Temple Redux

Actually, an Arun Kolatkar redux! Here's another favourite:
"Yeshwant Rao"

Are you looking for a god?
I know a good one.
His name is Yeshwant Rao
and he's one of the best.
Look him up
when you're in Jejuri next.

Of course he's only a second class god
and his place is just outside the main temple.
Outside even of the outer wall.
As if he belonged
among the tradesmen and the lepers.

I've known gods
prettier faced
or straighter laced.
Gods who soak you for your gold.
Gods who soak you for your soul.
Gods who make you walk
on a bed of burning coal.
gods who put a child inside your wife.
Or a knife inside your enemy.
Gods who tell you how to live your life,
double your money
or triple your land holdings.
Gods who can barely suppress a smile
as you crawl a mile for them.
Gods who will see you drown
if you won't buy them a new crown.
And although I'm sure they're all to be praised,
they're either too symmetrical
or too theatrical for my taste.

Yeshwant Rao
mass of basalt,
bright as any post box,
the shape of protoplasm
or a king-size lava pie
thrown against the wall,
without an arm, a leg,
or even a single head.

Yeshwant Rao.
He's the god you've got to meet.
If you're short of a limb,
Yeshwant Rao will lend you a hand
and get you back on your feet.

Yeshwant Rao
does nothing spectacular.
He doesn't promise you the earth
or book your seat on the next rocket to heaven.
But if any bones are broken,
you know he'll mend them.
He'll make you whole in body
and hope your spirit will look. after itself.
He is merely a kind of bone-setter.
The only thing is,
as he himself has no heads, hands and feet,
he happens to understand you a little better.

A low temple

A low temple keeps its gods in the dark.
You lend a matchbox to the priest.
One by one the gods come to light.
Amused bronze. Smiling stone. Unsurprised.
For a moment the length of a matchstick
gesture after gesture revives and dies.
Stance after lost stance is found
and lost again.
Who was that, you may ask.
The eight arm goddess, the priest replies.
A sceptic match coughs.
You can count.
But she has eighteen, you protest.
All the same she is still an eigth arm goddess to the priest.
You come out in the sun and light a charminar.
Children play on the back of the twenty foot tortoise.

~ Arun Kolatkar ~

Gods have nesting instincts too?

Exploring the neighbourhood throws up interesting sights! Here's Shiva, nesting, as it were. It almost felt as though his divine consort, Parvati, had left him to hatch some divine eggs!

He, who is one of the triumvirate of Hindu divinities, namely, Brahma, Vishnu & Mahesh. The three represent one aspect each of the Divine: Brahma is the creator, Vishnu preserves & Mahesh, or Shiva, as he is popularly called, is responsible for destruction which, in turn, represents change. In his avataar as Rudra, Shiva is considered to be the destroyer of evil and sorrow. As Shankara, he is the doer of good. Interestingly, his name "Shiva" also means kind, friendly, gracious, or auspicious. Seems apposite, in a sense.

Back home, in Maharshtra, he is known as Khandoba in Jejuri.

And when you mention the word "Jejuri", you cannot go forth without mentioning at least one of Arun Kolatkar's poems from his book titled "Jejuri":

A SCRATCH
what is god
and what is stone
the dividing line
if it exists
is very thin
at jejuri
and every other stone
is god or his cousin

there is no crop
other than god
and god is harvested here
around the year
and round the clock
out of the bad earth
and the hard rock

that giant hunk of rock
the size of a bedroom
is khandoba's wife turned to stone
the crack that runs across
is the scar from his broadsword
he struck her down with
once in a fit of rage

scratch a rock
and a legend springs