Aswathi Thirunal Gouri Lakshmi Bayi

In Entreaty

Let me water
The twin lotuses
Your feet
My Lord,
Not with rose water
Sweetly scented,
Nor with honey
Smelted golden hue,
Neither with milk
So “Satvic”, pure,
But with the pain
Of my penance
With the agony
Of my heart
And with the lament
Of my soul.

Two tears, pristine
Clear, crystal drops
Rid of dross,
Mud and mire
In searing fires
Wrung out of lightning
On back drop of gloom,
Or from thunder turbulent
Dire orchestra of doom.

Two tears!
Droplets of despair
One less than Vamana's
Famed steps they be
Yet they too well
Swell to submerge
Thine great Ocean of Milk.

They tender a plea
To replace Thine couch
Of serpentine power coiled
With bed rest of water
Expansion of tears
That ever undulates
In non-static
Graph of grief.

A love wearied
Of formlessness
Donned gentle, mortal form
As kindly light lavishly spills
In over flow of grace.

Oh! mine Lord, I do implore
Amidst the hide-and-seek of fates
Hark the clamour of multitudes
That spirals high and encircles Thee
In tireless, traumatic entreaty.

Yon lustre fashioned to human shape
Bloomed as slave, as king
A divinity in earthly guise
Holding in his fragile palms
The lot of an adoring clan.

Mine Lord, tender I this plea
Oh guard that flame dearly priced
For many more spans of time
Receive mine tears and in turn
Spare and save, bestow on us
That royal seal to salvation.

This is a prayer to Sree Padmanabha Swami to protect one of the best of human beings - my beloved uncle Sree Chitra Thirunal Rama Varma, Maharaja of Travancore, written two years before his final journey.


Notes:-

1. Vamana’s famed steps: The three famous steps taken by
Vamana when he measured the land offered by King Mahabali.

2. Swell to submerge : The young Brahmin boy Vamana
suddenly grew to huge proportions to submerge the earth and
the other worlds by measurement of His mighty feet. In the
same way, the two tears (“one less than three”) also swell to
such an extent that they submerge even the Ocean of Milk on
which Sree Padmanabha Swami reclines on Anantha the
Serpent.

3. Serpentine Power: Kundalini Shakti as represented by the
coiled body of Anantha.

4. A love wearied of formlessness: Love got weary of being
without form and took on human shape as Sree Chitra
Thirunal.

5. Yon lustre : Same idea as above.

6. As slave, as King: as Sree Padmanabha Dasa or slave of
Sree Padmanabha. He was the king of Travancore too.

7. Royal seal to salvation: Sree Chitra Thirunal himself who
continues to be the saviour to so many of us.


 ‘Ponnammavafl”

This poem was written roughly between 12th July 1991 and
19th July, 1991, during that tension - fraught period of hope
and despair as life and death waged a grim war on the
chessboard of destiny in the specific attempt to capture the
King.

Dearly beloved, a thousand deaths we died
In anguished fear for your one life
Hades flung shadows, last curtain call
Pregnant with menace in all mean might
Myriad hearts wept life blood in streams
For one precious heart its beat to keep
Self ignite flares unbridled in force
For keeping those funeral pyres at bay.

My Swami ! Padmanabha Master Supreme!
Hear not you this whiplash below?
Fears, tears and echoing prayers shake
Walls of Vaikunthom, they reverberate strong
Supreme immortals in celestial spheres
Play of emotions they spare themselves not
What then, poor mortals, why chastise
With obsessed love only to forfeit?

My Swami ! Padmanabha ! Master Supreme!
As You recline, would You imbibe his pain
Convert his trauma, make it ‘k’ur own?
Defy death’s greed, deny its demand

Multi - petalled lotus to bloom to command
Your dictate divine, yon soft flower of life
Concealed in its core our flickering hope
To unfold again as Your paramount gift?
Clamour and cry of countless let cease
Dear God, yawning darkness banish we pray
Thus herald the finale of unseasoned night.

We entreat, with shattered sobs invoke
Might of mercy, Your grace extend
Take not now unto Your Atman Supreme
That fragile form of gentlest mould
Piety, the heart, love and care twin beat
Adorned with Syamanthaka of humility rare
If the gods then a human form confer,
My dearly beloved, on whom else but you?

Your dear feet, our anchor. Oh uncle serene
In storms and furies fates feast upon
From your frailty, our forces we draw
Your eyes’ aura as our sunshine spills
Blue - hued One His shade impose in
Blue of your eyes; they bind Him captive
In your constant thirst of Him.
Your voice blesses as wisdom’s notes
Play in resonance on keyboard of life.
Your heart, your dear heart. words stand still,
Uncrushed, unsullied by fate’s escapades
Pangs or the joys of this adventure, life
Like bees to the bloom by nectar lured

Man hunts that honey, your dear heart
Its goodness, its gold, your ivory tone
Our uncle ! our love, our light, our life
God amidst men, man amidst gods?

For one single boon computed in worth
Our hands, our hearts beseech at your feet
Uncle! so loved, so sacred in worth
A lease of your life, the seal of our fate
Trade Heaven’s peace, from hell us to spare
Your grand union final with Merciful One
In infinite mercy a while more to stay.
Forsake us not some summers still
As history’s relics, poor orphans of time

Ponnammavan- beloved Uncle

Multi- petalled Lotus to bloom to command:-The lotus indicated here is thousand patalled lotus which rest on crown of the head in inverted  form. Maharaja was struck down by a stroke on the 12 July morning damaging the brain, the seat of thousand petalled lotus. If God so commanded that lotus would bloom again. signifying the reactivisation of the brain.

On Death

Dread symbol of distress
Clemency in another guise
your colour dark, cold your touch
Your nature awesome, intent grim
Oh death, what indeed are you?