Yashodhara

O Yashodhara!

You are like a dream of sharp pain,
life-long sorrow.
I don’t have the audacity to look at you.
we were brightened by Buddha’s light,
but you absorbed the dark
until your life was mottled blue and dark,
a fragmented life, burned out,

O Yashodahara!
The tender sky comes to you for refuge
seeing your shining but fruitless life
and the pained stars shed tears
My heart breaks,
seeing your matchless beauty,
separated from your love,
dimming like twilight.
Listening to your silent sighs,
I feel the promise of heavenly happiness is hollow.

Tell me one thing, Yashodhara, how did you
contain the raging storm in your small hands?
Just the idea of your life shakes the earth
and sends the creaming waves
dashing against the shore.
You would have remembered
while your life slipped by
the last kiss of Siddharth’s final farewell,
those tender lips.
But weren’t you aware, dear,
of the heart-melting fire
and the fearful awakening power
of that kiss?
Lightening fell, and you didn’t know it.
he was moving towards a great splendor,
far from the place you lay….
He went, he conquered, he shone.
While you listened to the songs of his triumph
your womanliness must have wept.
You who lost husband and son
must have felt uprooted
like the tender banana plant
But history doesn’t talk about
the great story of your sacrifice.
If Siddarth had gone through
the charade of samadhi
a great epic would have been written about you!
You would have become famous in purana and palm-leaf
like Sita and Savithri
O Yashodhara!

I am ashamed of the injustice.
You are not to be found in a single Buddist Vihara.
Were you really of no account?
But wait – don’t suffer so.
I have seen your beautiful face.
You are between the closed eyelids of Siddharta.
Yashu, just you.

By Hira Bansode

+++++++

I, would like to think that this queen actually led a fulfilling life, apart from her, the king also abandoned his Kingdom, maybe she was the guiding hand, making decisions to help in the Governance? And maybe the same amnesiac History forgot that too. Nevertheless I love this poem for the image of Hira herself; Did she stand at the feet of the massive Buddha in the caves of Aurangabad, look up at the peaceful face, and while being mesmerized by those half closed eyes, did her thoughts drift to Yashodhara?

A dalit woman reviving the memory of a queen that husband and history left behind, and she was brought to us by others too, usually in the sadness of her being, Hira a Dalit, calmly, like dusting cobwebs, sweeps through caste, status and temporality to reach out to the woman Yashodhara. Hira who found solace in Buddhism, is taken in by the teachings yet is able to see the Great one, as merely a man, one being only capable of taking leave of his beloved wife, while she slept. She goes further to bring the Enlightened-one to ground level, by seeing in him the devotion of a man to his beloved, as she says -in his eyes an image of “Yashu, just you”.

—

Anybody who has been in those caves, atheists included experience the sheer magnificence and calmness of the statues. The powerful flashlights placed at the base of the massive forms are focussed only on the face and the darkness of the caves becomes a halo around the Buddha’s face, it is an unnerving sight and experience.

Hira Bansode wrote Marathi poetry describing the lives of dalits. Hira’s assurance to the abandoned queen is one she wrote after converting to buddhism……… translated by Jayant Karve and Philip Engblom.

Source: Poisoned Bread.