Reconnecting with poet Surdas through Mewari paintings

BN Goswamy

Struck by a warrior’s (soor in Hindi) arrow

There is piercing pain in the chest.

But when you are pierced by a verse of Sur(das)

Your whole body feels as if set on fire.

— Saying attributed to Tansen, the great musician

I AM reluctant to admit it, but I have not, personally, had too many encounters with Surdas till now. Of course, I know the great 16th-century poet a little. One kept hearing snatches of his wonderful compositions in one’s childhood: “Maiya mori main nahin maakhan khaayo”; “Nisdin barsat nayan hamaare”; “Akhiyaan Hari darshan ki pyaasi”, and the like. I also remember the film ‘Bhakta Surdas’, which our parents cheerfully took us, young ones, to see, with the great KL Saigal singing. Later in life, one had the good fortune of listening, sitting close-by, to Kumar Gandharva sing, magically, “Akhiyaan ati anuraagi”, or “Nayan ghata ghatata na ek ghari”. I also know a fair bit about his life and career: birth in a little village near Delhi; his blindness whether from birth or, as in another version, self-inflicted; his enormous learning and his brief exchange with the emperor Akbar; his deep devotion to Krishna and his encounter with the great Vaishnava teacher Vallabhacharya, who urged him to celebrate the timeless lilas of Krishna in his music rather than keep beseeching the Lord for favours.

All this, but I had not read him much. Till I discovered him, so to speak, and came under his spell, through a series of Mewari paintings based on his crowning achievement, the ‘Sur Sagara’, ‘Surdas’ Ocean’. Every single folio in these series shows him, the blind poet, seated, playing on his cymbals in some corner, while the page contains a visual parallel to his composition, words of which are inscribed at the top. On the face of it, the ‘Sur Sagara’ is a rendering of all the 12 books of the great Vaishnava text, the ‘Bhagavata Purana’, but the most celebrated part of it is the Tenth Book that centres upon Krishna, especially his countless lilas, in the sylvan setting of Vraj (or Braj): his enticing childhood in the household of Yashoda and Nanda; his seductive pranks; his love of cows and of his flute; his turning into the heart’s desire, the true guileless love, of every single maiden of Vrindavan; his love, especially of Radha, and hers for him.

Set, like a diamond, in the heart of this part of the ‘Sur Sagara’ is a section called the ‘Bhramara Gita’, ‘Song of the Bumble-bee’. The setting is dramatic. Krishna, after having killed his evil uncle, Kamsa, stays on for a while in Mathura, living in the house of Kubja, the hunch-backed maiden whose deformity he had removed in return for a kind act of hers. From there he sends his friend and confidant Uddhava to Vrindavan, carrying a message to his family and his numberless beloveds that he is not coming back to them, just yet. Uddhava, charged with the heartless assignment, goes to Vrindavan and spends a comfortable night, but in the morning, he has to confront the gopis. He arrives, handsome almost like Krishna, “with long arms and eyes like fresh-blown lotuses, clad in yellow silk raiment and wearing a garland of lotuses, with a lotus-like cheerful countenance, brightened with ear-rings set with resplendent jewels”, as the Bhagavata describes him. He, it turns out, is the ‘bumble-bee’ the text refers to and how the gopis would refer to him: bearing cloud — shyama, and yellow colours, but capable of stinging. When he delivers Krishna’s message to the gopis, it is as if lightning has struck. They cannot believe their ears, and speak back to Uddhava: complaining while shedding ‘ceaseless tears’. Their words come like a river in flood. This is where Surdas’ magic comes in. In verses that cover something like 40 pages, and are hundreds in number, one sees that the poet, a great Krishna bhakta himself, is deeply, viscerally, moved. The pain of eternal viraha, the utter sense of desolation, bursts through each word, refusing to leave. The words though are placed in the mouth of the gopis who speak one after the other to Uddhava — ‘Udho’ in the Braj Bhasha that the great poet wrote in — accusing him of betrayal, of speaking falsehoods, of concealing from them the ‘fact’ that Krishna is not returning because he has been ensnared by the wiles of Kubja.

“Udho, man naahin das bees,” they say. “We do not have 10 hearts or 20; each of us had only one and He has walked off with it.” There is kataksha, upalambha, anunaya, rosha. When one gopi stops, another takes over. “Sakhi in nainan se ghana hare,” begins the song of one. ‘O friend which cloud can bring more rain than our eyes?’; “Ab in gayyan kaun charaawe,” asks another. ‘Who is going to take these cows to the fields now?’; “Madhukar, shyam hamaare chor,” sings one, “He, O bumble-bee, is a thief having run away with our hearts”. And another, breaking down, is barely able to utter her words, “Hari bichhuran ki shool na jaayi”. “Never shall go away this pain that your dagger-like words have riven our hearts with”; “Nayan ghat ghatata na ek ghari”. “The vessels of water that our eyes are will not empty out one bit.” It is endless, this bitter dialogue between them, the gopis, with Udho. When Uddhava asks them that they should now forget Krishna and take to yoga, to meditation, to fixing their minds on the Absolute, they mock him. “Raakho sab yeh yog at-pato Udho paaye paraun.” “Keep this absurd yoga to yourself, Udho”; “Phiri kahaa banaawat baatein; phiri kahaa sikhaawat maun”. “Why, wherefore, are you using this chicanery; and why, wherefore, are you commending meditations to us?”; “Udho yoga thago-ri Braj na bikai hai; moori ke paatan ke badle ko muktaahal dai hai?”, “Udho, this yoga that you talk about is all a hoax; what you are asking of us? Trade a pearl necklace and receive a platter of leaves in return?”

It is like an incantation; the words keep coming naturally: like a spider weaving its web, a weaver-bird constructing its nest. The pain one can see will never go away. That is why Kumar Gandharva’s voice at this point sounds as if soaked in tears.

There is much truth in the popular saying weighing the relative merit of great Hindi poets of the past: “Sur soor, Tulasi sasi, udgan Keshavadas; anya kavi khadyot sama, jahan tahan karat prakaas”. “Sur is like the Sun (of poetry), Tulsi is a moon, and Keshavadas like a cluster of stars. The rest are all like fireflies flitting about, shedding but a faint glow.”

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