Conversation on Sounds of River

 Françoise Dhulesia

Thank you, Sushama, for sharing this journey of yours, an introspection or a questioning.

Since I have read your prose or your poetry, I have been striken by the recurrent presence of water, of the sea, of the liquid element crossing your work like a lietmotiv, a backbone.

This poem is an homage you pay to water and its multiple forms.

Water is ambi or pluri-valent. It accompanies us throughout our life, from the womb onwards and here I see different manifestations of water:

water is ripples, diffusing its rejuvenating power; it is also a music, chanting its rhythms along. It purifies our minds and bodies...and in the end, water is for you as sweet as a lullaby, bringing you back to the reassuring warmth of childhood. And what about the sea? It is where the ultimate step of the search for/of one's self terminates: the circle seems complete.

I have liked the idea of life seen as a pilgrimage that takes us to an unknown destination. And maybe Faith is what makes the pilgrims perform their rituals without any anxiety.

My study of your poem definitely took me back to my reading of Gustave Bachelard's "L'eau et les rêves". (1942)

Here is a quote that I particularly like and that seems to fit today's poem:

"It was near water that I understood best that daydreaming is an emanating universe, a fragrant breath that comes out of things through the intermediary of a dreamer."

There is no doubt also that water is the primary symbol of Mother Nature, and the "eternal loss of the umbilical cord" is covered up by the eternal presence of water in the narrator's life

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Sushama Karnik

Françoise Dhulesia I know my poem went through different phases of anxiety. If I had not let myself immerse into them the poem would have been hollow. I am glad that you as reader did not abandon me in the middle because of a mood that overtook in a s… 

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Françoise Dhulesia

Here is Bachelard on a conference that he calls a "causerie"!

https://youtu.be/Z65E177AEHc

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Françoise Dhulesia

Sushama Karnik I think it very healthy to articulate our anxieties in some way or the other, especially through an artistic expression. I have also felt the notes of "A Quest for life" in the poem. And indeed, it ends in the echo of a peaceful lullaby