This weekend, I revisited a language I love via a band I've come to love. I listened to the Raghu Dixit Project at the Bandra Fort Amphitheatre, as part of the ongoing Celebrate Bandra festival, and fell in love with Kannada all over again. Years ago, while living in Bangalore, I was forced to learn to read and write Kannada as part of my school curriculum. Strangely, I took to the round, jalebi-like script of the language and the way it rolled off the tongue immediately. Strange, because I belong across the border - in Tamil Nadu - but have never learnt to read or write Tamil.
On Sunday evening, Raghu Dixit brought the already evocative Bandra Fort amphitheatre to life with his deep, powerful voice and inspired singing. I was especially delighted when he launched into Kannada folk rock -- it felt like revisiting an old friend. One song in particular lingered in my mind: it's called Gudugudiya and you can listen to it
here (not the most intelligent video, but whatever).
The song was written by a 19th Century Sufi saint called Shishunala Sharif, who Wikipedia informs me is "recognised as the first ever Muslim poet of Kannada literature." I'm in no position to contest that, but I can tell you that I like his brand of philosophy. The lyrics of that song, roughly translated, propose that life is a hookah. I'm sure many agree and see it that way too, but I digress. So, consider that life is a hookah. Open the bag called your mind, take out the hash called greed and crush it, put it in a chillum called faith, set it alight with your intelligence and inhale the illumination. Don't you like it already?
My first tryst with Sufi poetry was when I read the unabashedly sensual, even erotic, poetry of Rumi, the 13th Century Persian poet and mystic. As a teenager, I remember being taken with the raw passion of Rumi's poems. As an adult, I marvel at how deeply and viscerally he felt his faith. Here is an excerpt from one of my favourites, In the Arc of your Mallet, which you can read
here:
"I want to feel myself in you when you taste food,
in the arc of your mallet when you work,
when you visit friends, when you go
up on the roof by yourself at night.
There's nothing worse than to walk out along the street
without you. I don't know where I'm going.
You're the road, and the knower of roads,
more than maps, more than love."
Now if only all the purveyors of faith could phrase it in quite such a tantalising way, I would have never felt lost all this while!
