Rahul Sankrityayan

Rahul Sankrityayan, it is not your travel literature nor Leningrad Univ. professorship That interests me, Neither your scholarship nor your language learning, What it actually stuns me is this that You forgot even your child bride Whom you married long, long ago And a truant, you had been away, away from home for so long Just like a nomad, a gipsy traveling far, Far off And years away from home, Forgot you even your Indian wife With whom rounded you around the hold fire For seven rounds That you would not betray her And betrayed you, forgot you But away from, married you a Mongolian and left you far off To come to India, A mendicant wandering and moving out on pilgrimages, Passing days in the company of sadhus In the Himalayan domains And sometimes trespassing too To learn and experience through And monastic learning did he get, Travels schooled him And finally settled you in Darjeeling to opt for a Nepali, Taking the teaching assignment at some Lankan university, A scholar like the Hindi poet Nagarjuna You had a wandering nature of your, Learnt you taking to company, Living on alms, Visiting across, sometimes trespassing far Into the domains, Which they lie beyond, As the case is Kipling’s novel, Kim, But whatever do you, you should not have forgotten Your first child-wife.