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Above: detail from photo by Raminder Pal Singh. Below, first from bottom: detail from painting by Maxfield Parrish.

Poetry

Epiphany

by FELICIA KAUR JODHKA

 

It is 3:30 AM, and a rush of cool air attempts to blow my chunni off my head.

I walk forward, stop at the entrance gate, graze my fingers on the dirt ground, and slide them across my forehead. 

Back home, at this time, I would be nestled underneath the covers of my warm comforter.  My fingers would be grazing nothing else but the top of the alarm clock to orient it towards my gaze.  Reading the large, red digits, I would brush my hands across my forehead in frustration, dreading the moment that the alarm would set off into utter pandemonium to awake me in the few, short hours of peace that remain. 

But I am not at home.  

I am wide awake, walking swiftly under the twilight of the dark, early morning sky.  My mind and body feel particularly light this morning, as if all burdens and stresses have been lifted off of my shoulders. 

Gone are the urgent deadlines, the responsibilities, the exams, the presentations, and the people. 

I am alone with my Guru.  I hear His voice echo across the ancient dirt roads, across the temporarily abandoned shops, across the rows of houses, and finally across the delicate membrane of my inner ear.  His sweet melody one million times more captivating than even the song that the Sirens of the Odyssey sung. 

However, unlike their song, my Guru's song is not a danger that I must escape.  Rather, it is my sanctuary that I escape to.  For, His words are my home when my own home burns and cinders under the flames of my wrath.  His words are my honor, when my own is tainted with the black ashes of self-pride.  My Guru's words are my hope, when my previous hopes and wants drown into a sea of attachment. 

His resonating voice carries me across the city streets, onto magnificent marble floors, and through a trough of cold, soothing water.  I stop and am completely mesmerized by Sri Harimandar Sahib standing in front of me, in all its beauty and glory. 

And it is here that my Guru serenaded me.  His song in the form of Raag Asa pierced my heart and galvanized my body.  It saturated my eyes with the nectar of love, and suddenly the golden hued borders that contrasted so sharply with the dark morning sky began to blur.  His shabad caressed my skin and each and every hair stood up with His electrifying current of compassion.

Never have I experienced such sheer raw emotion empower and overwhelm me.  I found myself in an unforgettable sacred ambiance, unable to think, unable to utilize the mental faculties which define me. 

I experienced a calm exhilaration, a static ecstasy in which boundaries ceased to exist, where land met water met air met fire met space met time.  Everything converged, yet diverged. 

And, one month later, I still find myself lacking both the words and the logic to portray it. 

I often think back to this "epiphany", desperately clinging on to it from within, attempting to protect it from the obscuring effects of time.

But slowly and surely, like the beautiful rays of a setting sun, the colors of the moment begin to fade.  And amid the hustle and bustle of life in the West, maya slowly begins chipping away at the sharp, poignant edges of its clarity. 

Never will I be able to experience such a vivid moment again, let alone describe it. 

However, I now seek solace in the fact that it exists, that it, for a lack of a better word, just is.  At times, I grasp for what is left of it in the midst of the distressful, incessant babble of my mind, and it becomes my Guru's tight, comforting embrace. 

On occasion, when I thirst for the feel of His cool, soothing Nectar trickling down my face under the shelter of the Dukh Bhanjani Beri tree, I partially revive what remains of it, and it becomes my Guru's arm reaching out and pulling me back, for a fleeting second, to the land that I have come to love so dearly  -  Sri Darbar Sahib, Amritsar.

But most importantly, I find that its existence is founded on the presence of an intangible, intimate memoir gracefully and eloquently written and sung by my Guru with words that speak volumes, and that reveal universal truths that have withstood the test of time. 

They are words spontaneously written in the enriching language of love and in the intangible grammar of quintessential experience.  These are the words that complete the sentences that I cannot finish.  These are the words that fill in the blanks of my fruitless, lacking vocabulary. 

I can neither write nor speak.  But, I have no need to for my Guru[bani] has done that for me.  All that He requires of me is to listen.  And on that blessed amrit vela, for once in my twenty-six years of life, I let go of my mind's pen and did just that  -  I listened:

Sun sravan baanee gur vakhaanee har ra(n)g thuree charraaeiaa ||

Put your ears to the Word, and attune your body to the Lord's Love.

 

 

June 9, 2008       

Conversation about this article

1: Jagraj Singh (London, England), December 07, 2008, 10:15 PM.

Chardi kalaa :)

2: N. Deep (Ludhiana, Punjab), January 23, 2009, 2:11 PM.

Good one:) Keep sharing!

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