Book Review: I, Lalla

Author: Lal Ded
Translated by: Ranjit Hoskote
Publisher: Penguin
Language: English
ISBN: 9780670084470
Pages: 328
Binding: Hardcover
Price: 450

And before I continue, I confess. Ignorance is never strength. In the state of enhanced consciousness induced by special techniques of concentration, the self and the world, the subject and the object, the destiny and the destination, the resistance and the freedom, never remain separate entities; they fuse in a single process, though visible in quite a subtle sense.

For Hindus, you are Lalleswari. For Muslims, you are Lalla Arifa. But for Kashmir, you are Lal Ded – the mother who murmured lyrics about the sufferings of her people long before they were born.

Lal Ded lived in independent Kashmir some six centuries ago. At twelve, Lalla was, in a sense, married to a misfortune - a neglectful husband. But her destiny lied somewhere beyond the obvious. At twenty-six, she left her husband and her abusive mother-in-law in pursuit of the Unseen. Although very little is historically known about her life, Lalla descended upon the earth with a divine message for mankind. 'She did not have a Boswell to record her performance in life, nor was there a Swami Vivekananda to carry forward her spiritual philosophy to the world by large. By the sheer force of her sayings (vakha), Lal Ded has survived in the history and is remembered in every home in Kashmir with all communities claiming her blessing.'

In her vekha's, Lalla enacts the theatre of her denotation in different registers: she yarns, she demands, she laments. Her poems shuttle between the vulnerability of doubt and the assurance of an insight gained through resilience and reflection. The poems in the book are seriously evocative as they are charged with an ecstatic devotion: Lalla does not surrender meekly to enlightenment but embraces it with wild passion.

In the book, Lalla’s vekhas epitomize the epic turbulence that afflicts the people of Kashmir. Across the valley people live deeply tormented by ideological and religious schisms, suffering the legacy of torture and terror as well as the 'insensitivity and repression of a state that cannot fathom the true feelings of its people'. In the depths of crises, Lalla’s voice exert a redemptive power over those who hear her.

The book has gone through an immense research putting vekhs's in mesmerising continuity. While introducing the reader to the philosophical, political and the social context of the creativity of Lalla, the author attempts to address the troubled history of Kashmir through the figure of Lal Ded. At the same time, however, the book falls a little insufficient unto itself. Since a large part of Lalla's poems have much to do with the contemporary Kashmir, it seldom makes any mention in the book.

Braving the trials of humiliation that came to her way, Lalla grew in stature to become a ‘questor’ and a teacher. Revelations came to Lalla like a moon in dark water. She celebrates perseverance in the quest, contrasting physical agony with the spiritual fight and dwelling on the obdurate landscape that the ‘questor’ must negotiate.

The book presents an in-depth study about the vision of Lal Ded. Even though her poems are linked by a metrical structure with sensitive metaphorical message, their music changes consistently. Some of the poems are festive, others are melancholic, yet others combative; some spell out a pensive reflection, others open out into a wound and a passionate cry from the heart, yet others rap out a quick-step dance measure.

Lalla holds a simple thought. Nourishes it. Chissels it. Then sets it free for the enlightenment till it stuns the Behold. And true enlightenment, she argues, can result only from the instruction of a truthful guru or leader, who directs the seeker towards the knowledge of his or her karmic profile, and indeed of self. In poem 7, Lalla offers a bleak vision of the world’s inhabitants as transients, who are born only to die and who die only to be reborn. The piquant cadence of the closing line conveys the measure of this dance of perpetual circularity. Most of her poems carry the metaphor of the restless search of man's freedom.

Lalla phrases a passionate testament to the recognition of the unity between seeker and goal, self and self. She castigates herself for having to be blinded to the unity by her body-centered consciousness, with its emphasis on the personality, on individual identity; and also by the constant doubt concerning the true nature of the divine, which she previously nurtured.

Lalla predicts the shape of things to come. She knows the fate that her children are doomed to face. And it is not encouraging at all. She laments the loss of more innocent and serene times, and foresees the coming of disaster; the king will change his line, the slave will change his attitude, collaborator will intensify the deceit, traitor will strength his paradigms. The conscious soul will again dream of a rebellion. The pain and wound may heal, but memory never does. Lalla’s prognostications in these stanzas find a disturbing fulfillment in the continuing turbulence in contemporary Kashmir, with its lethal combination of insurgency, low-intensity warfare, and state repression.

At this stage the Unmanifest manifests Itself. Lalla begins with a portrait of an individual trapped in conflicting desires - the greed for fame and lust. And then there are people who will be killed just because they won't compromise their honour and existence. There are others who will sacrifice their lives for the chastity of their mothers and sisters. There are others, who die a silent death; they are cowards who have a fear of physical death but spiritually die thousand times a day. A desire for freedom, Lalla demonstrates, is the only route to immortality.

Foreseeing what her children are to face, Lal Ded shares a song like beat that quickens the readers perception of its teaching: the self comes into the world with a mission – that of continuing the quest for transcendence and freedom. This memory and promise must not be overwritten by new memories. The resolve made in the previous day must not vanish; there is self-fulfillment in the quest of freedom itself.

Lalla invites the aspirant to put on the robe of wisdom and commit himself towards a set destination. Through devotion to the primal syllable, one must let himself absorbed by the light of awakened consciousness, and so defeat the fear of death; a hope of liberation emerges that can be passed on to the future generations. What not can a man sacrifice for freedom, after all.