The Poetic Love of The Poetess, Meenakshi

The Poetic Love of The Poetess, Meenakshi

I have known Meenakshi for nearly two decades. I remember the first time we met-though I hadn’t seen her earlier and she also hadn’t seen me-I was as familiar with her personality as I was with my own, because I had heard my husband mention her many, many times. He had known her for about five decades. They had been colleagues, friends and close companions in rebellion. Serving the cause of the society brought them still closer, into a relationship beyond the definitions and limitations of any particular brand. This relationship continues till today. From the time I had come into my husband’s life, we –my husband, Meenakshi and I-had formed a trio of a close bond that is difficult to explain and still more difficult for people understand .

I am an ardent admirer of Meenakshi’s poetry. Whenever we meet, which is very rare, we talk poetry and whenever we speak, which is often on the phone, I find that most of our conversation centre on her early poetry or a poem which had just then made itself known to her, as she sat holding the phone. She will immediately quote the lines to me and after the conversation of an hour or so only will she record it for posterity.
Her latest collection of poems, entitled “Udaya Nagarilirindu “, as usual contains gems of poetic scholarship. In this collection, to my great pleasure, I find a new Meenakshi emerging after all these years of writing poetry. Her tender love for nature, motherly love for all the children she meets not only in Auroville but all over the world, wherever she travels, her reverence for the culture and tradition of Tamilnadu and her respect for the people of the other nations she visits frequently are all revealed in her poem, forming the themes of her poetic collections.
But one of the poems in the present collection reveals a new dimension of Meenakshi, a woman! All these years, her poems have been illustrative of her Universal Brotherhood (that’s why she is in Auroville ), her devotion to God and to The Mother and Sri Aurobindo. From an Aurovillean this is nothing strange. But this poem I want to explore further is no great revelation but just a tiny glimpse of a woman who has awakened to the charms of Cupid! Yes, this poem I am talking about is a poem about’ A Woman in Love!’
If she were an ordinary woman, I could have called her on the phone and teased her and delighted at the thought of her blush and a shy smile. But she is a woman extraordinary- a poetess of renown. The thought itself is blasphemous, as if I were teasing Meera over her love for Lord Panduranga. The mere thought shocked me and I felt that I would rather put down my reaction to her love poems in writing than call her and talk to her.
The poem entitled, ‘Idhamaana Thunaivarai Enni’ is a classical epic of love in just twenty five short lines. Though it is a simple love poem, how profoundly beautiful it is ! In the moment of the wife’s acute suffering, she has become his friend, who all these years had been a dutiful South Indian wife and intellectual companion. Many wives complain that all their services as a wife to the husband go unnoticed and unpraised. But Meenakshi’s love-epic husband in just two lines, “You are responsible for the strength of this shoulder; lean on it” quenches the thirst of eons of the Hindu wife’s thirst for recognition. Meenakshi aptly describes the tenderness of man’s love as woman’s golden shield which will protect her from any trials and tribulations of Life. She concludes the epic with breath-catching fervour-“At any age it is Divine Secret that keeps the lovers ever young.” These are lines which stir in one “ thoughts that lie too deep for tears.” These lines, the concluding lines of this wonderful poem brings to mind Keatsian ‘Ode on a Grecian Urn’, where Art has captured youthful love and made it immortal. The whole panrama of marital love has been captured in just two concluding lines of this poem:
At any age it is a divine secret
We will live on as young as ever
True marital love of a husband and wife keeps them as young as the time they were a newly married couple. This is the secret of remaining ever young. Meens seems to have drunk at the fountain of marital love and this drink will keep her and her husband young for ever. An exotic thought that delights me is that she has found a husband in whose understanding love she will remain ever young, as I do from my marital happiness with an understanding and loving husband.

This love poem is followed by another love poem “Nee” (You). She has seen a photograph of his and for ever she keeps it framed in her heart. He is like a river with white foamy waves, like the snow-capped tip of the mountains and the white froth of milk. Physically and mentally he is as quick as the squirrel. He is tumultuous like the flood water and is a fast. But this flood turns into a life-giving sedate river beside the poetess, quietening the boiling emotions, and bringing tears of tenderness into the eyes which had hitherto been just dreaming of such love. She look into the face again. He is like the flowing stream from the hill, white and pure.
Can anyone ever doubt if this is love poem. The repetition of the colour white again and again clearly shows that Meenkshi is referring to her foreigner husband Mr.Toine. The grandeur, the majesty and the purity of the river flowing from the mountains, sweeping away all else except love appears to be wonderful. Let us all, the readers of these two love poems, rejoice with Meena. Finding such all-pervading love in a marriage is a Divine Blessing, for are not marriages made in Heaven ?
I am furnishing below the English translation of these two Love Poems of Meenakshi:

Thinking of the Warm Life-Partner
(Idhamaana Thunaivarai Enni)
My Love,
I remember
Even when you are not here
What you said to me.
“My Darling
Do not weep
Do not allow your wounds
To become fresh.
With your wounds
You appear as the real YOU
Even your wounds are yours
With those wounds my love for you
Grows more intense
Your medicine and
Your food
Today I’ll feed you
With my own hand, My FRIEND

These are the shoulders strengthened by you
Lean on them”.
So saying you kissed my forehead
With your eyes.
This Masculine tenderness
Becomes my feminine golden shield
At any age it is a Divine Secret!
Let us remain ever young like this…

You (Nee)
I saw your face in a picture
I’ve pasted it in my heart
YOU
Were like the river
Waves and waves of white
You were like the reachable
Ice-capped Mountain tops
Like the froth on milk, White.

Internally, Externally
You had the agility
Of the squirrel.

Flood,
Rushing,
You
Quietened the boiling emotions
Cooled the heat
You were the Living waters
Bringing tears to my eyes
I looked at your face again
You were White
Like the flowing river, child of the
Mother –Mountain.