Of aadha saa Krishna
| Date :24-Sep-2019 |
By Vijay Phanshikar
Peer likho to Meera jaisee,
(Express anguish how Meera did)
Milan likho kuchh Radhaa saa,
(Express surrender like Radhaa did)
Dono hi hai kuchh pure se,
(Both by themselves are complete)
Dono mein hi woh adhaa saa ...
(Without them, He -- Krishna -- was
incomplete) ...
- Author -- poet -- not traceable,
picked up from pinterest.com
These four lines can be treated as epitome of the understanding of the process of surrender, of becoming one with God! Radhaa and Meera! They were women all right, the timeless entities in different times, devoted to Lord Krishna. Their single-minded devotion, their unwavering focus, their unmatched love, their total unacceptability of anything other than Krishna the Darling of all darlings ...! All these have become part of the legend of Krishna who was incomplete without Radhaa and Meera -- and countless devotees who are symbolised so sublimely in the story of human oneness with the Divine. Radhaa and Meera epitomise eternal love with the Divine, eternal oneness, total inseparability with the Lord.
And the two women -- are they really just women, one may ask -- tore through social barriers of their respective times, and merged into the Divine, in the process losing their identities, their separate signatures. The story of their merger with Krishna, their dissolution in the deity, is now told and retold and sung and sung again and again. As a little one, Meera chose her ultimate cohort, Krishna, and refused to budge from the thought. But the Lord was elusive, as he has always been, slipping from grasp ...! Meera’s bhajans came from that anguish that Krishna was so elusive, so out of grasp, and yet so much near -- so much that even nearness appeared to get defined by distance. Anguish, thus, became a defining element of Meerabai’s devotional signature -- the anguish for the elusive Krishna, the anguish of not being able to have him in embrace, lock him up in the inner being ...! No matter the anguish she expresses so wonderfully in her bhajans, Meera did find her Lord -- Krishna -- and was sublimated to nirvana of her choosing.
Radhaa, as one may be tempted to think, was an earlier incarnation of Meera (if such liberty is allowed in thought). So completely could she merge with Krishna that scriptures and literature made an inseparable pair of Radhaa-Krishna (in which Radhaa came earlier and Krishna later -- in that order). For, Radhaa was ‘complete’ by herself, and Krishna remained incomplete without her. So was the case with Meera -- who remained in anguish of not being able to have Him in her grasp. Yet, both of them had ‘found’ Him in totality: Dono hi hai kuchh pure se, But He was incomplete without them Dono mein hi woh adhaa saa ... The extreme and intense poeticism in the expression is divinely legendary.
The Lord, of course, is Completeness! Yet, without Radhaa and Meera, even He remained incomplete. This recognition of the importance of Bhakti is actually the highlight of devotional culture that evolved in India. The line Dono mein hi woh adhaa saa is actually a defining point of devotional culture -- in which the Lord senses His own incompleteness without his devotees, without his eternal cohorts. What a deep sentiment this -- adhaa saa -- Krishna, the Purnapurshottam!!!