‘The Body the Shrine’

Body

The man with a body grows hungry
The man with a body tells lies
Do not tease me,
The man with a body
Just once
Take on a body like mine
And see for yourself, O Ramanatha.

(Devara Dasimayya: H. S. Shivaprakash)

People,
male and female,
blush when a cloth covering their shame
comes loose.

When the lord of lives
lives drowned without a face
in the world, how can you be modest?

When all the world is the eye of the lord,
onlooking everywhere, what can you
cover and conceal?

(Akka Mahadevi: A. K. Ramanujan)

Age and decrepitude claim you,
body and mind askew,
hope of remedy vanished.
Your wealth’s run low too.

That’s
when you turn to religion,
when flesh tears
like mouldy cloth.

Akha says,
you did not know
how to worship the Lord.
But are down on fours now,
hands to floor!

(Akho: Gieve Patel)

The Dude! Bathed, scrubbed,
perfumed, tucking in
eats till he bloats
stud-size.

Battening on
each pleasure on earth,
a germ of maya sits concealed
in that bulk.

That pampered carcass
believes maya to be his friend.
But maya will chew him down
to his entrails.

(Akho: Gieve Patel)

This body that you’re fussing over,
this body that you’re dolling up,
this body that you’re wearing to the party,
this body will end as ash.

(Lal Ded: Ranjit Hoskote)

The walls are made of water, pillared by air,
sealed together with the mortar of blood,
A cell of veins and meat and bones
a cage to hold this poor bird.
Who cares what is yours or mine? —
for we nest in this tree only briefly.
As high as you can build, as low as you can dig,
your size will never swell the dimensions of a grave;
Those lovely curls, that turban tied so rakishly —
they’ll soon be turned to ash.
If you’ve counted on the beauty of your wife and home
without the name of Ram, you’ve already lost the game.
And me: even though my birth is mean,
my ancestry by everyone despised,
I have already trusted in you, King Ram,
says Ravidas, a tanner of hides.

(Ravidas: John Stratton Hawley and Mark Juergensmeyer)

Death has them in its sights,
Both beggar and king.
Man’s life is a dancing shadow,
Amounting to nothing.

But the body’s a lake,
The soul a swan,
If the chemical on your tongue,
Says Kabir, is called Rama.

(Kabir: A. K. Mehrotra)

With a whole temple
in this body
where’s the need
for another?

No one asked
for two.

O Lord of Caves,
if you are stone,
what am I?

(Allama Prabhu: A. K. Ramanujan)

You say some bodies are untouchable.
Tell me what you say of the soul.
You say defilement is born in the body.
If menstrual blood makes me impure,
Tell me who was not born of that blood.
This blood of mine fertilises the world.
Tell me who has not sprung from this source.
Soyara says: this impurity is the cornerstone of your world.
That’s why I praise only Panduranga,
Who lives in every body, pure, impure.

(Soyarabai: Jerry Pinto and Neela Bhagwat)

The rich
will make temples for Siva.
What shall I,
a poor man,
do?

My legs are pillars,
the body the shrine,
the head a cupola
of gold.

Listen, O lord of the meeting rivers,
things standing shall fall,
but the moving ever shall stay.

(Basavanna: A. K. Ramanujan)