393. Treatment to my decease
I become frustrated due to affection
And become very thin by taking deep breath
Where he has gone making me to wait
As he promised to come to meet me?
I went everywhere searching him
I searched him in so many places all the time
But I don’t know why he has this much interest
To see my frustration of seeking him?
My body began to lose its weight
And my glory also went down along with it
People in the village began to talk so much about me
But I have lost both shy and fear within me
People are talking that I am struck with lust
But not knowing my true love they talk like that
They all spoil my name joining together
Not knowing my heart they are rebuking me
Let anyone talk whatever they want to talk
Who is going to come and help me in this?
Unless they know about my true bhakti
Who else know the real treatment for my sickness?
Mathigiri, 15-3-16, 2.15 p.m.
The ‘Victorian Puritanism’ deprived many aesthetic feelings which are part of common life of people in India. Particularly in Bhakti tradition, all kinds of bhavas (emotions; feelings) are used to express one’s bhakti. Even erotic1 languages are freely used without having any hesitation on the part of the bhakta who wrote such songs. Gita Govindam and Songs of Solomon are the two best examples that we could find both in Hinduism and Muktiveda. To my surprise, as far as my knowledge goes, I never come across such songs sharing the ‘viraha’ bhakti (love in separation) in Tamil Christian Hymns.
I just completed the book Friedhelm Hardy, Viraha-Bhakti. The Early History of Krsna Devotion in South India, New Delhi, Oxford University Press, (1983), Oxford India Paperbacks 2001, and also reading, ‘Sur’s Ocean’ by Kenneth E. Bryant (ed.) translated beautifully by John Stratton Hawley, (Murty Classical Library of India, Harvard University Press, Cambridge, Massachusetts, London, 2015) in which one can read so many ‘viraha-bhakti’ songs by Surdas and also reading Vinay Dharwadker, ed. ‘the collected essays of A. K. Ramanujan’ in which Ramanujan writes about such songs. In Viraha-bhakti Hardy quotes one such poem in Christian tradition:
…Christ loving his Church, or the soul in love with God. One example illustrating the nature of this allegorical interpretation may suffice. In the Cantico spiritual. Of St John of the Cross we read:
Where did you hide, my lover,
Leaving me in agony?
You wounded me, and then fled like a deer. (p.569)
I ran outside after you, crying out,
And you had gone.{Quoted from San Juan de la Cruz, Poesias completas y comentarious en prosa a los poemas mayors, ed. D. Alonso/E. Galvarriato, Madrid, 1959, p. 31, Stanza 1}—pp. 569-70
Space won’t allow me to quote such songs which Ramanujan shares (‘Varieties of Bhakti’, pp. 324-331, John Donne’s Holy Sonnets, Sonnet XIV, George Herbert’s Love (III), the last poem of his book The Temple, first printed in 1633 and one by St John of the Cross).
But I have written such poem in the past (which I already shared). As I was thinking on this (as I just read one such song by Surdas in Hawley), immediately I wrote this song.
We can find such songs in Tamil sangam literature and also in Tamil bhakti saints’ song (both in Saiva and Vaishnava traditions). If I began to explain all these details (quoting from various sources) then it will become a big paper. Celebration of life and bhakti in every kind and form helps a bhakta to understand the human natures in its totality—as God created us with all of them.
1. …Here a vulgar Kannada word, tabooed in all respectable households, is used to speak of the ‘cuckolding’, the ‘fornication’; the whole poem, written in a colloquial, vigorous speaking style, moves toward the word haadara or fornication, enacting by linguistic shock the shock of her explosive desire to shatter the entire framework of so-called legitimacies. Elsewhere also Mahadevyaakka rejects outright all notions of modesty as a virtue. She is supposed to have thrown off her clothes at one point, in defiance of the indecent pruderies of the society around her. —Ramanujan, op. cit. 327
393. என்நோய்க்கு மருந்து
மோகம் கொண்டு நான் தவித்தேனே
மேல் மூச்சு வாங்க இளைத்தேனே
காண வருகிறேன் என்று சொன்னவன்
காக்க வைத்து எங்கு சென்றானோ?
நாடித் தேடி நானும் ஓடினேனே
நாளும் பொழுதும் எங்கும் தேடினேனே
ஆயினும் நான் தவிப்பதைக் காண்பதில்
அவனுக்கென்ன ஆர்வம் புரியவில்லை
மேனிதானும் இங்கு இளைக்க லாச்சே
என்மேன்மையும் அதனுடன் தாழலாச்சே
நாலுபேர் பலவிதம் பேசலாச்சே
நாணம்-வெட்கம் என்னில் நீங்கலாச்சே
காமம் கொண்டேன் என்று கூறுகிறார்
என்காதல் அறியாது பேசுகிறார்
ஊர்கூடிப் பலவிதம் தூற்றுகிறார்
எனுள்ளத்தை அறியாது ஏசுகிறார்
யார் என்ன சொன்னாலும் சொல்லட்டுமே
எவர்வந்து எனக்கிங்கு உதவி செய்வார்
நான்கொண்ட பக்தியை உணர்ந்தவனன்றி
என்நோய் தீர்க்கும் மருந்து யாரறிவார்?
15-3-16, மத்திகிரி, மதியம் 2.15