Poetry at Sangam
Poetry at Sangam showcases poetry in English and translations as well as essays on poetics and news of new releases.
(This excerpt from Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader Translated from the Sanskrit by Mani Rao is reprinted by permission of Aleph Book Company.)
About this poem: In Meghadūtam, a yakṣa, who is a supernatural being, requests a cloud to carry a message of love and longing to his lover who is far away. The yakṣa hero of this poem serves the god of wealth, Kubera, and having failed in some responsibility, has been cursed to live for a year in Rāmagiri in Vindhya mountains of Central India. The year proves too long to endure, for his lover who remains unnamed is a woman or yakṣī who lives in Alakā, a city in the distant Himālayas. The yakṣa is obsessed, he reminisces his past moments with his lover, and fantasizes that she too is lovesick for him. However, the Meghadūtam is much more than a fanciful love-poem. The yakṣa tries to motivate the cloud by describing the wonderful sights en route to Alakā, and the poem, thus, also works as a travelogue of an itinerary from the Vindhyās to the Himālayas. Over the centuries, Meghadūtam became a model for the genre of ‘messenger-poem’ with numerous imitations in Sanskrit and the vernacular.
Meghadūtam is written in the mandākrānta meter of 17-syllabic lines in a fixed order of long and short syllables, which has a slow and meandering rhythm. Kālidāsa is so deft with the meter, the reader never feels that a word is contrived, or chosen for its syllable length or phonetic features rather than for aptness of meaning and suggestion. There is a lot of information in the long lines of Meghadūtam, but each detail informs the other, and it all adds up to more than the sum of the parts. The antelope runs to avoid the rain, meanwhile the earth responds to the same rain, and the antelope sniffs the rising fragrance… what we have is a montage, all these things come together at once. Each stanza is complete in itself, presenting one image or idea.
About this translation: In Meghadūtam, we learn that the hero, a supernatural being called a yakṣa, lived on a mountain named Rāmagiri. Why is the mountain called Rāmagiri? Kālidāsa does not spell it out, nor do any commentators. In fact, ‘Rāmagiri’ has unmistakable connotations for anyone who knows something about the importance of the epic Rāmāyaṇa to the Indian imagination. The anguish felt by the yakṣa upon this mountain recalls the anguish Rāma when separated from Sītā. The cloud (megha) brings back thoughts of Hanuman, who is the son of the god of wind, and who flies like a cloud, and Rama’s messenger (dūta). A comment within the translation, in italics, helps the reader pay attention to these connotations. And what kind of hero is this yakṣa? The first word in the poem is ‘some’ (kascit) – we are about to enter an epic-length poem from Kālidāsa, and the character we meet is non-descript. This is most unusual. In the very first line, we are told of the yakṣa’s lapse of duty. Unless the reader knows the context of classical poetry and what is expected of heroes whom poems are written about, s/he will not realize its significance. A duty or obligation (adhikāra) is the same as privilege (adhikāra); therefore, a person who neglects his duty is not only a rebel, he is foolish toward himself. Has the yakṣa become ordinary after the curse? Was it because he was besotted? An anti-hero? This translation helps point out this contrast by way of a commentarial remark. But it does not spoil all the fun. Why the use of the plural in ‘hermitages’? A wandering yakṣa, lost soul? Kālidāsa does not say, nor do I. Having expanded just a little, I get back to Kālidāsa’s summary-style brevity, repeating the ‘story so far’ and then move to the next narrative step. In general, I try to recapture the effect rather than the arrangements of the parts. In Meghadūtam, I often repeat a phrase that applies to several parts of the stanza, gaining the sense of an oral rendition, as well as the montage effect. Thus, this is a translation, that also serves as an appreciation.
1.
Some yakṣa who made a mistake was cursed by his master:
Suffer!
One entire year
An ordinary yakṣa
Not a hero
When even a season’s separation’s unbearable
Imagine six
What mistake
Kālidāsa does not specify
Some lapse of duty
Same word for ‘duty’ and ‘right’
Has the ‘hero’ lost the reader’s heart
In the very first line?
Heavy the pangs of separation from his beloved
His prowess gone like a sun that’s set
Year-long night
He lived in hermitages on a mountain
named after Rāma
Groves cool, waters pure
Sītā once bathed here
Remember Rāma remembered Sītā
Remember messenger Hanuman
Flying like a cloud
Why hermitages, in the plural?
More than exiled. Unsettled.
2.
Separated from her for months wasting on that mountain
The yakṣa looked lovesick
His gold bracelets had given his forearm the slip
Good lovers pine thin
Looked at a cloud embracing a ridge
on day one of the rainy season
like an elephant butting a rampart
Elephants sharpen tusks
on termite-hills or trees
The simile’s a stretch
Kālidāsa knows
Wait two stanzas …
And Kālidāsa calls the yakṣa’s lover
‘abalā’ : ‘without-strength’
Just a generic word for a woman
in a stanza where a particular yakṣa
seems bereft of ‘bala’
3.
In front of the cloud the stirrer of Ketaka flowers
The servant of the king of kings
The yakṣa, servant of the yakṣa-king
barely stood
Brooding
A long time
Tears pent
At the sight of a cloud even the mind of the contented
goes for a spin
Imagine a man whose beloved who longs to embrace him
lives faraway
4.
Foreboding in the skies …
For the life of his love he wanted the giver of life the cloud
to carry news of his well-being
With a gift made of fresh Kuṭaja blossoms
and pleasing words – “welcome!”
5.
What! A cloud? A tumble of vapor, heat, water, wind
To deliver a message from sentient living beings
Not figuring that the eager yakṣa
asked it – him –cloud
The lovelorns’ nature is such – poor things –
They cannot discriminate
betweenanimate-inanimate
Kālidāsa calls him “guḥyaka”
It means yakṣa, but also, ‘mysterious’
Wearing his heart on his sleeve
Our yakṣa is anything but
6.
I know you—
You’re born in the world-famous family of
Puṣkara and Āvartaka clouds
You’re Indra’s main aide
You take any shape you please
As for me
Far from family by a twist of fate
I’ve come to this state of imploring you
It’s said
Plead to a superior even if in vain
Not to inferiors even if successful
7.
Raincloud, you’re salve for those burning in love
You’ve got to take my message
Me – ripped by the wrath of wealth-god Kubera
Take my message to Alakā, city of the yakṣa-king
Palaces washed by moonlight from the moon
on the head of Śiva situatedtempled
in the outer gardens
8.
Tossing curls
Sighing
Wives whose husbands are away will gaze at you
riding the wind-route
When you’re here all ready
Who can ignore a pining wife?
No one
Unless – like me – slave to another
9.
Go without delay and you’ll surely see
your brother’s faithful wife alive
absorbed counting days
Women’s hearts : like a flower
Proneto wilt in separation—
Hope’s the tie that holds it up
For ‘alive’ our yakṣa says ‘not-dead’
Hurry, cloud! She’s in dire straits
10.
As a cool breeze nudges you slowly along
A proud Cātaka bird sings sweetly to your left
Your entourage in the sky a flock of cranes
in spectacular garland-formation
to mate undercover
11.
Hearing that fortuitous sound the rumble
that makes earth a field of mushroom-umbrellas
Noble swans withlotus-stem-shreds in their beaks
Eager for Mānasarovar in the Himālayas
will fly along, your companions
all the way to Mt. Kailaś
12.
Hug your dear friend, the high peak
Slopes marked with Rāma’s footprints humans adore
Say bye
It’s a friendship shaped by recurring meetings
and long separations’ warm vapour exhalations
The mountain’s resonant
with devotion and separation
13.
So listen as I tell you your journey’s right route
Later, water-giver, you’ll hear
my message with your eager ears
Placing your feet on peaks,
weary, ragged,
You’ll sip some water from streams
and be on your way
14.
As naïve celestial women
Faces upturned
Alarmed:
‘What! Does the wind blow the peak away?’
Up into the sky
Fly northwards
From these juicy cane-fields
Steal away from the bossy, massive trunks of elephants
They guard eight directions
15.
Indra’s bow rainbow
shines from the eastern hillock
A spectacle like shimmering gems
Your blue form’s lit by it
Like Viṣṇu’s figure think blue
in a cowherd guise Kṛṣṇa
Lit by apeacock plume
16.
The loving lovely eyes of country-women drink you
They think ‘the crops depend on you’
They don’t know the art of eyebrow-coquetry
Now climb a mound of fragrant ox-tilled earth
A short back-step for momentum
and go North again
17.
Mt. Mango-Peak hoists a travel-tired you
nicely on its head
You put out its forest-fire with a strong shower once
Past favors in mind
Even the mean don’t turn from friends in need
As for him who’s this lofty
he’ll host you, of course
18.
A must-see view for celestial lovers
in the sky:
You the color of a glossy braid on mountain-top
Slopes glow with ripe forest-mangoes
Like earth’s breast:
Dusky at the tip
Around it, fair
No airplanes in Kālidāsa’s days
And what a birds’ eye view
19.
A short stop in these woods
where foresters’ wives pleasured
A faster gait from shed moisture
The next part’s crossed
You’ll see river Reva ragged
on rock-rugged Mt. Vindhya’s feet
Like holy-ash streaks etched on an elephant’s limb
20.
Rain-spent, sip water from this current
Infused with bitter wild-elephant ichor
Slowed by rose-apple bushes
The wind does not shake you when laden, hey
Dense cloud, everyone’s
Inconsequential when empty
Fullness, for gravitas
Elephants-in-heat exude ichor
It runs into streams where they bathe
Such sensuous liqueurs await
our thirsty cloud
21.
Forest antelopes
Spying green brown Nīpa flowers with half-sprung stamens
And upcoming buds of Kandala along the banks
Sniffing overpowering earth fragrance in burned forests
Forest antelopes will mark
your dripping raindrops’ path
A flight-path traced on foot
22.
Celestials
Watching the Cātaka birds’ clever catch
of celestial raindrops
A bird said to subsist on raindrops
Pointing out – enumerating – cranes in formation
Winning their dear bewildered wives’ jittery embraces
at your rumble
The celestials will honor you
in gratitude
23.
For my darling’s sake
For my happiness’ sake
You’ll want to go fast, but I imagine
You’ll linger on this hill and that
Fragrant with Kakubha flowers
Welcomed by peacocks
with moist white-edgedeyes
I hope you’ll get up, somehow,
and try to go quick
24.
At your arrival in the Ten Citadels
where geesehave stayed a few days
A commotion
Shrub fringes a lighter shade
with new Ketaka flower spikes
In village squares
Birds starting to nest clamor
for leftover home-ritual offerings
Edges of the forest a ripe rose-apple purple
25.
Reaching Vidiśā the capital
famed in all directions
and named for that
Gain a sudden fulfillment of your lust
You’ll suck the sweet water of river Vetravatī
Waves wavy like eyebrows knit on a face
A pleased rumble along her shore
26.
For a break, stay there in the hill called Nīca
withKadamba flowers pert as if
erect at your touch
The hill advertises
with grottoes that emit erotic aromas of prostitutes
The youthful exertions of city-boys
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