triveni spotlight
A FEATURE EVERY ALTERNATE DAY!
hosts: Teji Sethi and Kala Ramesh
host editor: Teji Sethi
Theme: Raga in Nature
Journal: haikuKATHA
monsoon rains,
the endless fields
are weeping too ...
lost in the winds of change
rice-planting songs of natives
— Milan Rajkumar
There is no end to seeing and hearing. The structure of the universe is infinite. Endless vibrating expansion.
~ Nanak
There are myriad sounds which pre-exist in nature and can be perceived by human ear. It is completely natural, both animals and humans to have profound reactions to certain sounds. Some songbirds sing from repertoires which use the same rhythms and note combinations as modern composers. For example, the canyon wren uses a 12-tone scale. The hermit thrush, on the other hand, sings in a five tone penta-scale which is common in Asian music. The tanka I have chosen to showcase, exquisitely capture the ‘music in nature’ be it the sound of ripples, a bird song, a cicada’s mating call, the rustle of leaves or the lament of paddy fields!
Teji Sethi
Beautiful! Lost in the rain-soaked paddy fields the forgotten lives of natives. Change comes with a lot of loss. It is poignantly caught by Milan.
love the 'o' sounds in this one Milan, I can hear the wind
This is truly beautiful, especially L4!
A beautiful tanka indeed!
I truly felt the loss through this tanka— I had to pause as I reflected on the slow loss of diversity in the sound sphere at multiple levels.
The L4 turned around the poem so well. Thank you.