Mani Rao

Mani Rao is the author of twelve poetry books including Love Me In A Hurry (Atta Galatta) and three books in translation from Sanskrit including Saundarya Lahari— Wave of Beauty (HarperCollins) and Kalidasa for the 21st Century Reader (Aleph Books). She has published poems and essays in journals and anthologies including Wasafiri, Poetry Magazine, Fulcrum, WestCoastLine, Bloodaxe Book of Contemporary Indian Poets and Penguin Book of the Prose Poem, performed at festivals including NY PEN World Voices, The Age Melbourne Writers’ Festival and Hong Kong International Literary Festival, and held writing residencies at Iowa International Writing Program, Omi Ledig House and IPSI Canberra. Mani has an MFA in Creative Writing (UNLV, USA) and a PhD in Religious Studies (Duke University, USA). Her book Living Mantra: Mantra, Deity and Visionary Experience Today (Contemporary Anthropology of Religion series, Palgrave Macmillan) was based on fieldwork among tantric practitioners.

Poet’s Reflections

There is the letter where Dante claimed his poem literally true.
Disagreement is irrelevant, because Dante’s authenticity is embodied in his realism, and the commitment to his vision.
Writing after Dante, these are my Beatrice.

One, a journey in the afterlife.
Two, the lens of my reality.

The extent of my imagination in the afterlife goes as far as the dissolution of the corpse.
What other worlds can I write about? None that would be true to my experience or imagined experience.
What about the soul? What about it. As Nachiketa asked Yama, “some say it is, some say it isn’t”. I would like to know.
What traveler [soul?] would not want to return “home”, why wander anywhere? We came from or via nature and its elements, and return to or through it – is that not adequate, and more than?

January 2021, Kashi. Some come here to be absolved of sins; many, to cremate the departed and scatter their ashes into river Ganga. I walked by the river, stood in the thick air of the burning ghats, sat on the steps, went on boat-rides, in and out of temples, and yes, dipped. Ma Ganga, tepid in the early hours of the morning and cold the moment the sun shone.

What else can I vouch for? Paradise is a particular beach I know.
Dante’s three worlds became my triptych of cremation ghats, river and beach.

Divining Dante Poems 2023
Kashi After Dante

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Translator’s Note

Saundarya Laharī underlines the importance of the feminine principle in early Indian thought. There are numerous commentaries in Sanskrit and other Indian languages proposing esoteric meanings along with manuals that prescribe yantras and procedures for ritual worship, but these are typically meant for the initiated ritual practitioner. In fact, Saundarya Laharī is an example of poetic genius from centuries ago. An intricate composition in the seventeen-syllabic Shikarini meter, it accommodates multiple ideas in each stanza and elaborate similes. The descriptions of the Goddess’s beauty in Saundarya Lahari are unabashed. My goal was to create a lyrical translation of this iconic tantric hymn for the general reader.