Chapter Eight: Literature of the Rasika Tradition in Hindi

—wearing pain as the fakir’s girdle, where could happiness now arise?
What use would freedom from pain be, when well-being itself is filled with pain?
A prisoner of pain, I speak only pain; our pain burns us.
Kripanivas lives through pain alone—these are the blows of consuming attachment.

3

Mother, why has this wretched attachment fallen upon me?
It cuts my liver like shears and makes my breast tremble night and day;
hooked through the nose, I am stretched upon the taut gallows.
No judge exists in the city to give justice to the loving person.
Bound in attachment’s snare, my mind cries out on the other side.
Fire is set beneath soft butter, yet even diamond hardness is not pierced;
the deer-eyed one shoots arrows, yet the lion-hearted foe of elephants does not come near.
The bee dwells captive within the ketaki and its thorns pierce him again;
filled with the crane’s rasa of attachment, why then does he cry like the crane?
The tightening twist of attachment has drawn the mind away—why does it now wail?
Burned in attachment’s fire and turned to charcoal, why does it still sigh like the bellows?
Having obtained a full measure of love, why does the calamity of separation increase?
Her darling glance wounds—why then apply poison to the injury?
Moonlight sets the fire ablaze; attachment makes the chakora wonder.
Without the night-blooming fruit, Kripanivas’s lover continually cries “Alas!”

Only sustaining attachment will suffice.
Let dream judge feeling good or bad; one must earn the name of lover.
When the eyes became fixed, the mind was surrendered and sold into the Beloved’s hands.
My mind is no longer mine; helpless, before whom can it settle its claim?
Body may burn, melt, and scatter to the wind, yet attachment still entices.
If he removes my head and kicks it from his feet, even then I celebrate my fortune.
I possess many faults and not the least virtue, yet I sing his qualities.
How could I stain the honour of the ever-new Beloved’s stainless love?
What loss if life, worth a mere cowrie, is spent to gain the crimson jewel?
Let family, happiness, liberation, and noble birth go—do not surrender one grain of attachment.
Kripanivas would rather let the world laugh than abandon love for the Beloved.