what shall I do? You will make me endure the pangs of birth again and again.[1]
A very famous song. There are variant readings.
IX. HIS DAYS ARE PASSED IN MISERY
In what have I offended so?
Unendurable has my daily lot become, all day I sit and weep. Inwardly I say, I will leave my home, I will dwell no longer in such a land. But the Wheel of Life turns me in its circle, and Chintārām Chāprāsi[2] awaits me. I say, I will leave my home, and pass my days praising the Name. But you, Kālī, have so wrought that I am bound fast to this vain show of things.
Weeping at Kālī's Feet, poor Rāmprasād says: This Kālī of mine, this Kālī of my thought,[3] through her I have become wretched.
X. THE VANITY OF LIFE AFTER LIFE
It is just the hope of hope, this coming into the world, and it all ends in coming,[4] the black bee's mistake when he falls on the pictured lotus. You have fed me with nim-leaves,[5] calling them sugar, deceiving me with words. Mother, in my greed for sweets, I have spent my whole day with wry, embittered lips.
- ↑ He desires to be set free from the cycle of re-births. The reference in this last line is to the belief that during the pre-natal period the child suffers intensely in the womb.
- ↑ A very homely, almost humorous, touch. Chintārām (Lord of Anxiety') is Yama (Death); and Rāmprasād pictures him waiting like a Chāprāsi (servant in livery), to tell the man he is wanted elsewhere.
- ↑ The Bengali has a series of puns on Kālī and Kālā (black).
- ↑ A line of puns, on āsā, coming, and āśā, hope (different spelling, but similar sound).
- ↑ Which are very bitter. The nim is Azidirachta indica.
