Be­gin­ning with the New Year 2019, World Sikh News hap­pily in­tro­duces to our read­ers -WSN as­so­ci­ate, thinker, writer, mu­si­cian and Rabab-ex­plo­ration pi­o­neer and ex­po­nent –Chris Mooney-Singh. He will be reg­u­larly con­tribut­ing from his vast reper­toire of po­etry and prose and crit­i­cal lit­er­ary writ­ings and mu­si­cal com­po­si­tions.

Aus­tralian-born Dr Chris Mooney-Singh lives in Sin­ga­pore where he teaches Cre­ative Writ­ing at Lasalle Col­lege of the Arts. He writes play, fic­tion and po­etry and is artis­tic di­rec­tor of Lit Up Asia-Pa­cific Fes­ti­val. His last col­lec­tions were The Laugh­ing Bud­dha Cab Com­pany and The Bearded Chameleon.

Mooney-Singh has been a writer and pre­sen­ter for ABC Ra­dio Arts, Aus­tralia and com­pleted his PhD on the longer po­ems and haiku trans­la­tions of Harold Stew­art, the Aus­tralian ex­pa­tri­ate poet who lived and died in Ky­oto in 1995.

Mooney-Singh’s verse novel was com­mended in the 2015 Vic­to­rian Pre­mier Lit­er­ary arts awards (un­pub­lished Fic­tion Cat­e­gory).

To the Banyan

To­day the law of five con­venes be­neath the pan­chayat tree,
you, the shade-giv­ing seat of each In­dian vil­lage coun­cil.
An­cient toe­hold of roots and hairy down-run­ners, you rat­tle fig leaves in the air
above a mus­cu­lar girth of gov­er­nance, long-up­stand­ing to the peo­ple.
And no one would dare cut down the dra­maturgy tree,
the air-con au­di­to­rium where yearly Ram Lila ac­tors tell
eye-and-hand mu­dra tales be­low the moon on Di­vali nights.

You are the buf­falo rub­bing tree, the lie-down siesta of brah­man cows,
the re­pose of el­ders on jute string beds where chil­dren ping their mar­bles;
you are the ho­tel of men­di­cant sad­hus, and rat and vole key­holes for co­bras,
the fer­til­ity tree at Holi throw­ing out rain­bow shud­ders of chalk dust.
No one would dis­re­spect the tree of con­cep­tion, bob­bing with plas­tic hope-dolls,
or plun­der the pros­per­ity tree adorned with or­nate golden ear­rings.
Yes, you are your own tem­ple by the mandir. Best of all, you are the shade tree
for vil­lage school­yards. No one in their right mind would want to be re­born
as a low-totem worm through caus­ing the death of a banyan.

You are the sun­set prayer-time tree ring­ing with brass god bells.
Young women cir­cum­am­bu­late chant­ing Ram! Ram! on fast­ing nights
and marry you, twin­ing red thread about your girth to change their luck
when a man­g­lik girl has se­ri­ous blots on her as­tro­log­i­cal chart.
Yes, you are the fes­ti­val of lights where the ran­goli colours
form chalk cir­cles on cow-dung, you the root-shelf for ghee-lamps.

Even Alexan­der em­braced you: one vast banyan tree gave shel­ter
to seven thou­sand storm-bombed Greeks along the Nar­mada River,
blue­print of em­pire, the first cos­mopo­lis, rhi­zome hin­ter­land.
With­out a doubt you are the Na­tion Tree, slow epoch builder,
the Wish-Ful­fill­ing Tree, Kalpavrik­sha tap root to the Vedas.
Of all your fol­low­ers, the In­dian mi­nah, that lit­tle black-hooded fel­low
with a yel­low beak has al­ways been true and stays your best dis­ci­ple.
Eater of pigmy figs he scat­ters your seed, king­dom af­ter king­dom.

We, the bat­tal­ions of Hanu­man mon­keys cling to your hairy chest
re­play­ing epics in the sub­plot tan­gle of trunks and down-root run­ners
while you stay firm, eco-um­brella, shel­ter­ing us from an­gry gods —
even as coal mines choke the lungs of jun­gles that you rule over,
even as elec­tric mon­soons throw down their El Niño javelins,
even as the ozone con­tin­ues to be shred­ded like a flimsy blue rain­coat,
still you re­main the solid idea, of per­ma­nence, a supreme be­ing able to spread
new roots from a sin­gle trunk like a city of ele­phants across the acres.
Stretch­ing through time and space like the web-work of milky star-fields
I only have one ques­tion for you, Banyan. How much time is left to us?