Apoem composed by Dr Rati Saxena explicated by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya

 An explication de texte by Dr Ramesh Chandra Mukhopadhyaya of a poem by Dr Rati Saxena

The  Text

by Rati Saxena

At any moment /under any condition the storehouse/of mother was never empty/she saved oils grains pickles beans/salt in clay pots glass jars  in jiggery/ allof it living for centuries/in her magic storeroomand available/ in an instant/ without a single open sesame

Mother saved flesh too/on waist and hips for/ her  seven hungry children born/one after another/ and for the next generation/ to love grand mothers soft sweet feel

And she saved stories myth/ unknown rhythms steps/ for the grand childrens dreams/ a way of keeping her with them/ after she is long gone

In her final moment her last / breaths left for her daughters alone/ through which she keeps  dissolving/like sugar packet into water

Explication

The poem opens with a vivid pen picture of an Indian mother in the village. She readily helps her children whenever they are in need under any circumstances whatever. Her store house is full of oils grains pickles beans salt in clay pots glass jars of jiggery. The store house of an Indian mother has been here faithfully described. We can see the jiggery in the glass jar. We can visualize the grains in the pitchers made of clay. True that the poet recalls her mother  in the above portrayal of a mother .But is not the mother as portrayed by Rati the mother in every home serving her children through the ages in every country and clime .Her body is the storehouse for every child in the placenta .The Mother incarnated in myriads of mothers  seems to have saved oils grains beans and jiggery for her countless children to consume in Nature. Could we not learn from our Mater familias the will to save? Unless we save how can  we  amass capital for further production? Mother has saved oil for our consumption. It might mean gasoline as well for our use. Trees give fruits .The nomads often claim that the bounty that the nature distributes is enough for them .Working two or three hours a day they can get enough food for themselves. Their calorie intake is as much as the calorie intake of the citizens of the advanced countries. And Mother provides for every taste sweet sour salt etc .The poet tells us that Mother has saved everything  necessary for her children through the ages in the magic store of Nature and it is readily available In fact to derive sustenance from Nature we need no mantra like open sesame. Indeed this is why we have been exploiting Nature through the centuries to accelerate our so called development .It naturally provokes the reader to ask---Why do we suffer from hunger? The answer is simple. The capitalist system has made the wealth retrieved from Nature scarce.

The feminists today such as Helen Cixous ask women to write with their bodies. Rati puts forth in this poem of hers her whole being including her body.The mother is the poet and the readers are the consumers of her store including her body.The mother saves flesh too on her waist for seven hungry children born  to her one after another. and for the grandchildren to hug them. Ecclesiastics  chapyer 17 verse 5 found in a Greek manuscript speaks of seven senses that includes intelligence and the word. Or else the seven hungry children might refer to the children of Africa .Or else seven hungry children might allude to the  seven continents. Why is Africa hungry? Mothers store is always f ull. It is capitalism to blame. Every living organism is driven by hunger or as the Buddhists would say driven by  tanha. And Mother sees to that our hunger is satisfied.Mother feeds us with her body which is Nature.She not only feeds her children but builds her body in such a way that her grandchildren could be caressed by her. The hills and dales of the earth are her accumulated flesh. May be the gods are her children With us pagans every living organism could be deemed as the children of gods.

Man is never satisfied with bread alone. Mere tangible things are not enough for his consumption. He is as much hungry for hearing tales and words from her mothers lips as he is hungry for food. Any mother breast feeds her baby and at the same feeds her with words.So there are myths stories unknown  before rhythms in her store. When the Mother is not near them they remain virtually close to her through those myths. The struggle for existence and the battle of life is sustained by those myths---the Maya of Vedanta.With the poet Maya is a way of the Mother keeping us with her

The mythopoeic  imagination of the poet tells us that the Mother dissolves herself into sea of womanhood just as sugar is dissolved into water. Thus every woman whatever is the self of the cosmic Mother The poets mother is not merely dissolved in the poet herself but among all the women. This has reversed a traditional imagery of the Vedanta. The Vedanta posits that the individual soul dissolves into the cosmic soul just as salt melts into the sea. That is  the ascent of the soul. The poet however notices that the Mother who is all love and kindness dissolves into the individual souls just as sugar dissolves itself into  the countless waves of the sea.

The present reader has never read any poem on motherhood so sublime