Continued from Previous Page 

21

What is a sojourn, truly?
Is it a voyage through one’s own land, or across foreign shores?
Is it a journey across the universe?
Wherever you stand, to drift upon the currents of thought—
That is the true Sojourn.

To remain within narrow confines is no wandering;
It is but a domestic prison... a tethering to a place,
A shackle of caste, of creed, or of tongue.
Your boundaries are your limitations;
Your limitations are your chains;
Your chains are the bonds that hold you captive.
To shatter these and wander free—that is the true Sojourn.

22

If you seek to become a Citizen of the Universe,
You must become a Wanderer of the Cosmos.
You must circle the entire creation—
Through thought... through reason...
Embarking on a pilgrimage of the mind.
Wherever you are, you can be a universal wayfarer;
You can become the Universal Man.

To listen is a sojourn; to behold is a sojourn.
To read is a sojourn; to write is a sojourn.
To live is a sojourn; to die is a sojourn.
To dissolve into the embrace of Nature is the ultimate Sojourn.
That is the Sojourn... the Eternal Epic. 

23

Mother’s tongue is our own tongue;
Mother’s love is the love of the universe.
Mother’s heart is a cooling balm... her lap, a hearth of warmth.
The black beads around her neck,
The silver anklets upon her feet;
Mother is a world unto herself.
Mother’s milk is sweet,
Mother’s morsel is savory;
The very cry of "Mother"
Is the awakening of all living beings.

She is weeping.
In her tears, she curses the Divine;
She has cast dust into the temple of God.
A god devoid of mercy—
How could He take away the one who wed her?
She must shelter her offspring within the fortress of her soul;
She must endure hunger to nurture them.
The children cry out in their famine,
And the mother, too, feels the gnawing of want.
Sucked dry and withered... her breast has lost its fullness.
Yet, she did not remain seated in her sorrow,
Nor did she cease her stride while cursing the Heavens.
She girded her loins for the struggle;
With the hem of her robe, she wiped away the spilled tears.
She rose even before the first light of dawn.

Agony surrounds the children's bed;
The palm-leaf thatch has failed, letting in the rain.
She moved with a stoop, cleansing the floor with clay water.
The hearth-fire must have died away;
She tossed in the dried dung cakes for fuel.
She set the broken pot upon the stove to boil.
The red flame flickered against her black beads,
As she blew and blew through the hollow pipe to kindle the smoke.
At last, the fire caught.
A cry of "Mother!" reached her;
She went to the bedside,
Kneaded the mud and hummed a lullaby to soothe the ache.
The milk had run dry through the long night...
Recalling how she went to Mumbai during the festivals
To plead with the moneylender;
Waiting for the meager morning meal
With a heart full of desperate hope...
She had taken a debt.
Her throat grew parched and dry;
She filled their bellies with tales instead of bread,
Lulling their hunger to sleep upon that wretched bed.
While she herself, shriveled and shrunk, stifled the pangs within.
Childhood that knows not the meaning of poverty,

Is but the defenseless flesh of the ill-fated—
Four souls, seeking three meals a day.

The lingering flavors of meals past—
The tripe stew, the tangy egg curry,
The maize porridge with garlic-chilli spice;
The mango pickle and the sour water of fermented grain.
The field beans and the yellow lentils,
The gourds—bottle and ridge—hanging from the trellis,
And the village fowl for the festive feast.
That was the magic of Mother’s hand;
A taste that can be found nowhere else on earth.
She dreamt of her children
Becoming high officials one day.
She bathed them with care,
Combed their hair with fragrant sesame oil,
And walked them to the portals of the school.
She enrolled them in that temple of learning;
Yet, the school’s tongue was one, and Mother’s another.
Mother’s was the language of toil and song,
Of playfulness and rhythmic chants.
The school’s tongue was a stranger’s tongue,
Its world, a realm entirely new.

Mother was born of hardship,
And through hardship, she nurtured them.
Her feet were weary from endless strides,
Feet that knew no the comfort of shoes.
For Mother, her children were her entire universe.

The idle chatter of neighborhood mothers—
All for the sake of life, for the sake of daily bread.
The children belong to a world entirely new;
While Mother grew weary, spent from endless toil.
As the seasons slipped away,
The satchel of childhood memories
Was lost somewhere along the rugged road of life.
That satchel must be reclaimed;
For what is lost becomes dear to the heart,
And what is found offers a path to follow.
The way is made by constant walking,
A path forged through rising and falling.
A sojourn through the memories of Mother—
Whenever the burden grew too heavy, she poured it out;
Yet the satchel still held the lingering scent of Mother.
To a man, a word of promise is his strength;
To the children, Mother was their sole refuge.
But in time, the children became Mother’s only stay.
Those children grew tall,
Fledging their wings and taking flight.
A radiance shone in Mother’s eyes—
Knowing her dreams had blossomed,
And her life’s purpose was fulfilled.
"My village, my home, my life—
My end shall be here," said Mother.

Time flowed on;
The seasons turned their cycle,
And the years slipped away.
Severing every earthly bond,
Her heart filled with a deep sense of fulfillment,
Mother has departed...!
Has Mother truly passed away?
It is a truth hard to embrace.
Mother has gone nowhere...
She lives on, dwelling within me.
She continues to breathe through the echoes of memory;
Mother does not perish,
For Mother, there is no death...
Through her DNA,
She walks beside me still;
In my eyes and in my dreams, she remains a guiding light.
        
24

Father is no more... he left us long ago,
The reason for his departure remains a mystery.
Father, captured in a group photograph in Bombay—
How handsome he appeared!
A single ring in his ear, a fine tunic, and a dhoti;
He wore a coat... and sturdy, full shoes upon his feet,
While on his wrist, a watch glittered and shone.

To conquer life’s struggles, Father left his native soil;
He left his kin behind and reached the shores of Bombay.
He became a laborer in the mills...
In his own village, through hard toil, he built a new home,
Yet, the road back to Bombay remained an inevitability.
For a brief time, he took his bride along;
But one wage was not enough for two... so Father dwelt in one place, and Mother in another.

Someone would arrive from Bombay,
Bringing bundles with them, saying, "He sent these for you."
They were fine cotton clothes,
Deeply saturated with the essence of his love.

Father yearned to remain at home;
But the Industrial Revolution tore the home and the family apart.
The machine needed only the laborer; it had no use for his kin.
In Bombay, there was no room for a home;
The wages were never enough to truly live.
By necessity, they were there, and we were here—

A tale woven across the world
By the relentless loom of the Industrial Revolution.
Father loved his children beyond measure;
He raced back and forth like a shuttle across a loom.
A life of warp and weft, racing between the village and the city.
Who knows what happened... perhaps some meal did not suit him...

A pain... a stomach ache... a searing, agonizing pain...
Standing for eight long hours at the looms like a silent statue,
Feet weary from endless standing... a burning fire within his belly.
A pain in the belly... an unbearable, searing pain...
How could he remain in Bombay without the strength to toil?

He set out for home, yet the nature of his ailment remained a mystery.
He could eat nothing; for whatever he consumed refused to digest...
Every morsel brought fresh agony. They sought cures of every kind...
"A stitch in the seed," they said, binding him with damp cloths.
The pain of food trapped within the entrails—it was a hernia.
He cried and cried... he wept until he fainted away.
His body grew cold... and they said he was gone.
For such a small ailment, death became the only refuge.
"Where is Father going?" asked the children...
"Father is going to dwell with the Divine..."
As the days slipped by, "Where is Father?" they cried...
The mother knew not how to answer...
"God has taken him away..."
"When will he return?" the children persisted...
"When you are grown and tall," whispered the mother.
Thinking he had merely gone to Bombay, as he always did,
The children waited for his return from afar...
Father was gone, and with him, the laughter of the home.
Father was gone—no more flowers graced the mother’s hair.
Father was gone—no vermilion adorned her brow.
The sacred threads and the golden beads were vanished from her neck.
The house that Father built passed into the hands of strangers;
The void is never felt until the presence is lost.
       
25

She has passed away...
Yet, death too is but a sojourn.
To dissolve into the embrace of Nature is the ultimate wandering.
Her physical form has vanished,
But her consciousness, her yearnings,
Remain etched in the wind, in the waters, and in the air.
From the echoes of the past into the light of the present,
She remains an eternal stream of inspiration.

Her ideals... her aspirations...
Flow within us still, as our very DNA.
The form may alter, yet the essence remains unchanged.
The patience she instilled, the toil she taught—
These are memories that time can never erode.
The imprints of Mother’s labor upon the pages of history
Remain a guiding light for generations 

The old perspective may embrace the new, or it may reject it;
For perspective is naught but the way one chooses to behold.
Within her gaze, there dwells a silent meaning;
Within his stride, a vision unfolds.
To perceive the seen and the unseen,
The manner of understanding, the manner of acceptance—
Perspective is the act of observing the new
Through the lens of ancient experience and insight.
To comprehend, to accept;
To critique, or to deny.
Perspective is a point of stillness;
Perspective is like an idol—
And that is devotion; a perspective born of faith.

When the flow of seeking knowledge comes to a rest, it becomes a perspective.
In that stillness lies equanimity (Sthitaprajnata);
It is through this stillness that a perspective finds its anchor.

To her, her husband was the living deity;
He was a man of a single vow, wedded to one.
Yet, his wife was never a living deity to him;
He cast her away into the depths of the forest.
And now, he knows not where she dwells.

The branches hold faith only while they are one with the tree;
She severed the branch to fashion a pestle.
The pestle grew dry and withered;
Neither the mortar nor the pestle can ever knowWater turns stagnant within a vessel;

But in the running stream, there is no decay.
Perspective is like water poured into a pot.
Every day, she journeys to the brook,
Carrying back two vessels of water.
Yesterday’s haul is but stale water now—
She offers it to the trees, or cleanses the floor with it.
Then she brings fresh water once more... and drops in a clearing nut;
The water turns crystalline and pure,
As the silt settles quietly at the bottom.

From the heart of the brook,
He fetched a vessel of water and filled the large urn.
Until those waters are spent, he shall not return to the stream.
The brook is the ever-new truth... the urn is the fixed perspective.
Perspective, Belief, and Culture—three distinct stages,
Three ways of laboring within three different realms.
Perspective, Belief, and Culture:
Inspiration is born through the embrace of the positive;
If one dwells only upon the negative, the spirit remains unkindled.
The reach of thought comes to a standstill.
It is the goodness within that offers inspiration;
And that inspiration awakens many more in its turn.
To believe that liberty, independence, and self-respect
Have finally arrived—is in itself an inspiration.
To claim they have not... is quite another.
Is but a surge of zeal that comes to a standstill...
A longing to remain forever in that state.

26

She opened the pages of a book;
She listened to the notes of a song;
She delved into the lines of a poem—

A journey back toward a childhood that can never return.

Without descending the stairs she had climbed,
She reflected upon the past that lay at the lower steps.

She is lost in thought
They yearn for their childhood to return—
How blessed they must have been!
Childhood is both heads and tails;
It is not merely one side of the coin, is it?
She decided she wanted no part of that childhood.
This youth is far better;
These burdens of responsibility are far better.

To her, the past is a haunting nightmare;
Her entire childhood was spent amidst violations—
A constant meditation on those trespasses.
If one stirs the waters that have long settled,
Only the mire and filth shall rise to...

Her childhood was like a bitter, raw fruit—
A childhood gnawed by many a spiteful wound.
Nostalgia!
You possess the nature of class;
You possess the nature of caste.
For them, childhood is a thing of the past;
But for her, life remains trapped in that infantile stage.
Even her children cannot know the childhood they enjoyed.
She knows this truth:
A seed becomes a sprout;
Branches, twigs, and leaves unfurl and spread;
The bud blossoms into a flower;
The flower conceives and becomes a green fruit;
The fruit, in time, ripens to sweetness.
 
Rice, when boiled, becomes food;
Yet even when cooked, it needs time to simmer and settle—
A life steeped in the essence of experience.
It takes time for a fruit to ripen;
One knows that mud shall cling to the feet,
One knows that fire shall sear the skin.
Yet, the pilgrimage of life does not cease;
Along the path lie mud, thorns, wounds, and remedies—
And the healed scars upon the body and within the soul.
What care they for words, whose words bellies are full?

They tell you to wait until the green fruit ripens;
They bid you tarry until the rice simmers and settles;
They stand still until the mud dries beneath their feet.
But is not childhood the act of gnawing
At raw, bitter fruits in the pangs of hunger?
Is it not the desperate urge to eat
Before the meal has even cooled, gasping for breath?
Childhood was but another name for hunger;
Hunger taught the art of deception;
Hunger instilled a spirit of meanness.
Poverty taught how to steal a meal from another’s yard;
Hunger made us fight like curs
Over the scraps left on discarded leaves.
Hunger commanded us to barter away honor and pride;
It taught us to tremble in the presence of the wealthy.
That childhood filled every pore with a sense of inferiority—
If you were to pinch that childhood,
It is not milk that would flow, nor blood, nor sweat...
But a raw, pervasive sense of inferiority.

No! I want no part of that childhood;
I want no part of that nostalgia;
I want that past no more—especially not now.

O Lord...!
When did that 
Their lives are spent on the upper steps, never to descend;
While her life remains still at the very bottom.
In the journey of existence, she is trapped in an eternal childhood;

And so, that spirit of smallness never left her.
She could not wait for the meal to simmer;
She could not tarry for the fruit to ripen;
For she knew that if she waited, it would never be hers.
O Childhood! Do not return!
O Childhood! Give me the youth
That they so desperately wish to cast away!
And give my childhood to them instead.
She closed the book.

27

O Friend...!
Is a slave but a slave unto another slave...?
I know how your heart once ached for me,
Thinking I would never find my way to a calling.
I know how truly you rejoiced
When at last, success was mine.
But how swift was the change...!
Why do you now pour coals of fire into your own eyes?
Why do you weep because I have found a path loftier than your own?

"If there is anything you loathe...
“...Then you are truly in love with it.”
I recall reading those words somewhere.
But when selfishness intertwines with it,
Love ignites into the fire of hatred;
And it consumes the human soul entirely.
That there dwelt such love for me within you,
And that it was but a fragment of your own greed—
I realized this only when you began to hate.
The State and the people are not distinct entities;
If they were truly separate, then why do you wail
That the people must become the State,
And seize the reins of sovereign power?
Yet, when the people finally enter the halls of power,
Why does it sear your eyes with such envy?
When the crusaders of movements become the architects of the State,
Walking alongside the folk they serve;
When the people themselves become the masters of their destiny,
Advancing through welfare, through reform,
Through progress, and the creation of shared wealth—
You pour coals of fire into your own eyes...
You shut your vision to the truth...
Not once have you said that my hearth is blessed...
That my children are flourishing...
Or that my husband is a far better man than you. 

28

Echoing the spirit of Kahlil Gibran,
He composed verses of love.
But when Love suddenly stood before him,
And she declared her acceptance of that love—
He was struck with terror.
Why draw out such a mountain of melody for all to hear?

"I wrote this poetry only for myself," he claimed.
"Then why distribute it to the world?"
She questioned him thus.
"You have no right to take my image,
To keep me in your thoughts,
And weave songs of tragic sorrow,"
She said, and departed with a curse.
The War beckoned him to join its ranks...
"I shall only sing the songs... I shall only deliver the orations;
I am but a milestone... I remain where I stand," he replied.
"I show the path... leave me be."
He did not surrender;
He merely bent low—
That was all...
He exports the idea of war;
Only as long as wars endure
Does his trade in the poetry of conflict thrive.
He promises a future of hope;
By chanting the hymns of war, he promises the crown of victory.

“Grow like me, live like me"—
He does not say so; that is his right.

To ensure there is no competition for that stance,
He conquers the present for himself.

“She is a paragon of beauty..."
"Is that so?
 
Behold her through my eyes..."
He is a warrior;
He emerged victorious in the war of love.
By chanting hymns of love, he captivated many;
He realized the power of his charm and the greatness of love.
The benefactor who provided everything—
He married his daughter.
"I have learned to love," he said,
"Henceforth, I shall love within the bonds of marriage."

29

Poetry that is stagnant... poetry that cannot stir the soul...
Poetry that fails to fill the heart with tender compassion...
Poetry that offers neither fortitude nor courage...
Poetry that cannot smile... poetry that cannot bring a smile...
It is but a ward of the infirm;
Their task is to render others sickly.
They steal away laughter,
Sowing seeds of despair, hatred, tension, and sorrow...

They cast their nets like hollow decoys...
They hurl stones with a sling...
What does it matter who is hit, or which bird falls?
They only spread contagious maladies.

He had just recently begun to weave verses,
Thinking that poetry is a cloak of concealment,
That it thrives on irony,
And speaks through twisted tongues...
And so...
To him, everything carried a double meaning.
Whenever someone said, "Your face is quite photogenic,"
He would fret, "Does that mean my face is not good in reality?"

A persistent doubt... he sank into despair...
He spoke of it when he met a doctor...
From then on, he decided—no more symbols of double meaning for him.
Once he silenced his poetry, he finally found his peace.
Those who believed that the physical and the practical
Are far greater than mere ideas—they emerged victorious.
Those who failed... became dependents;
They were the ones who brought ideas to the forefront.
Those who claim that ideas, songs, and slogans are paramount
Have not yet stepped into the pond.
Perhaps they fear that should they enter,
They would perish, for they know not how to swim.

30

Those characters continue to offer eternal inspiration;
That Sita remains a perennial spark.
Cleopatra, Shakuntala, and Dushyanta—
They continue to inspire us still.
The Herculean strength and the valor of Hanuman
Take on new forms as Tarzan, Spider-Man, or Chhota Bheem;
Their shapes may shift and change,
Yet they never cease to kindle the spirit.
The Goddess Venus has inspired generations through the ages;
Those primal natures are born and reborn continually.
They drape themselves in modern guises;
For if they fail to inspire, provoke, or exhilarate,
They are relegated to the silence of museums.
The Vasantasena and Shakara of Mricchakatika
Re-emerge as Madhuravani and Girisam;
They don new personas time and time again.
Sitas are born and nurtured in every age;
For in Literature, the DNA endures forever.

Archetypal characters and archetypal natures
Transcend the gulf of centuries and generations;
Surpassing the bounds of time and space,
Like water poured into new vessels, or like molten gold—
They continue to spread across the universe.
To the likes of Aurangzeb and Napoleon.

Alexander, the conqueror of the world, remains an inspiration;
These are but archetypal characters and temperaments,
photocopies, and spanning evolutions—
Just as gold is wrought into countless intricate designs,
Taking the forms of diverse ornaments;
Inspiration, too, manifests in a multitude of ways.

A mother gives birth to a child;
The forms and natures of both mother and father
Are blended within the offspring.
In their essence, a quantitative and qualitative...
Negation of the negation occurs,
As they drape themselves in entirely new forms and attributes.
Without Kant, Hegel, and Feuerbach;
Without Dühring, Ricardo, and Morgan—
Marxism would not exist.
Without Mricchakatika, there would be no Kanyasulkam.
The vast array of the eightfold heroes and heroines...
Hundreds of archetypal characters with diverse traits...
Ideal personas and model characters...
They endure through the passage of generations.
Without Don Quixote, there is no Charlie Chaplin;
Without Charlie Chaplin, there is no Raj Kapoor.
Archetypal characters and archetypal philosophies—
They constantly shift their shapes and transform 

When senior citizens say that in our childhood,
many people died from cancer and TB due to beedis,
cigarettes, gutkha, and alcohol,
school children listen to those stories with great interest.

When senior citizens say that in our time
there used to be conflicts over caste and religion,
children ask, "What is caste? What is religion?"
Not knowing what to say or how to explain,
they laugh it off, dismissing the old talks as "dirty stench."
Young men and women over the age of 22,
after completing their education,
are getting married to the ones they love with the blessing of their parents.
 
Every second Saturday of the month, mass weddings are being organized.
A single type of meal is served to everyone with a variety of dishes.
On behalf of every new couple, free meals are being provided to a hundred relatives and friends.

Everyone is working five days a week.
Beautifully, healthily.

Boys are growing six feet tall,
And girls are growing taller than 5'-8".
All boys and girls over eighteen years of age
Are weighing sixty kilograms.
Everyone is living up to 82 years.
Everyone is going on educational tours
For about fifteen days a year,
Free of cost, by planes and trains.
In every district and mandal center,
Rest houses and guest houses
Are welcoming them with love,
Providing free food and accommodation.
Roads and drains all appear
Perfectly neat and clean.
In the industries that once produced alcohol,
Diverse natural juices are now being prepared.
Every individual serves as a policeman for three hours a week,
And as a soldier for 20 days a year.
Every four to five kilometers,
On streams, rivulets, and rivers,
There are barrages, check dams, parks, and gardens;
Rainwater is being absorbed right where it falls.
Besides the roads and railway tracks, there are five rows of trees, forests, and pleasant air.
They are harvesting 60 quintals per acre.
They are using natural fertilizers.
Movies and TV episodes are being certified by the Scientific Education Department.
Every movie and TV episode script is reviewed and approved in advance.
Everyone is happily playing games and singing songs.
Everyone is living comfortably across three generations in 2100 sq. ft. houses.

There is no cooking in the house, hence no hassle.
Cooking at home is a waste of time.
Eating at a canteen costs only one-fourth.
Everyone eats together in the colony canteen.

In some villages, however,
they eat once in the canteen and once at home every day.
Government teachers and employees are all wearing uniforms.
Students of all schools are wearing the hundred percent of schools,
colleges, and universities are running
under the auspices of the government’s Scientific Education Department.
Startup centers are expanding at the mandal and taluka levels.
Even in forests, every house has tap water and electricity.
All villages, on par with smart cities, are shining beautifully with education, healthcare, playgrounds, residential schools, electricity, transport, housing, and roads.
Science and technology research is happening every day.

Time is infinite...
The wheel of time keeps moving...

No matter how many oceans are crossed...
No matter how many mountains are climbed...
No matter how many depths are witnessed...
Even if journeys have been made along rivers for centuries,
Even if wandering in space... no matter how much one grows...

Following the seasons... even if running like a cloud...
Whether it rains... or flows as floods... or surges as rivers...
Water catastrophes... human catastrophes... massacres...
Globalizations... consequences...
New lives every day...

New beliefs.. new theories.. new idealsA new world... will keep moving forward...
This universe... this cosmic journey (Vishwaviharam)... will not stop...

This "Viharam" (journey) is never complete...
This poem (Kaavyam) remains unfinished..

The river flows...
You cannot bathe in the same river twice...
If you add new practices to old theories...
It is like old wine in a new bottle..

Old beliefs lead back to the past...
They repeatedly recreate the past as the present.

For a new life... new practice... new consciousness...
New beliefs, new theories... a new world...
A new culture... construction of a new society.