Lamentation of Devayani

Prof. P.P. SHARMA

So you have gone to be acclaimed
a hero by the gods who may be
showering petals of the richest hue and fragrance
on one who has wrung from the adversary
the secret of reviving the dead.

Little did I guess then how your fondest dreams
and longings most intense
were not centred on me
and when you feigned by my song to be enchained
in your ears was ringing
the paen from the empyrean:
Well done youngman, you’ve assured us our victory.
The Asuras will now be contained, your name will
go down in history.
No more shall rise the foe who has once been felled.
Great honour to you in thraldom could not be held
of the wily maiden, Shukra’s daughter
who pined for you and lusted after”.

In their celestial abodes they thus speak of you and me
and you are pleased to concur
throwing me naked to their harshest judgement.
My quarrel, however, is not with them but with you
who are concealing the fact of how you betrayed
and played havoc with the emotions of a maiden’s heart.
Why don’t you stand up and confess
before the adoring crowd, boquet in hand,
that the arcaine knowledge you bring to them
you bought at a grievous price
of abasing yourself lower than the Asuras,
much maligned as they are by arrogant Devas?

II

Are those regions beyond the skies so cold
that they have frozen your speech,
immobilized the impulses of the soul,
paralized that discrimination which sets
right from wrong and would not let
the innocent be blamed ?

Does not the memory of the days gone by
when tossed into an unfriendly, alien world
in me alone you found a prop, an anchor
disturb your placid stay at home?
Even while losing your head in thunderous applause
don’t you remember my ever-radiant love
which kept you wavering, indeterminate,
sick for home on a steady keal?

III

O ungrateful Kuch,
of what coarse fibre is your soul formed
that it takes not any imprint from what
it has undergone?
As many as four times did my father retrieve it–
­the last most crucial, almost fatal to himself.

O insensitive one,
you and the like of you are deaf and blind
to the writhing agony of a lass
having to choose between the life
of one who gave her birth
and of another through whose touch the
woman came alive in her.

IV

Not liking your presence in our midst
the Asuras burnt you up to cinders
and mixed the ashes in the drink
my father liked to be treated to of an evening.

My eyes swollen with crying
my body aquiver with a strange emotion
I stood petrified, tongue-tied on learning
that my father had to kill himself to let you live.

Sensing in his bones that I would die without you
he got ready for his body to be cut up for your release
from his abdomen where you were put together and causing pain
He whispered to you the Sanjivani Mantra
whereby you might reassemble his tom limbs.

V

You were my world and I was lost in you.
When you got held up beyond twilight in the forest
whither you had gone to bring flowers and sacrificial fuel
my eyes struggling with tears would to looking out for you
the universe an aching void until you came and caressed me.

VI

O beshrew me,
I never felt you looked not at but through me
to something far beyond me, up in the heavens
the gratified looks of those who had sent you on the errand
of bringing the mysterious incantation from my father.
Your mean spirit could never rise above the purpose.
The heart of a maiden spontaneously offered
served you as a ladder to reach up to your goal.
A slave to success. you flew straight as an arrow
collecting your gains and walking away with a straight face
little caring for the hurt caused to the unsuspecting
by your cold-blooded programmed pursuit.

VII

O sinful one,
you turned me into a mere means
and your reason into a perverter of truth
declaring our separation justified
lest both of us sprung from the loins of Shukracharya
be guilty of incest.
Those who want an excuse often rationalize like this
while my silent cry is breaking my heart.