The Baidyanathdham Temple Complex Poem by Bijay Kant Dubey

The people in queues since the morning
With a potful of water,
Flowers and bel leaves,
If possible a little of milk,
If possible with the holy Ganga water,
Waiting to have their turn
To offer to
The lingam divine
Inside the sanctum sanctorum
Where in the dark room,
Windowless,
But with a small door,
People entering and exiting.

The bel leaves strewn across,
The oil lamp burning at the corner,
People coming in droves
And going out,
Sometimes suffocation, congestion and being trampled
Troubling the psyche of the devotee,
But he offering in a haste
And moving out
While the some hang on for their things to be said to
In whispers,
Demanded from and promised of
Next time worships,
Ay, into the court of the Lord,
The Justice Divine,
Which the humans cannot judge,
As His Jurisprudence Divine.

Many of the unmarried maidens in queues
To get their dreams fulfilled,
Many widows
Past their life, past activity,
Seeing the golden pitcher overhead
And bowing the head before,
With tears into the eyes,
In neglect and widowhood,
Poverty and penury
Asking the Lord to deliver,
As nothing to left in their life,
Nothing as to fascinate
The poor, old or ageing white clad widows,
Passing life and the times somehow,
As the Lord the final hope left for
To seek consolation
And redemption lies in His Hands,
One who is the Giver and Taker of life.

The beggars at the entrance of the grand temple,
A mass of amputees and the old and the blind
And the leprous,
Singing the songs of Rama in zest,
The old with an aluminum bowl seeking alms
Somehow strugglingly,
The blind singing and weeping,
All weeping and praying for humbly,
A scene melting the good heart,
Struggling to enter the complex
At his first encounter with cognizant conscience,
With the psyche at askance,
What to see and ask for
The Ordaining Deity?

The strictest seekers after from the bathing pond ghat measuring
The length of the body
And rolling straight over the ways,
Standing, bowing and sleeping over,
To cover the distance in strictest submission,
Measuring and laying down and counting
And demarcating the steps in prayerful submission,
Standing, bowing the head before, hanging over the way
With the front over the way to the temple
And going and measuring the way
To pray to finally,
Those who thought of taking the measure
In the strictest form of submission
As for something to be fulfilled,
The task still undone.

The flower sellers selling flowers and giving a pot with a rope
To pull the waterful from the temple well
If water is therein in the rocky well,
Otherwise purchase you the Ganga water,
Maybe from the holy river or not,
Who has seen it,
Just the words will satisfy the seeker,
As water has to be brought to,
The private priests moving around
For a catch of probable customers,
Taking to the temples as guide,
Asking for fees at the end
And the vegetarian food to be given,
More especially curd, beaten rice, banana and sweets
And after a bargain and a budge from,
The devotee readying to give.

While a few can be seen rounding the temple
With the folded hands
As for doing a parikrama,
A rounding,
Finally after the five or three rounds,
One stopping near the entrance
And bowing the head
After having closed the eyes,
Remembering Him
With the folded hands
After the worship
To do the last salutation
To move away to their destinations.

But what to heed most we heed it not
While praying to,
Beginning the worship
With the start from Lord Ganesha,
Rightly, we are sinners,
A sinner am I,
Sinful the activity of mine,
You redeem us, redeem us, Lord,
The sins we commit knowingly or unknowingly
Need to be confessed and sought for a pardon first
Rather than all that we do
And the other thing, whatever be that,
The rock-built architecture is no doubt the inspiration
Of Biswakarma, the Divine Architect and Sculptor
If we have nothing to record as historiography.