This is our 13th zoom meeting, and since it’s been a year now I am happy to say that we have been regular, consistent, a somewhat steady group of co- poetry lovers and have had the pleasure on and off of meeting many other OS on our 1st Wednesday-of-the-month get-togethers. Maj Gen AS Sandhu from the 62 batch joined us for this one. All in all a pleasurable and intellectually stimulating evening! - Vivek Ahluwalia

Here are the poems of the evening :
Session #13, 9th June

Omens

I rode to meet you: dreams
like living beings swarmed around me
and the moon on my right side
followed me, burning.

I rode back: everything changed.
My soul in love was sad
and the moon on my left side
trailed me without hope.

To such endless impressions
we poets give ourselves absolutely,
making, in silence, omen of mere event,
until the world reflects the deepest needs of the soul.
-Presented by Kumkum Bhasin
-Poem by By Louise Gluck

-Comments : I interpreted it as the poet encouraging us to read poetry. Even if  we read mediocre poems written by poets about omens and slighted lovers we will find poems about topics that will be true salve to our souls - fulfilling the true silent need of the soul.

Harbans had a more profound interpretation: “ The poet expresses the silence of mere events like an unfolding flower or trembling leaf and making omens out of these mere events  - having us pause in wonderment and gratitude for omens crafted out of mere events.”
Thank you Harbans- I shall try to pause, identify the omens, offer gratitude and attempt to cater to the deepest needs of my soul.
_______________________

Whether we know it or not, we transmit the presence of everyone we have ever known,
as though by being in each other's presence we exchange our cells,
pass on some of our life force, and then we go on carrying that other person in our body,
not unlike springtime, when certain plants in fields we walk through
attach their seeds in the form of small burrs to our socks, our pants, our caps,
as if to say, 'Go on, take us with you, carry us to root in another place.'
This is why it is important who we become, because we pass it on.

-Presented by Vivek Ahluwalia
-Written by Natalie Goldberg

Additionally Vivek presented a very similar idea as propounded in the Rig Veda called Indra’s Net:
“There is an endless net of threads throughout the universe...
At every crossing of the threads there is an individual and every individual is a crystal bead.
And every crystal bead reflects not only the light from every other crystal in the net
But also every other reflection throughout the entire universe.”

Comments- The thread everybody recognised was one of inter-dependence and Mini described how all sciences, behaviour and relationships are interlocked and what the Rig Veda espoused was a significantly earlier realisation historically than what western thought recorded. Amrita acquiesced and propounded that what the Vedas enshrined was much larger than what we know and that surely Energy was the basis of this interaction. Harbans felt that not all branches of science and human thought were necessarily dependent on one another, each having its own standing. But most didn’t agree and ultimately there seemed to be consensus that it is important to analyse oneself and ones flow through life, because we do pass on our beliefs and traits to those who come into our circle, willingly or not. Vivek believed that one should practise mindfulness to be “good” so that positive vibrations and energy would pass on.

—————-
The Breakdown

Tearing oneself away from wife importunate
I drove recklessly to son’s place.
Mind darkly grappling with this thought
Enter the class before its start.

At son’s street front abruptly stopped car.
He emerged. “Come with me to class.”
He demurred. “You can’t go to class
It’s canceled.”

Enraged, I stood in the street
In the dark, brooding morning
Yelled. “You are not my son.”
A bear hug and I was taken in.

The enormity of my words
The loss of control dissolved
Into a flood of tears.
The children were off to school.

“You need to take him to emergency”
Their mother said. So we set forth
On a journey may we never repeat.
Of that I shall speak anon.

Where the mind is clear
No dark specks of illness linger
No greater joy can life offer
For one that has the dark side wandered.

-Written & presented by Narayan Raj
-Comments: The chairperson, Dr. Harbans Nagpal (a practicing psychiatrist) pronounced it to be a powerful description of an actual occurrence. Mr. Zafar Khan explained that the poet had actually undergone the breakdown and had now fully recuperated. Mini Kaur commended the poet’s courage in sharing the experience.
According to the poet, the motive for sharing was to increase awareness of mental illness. He mentioned that he was grateful for the support of Mr. Khan and other class mates during this difficult period.
————————-
Distilled Bottles
A rack in the corner, in a beautifully- lit ambient piazza with people packed, Multiple identical looking bottles put away- measured and stacked,
The neatness and and labelling perfectly intact,
Nothing seems amiss, in fact.
Under it all lies a sustaining clinical smell of squares and boxes,
Blocked white lines in peg holes of shards and sloshes,
Are they a testimony, a sign to human fear for ultimate stability?
a bit of a scare or an undermining of individual human potential and ability?
Each bottle names gender, race, colour, privilege, connections, education, birth and traits, Brought in carefully and clandestinely in little harmless looking crates.
The world calls it research, technology, food culture and pharmacy,
Institutionalized and owned through institutions, cultures, world organizations, lobbies terrorism and armory,
Through slow conditioning numbing the core of the human being- their intellect to know, act and be.
What is it with this love for writing in stone?
Marks and memorials-when life itself is a flow,
You are the hero and the villain shone,
From your actions instinctive and individual, always correct in the situation, though slow. The collective of such actions makes society create a better world that we know,
A few fall and it is the mahabharat inside that the seed of future, will sow.
Friend or foe,
It all comes to dust,
It is only the spirit that through independent introspected action in truth is a must, Rest all is greed and consumerism,
Simple and up for show.

-Presented by Amrita Varma