Paradheen ahe jagati putra manasacha

After a long, long time, I have started to write about a poem that I have read.

This poem is extremely close to my heart. It is one of the best poems that I have ever come across in my whole life. You would be hard pressed to guess the poem - no it is not by any English, or American, or Canadian, or African, or Australian poet. In fact, the poem is not even English.

The poem is written in Marathi, by none other than GaDiMa. The poem is included in his legendary Geet Ramayan. It is "Paradheen Aahe Jagati Putra Manavacha"

This poem is the most philosophical piece of literature that I have ever come across. Dante, Nietzscshe, even the Romantics and their philosophies are nothing compared to "Paradheen Ahe". The profound philosophy of life that this poem puts across in such simple language makes it poignant. On top of that, Babuji's flawless music renders emotion to the poem. Before you even know it, the poem is transformed into a song - a song that reaches the very depths of your heart.

I don't want to consider which character sings this song in Geet Ramayan, or in which situation the song is sung. The song does not remain situational at all. I beleive that it is a global description of human insecurities and fears. It is the most global song that I have ever heard, the most global poem that I have ever read.

Let me start at the beginning.

The song starts with two profound lines:
"Daiva jyat dukhkhe Bharata, dosh na kunacha
Paradheen aahe jagati putra manavacha"
These two powerful lines give you the gist and the direction of the song. In just two simple lines, the poet displays the helplessness of man, and the dependencies that human life has on fate. Even as you read these lines, the helplessness depicted in them makes you restless. Your faith in yourself, in the fact that you can make your own life, suddenly starts shaking. These lines have the power to make you rethink all your successes and failures. And suddenly it occurs to you that maybe, these successes weren't yours alone. There were some invisible factors beyond your reach and beyond your understanding that were constantly at work to make you succeed. Suddenly, you feel as if these factors can go against you any time and you won't be even able to help yourself out of the mess. Deep down, you fear this. You have always feared this. But these lines give you the mantra of not blaming yourself for what goes wrong in your life. Indeed it is nobody's fault. You, as a human being, are dependent on something universal that you cannot see, but perhaps you can only feel. Sorrow and miseries are a part of life for humans. If you are fated to be miserable all your life, you will be so.

When you read these lines, you can see so many people in your mind's eye who have never really been successful or even happy. You realise that you always wanted to help them, but you could not. Do what you may, you could not save them from their destiny. Sometimes, things start to go well in their lives, but right at that moment, they leave this world for the next. They have always remained unhappy. And no one can be blamed for that.

These lines make you restless. They make you think. They make you remember uncomfortable incidents. They set the tone for the rest of the poem.

The next stanza talks about the character's lot in life. He (Ram) has to give up his would-be kingdom, and he is banished to the forest for 14 years. His father dies while he is in the forest. Strange fate for anyone. But this stanza serves as an example of human sorrows. The lines show that though Ram is sorrowful about whatever has happened, he cannot blame anybody. Because he knows that he was destined to leave his kingdom and go to the forest. In the same way, we can picture some things in our life that we were destined to do. Every small thing that takes place in our life depicts some kind of change. The change may not always be good, but we are destined to go through it. Neither princes nor paupers can escape this.

"Ant unnaticha patani hoi hya jagat
Sarva sangrahacha vatsa nash hach ant
Viyogartha milan hote nem ha jagacha"
Can any philosopher sum up the ironies of life in just three lines? Destruction is the destiny of all progress. All life has its end in death. Man meets another man only to be torn away from each other. These lines make you aware of the primary truth of life - death and destruction. You can suddenly remember the natural calamities that befall you. The floods, eathquakes, tsunamis, volcanoes, tornadoes - they have the power to destroy civilisation as we know it. They have the power to destroy earth as we know it. But when you read the lines, you realise that civilisation is meant to be destroyed even as we live through it.

The last line is the most poignant of all. "Viyogartha milan hote nem ha jagacha". It is the law of the universe that we meet only to be parted from each other, sooner or later. I remember this old couple that I used to see every evening while coming home from school. Both, the lady and the gentleman, looked so beautiful together. They were both very old, but fit and fine. I always saw them together, out for their evening walk. And one day, I saw only the man. I thought that maybe his wife could not make it that day. Maybe she was not in town or something. But since that day onwards, I never saw his wife again. The only conclusion that I could come to was that his wife was dead. I still feel very sad for the old man. He and his wife had lived their whole life together. They must have been through thick and thin together. But finally, she passed on, leaving him behind alone to face the world as he could. Could he help that? Could he blame anybody for that? Why did his wife leave him alone? Because that is the law of nature. That is the law of the universe. Maybe he could have passed on first, and then his wife would have been left alone. But that does not change the gist of what the poet wants to say. You meet others only to be parted from them, perhaps forever.

This is true for all relationships that we may have in life. We meet people, we become the greatest buddies. But after some time, our friends or we move on, a lot of water passes under the bridge, and we never see each other again. Sometimes we feel sad for lost friends. Sometimes we feel nothing. The depth of our feeling has something to do with what we call in Marathi as "runanubandha". But nevertheless, we have to part, and we never see some people in our lives again. But that is the law of Universe. We cannot change that. We are destined to meet and to separate. We are humans.

We cannot keep mourning for departed friends and relatives. Death is born with birth. Death always goes hand-in-hand with life. "Jivasave janme mrityu, jod janmajat". Whatever we see around us, whatever we feel around us, is all destructible. We cannot keep mourning for dreams. Because the universe is nothing but a dream. It is something that we can see, and we can feel. It is something that will be destroyed one day. We get good dreams when we sleep. We even get bad dreams. We get nightmares and we get beautiful dreams. But all of them are destroyed as soon as we wake up, just as the universe will be destroyed one day. "Dise bhasate te sare vishwa nashwantKay shok karisi vedya, swapnichya phalancha?"

Ram's father is dead, and he has come to the forest, banished for 14 years. Ram tries to tell his brother that everything was destined. Though everything happened suddenly, it happened because it was meant to. After all, our logic stops at the thought of death. This line sounds much better and poignant when read in Marathi. "Marankalpaneshi thambe tarka jantyacha". To translate it literally, it would read "The logic of a knowledgeable person stops at the idea of death". Is there any way to describe the insufficiency of human so simply, and so easily? Humans cannot think of anything beyond death. Death is the threshold of knowledge for them - a blank wall that no one can cross.
There are so many people around us that claim they are not afraid of death. But are they really not afraid? When the moment comes, how many of us would be calm and in control of the situation? We are afraid of death because we don't know what lies beyond death. Our religions have taught us to be afraid of hell and pray for heaven. But we don't know what would be heaven and what would be hell, even if they existed. We want to know so much, but we cannot know anything beyond death. That is our border - we can cross it only when we come to it.

No one can escape the circle of life and death. No one can escape sorrows in life. The present always walks the path of destruction."Jaramaran yatun sutla kon pranijatDukhkhamukta jagala ka re kuni jeevanatVardhaman te te chale marg re kshayacha"These three lines again make you think of your mortality. As you read these lines, you remember that you also cannot escape this circle of life and death. You are here to die one day. Just as the person beside you. You don't know when that will happen, but you can be sure that it will happen one day. Whatever you see right now, whatever you feel right now, all the present around you, everything is destined to end one day.

When you read the line "Dukhkhamukta jagala ka re kuni jeevanat", you suddenly remember all your petty sorrows and miseries. If your life has been a difficult journey full of potholes, you will definitely feel the truth of these lines. But even if you have had a smooth life till now, you will realise that you could not escape small sorrows and miseries even in a sheltered life. Sorrows are part of the game for you. You cannot escape them. You will encounter them at every turn in the road. Perhaps they would be minor enough for you to forget them easily. Perhaps they would be major enough to scar your soul forever. But they would be there, and you would have to face them, and go through them. You realise that as a human being, sorrows will always be your lot.

Your sorrows may be personal and private, or shared by others around you. Your sorrows might spring from a person leaving your forever. Your partner in life, or your best friend has died and left you alone. Your favourite relation, one who was the closest to you has died. But you have to remember that you were always meant to part. The poet uses a beautiful metaphor to explain this."Don ondkyanchi hote sagarat bhetEk laat todi dogha punha nahi gathKshanik tevi ahe bala, mel manasacha"Two logs of wood meet each other in the vastness of the ocean. For a time, they drift together with the current. All that is required to break them apart is a single wave. One wave just comes and Tears them apart, and they never see each other again. Just like this, only moments are all that you may have to spend with the people around you. You will never know when you may get separated for them.

The rest of the poem is situational, and pertains to the flow of events in Geet Ramayan.

This poem never fails to make me think of everything that I have today, and I realise that I might lose all in just one stroke of detiny. One masterstroke is all that is needed. I feel my own inadequacies and insufficiencies. I realise that there is no way I can stop the passage of time, and there is no way I can change my own destiny. When we are just out of college, we tend to think that we can create our own world through our own efforts. Youth makes us think that we can play God. But as we grow up, and as we mature, we realise that absolutely nothing is in our hands. We are just mere players on the stage of life. We start thinking of our own mortality. And one day we come across poems like "Paradheen Aahe", and we get emotional. Because suddenly we see all our insecurities, all our fears, all our inadequacies written down on paper. We suddenly feel thankful that we are not alone in feeling all this. We suddenly feel that the world is beautiful again. Because the poem makes us tell ourselves that we are not to blame. That we cannot change destiny. So we might as well not worry about it, and accept life as it comes.