মাধব, বহুত মিনতি করি তোয়ে
দেই তুলসী তিল দেহ সমর্পিলু ,
দয়া জনি ছোড়বি মোয়ে।
গনইতে দোষ গুণলেশ না পাইবি
জব তুঁহুঁ করবি বিচার ,
জগতের নাথ জগতে কহায়সি,
জগ বাহির নই মুই ছার।
Probably Govindadas. More than 500 years ago. (I wrote this from memory, bits and pieces of which are fading now); read around 1981, in class 11 or 12. A rough translation would go as follows:
My Lord, I beg you fervently
Supplicating you with the ritual offerings (tulsi and til, basil leaf and sesame seed)
Please have mercy on me.
When the time comes for You to judge me, you will not find a trace of virtue, but
They call You the Lord of the world,
Do remember, I, insignificant though I am
I do not exist outside this world.
The hour of judgment is approaching. Today, I can only supplicate: 'Lead, kindly light, for the night is dark, and I am far from home', or
আরো কতদূরে সে আনন্দধাম ?
And, as another Bengali adage goes,
বিশ্বাসে মিলায় কৃষ্ণ, তর্কে বহুদূর।
5 comments:
Sir,
This is a quietly beautiful piece. The way you weave a half-remembered Govindadas verse—“মাধব, বহুত মিনতি করি তোয়ে…”—into your reflection gives it a deeply human, almost prayer-like quality. It feels less like interpretation and more like an honest return—to memory, to humility, to something larger than oneself.
I especially liked that gentle, almost playful enquiry: what remains when memory fades, and what does that say about us? Lines like “আরো কতদূরে সে আনন্দধাম ?” linger in exactly that way—open, searching. And the closing thought—“বিশ্বাসে মিলায় কৃষ্ণ, তর্কে বহুদূর”—lands softly but firmly.
A lovely, reflective read.
Best wishes,
Rajdeep
Sir, this is deep. Thank you for sharing. I doubt myself if I have the full capacity to understand this. But may be one day I will know what it truly means in its entirety. - Subhanjan
I am, in turn, surprised and grateful for both the prompt comments above: so humble, so open-minded and curious. After all, as another poet said, 'through a riddle, in the end, sagacity must go', and yet another, 'what am I?/An infant crying in the night/An infant crying for the light/With no language but a cry'. I have always felt that it is poetry/music, rather than mathematics, which is the one truly universal language, unless the universe is confused with matter rather than mind.
Dear Suvroda - thank you for sharing. I am not that well-read but whenever I have read Robi Thakur's philosophical works, I too have realised how they tried to tell us life is beyond matter. Alas, few understood that or even if they did I do not see them.
Thank you, Sir—beautifully put. Those lines (from Tennyson and others) capture that shared space of unknowing so well. Perhaps it is precisely in that wordless reaching—where poetry and music dwell—that we come closest to one another, even before understanding. Warmly, Rajdeep
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