Work nominated 
for the 2025 Music Springboard Award

साँवरौ मनमोहन माई

saamvarau manmohan maai

The Beguiler of the Mind is the Color of Dusk

 

The title of the work comes from the 16th-century devotional Hindu 'blind poet' Surdas (Sanskrit: सूरदास, romanized: Sūradāsa), where he refers to a parrot–the parrot being himself, but in mentioning the bird the author also refers to the third verse of the Bhagavata Purana, a staple text of Hindu culture, where it is said that the narratives in the work have been given added flavour by the touch of the speaker, Shukadeva (literally ‘divine parrot'). Here is the Indian cultural conviction that what is consciously shared increases its ‘flavour’, meaning depth and value. Suradasa's poetry can be read in Estonian in Mathura's translation (“Elada, et olla ookean", Allikaäärne 2018). I thank Mathura for his help with the Hindi and English translation of Surdas’ texts.

 

The content of the piece is an excerpt from State of Siege (2002) by Palestinian poet and writer Mahmoud Darwish. The work was written while the poet was under siege in Ramallah during the 2002 Israeli invasion.

 

If you shall not be a rain my love

be a tree

saturated with fertility…be a tree

and if you shall not be a tree my love

be a stone

saturated with humidity…be a stone

and if you shall not be a stone my love

be a moon

in the loved one’s dream…be a moon

 

An Estonian 00s pop idol, Ines’s song “Iseendale” (“To Yourself”) will be heard before the end, as if sung under the shower.