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Verses of love

"Deep Footprints" is a compilation of Minnie N. Canteenwalla's poems on the Mother, Aurobindo and Pondicherry

Pondicherry is known to have inspired poets such as Subramania Bharati, Bharathidasan and Aurobindo. Minnie N. Canteenwalla (née Minnie D. Sethna) of Bombay was no exception. Born on September 7, 1913 in Bombay in a Parsi family, she wrote her first poem "At Eventide" in Pondicherry when she was 18 years old. "Surely a born poet" said Aurobindo about her. "My having come in contact with the Divine Grace let loose within me a fountain of poetry," wrote Minnie in her memoirs 22 years later. Her poet-brother, K. D. Sethna, captain of the Aurobindonian School of Poetry, brought out a compilation of her poems titled "Deep Footprints". Sometimes descriptive, sometimes reflective, sometimes mystic and often a fusion of all the three, Minnie's poems are on Aurobindo, the Mother, Pondicherry and her relationship with all three.

In "Supplication", her first poem to the Mother, she requests for a drop of the "ancient peace that lights her face"

"I need no touch to feel your arms,

I need no eyes to see your face;

I gather your light in the cup of my heart,

And drink deep draughts from its secret place."

Speaking of her love for the Mother, she says in "Parting":

"Mother, you have plucked my heart away.

How can I go with this hollow bleeding gap?

The thought of parting is a revolt in my body."

Minnie has drawn a lovely word picture of Aurobindo in her poem "A Promise":

"His name, an oasis of peace for pale parched lips,

For seeking eyes, His look of infinite charity.

His unruffled face is the burdened heart's ease,

His unruffled brow is the peace of the skies."

There are poems on the samadhi, the meditation hall, the service tree at the samadhi, the long winding queue during the darshan days, the darshan at the balcony and the wondrous rooms of the Mother and Aurobindo.

Pondicherry was the dream city of the poetess. To her, it was a historically renowned place with its "silent, empty, dream-filled roads". She recorded her impressions of Pondicherry by day and night.

The posthumous volume also has verses on her own mother, her children who "listen to stories with stars in their eyes," her poet brother — "Each warm word of your beloved company / Turns to a precious jeweled tear... " — and her pets Bella and Puppy.

Her work also mentions her life-saving heart operation, her daughter choosing to stay permanently in the Ashram and her impressions of the hill station Matheran (where her grandparents had built a cottage). What attracts the readers towards Minnie's poems are her love for all things great and small:

"Smaller than the smallest seed heart

Yet mightier than the depthless sea?"

To Minnie, the true sense of living was being one with the Undying spirit.

She loved Pondicherry and wanted that after her death a handful of ashes should be scattered over one of Mother's rose gardens.

P. RAJA

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