would not be able to visit her to celebrate her birthday. When I saw her before the restrictions came into effect, I realized that she had given up the fight. Perhaps she knew that the cancer had returned. There was a definite glissement – a sliding down in her condition. It felt as though she had lost her desire to be.
*
Nothing prepares you for the death of a parent. When she passed away a week after her birthday, we were bereft of a mother who had loved each of us unconditionally. Though the pandemic had prevented us from mourning our mother in the company of all our relatives and friends, we were gifted, instead, time to cherish our memories in a more intimate setting, without the bewildering hurly-burly of rituals and the exhausting crush of visitors.
I know that my mother is free from pain but the web of maya has us bound with invisible chains. Perhaps the truth of impermanence is one of the toughest truths to come to terms with. As she was laid on a bamboo bier for the final journey to the ghats, her face was serene and beautiful. Memories of her beauty, kindness, her need to seduce everyone with her cooking, the softness of her body, her perfume, her never-ending building projects, her creativity, her love of nature and animals, her wit, her temper, surface and resurface at the most expected and unexpected places and hours.
In my heart a shrine
built with precious memories
you dwell within me
After my mother’s passing, I began to interpret human lives as parallel embodiments of the Earth itself. I remember reading that the Buddha said “every human being is the author of his own health or disease”. My mother was a chain smoker and the cancer was the outcome of her addiction. All the toxicity of her chemotherapy and radiation was perhaps harsher than the disease itself and for me became synonymous with the toxicity that we were unleashing on our bodies and the environment in multiple ways. I also understood that the pandemic was yet another dimension of our greed and disrespect for Mother Nature and all her creatures. The virus was teaching us many life lessons.
As the lockdown continued in Nepal, the chariot of Machhindranath, the Valley’s all-compassionate Rain God, stood desolately, in limbo, and even Pashupatinath, the most sacred of Shiva temples, closed its doors to devotees. It became clear the much-hyped Visit Nepal 2020 and many other international events would have to be cancelled. But there were moments when we could rejoice – in Kathmandu, we made trips to our terraces and rooftops to see the beguiling, snowcapped Himalayas now that the air had cleared.
When the local lockdown was lifted, my husband travelled to Dhankuta in east Nepal and returned in early October infected with Covid. Despite all the precautions we had taken, I was exposed to the virus. Isolated in our rooms we struggled to overcome the disease – the lingering fever, headache, heavy chest and anosmia. Even as my son, daughter-in-law and staff rallied around, looking after our every need, my husband’s condition deteriorated and he was hospitalized. After nine days in the hospital with remdesivir, steroids and oxygen he was much better but frail. During this time, television news was our sole diversion. As our autumn of Covid turned to winter I felt drawn to the teachings of the Buddha and could not help but marvel how far this spiritual philosophy had reached – even far-flung Buryatia, a mountainous Russian republic in Siberia, where Vajrayana Buddhism is still practiced.
In November the nocturnal jasmine came into bloom and I realized I had regained my sense of smell when the heady fragrance wafted up to my room. Watching the news, I wondered why development sometimes comes with collateral damage to the environment. The much-touted Nijgad airport means two million ancient saal trees will be felled. No doubt the giro or state profiteers have been activated. In the villages roads are being constructed with scant regard for the environment and reports of landslides, water tables falling, floods, fires and animal-human clashes dominate the news. In the cities, a miasma of disregard seems to have consumed urban planning. And in these ever-burgeoning concrete dystopias, men and women incapable of engaging with each other may in the future find solace with cyborgs.
Television served up images of wars being waged in different parts of the world and mankind pushing the boundaries of space in a race to colonize Mars. It was all these paradoxes that set me to writing to come to terms with the pain of this bewildering time. The Japanese haiku and the demands of its seemingly simple structure instilled the discipline I needed to overcome the Covid fog I was struggling with. The poems in this collection are dedicated to the five elements and to love.
Pandemic slithers
into a serpentine coil
suffocating life
Intubated, immobile
your ragged breath a dagger
in my very heart
Nocturnal jasmine
sheaths her fragrance in the sun
to seduce at night
Full moon and high tide
surreptitiously I eavesdrop
on conchshell secrets
Ocean’s churn and grind
Fukushima mon amour
who will extract nectar from your poison?
Oh Machhindranath!
your tall bedecked chariot
teetering with love
Huddled by the road
gaunt stick men set alight
torches of resistance
In charred forests
green shoots emerge from the soil
birdsong will follow
Arteries of light
flash ominously in the sky
the lone dog cowers
Buryatia monk
sequestered in ice-cold
dreams of Lumbini
She said the night sky
has a million perforations
so stars can shine through
Love mirrored in
parallel universes
always out of reach
No words assuage
when the heart is a prison
No caresses heal
Longing
in parallel universes
no worm hole in sight
