Temporal ignorance

A.J. Mohammed Shafeer

More than Kerala, more than India, more than this planet earth, this universe itself is the birthplace of the poet in me. More than temporality, more than contemporaneity, its permanent interface is with eternal time. One who experiences at least an inkling - an inkling - of that enchantment can hardly relent to the rigours * of regionalism and contemporaneity that are raring to ensnare us. I humbly believe that - like light, air, sound and time, like empty distances, art too, in its exalted state, is an entity that is pristine, liberated and self-sufficient. The argument that aiming skies of pure art reveals a lack of commitment to society and contemporaneity,I reject with the felicity that springs from the innocent impetuosity of self-realization.

Through a creative work that sets free the universality underlying everyplace and each one’s self, a theme that is regional to the utmost extent can attain the same eternality.” The more individual something is,’ says Joan Miro,” the more it becomes universal ”. At any rate, it has to be a gross quirk of fate that we who are the descendants of ancient Indians who had known that the cosmic and the atomic are, to the same extent, inhabited by the Brahma**, have become narrow-minded even in matters concerning art.

I experience and appreciate art and poetry as the most distinctive resource gifted by nature to continually remind us of the “forgotten wonder of being alive”(Octavio Paz). Art-forms wherein intellect and emotionality, as well as intellect and romanticism lie interwoven, correlate at least distantly to the magical potential of life that antipodally crisscross and disperse.

*To be unaware of our eternal nature, and to reckon the living, temporal and regional as ultimate realities, is “temporal ignorance” as termed by Maharishi Aurobindo.

**Isavasyopanishad (Brahma: The absolute; eternal and the infinite; 'Greater than the Greatest and Smaller than the Smallest') posted by a j muhammed shafeer @ 11:49 PM Friday, September 01, 2006