Suraja Menon Roychowdhury

What Is and Isn’t

Less well known than its famous neighbor Angkor Wat, Phnom Penh in Cambodia is nevertheless a pretty city.  Frangipani and bougainvillea bloom riotously and trees laden with mangoes grow everywhere almost casually.  The mighty Mekong and the shorter Tonle Sap rivers flow leisurely and merge just around the corner.  Fishing boats and party boats dot the waters, one of them named Hanuman. . .Hanuman, the monkey god of Hinduism, is an odd but somehow appropriate name for a party boat. After all, according to the Ramayana he did leap 100 yojanas (about 1500 kms) across the sea to land in Lanka and then create mayhem by burning the evil king’s city down. . . An old toothless woman sits by the bank with baskets of lotus buds for sale while a man sells various kinds of fish and crustaceans.  The sensory assault is immediate—colors, smells, heat, sounds of traffic and the birds.  

golden pagodas 
reach up into the blue skies
as orange robed monks
glide by quietly 
how can this just be maya*

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Author’s Note: *maya: the concept in the Hindu and Buddhist spiritual traditions that the world we observe with our senses is an illusion 

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About the Author

Suraja Roychowdhury is originally from India, now living in Lexington, Massachusetts. She is a Chinese Medicine practitioner who loves writing haiku, tanka, haibun, haiga, and other Oriental poetic forms.

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