She supports you like a good disciple should

Let me tell you about that evening.

It was cold, but not as steely cold

as your determination.

I saw as soon as I let you in the door,

the two of you were taking this seriously:

you were both afraid of something.

I tried to be avuncular, professional,

I should have worn tweed and held a pipe

and led you a table of wine and cheese.

I said something vague about community

all learned and a little puffed up from reading Scott Peck's book.

I may even have let slide the word, "vulnerability."

But you had made up your mind to be invulnerable.

Draupadi Ma did not want the Dragon Flower to come

and she was right: the two of you came prepared.

Your teeth were clenched, your strategy worked out.

First you would show how you were reformed;

because now you are okay, it was a momentary lapse

and your wife had forgiven you so why won't we?

And you had quotes from Jaiva Dharma

and from a commentary of a commentary

that you excitedly shared as you do with your disciples

exalting in the glory of the shastra,

where you so insightfully discover another,

yet more eloquent way of saying

that one should never find fault with Vaishnavas.

But I am not one of your disciples and

we were not there to indulge in idle gossip.

I was not there to put you on trial.

And here again, you are afraid of us,

your friends, who are just asking a simple question,

what is prem, and how do you get it?

And my request is there should be no bullshit,

no quoting shastra to lead your speech, no lecturing.

Only realization. Real life realization.

You are hiding, you are afraid.

ahaṁ cātmātmajāgāra-dārārtha-svajanādiṣu

bhramāmi svapna-kalpeṣu mūḍhaḥ satya-dhiyā vibho

You are afraid to abandon the walls of shastra and yukti

and face reality.

I've got them people here

these are good people

I need them to have someone to believe in

is that you?

Are you a charismatic who knows how to charm the ladies?

Who entertains with shlokas and sankirtan

and even occasionally permits himself

to dredge the bounds of his romantic memory,

very alarming indeed when speckled

with sweetly sung verses from Lalita Madhava or Ujjvala Nilamani.

When I said Rukmini Dwarkadhish

your mind was stirred.

It would have been a great subject

for discussion had we let down our guard,

but you couldn't,

the Dragon Flower was there.

You are involved

from the beginning; your shadow was there,

I am sorry to say.

You are not responsible for your shadow, you may say,

yet you cast it.

Your shadow's role may be greater than the real you.

You are afraid of magic because you use it.

The glance. At one point our eyes met

perhaps while the women argued,

we human beings keep our ocular intimacies brief.

It is rare that we have the innocence needed

to enter another soul through the eyes.

And the little smirk danced on your lips

as Draupadi blustered helplessly, uncontrolled.

And you gave me that knowing glance

of masculine intimacy and subtle victory

as she flailed helplessly and seethed

that I was going over to the enemy,

and that you were scoring all the points, not she.

Ah yes, the Dragon Flower

has forgiven you and now supports you

like a disciple should support a guru,

a true Vedic wife, a true Vedic husband.

Draupadi Ma was furious that I did not take her side

she began to take the form of Kali with numerous arms and heads

all spouting ferocity.

I wanted her to let it slide

but she wanted some goddamned effect

and she wasn't going to take no

extended sannyasi's authority trip

muttered by the sannyasi's frightened wife.

She was Draupadi in the assembly

abandoned by her protector.

Yes, I wanted to take a friendly

long range sweet path to union,

to speak intellectually, a little confessionally

if we could create a basis of friendship and trust

other things could eventually come forward.

But Draupadi Ma was in a different world

and she wanted to validate it.

“We are the seniors here,” she said.

And we are, it is true. We are the elders,

but we are also from the West, what do we care

about seniority? We pay it lip service

and don't approach it with gravity,

except where pecking orders are institutionalized.

“Don't tell us things are straight,”

she would scream. “It will happen again and here's why!”

But she could not speak out with the Dragon Flower

standing guard against the truth.

She will defend you like a lioness

because she is fully invested in you

and she craves your love.

And there you are, smirking sweetly

and oh so helplessly at her display

and then you restrain her,

holding her against you, controlling her like

a master with a trained pit bull hound.

It was Draupadi who hardened

the Pandavas' hearts

a conflagration for nothing more

than stupidity and hurt pride

that is the story of the lesser of two evils

winning because of a woman.

She was born for revenge

Her revenge was approved by God himself.

If you were a man married to Draupadi

which Pandava would you be?

She had failed in her dharma to love

the five of them equally,

by loving Arjuna a little more totally.

And what was Arjuna's game?

He was afraid to dominate her love

like a Krishna, of whom he was the second self

the husband in whom God is most fully manifest.

He was afraid that if he gave himself to her completely

if he gave his love to her too soon,

she would forget the others.

Arjuna, for all his heroics

and consummate mastery of the kshatriya dharma

was at heart a lover of poetry and dance

with a feminine side,

he lived among the Apsaras and taught them to dance

he was even a hijra for a year.

He took a twelve year hiatus

before he even lay with her,

being cast out by the agreement that

whosoever of the brothers should be present

when Draupadi was alone with her rotating spouse

was to be exiled for a dozen years.

She had to love them equally

each in the way that they needed it,

to perfect themselves in happiness

and humanity and all the graces

they could acquire and distribute to their people.

And yet there was to be a conflagration.

A man cannot help but be recreated by his woman,

and she will recreate him in her image.

And so there  we have our image,

the lioness pit bull seething with controlled rage

while her master soothes her with a calming hand

and looks about, proud of his mastery over such a beast.

And over here, who can fathom Draupadi's anger?

She has things she wants you to know,

but you have put a wall around your

desire to listen. You prefer the pit bull.

and I hear she has puppies.

No wonder Draupadi did not want the Dragon Flower there,

but you were afraid to come without her.

She keeps trying to give birth to me

And I keep fizzling out.

My Draupadi wants her Arjuna to get out there

and do a little sword-fighting.

Then she quietened down,

and we blathered pointlessly.

The the Dragon Flower was there,

she had raised the drawbridge, the moat was full.