‘If You Can Figure It Out’

Twilight Tongues

Brother, I’ve seen some
Astonishing sights:
A lion keeping watch
Over pasturing cows;
A mother delivered
After her son was;
A guru prostrated
Before his disciple;
Fish spawning
On treetops;
A cat carrying away
A dog;
A gunnysack
Driving a bullock cart;
A buffalo going out to graze,
Sitting on a horse;
A tree with its branches in the earth,
Its roots in the sky;
A tree with flowering roots.

This verse, says Kabir,
Is your key to the universe.
If you can figure it out.

(Kabir: A. K. Mehrotra)

What is this untellable tale about?
The ogress and the dog make bedroom eyes;
The big cat prowls the jungle;
In my family of five, all hell breaks loose.
Led by drum-beating rabbits, a herd
Of antelopes mounts an attack;
The hunter’s around, though all he does is watch.
The sea’s ablaze, the forest’s turned to ash,
But the fish are out looking for game.
The true pundit will get the story, says Kabir.
He’s my guru. He’ll save himself and save me too.

(Kabir: A. K. Mehrotra)

An ant flew into the sky,
She swallowed the sun.
That wasn’t the only wonder:
The barren gave birth to a son.

The scorpion burrows into the underworld
On the head of the liberated one,
A cobra sits unfurled.
Unto a fly, a hawk is born.

Muktabai watches
Muktabai laughs.

(Muktabai: Jerry Pinto and Neela Bhagwat)

Onion and garlic are one, I’ve learnt.
Fry some onion. It’s hardly a gourmet dish.
Fried onion, I wouldn’t touch a sliver of it.
But it gave me a taste for saying, ‘I am He. ‘

(Lal Ded: Ranjit Hoskote)

The deer with the tiger’s head
The tiger with the deer’s head
The two—-joined at the waist—
It is not the tiger, not the deer
But something else
Come to eat next. Look!
When the body without the head
Grazes—
Look, O Gogeshwara,
The leaf vanishes.

(Allama Prabhu: H. S. Shivaprakash)

I saw, O Friend
A monkey fondling an elephant
That had dropped dead.
I saw, O Friend
A harlot in a forest calling men
And pawning herself.
I saw, O Friend
Dogs quarrelling in a ravaged town.
What is this wonder, O Gogeshwara?

(Allama Prabhu: H. S. Shivaprakash)

Ah!
A tiger came
From a desolate land
To eat my young calf
The tiger couldn’t return
To the desolate land
The tiger looked at the young calf
And turned into a mother.
What shall I say of this?
O Kudalsangamadeva, dear to Ganga!

(Gangambike: H. S. Shivaprakash)