Darkness and fear--these two words though different, evoke similar feelings. These feelings force man to move away from these situations. The world's oldest available book Rig-Veda talks about the creation of the world from darkness. As it says, there was only Darkness that was also covered by Darkness.

"Darkness there was: at first concealed in darkness all was indiscriminate chaos. All that existed then was void and formless: by the great power of warmth was born that Unit.

Thereafter rose desire in the beginning, desire, the primal seed and germ of spirit. Seers who searched their heart for wisdom discovered the kinship between the being and non being".
(Translated by T H Griffith)

Man's journey is to get away from the "Darkness", from the darkness of emotion through creativeness, the darkness of situation through science, and darkness of mind through knowledge. Society, culture, languages, literature, art and sculptures and religions, all were the tools which man utilized to overpower darkness of all types. It is strange that man is running away from darkness, which is the source of the Universe.

When we talk about war, terror, anger, rape or other kind of mental or physical tortures we place them in a cage of darkness and develop a fear for them. That is how we try to keep our journey on. The journey of life, the journey of brotherhood and love!

When we talk about exile, it could be separation from darkness and fear. Logically, we accept exile for survival. In other words, for life. Life is again light.
"Let me go towards light from darkness." ( asato ma sad gamaya )
In this case this type of exile is positive, and life oriented. This positive exile gives us the light of knowledge, fire of energy and pain of nonbeing. Man was always moving in search of real happiness, and thus moving away is sometimes earning the light of knowledge.

I want to talk about positive exile to highlight our topic of discussion for the upcoming festival. – Kritya 2010, when we will be discussing exile in all its aspects. I request readers to give their views in order to open up this subject.
In this issue you can feast your eyes on the paintings of an artist from Kerala – Biju, who works primarily in acrylics. His favourite themes are those related to nature. His paintings embrace a wide variety of themes, schools and techniques. Do visit his websites http://www.varnachitra.com and http://www.seekpaintings.com

We are almost ready for the much awaited poetry festival and are striving to bring out poetry belonging to different styles and from poets belonging to different age groups.


Best

Rati Saxena