Description

From the introduction: I stumbled out of bed, feeling like a body shot by a sniper, trying to reassure myself that I was alive. I was frantic. Out on my balcony, I breathed deeply, letting the early air in and out of my lungs, relaxing them until I was still. I looked up at the Rain Tree in front of me and waited. I didn’t feel time pass. It was a continuous present of which I had become a part. Light washed leaves and gently trickled through. The tree hummed and sang with birds as dawn washed the sky. I saw and felt the world through Tara in one brief fraction of a moment. Long enough to part the curtains. Turgid streams that flowed occasionally apart, now flowed one into the other, dark water rose from within and seeped out until a torrent broke through. It was like a belly-surging retch. A Flood. The Pretender came out, gave up and drowned. The axis of my earth swung and the poles shifted one to the other. In the clear light of dawn, I felt the beginnings of deep cleansing without understanding what was really happening.

The experience of that Dawn was transformative in its own way. Akin to the cycles of living and dying, of feeling and unfeeling, of loving and unloving, of being and becoming, of Divine creation and destruction within and around, manifesting with defining certainty. Out of the manthan of hurt and loneliness, violence and desperately wounded tenderness, of guilt and the need to belong, cut loose from a make-believe sense of belonging and identity, came clarity as pure as first light, an expression of surrender and devotion. Since then, Dawn has been the seamless link between waking and sleeping, one flowing into the other, between the self and the other, between losing, finding and becoming whole. Dawn is the experience of divinity far beyond all that I have experienced in my childhood, youth and grown years.

These prayer-poems have grown to their fullness within, have been born ‘whole’, and are expressions of devotion to the all-consuming presence of the spirit of Nature.

Randhir Khare has Spanish, Irish, English and Indian grandparents but has spent his entire life on the Indian subcontinent with occasional forays into Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Bratislava, Belgium, United Kingdom, Republic of Ireland, Indonesia and pre-independence Bangladesh. His activism during the struggle for Bangladesh’s Liberation, engagement with Mother Teresa’s Home for the Dying and Destitute in Kolkata, anti-terrorism work in Punjab and fifty years of folkloric documentation and empowerment experiences in tribal India have nourished his creative life as poet, novelist, artist, mentor, playwright, translator, essayist, teacher and healer. He is the recipient of The Palash Award for his lifetime contribution to culture & education, The Sanskriti Award for Creative Writing, Pegasus (Gold Medal for Poetry) given by The Union of Bulgarian Writers and other honours. His involvement with music has led him to establish and lead two poetry-music bands (Mystic & After Rumi) and collaborate with AR Rahman. He has forty volumes of poetry and prose to his name and his latest books are Travelling Light (poems) and Wolf, End Time (a novel). His work has been translated into Bengali, Hindi, Marathi and Bulgarian. He lives in Pune where he is the Director of a school and Junior College and the Founder of RBA Centre For Special Education. A documentary film, Makers of God, is being made on his life and work.

Chetana Sudame was born in Nagpur and grew up with varied academic and creative influences which she combined to evolve to the painter she is today. The world of her art is deceptively simple, rooted as it is in folk metaphors and linear expressiveness. It draws from the timeless realms of Indian folk art, especially Miniature paintings and Madhubani art. During her initial years, her art was influenced by the story telling tradition which is still visible in her work. Her paintings explore the feminine and its numerous social and psychological aspects. Acrylics on canvas and mixed media on paper are her preferred mediums. Her paintings have been displayed in cities across the Indian sub-continent and in Australia and the United Kingdom. Private collectors in India and abroad have her work. The Book of Dawn, is her collaboration with the poet Randhir Khare, revealing new and unexplored areas of internal clarity.

From the Book

43

My Rain Tree is silent —
Waiting for sky water,
Waiting for silver ribbons of light,
Waiting for the wetness of being,
Waiting for the kiss of becoming,
Waiting for the beginning when the earth was water,
Waiting for winged spirits skimming
Like dragonflies,
Waiting for hailstones
To ripple the lake of joy,
Your joy, my joy, the joy of creation, pure joy;
Blessed are you Divine One who has taught me to wait
Like the silent birds in my silent Rain Tree;
Blessed is the act of waiting
Like the sleeping kernel in a seed shell
To grow into forever

48

The joy, pure joy, of rain at dawn, rinsing darkness from the air, drunk with birdsong, spiralling in flight, fill me with you, dear love, dear hope, prism of peace.

My life in stumbling dark is new now, birth-light glowing on my skin, my eyes unclouded, mirrors of the sky.

I praise all life, that sings in joy — cleansed of the uncertain dark, I praise the magic of rebirth, your glowing gift of hope that makes me whole.

You are my reason, birdsong and my flight, I feel you in my being, in every cell and wonder why I thought I was alone, why did I fear the pathless woods, my mortal self, false dawns, unanswered questions overflowing in garbage bins?

Give me the strength to hold, release, each blessed moment that you gift to me, so I have courage to travel through my dark to you, released and free.

54

There is no dark in me, just rainbow light, arching over my sacred green;

There’s no beginning and no end, a loop of light, that can be seen — circling with love, forgiveness, wings of hope; beyond me I’m a burst of joy, beyond me I’m eternity.

I greet the day, will let it flow to shores that glow with your pure love; you are my lamp flame, blessed one, that burnt away my frozen dark.

55

The grey rain streams with bird calls and the breeze, carries my prayers to you;

I, bare-skinned, am one with you in joy an elemental dance;

Praise be your name, your love, your gifts of life amid this whirling storm; praise be your creatures great and small who you keep from harm

I’m learning to accept your ways of love in times of hate, accepting all you do because I know you know our hearts;

Come sanctify this bare skin that you touch as I dance in ecstasy, I’m molten iron, hammer me into form.

76

May the morning light wash over you and awaken your inner light, filling your being with peace.

May the breeze that rises from the east lift your hopes today like a winged seed and carry you to the warm earth of opportunity where you settle and sink into the moment pulsing with hope.

May you feel your presence glowing and expanding till light seeps out of you and the seed expands into the Tree Of Life.

May you become a shelter for lost beings, a friend to the lonely.

102

I watched the morning pass me by as I held on to the songs of birds — the highs and lows, the roughs, the flows — each following each and sliding down the shutes of air, lake water carrying light in its arms.

When tonight I let loose my hold the dark will dance with fireflies and in my heart the sun will sing the songs of birds and the coming dawn.

My womb-heart births dreams I dream and scatters them like glittering dust to celebrate all that you are, my all.