Secondary Resources: · Origins of Music · The Ecoquiz · Online Crossword · Pilgrimage · Shraddh · World-Wide Webs · Personal Webs The Secondary Syllabus Primary Resources
		SECONDARY RESOURCES SHRADDH - A POEM 'A good day - Kartika - full moon.' A temple guide, hopeful of custom, Greets us by the train, hears us explain That we have come for Shraddh, come to perform The rites that free the souls of the deceased From more rebirths. He will, he says, ensure That all is done aright. Dwarfed by the temple's towering gopuram - Tapering stone, alive with sculpted forms - Pilgrims and vendors, beggars, cattle, crows, Are one with sea and sky, One with the ancient sage's certainty That all is one. On the beach we sit, the priest Banded with ashen marks, recites in Sanskrit, Asking the names of the deceased. He is alert, prepared With all we need - bananas, garlands, milk, Coconut, flour, dried grasses And umbrella, tucked away in case it rains. Raucous crows, eager attentive goat, mild watchful cow And you, hung with a Brahmin thread, Naming your father, mother, kin Across the generations. Bidden by the priest You knead the milk and flour to doughy balls. A crow snaps one, the cow receives the rest. The waves accept the garlands. Obediently we give bananas to a cow along the way Towards the temple, where the guide Draws water from each sacred well, Drenches you, guides us through Pillared avenues to shadowed shrines Arched by the steady glow of myriad flames, Arch beyond arch.     Multi-dimensional infinity enwombed; Space, time, present, past, Life, death all one This fulsome moonlit night Of Kartika. ['Shraddh' appears in Turn But a Stone, a collection of Eleanor Nesbitt's poems on diverse themes including religion and the countryside/urban environment. The collection is available from eleanor.nesbitt@warwick ac.uk, price £3.00. The proceeds are for Sangam School, a school for needy children in a North Indian village.] GO BACK TO ACTIVITY 3 © REEP, Eleanor Nesbitt