(e - Baba Amte - 1994) The Turning Point Poem by Kannan G

His heart advocated
For the lowliest and the lost.
So he refused to confine
His conscience in his courtroom.
He bravely pulled himself down
And soon became a down-to-earth man.
He was the speaker of silent scavengers –
Their leader and pleader.
So once when they protested,
Portrayed their plight,
To teach himself their troubles,
To taste their toil,
He carried upon his head
The burden of the night-soil
That their humble lives were used to carrying
All their hapless lives.

And in discharging this duty,
One day he stumbled upon
A heap of rotten flesh
Beside a garbage bin.
He sensed some static movement
In that visible mass of rags.
So he pierced his eyes,
And when he saw it
He instinctively shuddered;
His nerves betrayed him;
His hands trembled;
He ran away in fear.
It was a leper.
He had just two holes for his nose;
A lump of stinking flesh for his face;
Stumps of hands and limbs;
Germs were feasting on him!
A leper,
The one people fear to come near!
But the hero here had come across
One such frightful figure
And as anybody else would have
He too ran away;
He just couldn’t afford
To have another look.

In his early days as a hunter
He had fearlessly fought
A ferocious tiger;
And he had been ever since
Proud of the fact of that feat.
He had also fought
Some British soldiers
To save the honour of an Indian lady;
And won for that from Mahatma Gandhi
The title Abhay Sadhak,
(A Fearless Seeker of Truth.)
He now thought over it:
“How brave am I
When from a helpless
And suffering fellowman
I have thus run away? ”
A sense of shame invaded him;
Guilt gripped him;
His pride melted.
His mind was revolting against him,
And as anybody would have ran away
From the clutch of such a cruel conscience,
He now didn’t run away –
He faced it bravely
For he wasn’t a man ordinary.
He now knew
What was cowardice
And what was bravery.
He listened to his inner voice
And returned to that shattered soul in the street.
He sheltered that abandoned life;
And tended to it
With love and care.
And he had now his Sadhana with him,
His wife and his spiritual practices,
So he was secure!
He washed his wounds;
Covered him with fresh clothes;
Fed his hunger;
And in discharging
This self-destined duty,
In silence, unheard and unseen,
A future was taking shape!
That dead man soon died!
But a saviour of souls was therein born;
He lived thereafter
To resurrect many such dead lives!