The Baidyanathdham Temple Complex

The people in queues since the morning With a potful of water, Flowers and bel leaves, If possible a little of milk, If possible with the holy Ganga water, Waiting to have their turn To offer to The lingam divine Inside the sanctum sanctorum Where in the dark room, Windowless, But with a small door, People entering and exiting. The bel leaves strewn across, The oil lamp burning at the corner, People coming in droves And going out, Sometimes suffocation, congestion and being trampled Troubling the psyche of the devotee, But he offering in a haste And moving out While the some hang on for their things to be said to In whispers, Demanded from and promised of Next time worships, Ay, into the court of the Lord, The Justice Divine, Which the humans cannot judge, As His Jurisprudence Divine. Many of the unmarried maidens in queues To get their dreams fulfilled, Many widows Past their life, past activity, Seeing the golden pitcher overhead And bowing the head before, With tears into the eyes, In neglect and widowhood, Poverty and penury Asking the Lord to deliver, As nothing to left in their life, Nothing as to fascinate The poor, old or ageing white clad widows, Passing life and the times somehow, As the Lord the final hope left for To seek consolation And redemption lies in His Hands, One who is the Giver and Taker of life. The beggars at the entrance of the grand temple, A mass of amputees and the old and the blind And the leprous, Singing the songs of Rama in zest, The old with an aluminum bowl seeking alms Somehow strugglingly, The blind singing and weeping, All weeping and praying for humbly, A scene melting the good heart, Struggling to enter the complex At his first encounter with cognizant conscience, With the psyche at askance, What to see and ask for The Ordaining Deity? The strictest seekers after from the bathing pond ghat measuring The length of the body And rolling straight over the ways, Standing, bowing and sleeping over, To cover the distance in strictest submission, Measuring and laying down and counting And demarcating the steps in prayerful submission, Standing, bowing the head before, hanging over the way With the front over the way to the temple And going and measuring the way To pray to finally, Those who thought of taking the measure In the strictest form of submission As for something to be fulfilled, The task still undone. The flower sellers selling flowers and giving a pot with a rope To pull the waterful from the temple well If water is therein in the rocky well, Otherwise purchase you the Ganga water, Maybe from the holy river or not, Who has seen it, Just the words will satisfy the seeker, As water has to be brought to, The private priests moving around For a catch of probable customers, Taking to the temples as guide, Asking for fees at the end And the vegetarian food to be given, More especially curd, beaten rice, banana and sweets And after a bargain and a budge from, The devotee readying to give. While a few can be seen rounding the temple With the folded hands As for doing a parikrama, A rounding, Finally after the five or three rounds, One stopping near the entrance And bowing the head After having closed the eyes, Remembering Him With the folded hands After the worship To do the last salutation To move away to their destinations. But what to heed most we heed it not While praying to, Beginning the worship With the start from Lord Ganesha, Rightly, we are sinners, A sinner am I, Sinful the activity of mine, You redeem us, redeem us, Lord, The sins we commit knowingly or unknowingly Need to be confessed and sought for a pardon first Rather than all that we do And the other thing, whatever be that, The rock-built architecture is no doubt the inspiration Of Biswakarma, the Divine Architect and Sculptor If we have nothing to record as historiography.