A worm’s eye view

A year ago some senior citizens of Poona wanted to hear Rabindranath Tagore’s Gitanjali, which comprises 157 poems, in the original Bengali. They requested me to read the poems to them online. I had studied in a school based on the ideologies of Tagore and Mahatma Gandhi and so the Bengali language hovered at the back of my consciousness. Later, thanks to my grounding in Sanskrit, it was not difficult to learn Bengali.
As August 15, Independence Day, was approaching I felt I should not only tell them something about the "forgotten” verses of the national anthem Janaganamana but also about the anthems of Bangladesh, Sri Lanka and the Azad Hind Fauj, which were either written or inspired by Tagore.
In preparation, I started reading the beautiful Janaganamana whose first verse has become India’s national anthem, when I suddenly saw a long thin form which I thought was an eraser shaving.
I was about to flick it off the page when it suddenly began to move. This strange little creature began to slither and glide across the page weaving itself among the verses. I observed its movements in amazement as it danced across the page. Suddenly I saw it tap-tap-tap its little leg on the line: "Snehamayee tumi mata (You my loving mother”).
For all these years I had visualized Bharata Bhagya Vidhata in the form of Shri Krishna, a male deity, as in the third verse the poet addresses Him as "Hey Chirasarathi (O eternal charioteer). In the midst of viplav (dissolution) Your conch shell sounds — your shankhadhwani resounds. On the dangerous path of patana and abhyuday (fall and rise), You guide us and protect us.”
And yet the fourth verse describes Vidhata as loving mother who enfolds us in her arms!
In Verse 2 of Janaganamana Tagore prays that from the east and the west "May all your children — Hindus, Sikhs, Jains, Parsis, Muslims and Christians — gather around your throne O divine dispenser of India’s destiny to weave a garland of love around you.”
And the fifth verse ends with the land slowly awakening and rising out of slumber to the glorious red glowing dawn of compassion over which rules Parabrahman — the Rajarajeshwara — the king of kings!
And to think it took a tiny little creature to point out this truth to me that Tagore’s divinity is neither feminine nor masculine but rises beyond all binaries. ABAN MUKHERJI
mukherji.aban@gmail.com