By Robin Duncan
Photo/Jon Clark
There is a remote valley in India with thousand-year-old forests redolent with cedar. It is intersected by streams and waterfalls, and surrounded on all sides by the majestic Himalayan Mountains. It is also a place where myth and culture are “alive and well,” according to renowned poet, playwright, novelist and educator Kamla K. Kapur. Kullu Valley is her home for six months out of the year. It is where she found most of the inspiration for her latest book, Ganesha Goes to Lunch, Classics from Mystic India, 24 mythic tales, retold with a modern twist.
Kapur is settled back in her home in Del Mar with her husband, artist and writer Payson Stevens, after her six-month hiatus in the Kullu Valley of India. Since 1985, when they bought the land, the couple has lived half the year in this remote village and half in Del Mar. (more…)
November 6th, 2008
Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders
As India accelerates its rapid modernization, its mythic past is still alive and well in a country where disciples of Lord Shiva still walk barefoot, and dreadlocked holy men speed around on bicycles. After three, on Here on Earth: Radio Without Borders, Jean Feraca and her guest discuss tales from mythic India.
Guest: Kamla Kapur, poet and playwright. Author, “Ganesha Goes to Lunch“.
Here On Earth: Radio Without Borders
January 10th, 2008
By Navdeep Sandhu
October 15th, 2007
By: Nonika Singh
October 15th, 2007
On myHimachal
Chandigarh Sangeet Natak Academy organized the book reading of “Ganesha Goes to Lunch” by the author Kamala K Kapur at the Government Museum and Art Gallery, here today.
“Ganesha Goes to Lunch: Classics from Mystic India” has been published by world famous US based Mandala Publishing. Mr. Ramgopal Bajaj an eminent theatre director was the chief guest on the occasion.
Kamla K. Kapur, born and raised in India and educated in the USA, is a poet, playwright, novelist and educator. The Deccan Herald proclaimed her “a serious poetical voice of our times.” Kamla’s plays, produced in New Delhi, have earned her two Indian National Awards. Her fiction and poetry have appeared in anthologies in the US and in India. She was on the faculty of Grossmont College in San Diego, California, and at Delhi University. Her book “As a Fountain in a Garden” was also released earlier in 2005.
Currently she divides her time between California and Himachal Pradesh, India in the Himalayas, called the “Valley of the Gods” , where she lives with her husband Payson R Stevens, who is an earth scientist and an artist.
Kamla K. Kapur’s book ‘Ganesha Goes to Lunch’ brings for its readers 24 insightful tales from the traditional Indian stories.
“Like myths around the world, the book offers both a window into a fascinating culture that has endured for thousands of years, and a code for living that can be applied to the modern world” says Kamala K Kapur.
“They are reminders from spaceless eternity of the fabric of which we are made. Awaken us, and help us live with, and within, the mystery that is the matrix of our being.” she added.
Chapters introduce provide a comprehensive history of the major gods in Indian mythology. The stories themselves, recreated and embellished, reveal timeless insights into the human condition.
Shiva and Parvati’s wedding portrays a love that includes, but transcends the battle of the sexes. Vishnu’s incarnation as a boar demonstrates the strength of the bonds of attachment that even the gods can not escape. Brahma’s entrapment in the web of Maya leads him to free himself with his mind. Krishna’s compassion for a little bird ensures that creation continues even within the destruction of war. Markandeya’s fall out of Vishnu’s mouth into the ocean of chaos, humbles him in the face of the mystery of life.
The book includes the most fascinating, immensely readable and instructive tales from the ancient Indian history.
October 14th, 2007
By: Seema Sharma
October 14th, 2007
By: S.D. Sharma
October 14th, 2007
By: Arun Venugopal
Kamla Kapur is a writer and poet who divides her time between San Diego and Himachal Pradesh, in India. Her latest book, Ganesha Goes to Lunch: Classics from Mystic India, attempts to re-tell some of the myths many of us heard in various forms, growing up. We asked Kamla a few questions about her adaptations, as well as the marketing of the book. She suggests that Indian myths “show us a way to transcend the conflict of duality with which most of us our afflicted.”
For more on Ganesha Goes to Lunch, visit its page or check out the publisher’s page, at Mandala.
SAJAforum: What inspired you to write this? The description says the tales are relevant to ‘modern times’. How’s that?
When five of my short stories based on retelling of Indian myths were published in Parabola, the Journal of Tradition, Myth and the search for Meaning, I thought about writing this book. Then Raoul Goff, publisher of Mandala Publishing, visited our home, and when I mentioned my concept of the book, he was very interested.
As for the inspiration part: I have always been interested in mythology in general, and Indian mythology in particular, for its artistic, psychological and spiritual potential. Characters in myths are manifestations of human possibility. They are models of how we can be, or live, and what we can become, no matter in what times we live. The myths continue to offer solace and wisdom even now, in this modern age. Myths have the great, practical value of mitigating anxiety, stress, offering archetypal perspectives to alleviate suffering, and reconciling us to life as it is. When my father died in early April, incredulous with grief, I asked my husband, Payson, “is this a dream?” His initial answer of “no,” was followed, after a pause, by, “yes, it’s Vishnu’s dream!” His answer gave a perspective to my grief, and reminded me of the dream-like nature of life and death. In the Hindu view, separation is part of the trick that Maya, the illusion of the world, plays on us. We are just figments of Vishnu’s dream. Even our so-called ‘real’ selves are actors in a dream world where the line between what is real or not is fluid and always in flux. You can’t take the dream too seriously, for it has an end when we awaken.
The greatest of our tragedies and losses is death – the fear of it for ourselves and for those we love. Myths in every culture talk about the eternal regeneration of the self. Vishnu reincarnates again and again, and that is why the faith in individual reincarnation is very strong in India. The myth of the eternal return is counterbalanced by the desire of all holy men to transcend the recurring cycle of birth and death and attain Nirvana, or liberation. And Hindu myths and philosophy teach us how to do this.
Who is it being marketed to?
The book is mainly being marketed in the West, though I am told that Mandala has a healthy market in India as well. Indians may not buy the book thinking it is old hat, but the stories are being told in a new way for a modern audience, and I hope that Indians buy the book as well. There are stories in it that have been told to me verbally which are not found in any texts.
Also, though as an Indian you may be familiar with the images, say, of Shiva of Lakshmi or Ganesha, you may not be aware of the significance, depth and value of the stories. When something is all around you it can also become a cliché, something that you are familiar with in an unconscious sort of way. Though I knew that Ganesha had an elephant’s head, and that Shiva wore a tiger’s skin, I did not know why, or their significance.
Tell me about the process: Which stories did you choose to not include, and why?
I didn’t want to choose stories that were too long – given the crunch for time in almost every country (we have capitalism to thank for it!), most people like short stories with a punch. I picked stories that resonated with me personally. Also, while I was writing them, a friend of mine read some of the stories in manuscript to her young boy, and that reminded me to go easy on the sexual content.
It’s become apparent to me that many of the stories we read or were told as younger children had been sanitized. Sometimes the complexity of certain characters was erased, or violence was made to seem heroic. What are your thoughts on all of this, especially in this era when children’s stories are darker and anticipate that they can absorb more complex realities, like adults.
Because the stories we were told as children we sanitized, or told with a bias and a motive to make us follow the straight and narrow, it is imperative that stories be retold with each generation, to update their relevance, and to broaden their base to include a more expanding consciousness. Complexity of characters must always be maintained and enhanced to reflect all the contradictions of human nature, but in a comprehensible, simple way. Such complexity is inherent in the Hindu pantheon. Because the gods in Hindu mythology are echoes of us (or the other way around), they have many human weaknesses. Both the weaknesses and divinity of the gods reflect humans in all their contrary complexity, and both offer us gifts. Lord Indra, for example, is full of lust, addicted to soma, and goes into fits of rage. Shiva is the god of sexual orgies and also of the ascetic recluses. Vishnu is supremely detached, but he is also very entangled in the affairs of earth. These traits help us to identify with the gods because we are also a mix of these contraries. They also reassure us that despite all our weaknesses, we are also part of the godhood. The stories of the gods and their shortcomings take us through the arc of human error and let us see the consequences of our behavior. There would be no stories without weaknesses. Our weaknesses also have a profound role to play in our evolution. They keep us humble, and as in Greek, Roman, Norse, Egyptian and Sumerian myths, pride is the worst of the human weaknesses because arrogance above all keeps us from true knowledge, wisdom, wonder and awe. Weaknesses are the gateways to truth.
I disagree with you about the violence part. Though it is necessary, if one is to live an aware existence, to eschew unnecessary violence and conflict, a great deal of violence is inherent in the very fabric of life, and this is reflected in our art and our stories. Even in our own day many movies show violence in a heroic light. I myself balk at it while realizing its existence in almost all spheres of our life. Violence and death go hand in hand, and there would be no life without death.
The success of Maurice Sendak’s children’s stories, or even the violence inherent in our nursery rhymes, is evidence that children can and do absorb and accept this basic fact far more readily than we adults think. And in a way the stories and rhymes reconcile the children to an ineluctable fact of life. I have taught world mythology to many classes, and even teenagers ‘get’ the myths from all over the planet because they resonate in their souls. Myths from different parts of the world express different parts of ourselves.
October 6th, 2007
Parul
Myth has been an important structure of Kamla Kapur’s work, for the author feels Indian myth has become the repository of all our wisdom and solace. “In my work, the myth is transformed to the modern context, it’s instinctive,” explains the author, back home in Chandigarh from Devbhumi in Kullu for a holiday. Kamla is really excited about her latest book, Ganesha Goes to Lunch, which has been published by Mandala Press and comprises the kind of stories which Kamla “always wanted to do, but didn’t have the appropriate space to place them.” Two poetry books, stories, many of which have been published in the journal of myth tradition, a play, novel, Kamla has been writing since she was 13 and the structure of her writing is human — darkness to light. While she was encouraged and inspired to write Ganesha Goes to Lunch by Raoul Goff, the publisher, her abode, Devbhumi, “the earth of the gods,” or more commonly, “Valley of the Gods” has also a lot to with this book taking shape in a short span of about four months.
Stories of Vishnu, Brahma, Shiva, Parvati, Ganesha, Krishna…find place in this book, the seeds, explains Kamla had been lying in her and when she devoted herself to the job, they sprouted and she had as many as 24 stories in place! “They have all been drawn from Indian mythology, legends and folktales, and the books also contains some lesser-known myths, two of them which I’d heard just orally. The well-known classics have got a modern twist from me and there has been a lot of restructuring as well,” adds the author, who studied at GCW-11. India, pronounces the author, has an inexhaustible storehouse of mythic stories, with manifold versions of each myth and development of the narrative has been Kamla’s primary focus, along with retaining the essence.
A lot of research has gone into each story, admits Kamla, who read up on everything she could lay her hands on. “There’s been no systematic and methodical selection, the mention of any myth that made me sit up, and stopped me in my track was picked, basic instinct worked here and each story has been a process of self-discovery, they’ve all moved me,” smiles Kamla. Ganesha Goes For Lunch which will be in bookstores in March.
November 1st, 2006
Tribune article by Gayatri Rajwade
Photo by Parvesh Chauhan
Writer-poet Kamla Kapur is back and this time she is gambolling amidst the Gods of the Indian Pantheon!
Emerging As of a Fountain in a Garden, her book of verses written to assuage her anguished soul after the suicide of her husband, poet Donald Dean Powell in 1993, she comes back transformed, retelling Hindu myths this time round.
And no colourless portrayals here, for the Gods speaking in an easy narrative style say so much of the universal truths of humanity, but without the sting of sermons.
‘Ganesh Goes to Lunch’ is Kamla’s ‘chant’ to an ongoing passion in myths and legends. In fact her first book of poetry Radha Sings published in 1987 comprises of Radha talking to Krishna through a series of love songs.
However, this book happened quite by chance. For one, after being in semi-retirement from teaching writing courses at Grossmont College in San Diego in California, she finally resigned to write full-time.
At this time, three stories, one each from Hindu, Sikh and Sufi beliefs, were published by ‘Parabola, A Journal of Myth, Tradition and Search for Meaning’ in New York and Raoul Goff Publisher for Mandala Press read them, met with Kamla and the book was commissioned.
The result is 24 stories, ‘developed from India’s rich and vast ocean of Hindu myths, legends, and folktales and whose timeless quality lends itself to reinterpretation in every age’ writes Kamla in her preface.
“It is easy to see how Indian myth has become the repository of all our wisdom and solace. The gods, like us, are all perishable, yet timeless, like Vishnu asleep on the primeval ocean, appearing and disappearing in his incarnations, like bubbles in the river of time,” she writes.
So what does Kamla bring to these ageless tales? “A lot” she laughs, “The oral3 tradition of mythology means that every story has several different versions and some of them were told to me in just one line. I have given these fables a narrative and a context, developed the characters and have also tried to modernise them,” she explains.
Yes it was difficult because researching these ‘mirages’, in a sense, were not easy since the deadline given by the publishers was just a few months. “What made it tolerable was I enjoyed doing this so much and there was so much I was taught,” she smiles.
In the course of her study she found hundreds of little tales worth telling but selected those she “resonated” with. “There is nothing rational about the process of intuition. It happens sub-consciously and you have to trust it,” she elaborates. But now when Kamla looks back at the book, she sees each aspect, each little learning sparkling like “separate beads but strung together by a single thread.”
Next in this magical series are stories of the ten Sikh Gurus or Janam Sakhis, six stories that have a narrative fibre but which can also be read individually and perhaps a similar book on Sufi tales.
‘My inspiration is the hologram. Where every little bit contains a whole of the same image,” says Kamla. Just like the myths themselves, present everywhere around us, in the names of trees, rivers, villages and temples and within each one of us, as an essence of a higher being.
October 7th, 2006
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