I have been studying Sanskrit for a little more than decade. I took it up because I love ancient languages. But more than that, I wanted to have direct access to myth and poetry, to be able to translate these for myself and give them my own spin. I discovered the joy of this some thirty years ago when learning Ancient Greek. This year we have been translating the Raguvamsha of Kalidasa.
The story concerns a king and his wife who are having trouble conceiving a child. It doesn’t sound like much of a story for a feminist take informed by lesbian-centric thinking. But that is until you take into account the cow who was previously disrespected because the king was preoccupied with other things and failed to act appropriately. In order to reverse this he has to spend time doing her bidding, protecting her and spending all day and night with Nandini for three weeks.
I have been writing about mythic cows since 2009 when the figure of Queenie came to me. She is a universal cosmic cow with knowledge that goes back through the ages. She claims to have created the universe and her evidence is contained in language: galaxy a word that is derived from the Greek for milk; indeed the Milky Way. While Queenie does not make an appearance in this poem, any poem I write about cows has her looking over my shoulder. In the front of my book Cow (2011) you can find the etymological connection between Gau (Skrt: cow) and Queen (a word derived from Skrt: cow who is a woman rich in cows).
Surabhi is a wish-fulfilling cow and Nandini is her daughter. Surabhi is also referred to as Kamadhenu. What I like about the story is that there are no temples to her, rather it is the cow herself who is sacred. It is an interior worship.
In my retelling in this poem, I decided not to tell it forwards but instead backwards, as you would expect from a lesbian. The section I am telling comes from the end of Canto 1 and the beginning of Canto 2 (backwards).
Photo © Susan Hawthorne, 2019
Surabhi and Nandini
it’s a story that can be told in reverse
how we orbit the cosmic cow to solve our aridity
her udder full spilling milk across the sky
her dugs as big as jugs
death is an event on the horizon
when Nandini enters the Himalayan cave
her bellow reverberates in the hollow
a sound chamber of rumbling echoes
twenty-one days we sleep with her
waiting on this wish-fulfilling cow day and night
the interstellar space between her horns
is a fissure to other worlds
at dusk in the space between light and dark
she shines red like the star on the forehead of Taurus
Rohini visible in between worlds like the sound
of the wind-fluting bamboo singing
life
walking in the apron of the forest our eyes dry from
fasting
flowering trees shower us with falling blossoms
birdsong echoes as the vines hold fast to the trunks
there are many acts of worship for a cow
offer her sweet grasses and scratch her red hide
wave away the flies that settle on her wide shoulders
become her shadow standing stopping when she does
move on sit down drink water when she does
by these means you will follow the way of the cow
follow in her dusty wake
her four dugs are the four oceans
filled with unending seas of milk
This poem is from Susan Hawthorne’s forthcoming collection of poems, The Sacking of the Muses which will be published in 2019.
(Meet Mago Contributor) Susan Hawthorne.
Thank you, Susan Hawthorne, for this profound rethinking of Kamadhenu and Nandini!
A stunning retelling of the poem!
I want to take this opportunity to say how much I feel that your contributions, derived from your deep love for Sanskrit literature, enrich Indic and world literature, Though in terms of feminism standpoint theory, my views prefer to begin with body/gendered and go beyond at some point (Goddess forbid using the term “trans,” which would be beyond far from what is intended here). As sannyasi, I should be looking beyond body constructs, and the rest of the acronym, into the unbound potential of qualities from which your creative feast keeps delighting us in embodied/intellectual Goddessing. I must add that I owe to lesbian philosophers (Irigaray, Butler, others) and writers like yourself, Audre Lorde, bell hooks, and others, that thrilling experience of loving learning that the so called Greek “philo-sophers” robbed from us.
I hope to read more of your feminist reinterpretations of Sanskriti culture’s iconography to enrich our flattened anglophone plates into further depths of imaging and imagining!
Goddess Bless you, Susan!
Jai Durge!
Swami Pujananda Saraswati
PS: Swami Lalitananda, from the blog, is Goddess embedded mentor in Samkhya. Blog identity error, I keep trying to correct.
Re: poem/prose Susan Hawthorne
I liked the poem and the context very much – much better than I like cows.
As a naturalist I am struck over and over (living here in the desert with so many cows) by the vacancy of these animals – the lack of spirit/soul. I am always wondering whether humans have simply bred these aspects out of cows that, after all, serve only man.
I certainly am aware that the cow is an ancient symbol of the goddess – but there is a disturbing aspect to this animal – all milk and all giving – like half the goddess is missing completely.
wow, that’s beautiful.