Mela

An updated version of the song I posted last year - Happy Baisakhi :)

Mother Dear

Evolution.

When you were a tadpole and I was a fish
In the Paleozoic time,
And side by side on the ebbing tide
We sprawled through the ooze and slime,
Or skittered with many a caudal flip
Through the depths of the Cambrian fen,
My heart was rife with the joy of life,
For I loved you even then.

Mindless we lived and mindless we loved
And mindless at last we died;
And deep in the rift of the Caradoc drift
We slumbered side by side.
The world turned on in the lathe of time,
The hot lands heaved amain,
Till we caught our breath from the womb of death
And crept into light again.

We were amphibians, scaled and tailed,
And drab as a dead man's hand;
We coiled at ease 'neath the dripping trees
Or trailed through the mud and sand.
Croaking and blind, with our three-clawed feet
Writing a language dumb,
With never a spark in the empty dark
To hint at a life to come.

Yet happy we lived and happy we loved,
And happy we died once more;
Our forms were rolled in the clinging mold
Of a Neocomian shore.
The eons came and the eons fled
And the sleep that wrapped us fast
Was riven away in the newer day
And the night of death was past.

Then light and swift through the jungle trees
We swung in our airy flights,
Or breathed in the balms of the fronded palms
In the hush of the moonless nights;
And oh! what beautiful years were there
When our hearts clung each to each;
When life was filled and our senses thrilled
In the first faint dawn of speech.

Thus life by life and love by love
We passed through the cycles strange,
And breath by breath and death by death
We followed the chain of change.
Till there came a time in the law of life
When over the nursing side
The shadows broke and the soul awoke
In a strange, dim dream of God.

I was thewed like an Auroch bull
And tusked like the great cave bear;
And you, my sweet, from head to feet
Were gowned in your glorious hair.
Deep in the gloom of a fireless cave,
When the night fell o'er the plain
And the moon hung red o'er the river bed
We mumbled the bones of the slain.

I flaked a flint to a cutting edge
And shaped it with brutish craft;
I broke a shank from the woodland lank
And fitted it, head and haft;
Then I hid me close to the reedy tarn,
Where the mammoth came to drink;
Through the brawn and bone I drove the stone
And slew him upon the brink.

Loud I howled through the moonlit wastes,
Loud answered our kith and kin;
From west to east to the crimson feast
The clan came tramping in.
O'er joint and gristle and padded hoof
We fought and clawed and tore,
And cheek by jowl with many a growl
We talked the marvel o'er.

I carved that fight on a reindeer bone
With rude and hairy hand;
I pictured his fall on the cavern wall
That men might understand.
For we lived by blood and the right of might
Ere human laws were drawn,
And the age of sin did not begin
Till our brutal tush was gone.

And that was a million years ago
In a time that no man knows;
Yet here tonight in the mellow light
We sit at Delmonico's.
Your eyes are deep as the Devon springs,
Your hair is dark as jet,
Your years are few, your life is new,
Your soul untried, and yet --

Our trail is on the Kimmeridge clay
And the scarp of the Purbeck flags;
We have left our bones in the Bagshot stones
And deep in the Coralline crags;
Our love is old, our lives are old,
And death shall come amain;
Should it come today, what man may say
We shall not live again?

God wrought our souls from the Tremadoc beds
And furnished them wings to fly;
He sowed our spawn in the world's dim dawn,
And I know that I shall not die,
Though cities have sprung above the graves
Where the crook-bone men make war
And the oxwain creaks o'er the buried caves
Where the mummied mammoths are.

Then as we linger at luncheon here
O'er many a dainty dish,
Let us drink anew to the time when you
Were a tadpole and I was a fish.

- Langdon Smith

Dark Sonnet

I don’t think that I’ve been in love as such
although I liked a few folk pretty well
Love must be vaster than my smiles or touch
for brave men died and empires rose and fell
for love, girls follow boys to foreign lands
and men have followed women into hell
In plays and poems someone understands
there’s something makes us more than blood and bone
And more than biological demands
for me love’s like the wind unseen, unknown
I see the trees are bending where it’s been
I know that it leaves wreckage where it’s blown
I really don’t know what I love you means
I think it means don’t leave me here alone

- Neil Gaiman

The Sarai of Nur Mahal

The Sarai of Nur Mahal was built on the orders of Noor Jahan, one of the wives of Jahangir, the fourth Mughal emperor, and the power behind the throne. It was completed in 1620-21 A.D. Constructed on the old GT road connecting Delhi and Lahore, it seems to be quite well known in Punjab, not least because it is now situated in the middle of the town.

Till a few decades ago, the government school was located inside the sarai, and its bricks were being used to build houses. The Archaeological Department has taken over its maintenance now and while some parts seem incongruously shiny and new compared to the original, it is still a job well done, besides providing a walking space for the people of Nur Mahal.

Western Gate - August 2012

Photograph by Henry Hardy Cole (or possibly Joseph David Beglar) in the 1870s of the Western Gate to the Sarai. Source: http://www.bl.uk/

A view from the tower looking towards the arched gateway, with the town beyond - Photograph by Henry Hardy Cole (or possibly Joseph David Beglar) in the 1870s. Source: http://www.bl.uk/

Alexander Cunningham visited Nur Mahal during his Tour through Punjab in 1878-79 and provides a description of the complex -

"The Sarai is 551 square feet outside, including the octagonal towers at the corner. The western gateway is a double storeyed building faced on the outside with red sandstone from the Fatehpur Sikri quarries. The whole front is divided into panels ornamented with sculpture; but the relief is low and the workmanship coarse. There are angels and fairies, elephants and rhinoceroses, camels and horses, monkeys and peacocks, with men on horseback and archers on elephants. The sides of the gateway are in much better taste, the ornament being limited to foliated scroll-work with birds sitting on the branches. But even in this the design is much better than the execution, as there is little relief. Over the entrance there is a long inscription."

The second inscription on the western gateway consists of six short lines, as follows: 

Cunningham writes that the sarai "is said to have been built by Zakariya Khan, the Nazim of the Subah of Jalandhar, during the reign of Jahangir. His inscription which is cut in sunken letters on the right jamb of the west gatewaty says nothing about the building of the sarai, while the main inscription over the western gateway distinctly states that the sarai was erected by the order of Nur Jahan. I suppose, therefore, that the actual work was superintended by Zakariya Khan, of whom I can learn nothing."

A Zakariya Khan, who was the governor of Punjab, is known in Sikh history for having ordered the mass torture and execution of Sikhs. However, he existed in the early 1700s, much after the construction of the Sarai. It may be that the plaque referring to Zakariya Khan is of a much later date, added to the wall upon his becoming governor and having perhaps renovated the Sarai.*

Cunningam mentions that "There was also a similar gateway on the eastern side, but this is now only a
mass of ruin, and all the stone facing has disappeared. There was also an inscription over this gateway...", which was provided to Cunningham by a local resident:

Cunningham's description of the sarai continued:

"...In the north side of the courtyard there is a masjid [mosque], and in the middle a fine well. On each side there are 32 rooms, each 10 feet 10 inches square, with a verandah in front. In each corner there were three rooms, one large and two small. The Emperor's apartments formed the centre block of the south side, three storeys in height. The rooms were highly finished, but all their beauty is now concealed under the prevailing whitewash. The main room was oblong in shape, with a half-octagon recess on two sides, similar to the large rooms in the corners of the sarai...From this description it will be seen that there was accommodation inside for about 100 people. But the great mass of the Imperial followers found their quarters outside, in an exterior court about 2,000 feet square, some of the walls which were pointed to me in November 1838; all of these have disappeared now."

It's interesting to note that the practice of whitewashing our history and making it disappear isn't new.

Surprisingly well-maintained laws by the Archaeological Department

The mosque and the well in the Sarai

 Looking towards the outer walls of the Sarai with the main gateway at the left of the print - Photograph by Henry Hardy Cole (or possibly Joseph David Beglar). Source: http://www.bl.uk/

Looking to the South  

Rooms on the southern side with the emperor's chambers - Town rumour has it that a tunnel runs from the chambers to a nearby lake which was used by Nur Jahan

The remains of the Eastern Gate 

Any information on why this diagonally placed brick?

A renovated corner

An original part of the Sarai

Carvings on the western door that left Cunningham unimpressed 

_________________________________________________________________________________

* However, there is no evidence that I have found (yet) to back it up this claim.

Winter: My Secret.

I tell my secret? No indeed, not I;
Perhaps some day, who knows?
But not today; it froze, and blows and snows,
And you're too curious: fie!
You want to hear it? well:
Only, my secret's mine, and I won't tell.

Or, after all, perhaps there's none:
Suppose there is no secret after all,
But only just my fun.
Today's a nipping day, a biting day;
In which one wants a shawl,
A veil, a cloak, and other wraps:
I cannot ope to everyone who taps,
And let the draughts come whistling thro' my hall;
Come bounding and surrounding me,
Come buffeting, astounding me,
Nipping and clipping thro' my wraps and all.
I wear my mask for warmth: who ever shows
His nose to Russian snows
To be pecked at by every wind that blows?
You would not peck? I thank you for good will,
Believe, but leave the truth untested still.

Spring's an expansive time: yet I don't trust
March with its peck of dust,
Nor April with its rainbow-crowned brief showers,
Nor even May, whose flowers
One frost may wither thro' the sunless hours.

Perhaps some languid summer day,
When drowsy birds sing less and less,
And golden fruit is ripening to excess,
If there's not too much sun nor too much cloud,
And the warm wind is neither still nor loud,
Perhaps my secret I may say,
Or you may guess.

                                       - Christina Rossetti
                                          via Poets.org