By Swati Pal
Selfless unconditional Love is what inspires me, emboldens me and makes me carry on. And I see love in the hollowed mulberry tree outside my home which houses squirrels, birds and what not and valiantly sprouts new leaves at the crown though it is deadened by termites within. What resilience! I see love in the way the birds feed their young- mouth to mouth; in the way the lioness gathers her cubs around her, fierce in her protectiveness. I see love in the impassioned teacher who toils over a text that might change the way the students think and I see love in the tireless striving of the gardeners as they tend to the plants under the blazing sun. But most of all I see love in the vacant eyes of the parent who has lost a child- a love that burns bright in the soul and is clearly visible. Such love(s) must be written about. Writing is love too: as words spring to life on paper, the reader becomes one with the writer in a shared thought. For me, writing poetry is an act of love.
Both poems deal with presence and absence in different ways- the first talks about how nothing can never be absent really as the past sneaks into the present all the time; and the second talks about how one’s real identity can remain absent from view because of the masks we don.
The past sneaked in
Poet : Swati Pal
I thought I had
locked the door
thrown away the key
built the walls high
stuck the jagged glass pieces on top,
I thought I had forgotten.
But, the Past sneaked in
through a word
tossed carelessly
and shredded
the garden I had tended
in my heart.
The Mask
So everyday
One puts the mask in place
Kajal, lipstick, smile, upright back, booming voice
And everyday one fools most
Some so much
That they think one is free spirited, happy
Only the loving eye
Knows that it’s the mask
Which every night lies asleep
While I lie awake
Facing my darkness
Swati Pal, Professor and Principal, Janki Devi Memorial College, University of Delhi, has been a Charles Wallace scholar and the first Asian awardee of the John McGrath Theatre Studies Scholarship at the University of Edinburgh. She has recently also received the Fullbright Nehru Fellowship for Educational Administrators. Author of several books on theatre, creative and academic writing, her newspaper articles articulate her views on education. Her areas of research interest include performance studies and cultural history. She translates from Hindi to English and many of her translations are published. She writes poetry and her poems appear in several anthologies; she also has a collection entitled In Absentia and an edited volume called Living on. She is the Vice Chair of the Indian Association for Commonwealth Literature and Language Studies. She is the Delhi State Chair for the G100 Wing for World Peace of the Women Economic Forum. She has been the recipient of several awards such as a Lifetime Achievement Award for outstanding contribution in the area of educational administration and planning besides gender development by Women’s Agency for generating Employment in 2017; Exceptional Women of Excellence in Academia, 2017 Award by the All-Ladies League and Women Economic Forum and the 34th Dr S Radhakrishnan Memorial National Teacher Award in 2018, among others.
The Stillness Project 