‎swami Vivekananda ‎(A Soul To A Sleeping Nation) ‎ Poem by Prabir Gayen

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‎Swami Vivekananda
‎(A Soul to a Sleeping Nation)
‎
‎ Prabir Kumar Gayen
‎
‎Swami Vivekananda,
‎a great Soul,
‎an unextinguished fire
‎still breathing in our inward world.
‎
‎A burning image cast by Time itself,
‎whom we praise, adore,
‎and crown with deep reverence.
‎
‎Yet history keeps its deeper
‎wound concealed.
‎Beneath the shore of statues
‎lies a life of neglect,
‎a suffering unspoken.
‎
‎He lived a pain beyond measure,
‎a life unfinished,
‎fallen from the Tree of being,
‎before its branches could spread into sky.
‎A flower dropped with dew still in its breast,
‎before its fragrance learned
‎the language of Anemos.
‎
‎A diamond returned to earth
‎before the hand of time could shape its skin,
‎He was young,
‎a soul immense,
‎a mind charged with thunder.
‎His words were consecrated breath,
‎his eyes carried primordial fire,
‎his being an ocean
‎remembering immortality.
‎
‎Then death entered his house.
‎His father gone,
‎poverty descended into his kitchen,
‎The ancestral home was seized,
‎relatives turned away,
‎his mother and brothers
‎learned the blow of hunger.
‎
‎He wrote of days without food,
‎of nights filled with anxiety and pain.
‎A man of eternal potency,
‎dreaming of an India risen
‎through ancient wisdom and fearless truth,
‎walked the streets in humiliation,
‎asking for bread.
‎No one stood for him.
‎
‎No hand rose
‎to recognise the flame in a young sannyasi's eyes.
‎He wandered for his family's survival,
‎fasted without vow,
‎sleepless without mantra.
‎
‎From every door words of disdain,
‎From every road he received rejection.
‎A being fresh from eternity's womb
‎was forced into helplessness.
‎
‎Once, in anguish,
‎he asked his Master Ramakrishna
‎to pray to Mother Kali for food.
‎Ramakrishna smiled,
‎'Ask Her yourself'.
‎
‎Three times he went.
‎Three times he dissolved into silence.
‎Three times knowledge rose like fire.
‎A man born to become the sky
‎could not ask for grain.
‎
‎America called him.
‎But poverty stood like big wall,
‎He begged for aid,
‎none came.
‎So-called men of religion
‎turned their faces away.
‎
‎He walked the length of India,
‎particularly South india,
‎The kings heavy with money and gold,
‎famous for donation to temple,
‎But everyone rejected him
‎with words of disdain,
‎He returned empty-handed,
‎with wounds invisible yet deep.
‎
‎As a wandering monk
‎he was insulted, refused shelter,
‎treated as useless one in sacred lands.
‎
‎Still the resolve burned:
‎to awaken a sleeping nation,
‎to preach love, courage, and humanity.
‎
‎At last he crossed the sea,
‎criticised for the crossing,
‎accused of sin,
‎judged for imagined food,
‎while he struggled to survive
‎on foreign ground.
‎
‎Then came Chicago.
‎A single address,
‎and the world turned.
‎America bowed.
‎Newspapers crowned him
‎a voice of the age.
‎
‎India,
‎which had doubted him,
‎which defended caste and comfort,
‎suddenly claimed him.
‎They worshipped what they had wounded.
‎He returned to chariots and cheers.
‎Those who once ignored the sun
‎now pulled its wheels.
‎
‎They shared his fame,
‎not his fire.
‎He saw through it.
‎Standing amid celebration,
‎he remained alone,
‎outside the house of worship,
‎unhoused in the human heart.
‎
‎Victory did not heal him.
‎His thoughts returned to his mother,
‎poor, homeless, unprotected.
‎He raised funds relentlessly,
‎kept nothing for himself.
‎What he earned through lectures,
‎he gave to build Belur Math,
‎to sustain his brother monks.
‎No one asked him
‎to rest.
‎He worked as one possessed by compassion.
‎Days without rest
‎nights without sleep
‎Brain with thousand thoughts
‎and body becoming fragile.
‎
‎The nation was ill,
‎he tried to cure it
‎with his own work
‎The body broke.
‎A great sannyasi,
‎A silent warrior,
‎A soul whose quiet
‎was deeper than existence itself.
‎A star among countless stars,
‎yet singular.
‎The dearest son of the land
‎died at thirty-nine,
‎when the bud is ready,
‎when fragrance waits.
‎
‎They named it samadhi.
‎They named it mahasamadhi.
‎But truth speaks otherwise.
‎It was a slow self-sacrifice.
‎A chosen dissolution.
‎Like Jesus upon the Cross,
‎he attained illumination through abandonment.
‎Had he lived another thirty-nine years,
‎India would not be what it is.
‎It might have awakened
‎into courage and compassion,
‎worthy of the name World-Teacher.
‎He was the salt of the earth.
‎India received the fire,
‎but failed to protect the flame.
‎He lived in silence,
‎and dissolved into silence,
‎a silence greater than silence.
‎
‎Today we celebrate his birth.
‎Not to worship him only,
‎He wanted not mere worship,
‎We need to feel him,
‎his struggle,
‎his neglect,
‎his unshared pain.
‎And we should take oath
‎Not to neglect another vivekananda
‎to die through utter ignorance,
‎So that living masters
‎are honoured while breathing,
‎Not reduced to make statues
‎or Idle books of praise.
‎
‎@Prabir Gayen
‎17/01/2026/7: 10 PM.
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