Bhavani Ashtakam

Neither father nor mother
Nor friend nor benefactor
Nor son nor daughter
Nor servant nor master
Nor a wife nor learning
Nor occupation have I
So to you I come, I come to you
The one and only Bhavani

I know not generosity nor
The practice of contemplation
I have mastered no technique
Or eulogistic incantation
I do not know the ways of
Worship, its ritual depositions
So to you I come, I come to you
You are the one Bhavani

It is not virtue that I know
Nor the path of pilgrimage
Emancipation I have not know
Nor ever harmonious grace
Devotion is not for me, I took
No customary vows, Mother
So to you I come, I come to you
You are the only one, Bhavani

Of bad deeds, bad company
And evil thoughts composed
Devoid of all nobility
To misconduct disposed
Immersed in these, my sight
Tainted and my speech gross
To you I come, I come to you
For only you are Bhavani

Drowned deep in this ocean
Of becoming, of great sadness
A coward, fallen and lustful
Avaricious, full of wickedness
Bound to the temporal world
In its quotidian sinfulness
To you I come, I come to you
There is only one Bhavani

Utterly ignoble, impoverished
Fallen feverish and sick
Immensely dejected, exhausted
And always dull-witted
Entering life's tribulations
I am made prostrate
To you I come, I come to you
The one, single Bhavani

In disputes, in distress
In deviance, and in exile
From water, wind, mountains
Among enemies' wiles
In the dark of the forest
Grant me succour always
To you I come, I come to you
You are the only Bhavani

Lord of all subjects, the
Great king, Parvati's lord
Lord of the day and god of
The night, I have never known
Him, nor any other, so always
Protect me, protect me, Mother
To you I come, I come to you
The one and only Bhavani.

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Gulmohur
(Freedom Song in a Minor Key)

On a windy day like this
The rain clouds descend
Rough, tough, male

And the gulmohur
Forgets she is a tree
Rooted to the ground

Everything else thrusts
Upwards, red gold kites
Terriers' pricking ears

Alert to a drum of thunder
Eagles, and stiffish buds
On small, petulant plants

These rise to teasing bait
The short glamour of sex
Then why not the gulmohur?

Why not she?

Today, the sky is a bowl
Each ribbed gulmohur leaf
An imprisoned angel-fish

Swimming round and round
In the cold, grey lucence
Of the hooligan monsoons

But unable to escape, play
Her deft wit off against
A loutish rain cloud

The gulmohur loses heart
Sheds her vivacious fins
Her wild, scarlet flowers

Is this the nature of a tree
To be tied down eternally
Or can the gulmohur be free

Can she?

Kali

A goddess chews on myth
As other women might on paan
Red juices stain her mouth.

Bored by her own powers
Immense and spectral, Kali broods.
About Shiva, she is perverse.

She will not plead with him
Nor reveal Ganesha's birth.
She will not ask him home.

Shiva loves her, but absences
And apsaras are natural to him.
No god is hampered by his sins.

Kali desires a mortal, whose day
Begins with her, ends at nightfall
In her arms, a man who will die

Without her, whose love is fallible
But secure, she wants to be held
Like a warm creature, not a fable.

Loneliness drives this goddess mad
She is vagrant, her limbs askew
She begs a mate, her hair unmade.

Fickle as Shiva, memory deserts her
Chandi or Durga or Parvati, which
Is she, which of her selves weeps here?

Even Ganesha, for whom she feels
Only tenderness, excludes her, even he
Seems impatient with her flaws.

Where should such a goddess turn?
Kali, mistress of the temporal world
Wants bliss defined in human terms.

Staid Ganesha knows this wildness
Must be curbed, Shiva, peripatetic
Agrees, and across the wilderness

Both gift Kali a companion eagle, hurt
By no arrow, fed on nothing, it returns
Each night to its eyrie in her heart.