When God is a Traveller by Arundhathi Subramaniam
Who is Arundhathi Subramaniam?
According to wikipedia:
Arundhathi Subramaniam is an Indian poet, writer, critic, curator, translator, Journalist, writing in English. Arundhathi Subramaniam's volume of poetry, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women's Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others.
As prose writer, her books include
The Book of Buddha, a bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic,
Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently,
Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru).
As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God.
Awards:
Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry:For When God is Traveller
Mystic Kalinga Literary Award:
2020 - Sahitya Akademi Award for English - When God is a Traveller
When God is a Traveller
Trust the god back from his travels, his voice wholegrain (and chamomile),
his wisdom neem, his peacock, sweaty-plumed, drowsing in the shadows.
Trust him who sits wordless on park benches listening to the cries of children fading into the dusk,
his gaze emptied of vagrancy, his heart of ownership.
Trust him who has seen enough— revolutions, promises, the desperate light of shopping malls, hospital rooms, manifestos, theologies, the iron taste of blood, the great craters in the middle of love.
Trust him who no longer begrudges his brother his prize, his parents their partisanship.
Trust him whose race is run, whose journey remains, who stands fluid-stemmed knowing he is the tree that bears fruit, festive with sun.
Trust him who recognizes you— auspicious, abundant, battle-scarred, alive— and knows from where you come.
Trust the god ready to circle the world all over again this time for no reason at all other than to see it through your eyes.
About the poem:
When God is a Traveller" actually contains 22 poems from the “Deeper in Transit” section of her book "Where I Live (2009), thus there is substantial overlap in poems between books. Still, there are 29 new poems in this book, and it is a beautiful hardcover with very attractive cover art, making it a nice little book of poetry to carry around - and it is reasonably priced. The 22 duplicate poems are worth reading again, anyway. Writing about gods, goddesses, and heroines as well as daily life, and a favourite topic of writing on writing, this little book is well worth reading and travelling along the various textual references which lead to empty space, which is the terrain of gods, goddesses, and heroines.
In the poem which gives the book its title, “When God is a Traveller,” Subramaniam muses about Kartikeya/Murga/Subramania, my namesake.” Kartikeya/Murga/Subramania is known by all those names, as well as Skanda, and is the son of Śiva, in some legends of him alone, as Gaṇeśha is born of Pārvatī alone, but also often considered the son of both Śiva and Pārvatī. Subramania is the god of war who is also known as Guhā (cave, secret) or Guruguhā (cave-teacher) as he renounces war in some legends and retreats to the mountains. Arundhathi Subramaniam writes in this poem.
This poem is based on the myth of Lord Kartikeya. Kartikeya , also known as Skanda, Kumara, MURUGAN and Subrahmanya, is the Hindu god of war. He is a son of Parvati and Shiva, brother of Ganesha, and a god whose life story has many version in Hinduism.
This poem is based on the incident between Lord Ganesha and Lord Kartikeya that who is elder ?
Lord Shiva and his consort Parvati had two sons named Kartikeya (Kartika) and Ganesha (Vinayaka). The elder was Kartikeya and the younger Ganesha. In South India Kartikeya is popularly known as Lord Subramanya.
Arundhati Subramaniam's poetry takes us on a journey through different situations, emotions, beliefs, stigmas and compelled you to open the aperture of deep-seated lyrical self underneath our heart.
In 'When God is a Traveller', Subramaniam weaves metaphors, metaphors that are distinctly hers, into language that is simultaneously fluid and simple. Everydayness is woven as a metaphor rife with allusions to the deeper meanings of life. At first glance, the poems from this collection come across as beautiful but not .
Many readings of this award-winning text exist but they highlight the religious aspect of the text. While it undoubtedly adheres to a certain religious context, it differs widely in terms of the figures of the Hindu pantheon represented, that is, the ones within the text are not really the most popular of the Hindu gods. Moreover, what Subramaniam does is that she uses these figures but challenges the canonical religious stories through her representations, as can be observed in the poem ‘Benaras’, an underappreciated piece. She tries to highlight the personal side of one’s religious beliefs, for instance in the poem ‘How Some Hindus Find Their Personal Gods’.
Finally, what especially stands out in Subramaniam’s poetry collection is the imagery. Even when the meaning of the poems eludes the reader, the meaning-making processes remain accessible through the vivid images constructed, which interact with each other to produce meaning. In this text, the meaning is created through the words as well as through the imagery. This gives it a subliminal quality of sorts.
Central Theme of this poem:
If we look at the theme of the poem,Wandering, digging, falling, coming to terms with unsettlement and uncertainty, finiteness and fallibility, exploring intersections between the sacred and the sensual, searching for ways to step in and out of stories, cycles and frames - these are some of the recurrent themes.
These poems explore various ambivalences - around human intimacy with its bottlenecks and surprises, life in a Third World megapolis, myth, the politics of culture and gender, and the persistent trope of the existential journey.
Morality is one of the theme of this poem..Morality reflected in character. Through the character of lord Kartikeya poet reflect the morality of life. Kartikeya was intrigue by his brother but he kindly accepted each and everything.
Words:1043
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