Let me tell you about that evening.
It was cold, but not as steely cold
as your determination.
I saw as soon as I let you in the door,
the two of you were taking this seriously:
you were both afraid of something.
I tried to be avuncular, professional,
I should have worn tweed and held a pipe
and led you a table of wine and cheese.
I said something vague about community
all learned and a little puffed up from reading Scott Peck's
book.
I may even have let slide the word,
"vulnerability."
But you had made up your mind to be invulnerable.
Draupadi Ma did not want the Dragon Flower to come
and she was right: the two of you came prepared.
Your teeth were clenched, your strategy worked out.
First you would show how you were reformed;
because now you are okay, it was a momentary lapse
and your wife had forgiven you so why won't we?
And you had quotes from Jaiva Dharma
and from a commentary of a commentary
that you excitedly shared as you do with your disciples
exalting in the glory of the shastra,
where you so insightfully discover another,
yet more eloquent way of saying
that one should never find fault with Vaishnavas.
But I am not one of your disciples and
we were not there to indulge in idle gossip.
I was not there to put you on trial.
And here again, you are afraid of us,
your friends, who are just asking a simple question,
what is prem, and how do you get it?
And my request is there should be no bullshit,
no quoting shastra to lead your speech, no lecturing.
Only realization. Real life realization.
You are hiding, you are afraid.
ahaṁ cātmātmajāgāra-dārārtha-svajanādiṣu
bhramāmi svapna-kalpeṣu mūḍhaḥ satya-dhiyā vibho
You are afraid to abandon the walls of shastra and yukti
and face reality.
I've got them people here
these are good people
I need them to have someone to believe in
is that you?
Are you a charismatic who knows how to charm the ladies?
Who entertains with shlokas and sankirtan
and even occasionally permits himself
to dredge the bounds of his romantic memory,
very alarming indeed when speckled
with sweetly sung verses from Lalita Madhava or Ujjvala
Nilamani.
When I said Rukmini Dwarkadhish
your mind was stirred.
It would have been a great subject
for discussion had we let down our guard,
but you couldn't,
the Dragon Flower was there.
You are involved
from the beginning; your shadow was there,
I am sorry to say.
You are not responsible for your shadow, you may say,
yet you cast it.
Your shadow's role may be greater than the real you.
You are afraid of magic because you use it.
The glance. At one point our eyes met
perhaps while the women argued,
we human beings keep our ocular intimacies brief.
It is rare that we have the innocence needed
to enter another soul through the eyes.
And the little smirk danced on your lips
as Draupadi blustered helplessly, uncontrolled.
And you gave me that knowing glance
of masculine intimacy and subtle victory
as she flailed helplessly and seethed
that I was going over to the enemy,
and that you were scoring all the points, not she.
Ah yes, the Dragon Flower
has forgiven you and now supports you
like a disciple should support a guru,
a true Vedic wife, a true Vedic husband.
Draupadi Ma was furious that I did not take her side
she began to take the form of Kali with numerous arms and
heads
all spouting ferocity.
I wanted her to let it slide
but she wanted some goddamned effect
and she wasn't going to take no
extended sannyasi's authority trip
muttered by the sannyasi's frightened wife.
She was Draupadi in the assembly
abandoned by her protector.
Yes, I wanted to take a friendly
long range sweet path to union,
to speak intellectually, a little confessionally
if we could create a basis of friendship and trust
other things could eventually come forward.
But Draupadi Ma was in a different world
and she wanted to validate it.
“We are the seniors here,” she said.
And we are, it is true. We are the elders,
but we are also from the West, what do we care
about seniority? We pay it lip service
and don't approach it with gravity,
except where pecking orders are institutionalized.
“Don't tell us things are straight,”
she would scream. “It will happen again and here's why!”
But she could not speak out with the Dragon Flower
standing guard against the truth.
She will defend you like a lioness
because she is fully invested in you
and she craves your love.
And there you are, smirking sweetly
and oh so helplessly at her display
and then you restrain her,
holding her against you, controlling her like
a master with a trained pit bull hound.
It was Draupadi who hardened
the Pandavas' hearts
a conflagration for nothing more
than stupidity and hurt pride
that is the story of the lesser of two evils
winning because of a woman.
She was born for revenge
Her revenge was approved by God himself.
If you were a man married to Draupadi
which Pandava would you be?
She had failed in her dharma to love
the five of them equally,
by loving Arjuna a little more totally.
And what was Arjuna's game?
He was afraid to dominate her love
like a Krishna, of whom he was the second self
the husband in whom God is most fully manifest.
He was afraid that if he gave himself to her completely
if he gave his love to her too soon,
she would forget the others.
Arjuna, for all his heroics
and consummate mastery of the kshatriya dharma
was at heart a lover of poetry and dance
with a feminine side,
he lived among the Apsaras and taught them to dance
he was even a hijra for a year.
He took a twelve year hiatus
before he even lay with her,
being cast out by the agreement that
whosoever of the brothers should be present
when Draupadi was alone with her rotating spouse
was to be exiled for a dozen years.
She had to love them equally
each in the way that they needed it,
to perfect themselves in happiness
and humanity and all the graces
they could acquire and distribute to their people.
And yet there was to be a conflagration.
A man cannot help but be recreated by his woman,
and she will recreate him in her image.
And so there we have
our image,
the lioness pit bull seething with controlled rage
while her master soothes her with a calming hand
and looks about, proud of his mastery over such a beast.
And over here, who can fathom Draupadi's anger?
She has things she wants you to know,
but you have put a wall around your
desire to listen. You prefer the pit bull.
and I hear she has puppies.
No wonder Draupadi did not want the Dragon Flower there,
but you were afraid to come without her.
She keeps trying to give birth to me
And I keep fizzling out.
My Draupadi wants her Arjuna to get out there
and do a little sword-fighting.
Then she quietened down,
and we blathered pointlessly.
The the Dragon Flower was there,
she had raised the drawbridge, the moat was full.
