Sweet Legacy of Sravan
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The real Brij Bhumi is in our hearts, says RENUKA KHANDEKAR

Janmashtami will fall on August 23 this year (not that we need an excuse for thinking of Krishna!). But while the country, from Meghalaya to Malabar, from Dwarka to Puri, looks forward eagerly to the anniversary of the Holy Birth, surely we will please the Divine Baby most if we are tender to those little children who cannot drink that deep of childhood because they are handicapped. The story of Surdas bears this out. (Remember that lovely calender painting a lot of us grew up with, of the ecstatic old saint singing on the grass while a mischievous
Balakrishna looks on? It is as much a collective memory as that famous photo of Gandhi and Nehru sitting together on a dais).

Well, in 1478, in Sihi village, near Delhi, a blind boy was born to a poor priest. Neither the baby’s parents nor his three brothers cared for him. Instead they starved him, mocked him and beat him. He alone did not get new clothes for Deepavali. When the village children taunted him and he ran to his mother, she shooed him away. When he sat down for lessons with his brothers, his father chased him off. Desperate with loneliness and neglect, the little blind boy left home one day, in the wake of a travelling band of singers. They stopped for the night near a lake. They fed the child but did not want to be burdened by him. At dawn, they stole away while he slept. Where could the boy go? He sat there by the lake and sang aloud. The sincerity of his feelings made everyone stop and listen. The lake was a popular halt for travellers and Sur learned a lot by listening. The villagers kept him alive with food.

By the age of 14, Sur’s sixth sense was acutely developed and he helped the villagers locate missing things, cattle and children. Someone gave him an ektara. Soon, he attracted chelas who wrote his songs down. One night Surdas dreamt that Krishna called to him. Like so many before and after him, Sur carried an interior landscape called Brij Bhumi within his head. But this time, the physical Vrindavan was close enough to beckon, even through deep jungle. On the way, he fell, unseeing, into a dry well. Sur patiently waited for someone to rescue him. On the seventh day, he heard a bright, boyish voice call out: ‘‘Hold my hands, I will pull you out’’. The boy disappeared as soon as Sur came out, though he shouted himself hoarse, calling after him. Sur was convinced that this was Krishna himself.

Everyone else on the route to Vrindavan thought he was crazy. Swami Vallabhacharya took charge of Surdas and appointed him the chief singer at the Srinath (Krishna) temple in Govardhan, near Vrindavan. They also say that Tansen sang Surdas’s songs at court. Akbar was charmed and invited Surdas to Agra. But Sur sent word that he could only sing at ‘‘Krishna’s court’’. Typically, Akbar is said to have gone himself to hear Sur. If you go to the Dwarkadhish temple at Mathura, you’ll see that old calendar image brightly painted on a wall. And if you go to Krishna Janmabhoomi, try to forgive Sikander Lodi and Aurangzeb. They did what they felt was the right thing, at a certain point in history. Those days are long over. Remember Akbar instead. Remember Ras Khan, the medieval Krishna bhakt from Mathura whose Rachnavali resonates with love and longing for Him:

Kal kaanan kundal morpakha, ur pe banmaal biraajati hai
Murali kar main adhra muskaani tarang mahachhabi chhaajati hai
Ras Khani lakhai tan peetapata sat damini ki duti laajati hai
Vah bansuri ki dhuni kaan pare kulkaani hiyo taji bhaajati hai!

After all, Krishna stole our hearts long before a couple of ill-disposed sultans came by and He dances in us long after. Nor is Nandanandan, the branded property of any political party. He belongs to us, the common people, and we have never let anyone take Him away. The sheer strength of Krishnabhakti in regions as far apart as Assam and Kerala is proof that we, like Surdas, carry Brij Bhumi within our own hearts, an inner realm of gold, where the Magic Flute plays its Song of Songs to those who want to hear. Rather, when we see the clogged and sluggish Yamuna, does it not strike us that there is greater piety in cleaning this once-queenly river than in lamenting a couple of incidents in the past? ‘Shreeji’, as they call her in Brij, is brimful of ancient memories. Surely the sweetest must be that of a stormy Sravan night long ago, when a worn, worried man set his trembling feet in her waters, a basket on his head?

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