When God is a Traveller  by Arundhathi Subramaniam

"Fire is His head, the sun and moon His eyes, space His ears, the Vedas His speech, the wind His breath, the universe His heart. From His feet the Earth has originated. Verily, He is4 the inner self of all beings".

    In the above quote, Lord Shiva is mentioned.  As we know, Indian culture includes many gods.  Lord Shiva is known as Mahadev and Parvati is known as the form of Shakti.  Lord Shiva is known as the god of gods.  The history of which we see a lot.  Many stories of Lord Shiva and Parvati are prevalent.  One of them we will discuss here in this poem. So poem is "When God is a Traveller" by Arundhathi Subramaniam. Who is Arundhathi Subramaniam? 

About Arundhathi Subramaniam:

According to wikipedia:

    Arundhathi Subramaniam is an Indian poet, writer, critic, curator, translator, Journalist, writing in  English. Arundhathi Subramaniam's volume of poetry, When God is a Traveller (2014) was the Season Choice of the Poetry Book Society, shortlisted for the T.S. Eliot Prize. She is the recipient of various awards and fellowships, including the inaugural Khushwant Singh Prize, the Raza Award for Poetry, the Zee Women's Award for Literature, the International Piero Bigongiari Prize in Italy, the Mystic Kalinga award, the Charles Wallace, Visiting Arts and Homi Bhabha Fellowships, among others.

    As prose writer, her books include 

The Book of Buddha, a bestselling biography of a contemporary mystic, 

Sadhguru: More Than a Life and most recently,

Adiyogi: The Source of Yoga (co-authored with Sadhguru). 

As editor, her most recent book is the Penguin anthology of sacred poetry, Eating God.

Awards:

Khushwant Singh Memorial Prize for Poetry:For When God is Traveller

Mystic Kalinga Literary Award:

2020 - Sahitya Akademi Award for English - When God is a Traveller 

    She wrote poems on the natural environment.  She has composed many poems on the elements of nature.  In which she  has composed poems based on the ancient God.  Her compositions are very famous and good. So she also gets awards in these poems.  One of which we will discuss today is the poem Waiting for God.  So what is this poem?  And what is in it? 'When God is a Traveller' in the poem he has tried to whiten the elements of nature by talking to Karthik.

"When God is a Traveller"

Trust the god back from his travels, his voice wholegrain (and chamomile), 

his wisdom neem, his peacock, sweaty-plumed, drowsing in the shadows.

Trust him who sits wordless on park benches listening to the cries of children fading into the dusk, 

his gaze emptied of vagrancy, his heart of ownership.

Trust him who has seen enough— revolutions, promises, the desperate light of shopping malls, hospital rooms, manifestos, theologies, the iron taste of blood, the great craters in the middle of love. 

Trust him who no longer begrudges his brother his prize, his parents their partisanship.  

Trust him whose race is run, whose journey remains, who stands fluid-stemmed knowing he is the tree that bears fruit, festive with sun.

Trust him who recognizes you— auspicious, abundant, battle-scarred, alive— and knows from where you come. 

Trust the god ready to circle the world all over again this time for no reason at all other than to see it through your eyes.

    The poem is about some part of Nature. so nature is a metaphor of which things are happening with us .The poem when God is traveller is a very different kind of Title but poem and its meanings are very different. Basically, There are so many people who give his own idea about this poem. The poem has a very unique title  as we know that the God is traveller but the poet has a very different perseptive of the poem that's how she got the Sahitya academy 2021 award.

About the poem:

    When God is a Traveller" actually contains 22 poems from the “Deeper in Transit” section of her book "Where I Live (2009), thus there is substantial overlap in poems between books. Still, there are 29 new poems in this book, and it is a beautiful hardcover with very attractive cover art, making it a nice little book of poetry to carry around - and it is reasonably priced. The 22 duplicate poems are worth reading again, anyway. Writing about gods, goddesses, and heroines as well as daily life, and a favourite topic of writing on writing, this little book is well worth reading and travelling along the various textual references which lead to empty space, which is the terrain of gods, goddesses, and heroines.

    In the poem which gives the book its title, “When God is a Traveller,” Subramaniam muses about Kartikeya/Murga/Subramania, my namesake.” Kartikeya/Murga/Subramania is known by all those names, as well as Skanda, and is the son of Śiva, in some legends of him alone, as Gaṇeśha is born of Pārvatī alone, but also often considered the son of both Śiva and Pārvatī. Subramania is the god of war who is also known as Guhā (cave, secret) or Guruguhā (cave-teacher) as he renounces war in some legends and retreats to the mountains. Arundhathi Subramaniam writes in this poem.

This poem is based on the myth of Lord Kartikeya. Kartikeya , also known as Skanda, Kumara, MURUGAN and Subrahmanya, is the Hindu god of war. He is a son of Parvati and Shiva, brother of Ganesha, and a god whose life story has many version in Hinduism.

   This poem is based on the incident between Lord Ganesha and Lord Kartikeya that who is elder ?

   Lord Shiva and his consort Parvati had two sons named Kartikeya (Kartika) and Ganesha (Vinayaka). The elder was Kartikeya and the younger Ganesha. In South India Kartikeya is popularly known as Lord Subramanya.

Arundhati Subramaniam's poetry takes us on a journey through different situations, emotions, beliefs, stigmas and compelled you to open the aperture of deep-seated lyrical self underneath our heart.

In 'When God is a Traveller', Subramaniam weaves metaphors, metaphors that are distinctly hers, into language that is simultaneously fluid and simple. Everydayness is woven as a metaphor rife with allusions to the deeper meanings of life. At first glance, the poems from this collection come across as beautiful but not .

Many readings of this award-winning text exist but they highlight the religious aspect of the text. While it undoubtedly adheres to a certain religious context, it differs widely in terms of the figures of the Hindu pantheon represented, that is, the ones within the text are not really the most popular of the Hindu gods. Moreover, what Subramaniam does is that she uses these figures but challenges the canonical religious stories through her representations, as can be observed in the poem ‘Benaras’, an underappreciated piece. She tries to highlight the personal side of one’s religious beliefs, for instance in the poem ‘How Some Hindus Find Their Personal Gods’.

    Finally, what especially stands out in Subramaniam’s poetry collection is the imagery. Even when the meaning of the poems eludes the reader, the meaning-making processes remain accessible through the vivid images constructed, which interact with each other to produce meaning. In this text, the meaning is created through the words as well as through the imagery. This gives it a subliminal quality of sorts.

Central Theme of this poem:

Morality is one of the theme of this poem..Morality reflected in character. Through the character of lord Kartikeya poet reflect the morality of life. Kartikeya was intrigue by his brother but he kindly accepted each and everything. 

If we look at the theme of the poem,Wandering, digging, falling, coming to terms with unsettlement and uncertainty, finiteness and fallibility, exploring intersections between the sacred and the sensual, searching for ways to step in and out of stories, cycles and frames - these are some of the recurrent themes.

These poems explore various ambivalences - around human intimacy with its bottlenecks and surprises, life in a Third World megapolis, myth, the politics of culture and gender, and the persistent trope of the existential journey.

Conclusion:

    That is why it can be said that every man has something important in his life.  The way Kartikeya is worshiped in the south is not Ganesha.  In that way each person has a place of his own.  God also reveals the value of injustice to each other in this way, then what to talk about man?  Jealousy is also present in man.  So Subramaniam used the elements of nature as an ornament and Kartik presented this poem of God to us well.  In which Kartikeya's journey and Ganesha's ingenuity were talked about.  Every man is struggling with something in his life.  So in this poem which shows what kind of struggles he has to face in his life, we see that, what kind of work to do?  What to do  How much effort to make?  Work until success!  We find the answers to many such questions in this poem.  Every man needs to bring out the power that lies in him.  Any competition that requires the power to make one's own goals meaningful.  Even if it means getting to work at the right time.  This poem explains the importance of nature and the importance of struggling in life is presented very nicely.If we look at the theme of the poem,Wandering, digging, falling, coming to terms with unsettlement and uncertainty, finiteness and fallibility, exploring intersections between the sacred and the sensual, searching for ways to step in and out of stories, cycles and frames - these are some of the recurrent themes.

Words:1595

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