[Reader-list] Learning to Close My Eyes: Aman shares his journey with Kabir

Tue Mar 1 12:13:34 IST 2011

What a beautiful piece.  Thank you so much for posting this.

On 01/03/11 11:47 AM, "Chintan Girish Modi" <chintan.backups at gmail.com>
wrote:

> From
http://sunosadho.blogspot.com/2011/02/learning-to-close-my-eyes-amandeep.
> html

*Learning to Close My Eyes*

By Amandeep Sandhu

My journey towards
> understanding the fires that had until then driven me
into clinical depression
> started when Nilanjana sent me two music files by a
singer named Prahlad
> Tipanya who sings Kabir.

It was the summer of 2007. My mother lay dying in a
> small town called Mandi
Dabhwali in the Malwa region of southern Punjab.
> Prahladji is also from a
region called Malwa but his Malwa is in Madhya
> Pradesh. His language was
alien to our ears and my laptop computer had no
> external speakers. Still,
from time to time, mother asked me to play the songs
> to her. In spite of the
two Malwas, in spite our different languages, in spite
> of the two thousand
kilometres that separated us, his message of submission
> and humility
permeated into our ears. While cancer spread in my mother¹s body
> a fire
raged in our Malwa. Mandi Dabhwali was at the centre of a violent
> battle
between the Sikhs and the head of a sect called *Sachha Sauda*. The
> Sikhs
were angry because the head of the sect, Gurmit Ram Rahim, had
> appropriated
icons from Sikhism and had attracted a certain caste of Sikhs to
> his fold.
The reasons for the fight are complex but the gist is that Sikhism,
> which
was conceived as casteless by Kabir and contemporaries Guru Nanak and
> other
Sikh Gurus, had actually discriminated against its own lower castes who
> had
in turn sought salvation in other sects which were more inviting. As
> a
result the Gurdwaras were missing out on donations. My mother¹s death
> was
simpler. She was a life-long Schizophrenic, who had developed
> severe
cardio-myopathy, and was now in breast cancer Stage IV. The
> secondary¹s
spread to the rest of her body. She died. Punjab burnt as vote
> bank politics
and monetary gains stroked the fires.

I came back to Bangalore
> and Nilanjana told me she goes singing Kabir with
someone called Shabnam
> Virmani who, every morning, opens her home to anyone
interested in singing or
> listening. In February 2008, Nilanjana told me
Shabnam is singing at the
> annual cultural festival on the outskirts of
Bangalore -- *Fireflies.* I went
> to listen. For years I had been listening
to a Kabir cassette by Madhup Mudgal
> but again the language was slightly
alien to me. A friend¹s mother had told me
> there was someone called Kumar
Gandharv who used to sing brilliantly. I had
> never heard him.

At *Fireflies* I could understand Kabir. Shabnam¹s
> translations in a mix of
simple English and Hindi and her singing made the
> songs so easy to
comprehend. After the concert I told her that couplets from
> Kabir open my
first book of fiction and thanked her for giving me an
> opportunity to listen
to Kabir live. She looked at me kindly and asked
> indulgently: Have you
never heard him live before?¹ I said no but in that
> question of hers I knew
that I had failed to access the 500-year old poet who
> I had only encountered
in school text books, on thin shabby pages. He had
> survived the oral and
written traditions and has existed alive and available
> to us. Now the
question was what route should I take to access him?

I heard
> Shabnam thrice before her festival in Bangalore in 2009. But it is
at that
> festival when she sang *Munn mast huaa re phir kyaa bole* ... that I
closed my
> eyes. Now I tend to close my eyes every time I listen to music. It
does hamper
> my work or even life at home. But it happens and I lose myself.
Then I saw the
> documentaries Shabnam had made through her *Kabir
Project*and picked up Kumar
> Gandharv¹s
*Avdhoot.* Since then, in the last two years, every morning I have
> listened
to any one of the Kabir singers collected in Shabnam¹s *Project* or
> to Kumar
Gandharv and I just recently discovered MS Subbalaxmi. I do not have
> any
knowledge of the terms of music. It helps me that Shabnam claims even
> she
had never sang before she got onto the *Kabir Project*. I, in fact,
> know
nothing about what has invaded me so beautifully for the last two years
> that
now I have found newer loves  classical music.

Yet, through all the
> music and the films I learnt something that comes up
fairly early in
> *Had-Unhad* when Prahladji asks a young man who hates
idolatry and leans
> towards the formless to explain if his own body is not a
form and towards the
> end of *Koi Sunta Hai* when singer Dhulichand, a rustic
villager, flips his
> hand and says that what we are all looking for, the
word¹ that denotes it,
> can only be found if one turns one¹s focus to the
inside rather than looking
> for it outside.

This was my conflict. Until then I had looked at events and
> phenomena
through the labels I had learnt. When they clashed with each other I
> felt
the fires burning me. I learnt that not knowing that these are mere
> labels
makes the fires blaze and knowing that these are mere¹ labels gives
> you a
sense of being able to harness the fires, channelise the self. In my
> case,
finish my second book, which again opens with a couplet by Kabir.

My
> journey led me to Kumarji¹s home in Dewas in 2010. I had learnt of
the
> *Kabir
Mahaotsav* in Lunyakhedi, Prahladji¹s village near Ujjain. Nilanjana
> had
once said that thousands gather for the festival. I wanted to be there and
> I
had wanted to see Ujjain. I was experiencing the ease of the state
> without
external labels *(Nirgun*) but I was still interested in
> *Matsyandar
Nath*and the
*Mahakaal* temple (*Sagun).* The temptation to see
> Kumarji¹s home where he
had lain for many years, stricken by Tuberculosis, and
> listened to beggars
sing Kabir and wanting to see the *Sheel Nath Dhooni*
> where Kumarji had seen
written on a mirror *Ud jayega hans akela*... pulled me
> to the festival.

The festival was a miracle of sorts. Lunyakedi did not have
> metalled roads
yet people from nearby villages and far off cities had gathered
> and with
them had gathered the modern power paraphernalia: IAS and IPS
> officers, and
politicians and Kabir Panthis. This was realpolitik. Through all
> this,
cutting through symbolism and iconography, one singer after another
> touched
our hearts. This was *Sat Sang*, the concept that is a recurrent motif
> in
all of Kabir¹s and Shabnam¹s work, as Shafi Mohammad Faqir, from
> (now)
Pakistan says: *mil baithna, saat suron ka sangam*.

After the night
> long singing I went to Kumarji¹s house and was admitted to
the room where he
> lay ill and where he regained his voice and sang so
wondrously. Coming out of
> the room I spotted a tobacco box and asked how it
had reached the pious room.
> Kumarji¹s grandson replied: Kumarji kept
chewing until the end.¹ So this was
> how the great singer who dealt with TB
and kept feeding himself the poison
> that caused the mighty illness and who
was once a patient and then a healthy
> body found and sang the essences. He
once said: *jo sunta hoon, who gaata
> hoon*.¹ He did it by seeing what each
state was and then by going beyond
> them.

That evening, behind a tent, in the light of one yellow bulb at
> Lunyakhedi,
I told Shabnam, Seven times I have heard you sing a song about a
> forest on
fire in which a bird keeps going back to sprinkle water on a burning
> tree
that has earlier housed her. Each time I listen to it, it reconfigures
> my
associations. The characters in the song: the tree, the bird, the fire,
> the
lake take on ever shifting personas in my personal life. Sometimes I feel
> I
am the bird, sometimes I am the tree, at other times I am the fire and
> I
look for the lake.¹

If I am rooted in the tree I find myself burning and if
> I fly like the bird
I feel self-righteous. Both of them are ego states. Beyond
> the forest and
the lake lies the experience of the story. That experience is
> beyond words.
It can be found, as the singer-villager said, when you turn the
> knowledge of
the story inwards. I now recognise that my own experience is ever
> changing,
ever informing. This knowledge liberates me from the explicit need
> to label
it. What right do I have on an emotion I feel in a moment which the
> next
moment will alter? My journey with Kabir has been one of recognising
> the
value of the markers of my identity, questioning them, and then
> stripping
down these markers and finding myself shorn of them. I try to walk
> this path
with my mind aware and my eyes closed, in faith.

---

Amandeep
> Sandhu has no permanent address. These days he is a neighbour of
Amir Khusro
> in New Delhi where he feeds birds on his terrace. He is the
author of *Sepia
> Leaves* (Rupa, 2008) and a to-be-published novel *Roll of
Honour.
> *
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