Rabindranath poem -

This post was truncated by an Explorer crash. Too bad. All you get is the bare bones.


Now I'll look to see if there is a better translation available.

Yes. It has been translated in Gitanjali by Tagore himself. And it adds context that the verses I found miss.

It's very much in the heroic mood of the early independence movement in India--the transition from madhura to vira rasas that characterizes the time. Anyway... gotta move on.

A little heroism, Arjun,
a little less moping in corners.
Wherever heroes die,
there are always joyful mourners.

I think that implicit in this poem is a conception of the "well-rounded" individual as possessing a balance of active (heroic) and passive (loving) characteristics, and that love ideally moves one to action.

Pran ache tar se hetu prachar is Siddhanta Saraswati's famous line ("The devotee has life and therefore he preaches.") The debate that this line evokes begins with a reminder that Saraswati himself spent several years in intense bhajan and, according to the legend, had to practically be forced out of it by enthusiastic disciples.

Prana ache tar. Sometimes we need suffering to remind us that we are alive. Therefore the line in Rabi Thakur's poem--rAkhte gele buker majhe, byatha je pay pran.

When I first read the poem, I admit to having thought of the phallic implications of the sword. This is not just because I am a man and I see phallic symbols everywhere.

Really there is no difference between a phallic symbol and what this sword symbolizes in the poem--empowerment. Men need swords as much, if not more than women do. This comes of something called "castration anxiety," which men need to overcome. Overcompensation of macho characteristics is, to me, the great malady of the male psyche. Manjari bhava is the medicine I prescribe.

The idea being that prema is ultimately more powerful and more resilient than the sword. The indication here being that the love of God, the only Purusha, in relation to whom we are all Prakriti, precedes genuine heroism, which comes in equal measure to man or woman in this world.

And this makes it important to give the context of where I found this poem. (This is the problem when you read in the subway on the way to work... even after you get to work you want to stay in the subway...)

I am reading a book (one of the many that I always have on the go) about Kabir by one Hajari Prasad Dvivedi. Though Rabindra (and other Bengali works, including Vaishnava ones) is quoted in this book, it is in Hindi. Dvivedi is a very entertaining writer, even while being informative historically and critically. Besides this, he is a fan and follower of Kabir, which altogether makes a mix that I find particularly appealing.

The first poem he quotes to begin the chapter is centered on the metaphor of a veil, the meaning of which is somewhat obscure. One thing we can be sure of, however, is that the veil is a feminine symbol—it is enclosing and covering, protective and soothing.



Dwivedi interprets the veil as bhakti, which he says is a causeless gift from God. He quotes the famous Upanishadic verse—


Kabir's poem is full of allusions. Dwivedi identifies the eight hands the eight periods of the day ("Time"). He interprets the five colors as the “pancha tattva,” though unfortunately he is obscure about which set of five he thinks it means.

Dwivedi, however, decides to make a point not really found in Kabir’s song, nor apparently in any Kabir song, because he has to use the above Rabindranath poem to make it. He says that though God makes the gift of the “shringar” veil of bhakti, it is not “light” or “soft,” but comes with a heavy burden of responsibility. So he takes the feminine symbol and turns it into a masculine one, which seems unjustifiable, at least from the point of strict adherence to the interpretation of Kabir.

Another Kabir song with a veil in it--



"Strange though it appears, in this love song, Kabir the weaver, uses the word Chunri (Veil) deftly to unveil the misperception of "truth" as an identification with one's body rather than with the invariant "Self." Perhaps rightly so, as the "Self" cannot get tainted! The love song seems to be indicative of a complete union towards oneness by which one transcends the merely sensual existence to one that is universal. The latter to me personally makes more sense as an absolute union or Samadhi is possible only when the mind becomes focused on a single idea, the idea that there is none other than the Self." (This comment from http://www.boloji.com/kabir/lovesongs/kl13.htm)

Hmm. There is a hint of the parakiya mood in this song. I'll have to think about it some more.

I spent those nights in Radha Kund;
I had one long dream of Vrindavan.
And I awoke, hearing shukas and sharis,
watching the sunlight waft over
the smooth and spotless sheets
of my North American bed.

I thought to myself:
Surely Radha and Krishna have left me a garland;
surely there is a legacy of prema left by this dream
that will embrace the world,
that will envelop it like a veil.

But as I look again,
I see that I was given
a strange gift--a sword,
which runs me through,
which beheads my world,
which punctures all my colored balloons.

I am exposed: am I unable
to carry the sword of conviction,
though like a beast of burden,
my back has been made strong
from bearing the bricks
of so many sweet theories?

Unlike Rabindranatha's maid,
my yes is not so readily made.

Rabindranath's poem has been having an unxpected effect on me. This poem came to me in the Metro this morning. I know it will sound strange to some people, but here it is.