TO MAKE A CELL OF GOOD LIVING: All Seasons' Greetings

‘Make a cell of good living in the chaos of our world”, said Eric Gill, as I remember it. I read it in my early twenties, some decades ago. It remained inscribed like an affirmation.

      I had then just finished a course in architecture at a college. Enthusiastically I started to look for an ideal, model cell in places, books and journals, and with the masters of architecture. But soon I realised this cell is beyond floor-wall-roof. Inevitably I turned inside. Consciously I started peeling off a layer after layer. Alas, there was no cell there except my gaseous ego. It brought me to tears like a peeled onion.

      Lo! And here too, within me, I found chaos. My body and mind riddled by some or other ailments and maladies: of ignorance, taboos, models or dogmas, indigestion or malnutrition; of teeth or skin or eyes or nose or stomach or some other limbs; and victim of epidemics such as war frenzy or cricket frenzy or flu, and so on spread by a city –  market – media – mod culture. And over them all there presides my omnipresent ego, whatever, wherever I am.

    I have been moving, almost all my life, to places: cities, villages, forests, coasts, monuments and ruins. I have been moving in the First World, the Third World and the Fourth World in India. I never crossed the borders if India.

      I have been fortunate to share warm hospitality of numerous anonymous people. The affirmation never left me. It would appear any time any place like the pop ups on the Internet. I realise now and then while moving in the real world and virtual world, the affirmation is as valid today, even more than ever before, as maybe it was hundred years ago. On the way slowly emerged a resolve:

‘From Here Now on
Live every Moment
Add every Moment
To the Time Eternal’

 © Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 25/11/2005  

Note: 1. Quoted poem above is by the author.
          2. About Eric Gill by Fiona MacCarthy, The Guardian, Saturday 22 July 2006
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Information Age

In hogging without ruminating

I forgot my Fourth Need ---

Release without polluting. …

Alas! To Remi's help no guru, no god!

(19–03– 2004)

Sri Ganesha

There is a story about epic Mahabharata. Sage Vyas wanted someone to take dictation of epic Mahabharata. Sri Ganesha's name was suggested. Sri Ganesha, too, was ready for the task. But he put a condition to sage Vyasa that he would not stop dictating once he begun. Vyasa, too, agreed, but with a condition, that Sri Ganesha would not write anything without understanding what he writes.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~
© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

India’s Population Uncensored

India's Population Uncensored | Painted Poem by Remigius de Souza

Here population explosion unlimited
Many Family Planning options employed
All Planning remedies get tired
Once an obstacle of Auspicious Time worked
But now through all seasons and times
Marriages happen 24x7 on TV serials

(18 February 2013 | Mumbai)

This is not an intellectual verbal acrobatics, but poetry in real life experienced and encountered by all my senses. Clearly, this is a word-caricature of Indian disparity or absurdity on several fronts, which cannot be caught in a photograph or a movie or in a fat discourse. Call it a poem, or a parody, if you wish, that defies rules of classical or romantic literature.


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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Discourses (Mod Age Haiku)

Discourses, Mod Age Haiku, by Remi de Souza

We, the civilized, love scriptures, philosophies etc. They provide plenty of food for dogmas. Countless commentaries pour in, just as in the past from the elite cream of civil societies. Particularly in the ages of technologies such as, Paper, Printing, ET-IT... and Mass Media etc., there is a lot of churning and chewing of old bones that go on and on.

The spread of Mass Higher Education and easy money adds on to the volumes. They talk standing on a platform, while ignore what is bellow. They provide ample quantity of Quotes. It hardly has either face of and/or insight into People.

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Spring Times in Plants/Humans

Spring Times in Plants/Humans
by Remigius de Souza

An Old Tree in Spring Bloom

Spring Times in Plants/Humans

by Remigius de Souza

In the life of a tree
Springtime comes free

a hundred several times;
in a human life but once,

you may have seen
many a monsoon

but spring time once
that you might live

knowing it is there
or missed forever.

Hold it in your soul
And let it radiate forever.

* * *
New Year begins with spring time in lunar calenders in India and other countries.

Remigius de Souza (Mumbai)
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

LIVING IN FOOL’S PARADISE

LIVING IN FOOL’S PARADISE

Once conditioned by the system
Subjected to a quarter century
Of rigors of the mass schooling
It is not easy going, easy keeping
Aflame awareness
In the cyclonic waves turbulent
By the anarchist housekeeper
One tends to buy time
In the memory (of events, images)
In future (projecting hopes, images).
Transient is but Time;
Remi is racing with Time.

Mumbai
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

WAYS TO WEALTH (POEM)

Ways to Wealth (Indian Budget - Year 2006)

1 
Once a god-adored adorned
many a head of door to an abode.
Now the gods take to the road,
beg for patronage. And the rich
beggars go globetrotting for
finance, know-how and trade.

2 
Once the children of communities
cohesive received learning free
in the life-supporting skills in
branches of wholesome life-tree.

Now in the forward societies
they buy it at the trading malls
turning their clocks fast forward
until late to their adulthood
to earn their dough of uncertain
value to buy the living and life-
supporting services from expertise
at the thriving market place.

3
Now the bureaucrats – the masters
from the branches of expertise,
at their highest level of incompetence
in Peter Principle – take chairs;
replace colours faded of feudal-powers,
at the helm of the people’s affairs.

Now no wonder the prostitution goes
rampant and the pimps thrive on
as they make it quick with smile on
the by-ways and highways to wealth.

4 
Now no wonder all the world children
– you and I, yours and mine –
are the cursed ‘unwanted generation’,
as much said, the ‘growing population’
by the stakeholder – the rational animal – man
as much done: the rape of Mother Earth.

Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 04-03-2006
(Revised and updated)

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Let A Billion Faiths Bloom

Let A Billion Faiths Bloom
by Remigius de Souza

Could there ever be a billion faiths, not one?
Could there ever be a billion gods, not one?
Could there ever be a billion incarnations?
Could there ever be one in love of Sovran Good?

Rather than in love of gods or ‘no-god’,
Or could I ever be relieved of loads on my head
Of history that grows with Ages with my growing age?
Let the billion faiths bloom in love of Sovran Good.
 
I met several cultures in places and among peoples
Like water that takes on colours of soil and skies
Putting my sole possession – my life at stakes
Beyond barriers of time and space, hell and heavens

Breaking loose, my life ether in flowering and fruition
Be a witness of the billion nameless in turmoil.
Let me be inside outside in love of Sovran Good.
Let the billion faiths bloom in love of Sovran Good.


Remigius de Souza | 27.04.2002 | Mumbai, India
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

These Offspring of Kali

By Remigius de Souza

Image 1: Ma Kali (Detail), Photo - Poulomee Das

  Kali - Goddess of Destruction and Regeneration,

is one of the three expressions of Shakti or Energy.

The other two are Lakshmi - goddess of sustenance

and Sarasvati - Goddess of Learning.

I jump on an incoming evening seven thirteen train
to secure a window seat.
As I open 'Leaves of Grass' the first line noticed,
declares, 'Sing on there in the swamp' in
the 'Memoirs of President Lincoln'.

An urchin occupies the seat next to me
With harmonium on her lap;
Her fingers wide apart, search for a pitch across
on the bars, high low, high low,
from maintain picks to deep seas.

She settles on a pitch appropriate to the crowded train
in motion, plays a pop movie song.
On the threshold of sprouting youth, her dark face
And full eyes glowed divine grace;
She is sound personified.

Her wards, two little sisters, one recites the songlines;
The other with tiny folded hands;
They appeal to the softer edges of weary home-going crowd;
They, not belonging to the mundane, remain
Untouched by hostilities or sympathies.

The Time atomised; there is no yesterday, tomorrow neither.
The concert moves to the next compartment.
They have not lost either their fragrance of innocence
Or dignity of untimely adulthood,
In the energies creative to sustain.

The last straw of hope, yet for the Post-historic
Civilization of exploitation
These offspring of Kali, until they open
The Third Eye imminent
To make way for regeneration.
* * *

Image 2: Ma Kali, Photo by Poulomee Das

(Written, 1980s)
Notes 1: 21st century is witnessing uprisings of the poor at many places. This has been happening in the past, but now it is simultaneously a Global Action, as a result of Global Oppression by invisible tentacles of invisible global Capitalist Powers.
2: Images 1 and 2: Photographs by Poulomee Das show Head (detail) and the full form of the deity – Kali – made by the traditional Bengali artisans.
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© Remigius de Souza. all rights reserved.

Indian Farmers' Woes and Joys

Key Word: Art, Farming (i.e. Agriculture, Aquaculture and Horticulture (forestry) collectively or separate)

Five Elements

Traditional farmers’ lives that depend on monsoon are almost identical in many regions of the world. Hence the following text is inclusive.

Very few would ever believe farmers are artists. Farmers' art is most risky vocation, among all types of occupations, professions and vocations. Even a few may not understand this fact though they may know what is farming.

Haiku by Remigius de Souza

Farmer's art takes place on real field down to earth. Like in words, painting, photography etc. it does not create virtual reality. Farmers take the colours from Mother Nature - Srishti, of five elements, Earth, Water, Fire, Air and Space, and on a canvas of small or big plot of land; he works with contemplation. They are never verbose. They are fully in contact with every nook and corner of their farm; likewise the health of all the plants.

Haiku by Remigius de Souza

Farmers are not only artists, they are also planners, but not like town planners, who flatten the lakes and land, and cut it into pieces, make their 2D drawings to build 3D art of cities. Farmers use undulating land for management and conservation of water and land.

Poem by Remigius de Souza

Farmers are management experts, too! They manage land, water, seeds, fodder, weeding, manure, tools, carting, storage, other food crops, rearing animals and birds. And equally important are the repairs, maintenance, examination, improvement and policy planning in every aspect of home and farm, which is part of their homestead. All of these, they do within available resources. Many farmers may be ill-literate but are not 'un-educated' as the elite think.

Poem by Remigius de Souza

Traditional sculptors, for years, make Ganesha, Durga idols in clay. They are aware the deities are to be immersed. Yet they work with devotion, faith, without boredom. Farmers too work with same dedication. Their labour of love, therefore, is elevated to the status of 'vocation', of art. In their karma there is element of contemplation – Dhyan – hence it is 'spiritual' too. Traditional farming also involves action by Community Participation.

Haiku by Remgius de Souza

Politicians are like white clouds.

The educated elite class have an impression that farmers work only four months (during the season) and the rest of year lazy around. Even the experts like Amartya Sen are not exception. What about the governments and bureaucrats?

Haiku by Remigius de Souza | Image by Soojung Cho

More than natural calamities, the real cause of farmers' woes and miseries are the government and bureaucracy, market and industry, and their wrong priorities of progress and development.

Note: There is lot to learn from farmers:
1. Watering the farms: Learning from the people. Governments could learn how to save resources, particularly currency spent for development, and seal its draining at the bureaucratic level - the starting point, which consumes its major part.
2. Cow dung, Rice and Amartya Sen (a critique):Challenges of 21st Century
3. SEE: Soojung Cho’s Artworks of Inner Vision (http://www.soojungcho.com/home.htm )
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

All Fools’ Day

All Fools’ Day 


Whatever may be, it’s my doing,
by choice or by force, that I forget;
my rush ends it in half-hearted doing
and in endless strife I am caught.

In my fear of loosing my doing
no moment spared to stop and look
from all sides around, inside out,
at all levels, in all dimensions:

much of it I am ignorant.
On the fast track of one dimension
never knew when I lost myself;
never realised I am the means;

and I am the end. A product, an idea,
a thought, an act, or a concept
in time is perishable and transient:
no sooner born belongs to the past.

In stagnant water all actions stink.
But waters of life are always flowing,
condensing, evaporating, raining,
reflecting; that’s the nature of water,

of life born in water, but not my doing.
In looking at doing, the doing ceases.
At the core of ocean prevails
Silence pregnant with new life.

* * *
Remigius de Souza | Mumbai | 26 March 2004
NOTE: 1. Image "The Fool" from Tarot pack is occult system, and has no connection to western custom of "April Fools' Day".
2. Image credits- "The Fool" from the Rider-Waite Tarot deck.
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

POWERFUL I FALL

I dedicate this poem, written on 03-03-2005, with deep reverence to the Tsunami that took place on March 11, 2011 at Japan, and the one that had touched India earlier. I wouldn't ever regret if I were hit by any such natural phenomena. ― Remigius de Souza

The Great Wave by the Japanese Master

Fuji off Kanagava

powerful I fall

air water meekly move aside
from any obstacle on their way
yet their presence inside - outside
in my world
I don’t even ever take notice
as much as of my towering ego
take them always for granted or
add some aroma.
it’s  pleasure to see them play
and sing photogenic as they seem
leisurely happily dancing together
at sea-shore
until suddenly they appear
in colossal shape size speed
a mighty dragon from the ocean
at my door
ransack everything on their way
as my nice world turns scary grey
I am stunned
in spite of all my might wickedest
of intellect and tools to dominate resist
powerless I fall.
Mumbai | 03-03-2005
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Tsunami! Tsunami!!

Up a hill a stream to low lands finds its way down 
through the rocks, cliffs, rough land runs down!
Nectar of earth runs down! Dark clouds pour down!
Accumulated knowledge acquired from the banks

of knowledge wants to go up, builds vaults more,
acquires more by refining, by splitting hair,
fragments wholesome life; very little trickles down.
Some water goes up by capillary attraction

in a congenial body, some evaporates to cool,
a lot percolates in lower strata in soil, in a pool,
runs down to rivers, to ocean to sustain life all.

In Tsunami it lashes ashore and cleanses land,
in cosy igloo gives loving warmth and shelter.

Knowledge has to go down to the ignorant;
and the educated who move in their grooves
of expertise ignorant of vital other areas
of their personal and the collective living.

Floods, earthquakes, Tsunami shatter lives,
Yet leave behind vital lessons: To be reborn.

The meek build from the debris. Why harp on
the limitations rather than take charge of self,
when the nature in abundance is there to help? 

Leave all the external aids that corrupt. 

Or the silent multitude hit back in Tsunami.

There’s a scramble among the learned to go up,
up the economic ladder, keep their knowledge
mummified in the safe custody of the specialist.

Who’s that, who memorizes scriptures by-heart,
has ever received salvation, a liberated soul?
At any point of time – place is a starting point.

When it rains we rarely ‘look’ at it and feel:
It needs some animal sense, vegetable instinct 
in the unified holistic life, and some honesty.
 

Remigius de Souza 

Mumbai (23-02-2005) 

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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

LUCKY DOG ON VALENTINE DAY

LUCKY DOG ON VALENTINE DAY  

Valentine or Santa, both strangers to me,
in this media-frenzy in this market place,
though I carry European Christian names:
They remain merely non-entities for me.

Certainly the seasons, even in this urban jungle
are close to my heart; so also the sun, moon
and stars, sky and clouds, dawn and dusk; a rare
patch of green and a song of bird. They evoke
emotions, memories, longings and aspirations
though I have no knowledge scholarly of them
to make money or name from these real entities.
I am enriched as I meet them in remote holes
in this urban maze like a stray ferrous flake
meets magnet: what a windfall for a lucky dog!

By Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
12-02-2004 
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

A Million Incarnations Now!

A Million Incarnations Now!: 

Tribute to Peoples' Uprisings everywhere

My Enemy Within Me: by Remigius de Souza

A night of million Incarnations NOW
in millions - faces,
eyes, limbs, yonis, phalluses, 
tongues out hungry ― 
Now a million stars show  
The Way to million Incarnations imminent 

Wake up O, Ruler!  
For this dark night  
is of a million uprising  
of anonymous multitude in  
A Million Incarnations Now! 

Mumbai | 15-9-1987
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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Song of a Modern Day Trishanku

I caress my ego endless
in my own utopia.
What if in utter poverty suffer
pangs of hunger, 
at homeland, a thirty crore persons?
What is it for me?
They bear fruits of their fate!

Why then do I search faces 
of my caste-community on Internet
of virtual reality world, 
send signals on satellites costliest?
Why then my mighty fate
can’t buy me a copter?
“What can coward luck do for Pandu?”   

Hey, Remi is such a persona!
Expert Modern Vishwamitra
of Yantra–Tantra–Mantra 
by promising happy-wealthy life,
by creating New World,
turned me into mythical Trishanku! 

And people of bone – flesh,
Blood – body, and alive 
at home whom I pushed
to homelessness by my insatiable  wants!
Such is an arrogant rash Remi,
a modern day Trishanku!
*    *    *
(Translation of original Marathi composition)
15-09-2010


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©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

Nobel Prize Winners in Peril

Jesus-didn't-do-any-miracle-in-2K-yrs-other-than-crusades-stop-What-could-even-2K-Nobel-Prize-winners-do-in-the-Yr-2010-about-starvation-...or-for-7billion-people-?

Nobel Prize Winners enjoy patronage of the Centralized Power Unlimited of the Global Capitalist Corporate Class, hence the result is anybody's guess! 

********
©Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

The Idea of New Town: Navi Mumbai (POEM)

Original title of the poem 

 (Poem written on 23-02-1997: I was writings a review of a workshop, "The Idea of New Town, Looking at Navi Mumbai" (earlier New Bombay). While writings it I was stuck for many reasons. One of them was the stalwarts in architecture and planning from India and abroad attended the workshop. Sant Tukaram came to my help, and I composed the following poem. I re-publish it. )

Oh Vitthala*, while you stand steadfast
On a single brick, the foundation bestowing
Courage and joy through Gyanoba-Tukoba*;
There is no beginning – no end.

On the threshold of Third Millennium
Of "English" calendar, what are a few decades
Of life of New Delhi, Chandigarh, or New Mumbai
But specks of dust in a hay stack?
We have lived through cities thousand years old.

The sperms of Navi Mumbai were laid in an incubator
By an industrial corporate body, legitimized
By the CIDCO* of Swadeshi Raj here
Of your beloved Maharashtra and of the displaced.

Oh Vithoba1, your beloved people of India
Are blessed by Mother Earth for millennia,
Living in million villages, who nurtured and helped
To sustain cities of Gods, kings and Nawabs.

In the age of rape of Mother Earth
And ecological-cultural subjugation of the sons of soil,
Pushed them to the brink, to make a fast buck
While the sun shines, through manufacture and market;
The machine does not make maize neither milk.

Corporations know not "boundaries", – neither of values
Nor culture, – Their tentacles reach afar
Under different garbs and masks anew;
What are the new towns across the continents
In the name of urbanism – yet another mask?

Swarms of corporate locust devouring resources
In decades, what had been plentiful for millions
Of living entities for centuries, to leave behind
“Holes in the sky". City planners are by-products.

We witnessed the destruction of Hiroshima-
Nagasaki, calamities man-made with impact;
the shudder of earth that reduced Kobe to debris.

You hold aloft Kedarnath – Kashi – Kanyakumari
Through the times of turmoil, age after age.
Bhagiratha*  brought Mother Ganga to revive
His five thousand ancestors in peril.

In the age of annihilation unsurpassed
His offspring struggle to survive in numbers.
Will the sons of soil survive or perish?
Oh, Vitthala, Give your holy verdict.

In the era of contraception - condoms - abortions,
The steel-glass-concrete jungles of modern towns
Are sprouting, sprawling, swelling, multiplying
To celebrate triumph of "Post-historic-Man".
Will New Town, living a hybrid life on life saving
Drugs, shall be or not be an abortion?

Desperate planners are gripped in two-three dimensions
When Newtonian Age passed away hither thither;
In spite of revelation of Time and Eternity;
And half-truth of second law of thermodynamics.

Tied to a mill of self-cantered ego, they go in rounds
Endless, locked in cells. Will some glimpse liberate them?
Oh Vithoba*, It is time again to release Vishwakarma*
from the bondage of Indra*, we pray.

We recite the past, or speculate the future in mechanical
Actions; run into political impotency;
when confronted to the Present, take refuge
of numbers in perpetuity, dividing, sieving, grading,
degrading the humanity at the cost of creativity.

Now the "Bhasmasura"* of modern technology is let loose
Shattering the ancient limits only to defile and displace
Land and Waters, to eliminate the living entities.
New Towns offer man a life of hydroponics.

His tentacles reach deeper and wider through his weapon –
"The Cities" – to bring slow death to regions afar without impact.
Oh Vithoba, heed to our invocation to give us Insight
into the Present, the People, the Life, the Nature's Way.

At the end of second millennium, they struggle
In the narrow compartments of 2D – 3D to establish
Credibility; offer the urbanites "New Town Neurosis"
They are yet to awaken to hyperspace;
How could the planners be Visionary?

Architecture is poet's imagination to serve
The two in hundred of the world;
Planning demands vision in Universal Truth
Of a sage – of a humble farmer – who lives
In the timeless eternal NOW.
* * * *
Remigius de Souza
Mumbai
23-2-1997

Notes:
* Vitthala, Vithoba: Most venerated deity in Maharashtra (an incarnation of Vishnu).
* Gaynoba – Tukoba: Jnaneshwar and Tukaram are saint-poets of Maharashtra, India.
* Swadeshi – Self-rule.
* CIDCO: City and Industrial Development Corporation, Maharashtra State, India.
* Bhagiratha: a character from Mahabharata.
* Vishwakarma, Indra, Bhasmasura: characters from Puranas. Bhasmasura is similar to Midas in the western mythology. However end of Bhasmasura comes reducing him ashes by his own folly, which is inevitable. There is no room for repentance.

(Poem on the event, “Workshop – The Idea of New Town: Looking at Navi Mumbai" held at Coomaraswamy Hall, Prince of Wales Museum, Mumbai on 21-22 February 1997.)

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

LABOUR LOST IN GUTTERS (Poem)

 Goldhunters in Mumbai - 1

Even from the gutters
of this city-life there is some hope
to recover a nugget
but from the morons there is none
– they are shipshape
for they’re hedonist market-delivered –
except for the parroted
responses impulsive, manipulations divisive.

What could one expect
from cultured synthetic show-plants
made at the assembly-plants 
by the culture of contentment and waste?
No flowers. No fruit.
Not a creative deed – no deliverance.
Mumbai [7-8-2002]   

Goldhunters in Mumbai - 2

 Note: Images 1 & 2 are by the author Remijius de Souza  
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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.

In the Urban Wilderness

 Illustration- Stuffed Crested Lark

In the Urban Wilderness

Perhaps I could sing words of birds  

Along smiling shoots of spring  

In the company of mango bloom  

And soothing green of cuckoo's Pancham,  

And dance under the canopy of clouds  

To the peacock's call in the backyards  

On the pathway of Meghdootam  

There in the abode of Saras;  

Or inscribe them on deadly diskettes  

For the posterity.  

In my mega-city, mummies  

Of birds celebrate, sing silently,  

In the tombs of Natural History.  

Who shall cherish the memory  

Of my jungle of skyscrapers  

And of glass buildings which scares  

The heavenly eagles away;  

Of serpentine Metro that snatches  

The abode of Shesha's descendants away!   

[29-2-1996]  

Illustration: Stuffed Crested Lark in a natural history museum: species of plants and animals are becoming extinct with progress and development of Industrial Civilization.

Ref: Pancham: the Fifth note of the seven tones. Eagle is considered Lord Visnhu's vehicle by the Hindus. Meghdootam: The classic literary work in Sanskrit by poet Kalidasa.  Saras: a bird.  Shesha: Primeval serpent that lives in lower world, the bed of Lord Vishnu, the ancester of snakes on the earth.

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© Remigius de Souza, all rights reserved.