Oh Ma Kali, for a long time now
You've masqueraded in this world
as a clown.
But I am punished inside
and there's nothing funny about Your jokes.
Oh Ma, sometimes You're the air we breathe,
Sometimes the sky in the seventh underworld
furthest away, and
Sometimes the water in the sea
You assume so many forms!
I have travelled to countless lands
and worn countless costumes; even so,
Your marvels -- ha! -- never cease.
Premik says,
My mind is a cad; that's why it's sunk
in attachments. Why else
would these tricks of Yours
keep working?
About the poem:
Battacharya, like several of the other great Kali poets of Bengal, evokes a teasingly plaintive voice when addressing the Mother Goddess Kali while, at the same time, berating his own misbehaving mind.
Oh Ma Kali, for a long time now
You've masqueraded in this world
as a clown.
But I am punished inside
and there's nothing funny about Your jokes.
For Kali, all of creation is the product of her lila, her play. Reality is a game of divine delight, an elaborate pretence of hide-and-seek, a sort of "joke" meant to prod awareness from sluggish matter. For those of us caught up in the dramas and attachments of our lives, we are repeatedly fooled by Mother's tricks. We become dazzled by physical reality and imagine it to be the beginning and end of all existence. Joys on that level are intense, but never lasting, and losses seem so terribly permanent. Caught in that level of awareness, Mother's "joke" doesn't seem very funny.
When we become less attached to the dancing objects and experiences of material existence, the mind stops spinning, it settles, grows clear. It starts to see behind the great magic show an immense presence, waiting for us to see through the trick, and catch her glowing smile behind it all.
It all comes down to that cad, the mind...
Premik says,
My mind is a cad; that's why it's sunk
in attachments. Why else
would these tricks of Yours
keep working?
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