A morning tea with Ranga !

 After retirement my Chennai life was over. 'Roaming everywhere, reaching Rangan over there' so goes a saying. By Mother's grace I reached back my Srirangam. That is some four years gone. When it was new, after a long long time, one morning I woke up to see bustling people across my door telling me, 'are you not coming? Perumal has come over there next door. Come come'. The Ranga Alimighty, is next door! Wow.. what these people talk! Next door is a doctor. Of course Narayana himself is a Doctor, curing the disease of worldliness. Yea why not? it suits Him. I was busy preparing tea then. But I heard the bustling feet so close to the side door where my oven was alive. I was curious. Opened it to see the Supreme Bhagavan smiling in his special Rangic style as if to say, 'hi! fool! Lazy crackpot! what? busy with tea?' I was so embarrassed. I was about to ask him, 'why not a cup?' to my own utter dismay. But anyhow I ran to the side isle to snatch a darshan across the streaming, milling crowd. But the hiatus of agony and shyness and joy, all rolled into one stunning time, I made it a poem and only then I was back to normal moods.

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'That day, sleeping beyond time,

getting up and ablutions done, taking bath

I was busy with my tea

and intended to sip it in all lazy cozy fold back

in a corner as if to see eternity passing by.

But out in the veranda people bustled here and there

calling me also to come and have darshan

'Perumal has come over there next door!

aren't you coming man?'

What! Perumal! The Supreme Ranga? over there just next door?

How is it? Is it not that we must go to the temple?

how come here next door?

Yea next door is a doctor.

and of course Ranga is also a doctor;

it suits: Vaidhyo Narayano Hari:

But how come..!

But the bustling new dresses

and trepid loving feet

are already all over the isle;

with the pulses beating

I opened the side door

to see Lord Ranga in all his bewitching smile

as if to ask : Hi lazy tard!

I was taken aback in the nearness

and lost ground a moment

about to offer him the tea at hand

and why not tea with Ranga?

I was catching myself. thank God !

next moment with the thought

hey it is some ubhayam;

so He is visiting over there;

it is routine this time of year

part of that day's table.

But somehow I felt

he should be spying me;

what spying? me? what for?

He is everywhere; and

how am I thinking anything before He knows it first?

But I think He likes my company

and many people doesn't like I know.

But why He alone.. should like me..

but perhaps it is new..

so by and by, over time He will learn

and come to shun me cool

but new? nay how come..

it comes all the way long

down the time, from the beginning,

and even before, I don't know when;

He knows it all

and He knows me the lazy tard;

sure He likes my friendship

and if not how come in strange hours

He calls me and ..

and even in hours strange to street-dogs..

surely He must be loving me

but what is there in me, a nothing..

strange! this love between a Everything All

and a just nobody puny nothing lazy fellow

perhaps He is so starved of company?

hey... come on... it is nonsense...

But don't you hear? He is hissing 'Rascal'

do I alone hear? yea perhaps to the internal ear.

or the ear of consciousness... leave it.

Yea that day I was about to share with him in a tumbler

the tea I had in hand

but if I would have done like that

oh what a shame would have I been

in others' eyes, a mad-cap perhaps

'that is why Sir, these mad men like this fool

should not be allowed free

they should have been put behind locked doors

but what to do? people would have thought

'how to manage cracks like these

and let them at large upon the world'

so perhaps the people would have

epitaphed my life rest of my living.

Thank God! I just escaped

by feeling down to earth

'it is after all somebody's ubhayam'

But down to earth? yea

'earth she sits upon and takes the sand in hand

and say this earth belongs to Vaman;

so says my dear'

Srirangam Mohanarangan

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