Dear friends and folks,
Given below is a Poetry ‘Moondru Devi ’ by Subramania Barathi -Grossly translated into English. I have tried to go as close as possible to the original text in Tamil by the Mahakavi, knowing well it is impossible. Hope this hasn’t marred the essence of the original.
I wrote this translation 6 yrs before, which gave me an inexplicable joy to stay. Strange divine support helped me with the unusually quick verbosity that brought tears to my smiling face. I sat completely transformed.
Please spend some time reading the length in the given meter.
(It may sound funny to keep up the meter while reading in English. But it helps to understand the propensity of expression and the vigor of its emotions. Try to help yourselves.)
I’m sure you would feel what I felt and that would be our tribute together to the ‘Mahakavi’.
My sincere thanks to all those who could spend time to, read, like, or comment. Your feedback means a lot to me because this is a part of my book on the biography of ‘Barathi’ titled ‘MAHAKAVI’, soon to be released worldwide on Amazon.
The poet explains that he was after Saraswathi – Goddess of Knowledge till he was 22 and then he was after Lakshmi – Goddess of Wealth, after which he finally settles with Parashakthi – Goddess of Wisdom.
The meter is
Om Shakthi Om Shakthi Om
Om Shakthi Om Shakthi Om Shakthi Om Shakti
(Om Shakti Om Shakti Om)
Saraswathi – Goddess of Knowledge
Young, when I was just a kid
I was told that she is the goddess who gives
Knowledge of all the good skills,
To create all that is needed in life to fulfill.
In the exuberance of a little pond,
Upon a white lotus, she sat in my heart with a bond.
Her unseen beauty kept me interested in,
I was stuck to my books with a goal just to win.
Her magic is all very wise,
Her logic of science is all easy in guise,
Deep in the science of this stillness,
In the motion of lifeless and in those moving lives,
In the sound, in the silence between,
She shows up with numbers, and now and then she is seen.
Again when I’m confused and depressed,
She gazes with help and she is gorgeously dressed.
The knowledge she personifies,
Are all for the world to be healthy and nice.
There lies the joy of surprise,
In the clarity of knowledge from the depth, she could rise.
I was not for the book of this science,
Not for the numbers in the school that we find,
Not for learning of this kind,
Not for the knowledge by the time that which blinds.
I sat alone on a fertile farm,
She told me the fairy tales and the stories of the past,
In the breezy grooves of the coconut trees,
She gave me the words for the song that would last.
This game of knowledge with her,
Gave me the words to write what I hear,
What I see in a world full of wants,
In her absence life goes into the darkness that haunts.
I ran behind her but in vain,
To attain the knowledge of the super-mundane,
She had an answer for everything,
And a question for me was always left in-between.
She is here, yet at a distance too far,
I try to reach her but somehow we stay far apart,
Sometimes she is clearly seen,
Sometimes she leaves me wondering ‘where she has been?’
‘This illusive girl is not for me,
All that I know is only, all that I see.’
Hence, so dejected I was,
My love for her unwillingly could no longer last.
This, till when I was twenty-two,
When I knew that knowledge is only a life-making tool,
To make a living with what we could do,
To feel proud of what we know, yet remain much as those ignorant fools.
Lakshmi – Goddess of Wealth
But then, there, in a park nearby,
I saw another beautiful damsel stand by,
With heavenly beauty in my sight,
Her face was like a pink lotus, bloom in fluorescent light.
From that moment onward,
I went behind this alluring lady, as she called me towards,
I believed that she would be mine,
Forever without a break, till the end of the unending time.
In a smile that she happily wears,
I jump for the joy of the richness that glares,
When she looks right into my eyes,
Her intoxicating beauty swoons me and I see butterflies.
She gives all the prosperity,
And the pride and the pomp and the glory she brings,
With all my friends and my people,
Priceless mirth is imbued in all the songs that I sing.
With just a dime she dispels the darkness,
And put me in the brightness of the limelight in focus,
With money to buy all the things,
She gets me all that I wanted to wear and to eat and drink.
Joy unbounded around,
Whenever this golden lady was frequently found,
This voluptuous lady of wealth,
Could give a long life, hale and happy with health.
All of a sudden one day,
She finds another place to hide and to play,
She promised that she would stay,
But she also says goodbye and just gets away.
Her absence shatters me in pain,
It batters me black and blue with unbearable strain,
I see her loitering around,
In new places, with people, she had newly found.
For a need that could arise,
Or for the greed of desire and the mundane avarice,
For those who could amass wealth,
For those who would know the art of how she should be dealt,
Like the longing lass, she would go,
Happily to all those who need her or she needs them so,
No reason she would ever tell,
No remorse, no reassurance to return the joy, as well.
I could see her everywhere,
Here in the field, in the streets, and in the garden there,
In the charities of those without greed,
In the alms to the poor who are in desperate need,
In the citadel of cities somewhere,
In the artifice and in the newness of material rare,
In the jewelry of gold people wear,
In silver and in the stones, in the diamond’s glitter.
This lady too is not of my kind,
For, I just lose her in joy at the moment I find.
Such a transient pleasure she grants,
When she pleases with her presence she equally warns.
Thankfully in every meal,
A thought of her is all that she would need,
Most expected or invited guest,
She sustains the life on the planet with all that she feeds.
Parashakthi – Goddess of Wisdom
Once, later in the darkness deep,
Woke up with contentment as I went to sleep.
As I closed my mortal eyes,
In the pitch of the night, I had a great sight.
Mind opened the eye that could see,
A resplendent black complexioned, far beautiful lady,
Once again but this time I could see,
Loving mother Shakthi, the mother of mothers she be.
In ecstatic joy, I’m in tears,
All the unasked questions were answered so clear.
Her grace is the one that we need,
With only her grace we get the world indeed.
All the knowledge of all that we should know,
The wisdom we grow and the good that we show,
All the riches and all opulence,
All that she gives and takes make a different sense.
All awareness of this cosmic bond,
In this world and in the worlds bigger, buzzing beyond,
In her super-vision with her grace,
She blesses all that she created in zillions in every place.
It’s easy to reach her, I know,
Through our sincere prayers, we get her so close,
Like the mother attending to a child,
She is constantly tending to us from the hide.
Om Shakthi Om Shakthi Om
Om Shakthi Om Shakthi Om Parashakti Om Shakti Om Shakti Om
-Srirangam Ramesh