your bridge home
Saints and Poets
He was told his poems were worthless and should be destroyed. He put them in the river himself, and then sat down on the bank and waited.
He was an uneducated shopkeeper, writing devotional verse in the language of the village.
And there were people who thought he had no business doing it.
The objection was about standing. Sacred matters were expounded by men trained to expound them. In the language such things were written in.
And here was a Dehu trader with no learning. Composing songs about God, in ordinary Marathi.
And having them sung by anybody who felt like singing them.
The tradition names Rameshwar Bhatt, a learned man of the region, as the one who pressed the point. The verdict was that the compositions should not exist, and that Tukaram should destroy them.
Tukaram agreed.
The rest of this story, read aloud, and a new one every day.