बर्बक की प्रार्थना
By शांढों चाओबी, गिरधर काठी
Summary
The text presents a poem by Shandhao Chaobi, a Hungarian poet, translated by Girdhar Kathi. The poem is a prayer or plea directed to primordial elements—"ancient stone" and "light-mother rock"—asking to be taken back into their womb. The speaker reflects on their birth as a first mistake, where everything flowed as they desired: tigers and tree roots intertwined, snow howling, and the consciousness of wind and peaks dripping like kohl. The speaker identifies as a weary traveler, master of the path, an existence of constellations, yet laments that everything they added within themselves has made them a slave because of transience. Only madness flows within these elements. The poem repeats the opening invocation, concluding with the speaker addressing the ancient stone and light-mother rock, stating they are on the stain of the womb. The text is entirely in Hindi, with some Gujarati script interspersed, and appears to be a complete poetic work.
Conclusion
The poem's raw, visceral imagery—of stone, womb, and elemental forces—suggests a profound crisis of identity and belonging. The speaker's plea to be returned to the "womb" of the rock implies a rejection of constructed, fragile existence in favor of a primal, unchanging state. This outcome is not merely personal but speaks to a broader human condition: the tension between the artificial, accumulated self and the desire for a pure, unmediated origin. The implication is that all human striving, all that we "add" to ourselves, ultimately renders us "broken" by its very transience. The only enduring truth, the poem suggests, lies in the silent, eternal dialogue between the self and the fundamental matter of the universe—a stark, humbling conclusion that redefines meaning not as creation, but as return.