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.

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Times Of India article by By Vandana Shukla

A New York-based publication is coming up with a book on Indian myths, written by city-born poet Kamla K Kapoor.

Chandigarh: The richness of Indian myths, particularly their spiritual and philosophical essence, has baffled the world for ages. Now, they feel the need to understand them. The Hindu myths offer to the world in easily comprehensible narratives what spiritual gurus have been attempting to explain through a complex web of spiritual austerity. New York-based Mandala Publication is coming up with a book on Indian myths, written by Kamla K Kapoor, a city-born poet settled in the US.

Kapoor has lived in the Kullu valley for the last three months, researching and compiling material for the book. “Kullu is called the Dev Bhumi, the land of the gods. I find each myth a repository of wisdom and solace, filled with a new message of hope.” She says her interest in the myths of the land has been intrinsic. “An old journal of myths, traditions and research, ‘Parabola’, published from New York, had already published some of these myths. The publishers of this book had seen that work and approached me to come up with a book on obscure Indian myths retold for a modern audience. The book will hit the market in March 2007,” informs Kamla.

The book of Indian myths, titled ‘Ganesha Goes to Lunch’, contains about 24 myths picked from various sources, primarily from the Ramayana and Mahabharat, Vedas and Purana. Some myths are picked from the ever-evolving oral tradition of Indian mythology. The West’s interest in Indian myths could be explained by the fact that Indian mythology has a unique distinction of using a magical way of looking at life, that gives one a perspective to access life with a strategy that helps one cope with all unbearable pains and miseries with a sense of normality attached.

Since the book’s target audience is the western world, Kapoor has been asked to provide a detailed introduction to all the characters and the source stories. “The stories are short, usually no more than a few pages, and encapsulate some of life’s essential truths. The gods of India in their abodes, humans struggling with life’s problems, and gods and humans interacting, all reveal their lessons” adds Kapoor.

The stories are embellished, and dramatised to reveal their relevance to modern times. Shiva and Parvati’s wedding reveal 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 gods are not immune to. Brahma’s entrapment in the web of ‘maya’ leads him to learn 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 falling out of Vishnu’s mouth and into the ocean of chaos humbles him in the face of the mystery of life. These are a few of the immensely readable and instructive tales included in the collection, adds Kapoor.

“Life is infinitely more marvellous than our day-to-day business and work, money and illness, family and bosses would make it seem. It is precisely the function of myth to thrust us out of the quotidian into the miraculous. One lives life more deeply, with greater peace and joy, when one lives with the enigmas that permeate it. These stories warp our minds, and allow us a perspective on life, on its incredible, enmeshing, magic web of ‘maya’, and the dream-like nature of our experience on this planet”, writes Kapoor in the introduction about ‘Ganesha Goes to Lunch’.

Kapoor has to her credit a number of publications, and her anthologies of poems – ‘Radha Sings’ and ‘As a Fountain in a Garden’ – have received rave reviews, apart from a number of full-length plays.

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