A Glance at the Sacred Feminine PART-I

MANPRASAD SUBBA

Little known outside Sikkim, Mandeep Lama is a writer to be read in all earnest. Even in Sikkim he, as a writer, is perhaps relatively not widely known not only because he basically writes in English but most of his essays or write-ups are really of profound nature that demands from the reader equally earnest reading. In these essays we can see his keen and explorative observation expanding toward horizon after horizon while flashing the insight of his deep spirituality as well as spiraling and rising movement of his intellectuality.

Quite an unassuming in his physical appearance, Mandeep Lama astonishingly sounds formidable when he talks on any subject. Yes, any subject that might have come up just casually can stir or tickle the vast wholeness of his intellectuality or subtlety, or his sensibility and spirituality which then begin to open up bit by bit just like the magical effects of the Sun-rays on the Kanchenjunga seen from the Tiger Hill at pre-dawn. The essays collected in this book are the testimony to what I say above.  

That he dearly loves Gangtok, the capital city of the Himalayan state Sikkim where he must have been rooted for generations, is evident in the very first essay and a few others in this book. It also may be said that this typical Gangtokian seldom leaves his darling town for long. But riding the horse-drawn chariot of his erudition, he has traversed such spaces, verbal revelation of which in most of the essays herein, simply captivates us. We are quietly and curiously, and willingly drawn into the passages of his essays by his convincingly erudite way of dealing with the subject matter taken up. Even an ordinary or commonplace topic gradually goes on assuming the form of idea of profundity at the hands of Mandeep Lama. Or, it may be said that Lama’s keen insight and subtle sensibility explore the subject matter in such a way that many aspects lying hidden in it are discovered and brought to light for the readers to see and feel. This is a kind of creative analysis or criticism which we like most. Lama’s astoundingly wide ranging study is amply evident in his essays and his creative perspectives are also found strewn here and there in them.

In the thirty-one essays compiled for this volume subjects range from local to global, mundane to metaphysical, sports to spiritual, music and literature to history, economics to ecology and from discourse on feminism to the history of matriarchy. The essays are of various lengths: a few are of few pages while the title essay, A Brief Excursion into the Sacred Feminine, is nearly of a book length.

 However, title of the book doesn’t end there. The main title is followed by the subsidiary title consisting of these words: A Glimpse into the Myriad Shades of Life and Its Unsparing Affairs. The group of these words forming this secondary title speaks volume. Particularly the last three words send a chilling sensation down the spine reminding us of life’s impartiality, futility and unpredictability. Having written tens of thousands of words, the writer says that the book is just “a glimpse into the myriad shades of life”. But even such a glimpse contains volumes of scriptures, epics and histories. And, we are just awed by the myriad shades of life he has brought into sharp relief for his readers to view.

Widely diverse subjects the writer has dealt with, and all with equal ease, show his wonderful versatility as well as creativity, and each subject of such diversity sufficiently reflects and echoes his formidable confidence and conviction. Such attributes, in a person, do not develop only through extensive study of scriptures, classics, history, science and great contemporary works but they rather evolve through sharp and subtle sensibilities, insightful perspectives, fertile natural flair with subtle aesthetic sense and liberal outlook inherent in her/him.

Lama, even while speaking with a nostalgic tinge in some of his memoir-like essays, lets his reminiscences go on encompassing deeper aspects relative to them. In Gangtok and the Era of 1960s he so adroitly blends some light-hearted anecdotes with the ethos and idealistic dreams of the era as a whole and their vibrant wave strongly felt from the other side of the North Atlantic to the small town ensconced in the eastern Himalayas. Such kind of essays of his have not only their literary significance but they also carry the value of analytical annals of a certain point of time in history.

There are quite a few essays of such category. But for now I am irresistibly drawn to the short (perhaps the shortest) essay entitled Floral Symphony.

To know how and what Lama sees in flowers, I am tempted to quote the following lines from the essay,

“Flowers have power to render the most talkative of humankind speechless as if their vocal cord is ripped right off the gullet! A flower evokes pristine quietude while balancing the other pan of the creational scale ? the abject ugliness in nature. Therefore, gaze intently at any youthful bloom, and slowly you will begin to find yourself looking at the innermost sanctuary of your own self!” 

Without enough of spirituality deep within one cannot experience such a sublime feel. In fact, true aesthetic feeling is intrinsically one to the spirituality which is above all sorts of prejudices. It may also be said that spirituality is the flower that blooms from the ground below. In the deep self of our author has blossomed such spirituality that has all-encompassing eyes of aesthetic and compassion. It is this spirituality in his innermost self that has inspired him to write in good length the essays on the subject of environment, ecology and the history of matriarchy in relation to feminism. It is in the essays on these subjects Mandeep Lama himself appears to be in full bloom, more so in the title essay. 

In Talking Green: Autopsying the Economics Myth he sounds very much concerned about the fast dwindling resources of mother Earth when he says,

“. . . buying an extra car when you already have a vehicle is also doing violence to the ever depleting petrol or diesel! When you do have a comfortable stack of cloths, buying a new suit, sari or any of the sorts is also doing violence to the fabric!”

Lama calls the modern-day economics the “macho economics” which knows only to thrust and act ruthlessly to feed its insatiable hunger for materialistic opulence. He sees globalism as “the macabre dance” in which the corporate moguls feel no shame to trade even the human genes. All these macabre acts are brilliantly exposed in this essay. For shaping up of the modern human mind ? utterly selfish, insatiable, and ruthless ? the writer, more than once, squarely lays blame upon three towering figures of modern civilization ? Bacon, Descartes and Newton. Bacon provoked man to be aggressively dominant against the Nature; Descartes so insensitively split mind and body while Newton saw the universe only as a lifeless machine. It is the human mind they so stoutly shaped that has been ever since causing havoc to the natural world.   

Relative to Talking Green: Autopsying the Economics Myth is another essay entitled Looking Behind Environmental Pollution which is placed three essays earlier in the book. In this essay the writer very interestingly relates the present day environmental movement with the movement of feminism. I quote a few lines from the essay:

“This branch of study (environmental and ecological study) came into existence due to a major social upsurge of the 20^th century ? the feminist movement. This movement facilitated a wide range of investigations of the human history from strictly feminine perspectives. . . This connection opened up a fresh field of academic learning which is called female ecology or ecofeminism.”

 He further goes on to say that,

“. . . exploitation of woman and nature has gone hand-in-hand ever since patriarchal form of social structure took firm roots about 4500 years ago.”   

It is, indeed, the “machoism” that, through the ages, grew into, and was established as patriarchal form of society in almost every corner of the human world. This discourse has been elaborately discussed in the title essay. But before I say something about that, I just want to mention here the title of another essay equally relating to the environmental and ecological discourse. This essay is titled as Bio-diversity: Nature’s Magnum Opus. Is there any greater artist or poet than Nature who has created such an incomparable and mystical yet simple magnum opus called Bio-diversity?

                                                                                                                                To be concluded