| 21. And then the peacock!
Peacocks are rare in Maharashtra but they abound in Gujarat. When I was in
Gujarat, I used to walk some ten miles daily, and saw many peacocks. When clouds gather and
it is about to rain and the sky darkens, the peacocks begin to call. You will understand it only
when you have once heard for yourself the piercing note drawn out from the depths of its heart. The
structure of our music is built on this note of the peacock which is our
shadaja swara - "shadjam rauti."
This primary note we got from the peacock, then
from it, we derived the other notes. Its face turned upwards to the clouds, its majestic
feathers spread out like an umbrella, as its hears the roaring clouds - what it man's finery before
this beauty? Kings and emperors too deck themselves elaborately, but how can they compete with the
glory of the peacock's tail? Those thousand eyes, that many-colored brightness, the marvelously soft
and lovely texture, the consummate workmanship! Look at this tail for a
while, and see in it the presence of the Lord. All creation is decked out
in this way. Wherever we turn, the Lord stands there for us to see but
we who do not see Him are wretched. Tukaram says:-
"The Lord is omnipresent and ever-present;
but to the wretched He is elusive."
To the saints there is prosperity always, but we unfortunate ones are
troubled by famine everywhere. |
