Pavada

Storm

by Anu

Image courtesy Internet: Snow Storm painting by J.M.W Turner

Having made a home atop a mountain
Can I say I am afraid of wild animals?
 
Having made a home on the seashore
Can I say I am scared of foaming waves?
 
Having made a home inside the market
Can I say the noise embarrasses me?
 
Since I am born into this world
When praise or blame comes
I cannot let brimming anger
Disturb my mind’s calm.
 
Cennamallikarjuna!
 
My Translation of Akkamahadevi’s vacana – Bettathe Melae Maniaya Maadi

This Kannada Vacana was translated from the book Vacanas of Akkamahadevi by Menzes and Angadi, 1973. You can hear the above vacana being sung in the second half of the video below.

Nesara: English Version

by Anu

An old favorite kannada song from the movie Kakana Kote.  Below is the transliteration and an attempt to translate into English.

nE saa ra nODu nEsara nODu

nEsaa ra nODu nEsara nODu  
mooDANa byliNda mElakke haari

doorada maleyA taleyaanE Eri
nE saa ra nODu nEsara nODu

nEsaa ra nODu nEsara nODu  
horaLitu iruLu beLakina gooDu

tereyitu noDu beLagitu nADu
nE saa ra nODu nEsara nODu

nEsaa ra nODu nEsara nODu  

**

Look at the sun, look at the sun

Look at the sun, look at the sun
Flying high across the eastern plains

Climbing atop the faraway mountain peak
Look at the sun, look at the sun

Look at the sun, look at the sun
Night’s darkness has moved on,

See, the luminous cave has opened
The land has brightened.

Look at the sun, look at the sun.

Ayya, Señor, Adonai !

by Anu

Ayya, nee kelidade kelu;

Keledidhare maanu-

This 12th century vacana by the mystic seer Akkamahadevi, is a lovely verse that is beautiful when read, recited or sung. 

The simplicity and musical flow of words tempted us to have its transliteration done into a few non-Indian languages. Chaitanya’s English translation below is followed by a Spanish and Hebrew version.

Lord, if you will listen, listen;


If you won’t, don’t—

I can’t bear to live without singing of you.


If you will look, look;


If you won’t, don’t—


I can’t bear life unless I look at you and be happy.


If you will agree, agree;


If you won’t, don’t—

I can’t bear life unless I embrace you.


If you will be pleased, be pleased,


If you won’t, don’t—

I can’t bear life unless I worship you.
 (Chaitanya Vacana 39) 

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Spanish Version

Señor, si estás escuchando, escucha

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir sin cantarte

Si estás mirando, mira

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir a menos que te mire y sea feliz

Si estás de acuerdo, acuerda

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir a menos que te abrace

Si estás complacido, complace

Si no, no

No puedo soportar vivir a menos que te adore.

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Hebrew version

Adonai, im tishma, tishma;

Im lo, az lo –

Ani lo yechola lichyot bli shiratcha,

Im tistakel, histakel,

Im lo, lo

Lo oochal linso et hachaim im lo estakel allecha ve’eheye me’vsheret

Im taskim, taskim,

im lo,lo

Lo oochal linso et hachaim im lo e’ametzcha

Im titratte, hitratte

Im lo, lo

Lo oochal linso et hacha’im esgod’cha


Kannada is one of the Dravidian languages of South India. It is very interesting to note how well the words and the meaning retain their beauty in Spanish and Hebrew, just as it does in English. The speakers and origin of these four languages; Kannada, English, Spanish and Hebrew are separated by large geographical distances but there is linguistic proximity among them. Contrast this with Kannada and Mandarin speakers, who live comparatively closer, yet are separated by greater linguistic distance.

Cavalli-Sforza’s study of human populations, genes and language evolution has some interesting insights into this:

 “Most patterns found in the analysis of human living populations are likely to be consequences of demographic expansions, determined by technological developments affecting food availability, transportation, or military power. During such expansions, both genes and languages are spread to potentially vast areas. In principle, this tends to create a correlation between the respective evolutionary trees (genes and languages). The correlation is usually positive and often remarkably high. It can be decreased or hidden by phenomena of language replacement and also of gene replacement, usually partial, due to gene flow.”

Hebrew, the modern version used here has an Afro-Asiatic origin, English and Spanish (as spoken in Spain) belong to the Indo-European group and Kannada is a Dravidian one. They cluster close together as seen in this evolutionary tree of genes and languages:

We are grateful to Aureliano Gomez and Naama for enthusiastically doing the translation of the above 12th century Kannada vacana into Spanish and Hebrew respectively.

Aure is a biologist-programmer and a writer of Spanish stories. Naama is a biologist-programmer, cyclist and mom of two. Both translators are atheists.

Sources: Vacanas of Akkamahadevi, By Armando Menzes and S. M. Angadi.

PNAS, Vol 94, pg 7719, 1997.

Songs of Shiva. Translated by Vinaya Chaitanya.

Seeking history for the Indian female body

by Anu

Not one, not two

Not three or four

But through 84,00,000 vaginas

Have I come

I have  come 

Through unlikely worlds.

Guzzled on pleasure and on pain

Whatever be all my previous lives

This one day, you show me mercy

Cennamallikarjuna

O Lord white as jasmine

O Cennamallikarjuna

Not one, not two

Not three or four

But through 84,00,000 birth cycles

Have I come. 

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This is a verse from one of 300 odd vacanas written by Akkamahadevi, the kannada mystic poet-seer from 12th century, during the fabulously democratic period in Karnataka. A time when women intellectuals numbering well over sixty held discourse with a few hundred fellow male truth seekers, philosophers and spiritual leaders as a normal course. The dialog between the male head at the assembly of the learned, at Anubhava mantapa and Akkamahadevi, who sought to participate in the discussions is lore. The questions and answers specifically referring to her naked body, and her spiritual quest in the public forum are rendered to this day as songs.

Prabhu to Akka: “Can you be one with God with a human form, a female body?”

Akka to Prabhu: “Would the sandalwood cease its fragrance when it's cut into pieces? Would a piece of gold, even when cut and heated, lose its lustre?  

When you search for my bygone sins and hurl them at my face, the deprivation is yours.

O Lord, though you may slay me, I will never cease to love Lord Siva.”         

Here she illustrates the superficiality of external appearance and the integrity of the inner core, and demonstrates the willingness to question authority, while putting her case across for acceptance into the fraternity of devotees.

Akkamahadevi, the one drunk with love for her lord Cennmallikarjuna, is beloved to the kannada people, her vacanas were not poems, but 'sayings', a given promise or commitment, for this was the time when the veera-shaiva movement challenged every tradition that lead to inequality, and that included trashing poetic rules of scale and metre. 

In Chaitanya's word's: 

"The Vacana literary form arose as a part of people's movement against oppression in the name of Sanskrit as the 'divine' language. The veera-saiva poets wrote in Kannada, refuting the millennia-old belief that 'native' languages were incapable of dealing with universal verities."

Of the many vacanas that I've heard while growing up, I chose the above one, as it is one that I read only as an adult, first in English then in Kannada. There are many works on Akkamahadevi, trying to understand her quests of dualities; of mind and body, the profane and scared, she will remain one to whom I will return again and again, for her sayings will reveal other dimensions of truth with passing age and changing experiences. 

I am now at the stage when the physical body fascinates me. Menzes and Angadi in their book describe her thus:

"Her body simply did not exist -a burnt-up corpse, a dried up tank, a burnt cord. If she partly covers herself with long hair, it is for the sake of others, not her own. How else could she be Cennamallikarjuna's bride?" And to her narrative, they say:

"Akkamahadevi appears as a master-psychologist of a woman's heart. She dreams of her lover by night, and dreams of him by day.... she provides a probing of the feminine heart that offer a thorough, clinical analysis of love" and in comparison they say even, "Proust did not use his microscope for more realistic details of our consciousness when moved by passion."

I am not that inclined to explore the romantic or spiritual in me as much as I am interested in understanding the physical body. It is however difficult to separate these elements in Akka's vacanas, but I try, as girls and women negotiating the 21 century paradoxes, one needs to locate the one possession that we can fully claim as our own.

My body is my own. Not my mind, in the organic sense, for it has too many other influences that are not mine.  Why is it important I know the body? Is it not enough to know and command just the mind? I could use Foucault's treatise to explain to myself the power-relations, oppression-subjugation and so on, of the male and female bodies and their relationships, with the entire society itself being centered around this one possession. And the myriad ways the mind is controlled through the manipulation of body ownership. 

However, his methods of exploring the questions of body and sexuality are primarily through the Christian narrative. This leaves me quite inattentive and unable to relate it to my Indian reality. The institutions through which we receive and process information about our bodies in India are quite different.

There are a number of female poets who have unflinchingly addressed the body. But I choose Akkamahadevi not just for the completely radical approach she took to resolve issues, but more because of the familiarity with the language of her vacanas. Kannada is the language of my childhood and many of these verses are voices that inform my consciousness. 

Though Foucault has few answers for the Indian women's narrative of the body and sexuality (at least to me), I strangely depend on the English language to reinterpret vacanas in adulthood. Is it because it is the language that first allowed me to know my body, at least in the biological sense? Quite possibly so! 

Since the 12th century she has been written about by others, it has been noted that they have been mostly men, and the English translated books that I have been reading are also by men. I do not question their interpretation; I use their translated vacanas to study Akka's verses that explicitly refers to the body. Something that seems to have become completely out of reach for several centuries, right up to the present times for us. 

Rarely will you come across Indian women comfortably addressing their body, its desires, its function and their control over all these. The disruption in the narrative of the body for which Akkamahadevi so simply and clearly leads the way, is astounding in its near complete silencing of women being able to talk directly about their bodies. This loss in vocabulary has contributed to it being relegating to some unnamable entity buried in layers of modesty, which are but, neat guises for the society's spin that continues to put women in ever reducing spaces, to be free as humans. 

I leave you with this movie clip by Madhushree Datta with score set by Iliayaraja. 

 

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Sources: Songs for Shiva. Vacanas of AkkaMahadevi. Translated by Vinaya Chaitanya.

Women writing in India. Vol I 600 BC to the early twentieth century. Susie Tharu and K Lalitha.

Vacanas of Akkamahadevi. Armando Menzes and S.M. Angadi. 

History of sexuality. Vol 1. Michel Foucault.

History of sexuality. Vol 2. Michel Foucault.