I find no contradiction between the sacred and the secular, I can be spiritual without being religious. This I have learnt from our saint and Sufi poets and reformers like Kabir and Gandhi who battled against hierarchies of every kind, and challenged power in its many manifestations.’
-- K. Satchidanandan
One day a lean poem
reached Gandhi’s ashram
to get a glimpse of the man.
Gandhi spinning away
his thread towards Ram
took no notice of the poem
waiting at his door,
ashamed at not being a bhajan.
The poem cleared his throat
and Gandhi glanced at him sideways
through those glasses that had seen hell.
“Have you ever spun thread?” he asked.
“Ever pulled a scavenger’s cart?
Ever stood in the smoke
of an early morning kitchen?
Have you ever starved?”
The poem said, “I was born in the woods,
in a hunter’s mouth.
A fisherman brought me up
in a cottage.
Yet, I know no work, I only sing.
First, I sang in the courts.
I was plump and handsome then,
but now I am out on the streets,
half-starved.”
“That’s better,” Gandhi said,
with a sly smile. “But you must
give up this habit
of speaking in Sanskrit at times.
Go to the fields. Listen to
the peasants’ speech.”
The poem turned into a grain
and lay waiting in the fields
for the tiller to come
and upturn the virgin soil
moist with new rain.
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Gandhi was walking in the sun
that had survived Noakhali.
“Stop, and rest for a while.”
Gandhi turned around.
It was a shady tree.
“You? It’s not yet time
for me to rest,” replied Gandhi.
“The world is in a hurry,”
the tree complained. “I have grown old.
I don’t flower any more, nor bear fruit,
even the birds have abandoned me.”
“Don’t worry,” said Gandhi.
“You are waiting for the axe
and I, for the bullet.”
“Don’t say that!” the tree said, in agony.
“Someone will need my shade.”
The memory of spring escaped
the tree as a sigh.
“Pray,” said Gandhi.
“If you don’t stop,
I will have to walk with you.”
And the tree fell into step beside Gandhi.
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A breeze blew. A bird
flew to the tree.
“See? I am in bloom again!”
The tree burst into a laugh of white flowers.
“If you have begun walking,
then I can cease,” Gandhi’s blood whispered
as it flowed out
like a prayer for every being.
“See?” cried the emancipated tree.
“My flowers are growing red!”
Three birds that had been dreaming of fruit
came flying from the East.
(Translated from the original Malayalam by the poet, in collaboration with Sampurna Chattarji)
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