gulab khandelwal selected poems

DIALOGUE
Son:

The pyre of the day is burnt out,
Where have you gone leaving me alone,
O cruel father?

How desolate is this house!
The howling winds
And the biting darkness are spreading their mouths-
Like pythons;
Ah look, my soul is disintegrating.

Light the lamps of the stars,
Shake the curtain of the sky,
It may be a flash of lightening
Or the thunder of clouds,
But do make some gesture towards me.

Come down from the skies once at least,
Take me in your arms.
Am I to spend the whole night waiting like this ?

Father:

Why are you so sad and dejected, my child!
My hand is always at your back.
You have thought me to be lying at a distance
From you,
That is the trouble,
In reality, every breath that you draw,
Tells my story;

It is for you alone that I have illumined
These cities of stars in the blue firmament,
Opened door after door in the void of the universe,
Put ladder after ladder in the infinite space;
And look at this earth also,
Which I have made as a cradle for you,
Adorned with green velvety carpets,
Swung by the arms of the sun and the moon.
Whatever you ask,
This loving mother gives you.
It removes all your anxieties and takes you in her lap;
You not only pull the hair of her body,
You tear her garments also,
Yet this loving mother keeps smiling at you,
Quenches your thirst and satisfies your hunger
By her saffron colored field and milky rivers.
There is no catastrophy in life
Which she has not shared with you;
Why should you think yourself alone
Sitting in the lap of such a doting mother ?

Son :

My Creator, if you could give me a form,
why could you not give it to yourself?
Even after creating the five elements,
Why could you yourself not enter them?

When I call you my father, these people laugh at me.
They call the unconscious lying mother,
The only cause of my birth.

When I tell them,
“It is only by the union of the father and the mother
A child is born,”
They observe laughingly,

“If there is a father, why is he not perceived?”

How am I to explain to them,
They, to themselves, are equally unperceptible.
Although performing all kinds of actions
Through their senses,
They are eternally unknown to the senses.

“The body is conscious
Whereas, the actions of nature are unconscious”
Some of them tell me.

But when I say,
“How is this conscious planning found
In unconscious-nature?”
They jerk their heads and keep quiet.

And then, one of them speaks like a wise man,
“There was a father but he died long ago.
He has left for us
The legacy of these eternal and irresistible Jaws.
It is by virtue of these laws alone,

The play of the universe is run.
Even for getting out of this house,
One has to take recourse to one of its laws.”

When I ask them,
“How the creator of immortal laws died himself ?
Truth became untruth,
Existence became non-existence ?
From where do the sparks come incessently,
If the great sun has cooled down?” _
‘They call me ignoramus and full of blind faith.

‘Tell me,
How do you tolerate this haughtiness
Of the materialists?
‘Why don’t you come out in person,
Tearing this veil of unbelief?

Father :

My child! –
Although I have retired long ago
And have gone and slept in the caves of infinity,
Your cries make me uneasy sometimes
And melt my heart with pity.
Even though I have formed laws for everything,
Determined cause for every effect,
Put some controller at each step,
Even though my actions are governed by set rules
And my inaction, although free, is powerless,
Yet, sometimes, when you persist in calling me,
‘When you lose the game of life
And ram your head against the wall again and again,

I am not able to remain aloof,
I make myself finite
And take the form you wish.