A Musical Interview with Mirabai, Sixteenth Century Saint-Poet

One of my favorite college courses last year was a course called “Sacred Sounds of South Asia.” This class explored various South Asian music traditions, including Sikh devotional music and South Asian Islamic Devotional Music. I was particularly struck by the poetry of the sixteenth century saint, Mirabai, and its interpretation by renowned singer Lara Mangeshkar. As I read more about Mirabai, I became inspired by her backstory and legacy. Mirabai, a princess from India, defied societal norms by rejecting her arranged marriage to a prince and declaring her devotion to Krishna as her true and only love. Her steadfast commitment to Krishna exemplified her resistance to the patriarchal structures of her era. Mirabai's profound influence on feminist thought led me to wonder how she figures in the modern imagination. This led me to write the following play/short scene from a novel, in which I am interviewing Mirabai in my room.

The play incorporates my own thought process as I listened to Mirabai’s numerous bhajans. Mirabai and I converse in mostly verse form, a form which allows freer expression outside the bounds of conventional sentence structure. The play features quotations from Mirabai’s original poetry into my own writing and reflects on how Mirabai’s poetry enhances her music’s allure:

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[Play begins with me writing a letter]

Dear Prakriti, 

Something wonderful is happening. I’m starring in a play. Now, before you start congratulating me on my acting debut, allow me to note that: 

1. I have zero acting experience. 

2. The play is still very much a work in progress, and sometimes I wonder if it’s turning into a short scene of a novel. 

3. The playwright (me) is ummm…struggling to create a somewhat logical plot. 

Nevertheless, I’m claiming that this is wonderful. The last time I wrote a play, I was eleven years old. It was called, “Mrs. Robinson is a Goose.” And…it was about a self-consumed woman who turns into a goose. She only turns back into a human when she learns to be compassionate again (Laughs) Honestly, I thought I had peaked as a playwright when I saw it in performance. It was…such an honor for me. 

[Silence, looking into the distance before picking up pen again]

I am twenty years old now, and for the first time in nine years, I feel inspired to write again. This time though, my play will be about a 16th century Hindu mystic named Mirabai. This is my idea: The play will run through all my visions of her as I listened to her sweet devotional songs or bhajans. It will unveil what I found truly special in her literary and musical voice: this raw yearning for her God, Krishna. It will explore a deep, uncompromising love for Him that withstood the test of time and translation. 

(Pause) 

Prakriti, I see opportunity here. [wags pencil while thinking] I sense something wonderful, something I haven’t felt in a long, long time. 

[Exits stage…stage turns dark and then there is a spotlight on the center, where I am sitting cross legged, leaning back on my hands, and looking up. Rumbling music. I’m wearing earphones and I’m completely still. Suddenly I take the earphones out and the music stops. There’s silence for a few seconds, to the point where the audience is confused. Finally, I look forward to the audience before speaking again.]

We’ll begin with fascination. Curiosity. The catalyst of every vision. [said very confidently, and then got up to start pacing.] 

In March, I attended a class on Sacred Sound in South Asia. We spoke about Mirabai and listened to the renowned singer, Lata Mangeshkar, sing musical renditions of her poetry. 

And…I was especially enthralled by this one bhajan:  

[Me pacing, reading the translation as I play the bhajan from my computer]

“What all things should I tell you about my brown skinned Lord Girdhari. 

Our bond of love is so old since previous births, 

which will never cease to exist…

Beautiful body, glittering face of my beloved (Lord Girdhari), 

May his form be protected from all evil eyes” (What All The Things) 

Mangeshkar decorated each note with dazzling, detailed ornaments. The tabla maintained a steady rhythm as her voice climbed otherworldly registers so effortlessly. Her gentle, controlled quiver on the words (saavraa) साँवरां could almost be mistaken as a bird-call. Mangeshkar’s elaborate trills masterfully adhered to the steady tempo and gave a sense of limitless playfulness. Long after the class, I continued to ponder about these devotional lyrics and how Mangeshkar’s remarkable musical sensitivity brought life to them. 

During the next few weeks, I listened to more of Mirabai’s bhajans and read more about her backstory. Her confessions of divine love felt so…human, so earnest and real. I learned that Mirabai was an Indian princess who believed Krishna was not only her God, but her lover and that she resisted her marriage to another Indian prince. After being forced to marry as per the custom, she spent all of her days in the temple instead of the palace. Everyone [waves hand in air] , especially her in-laws, rebuked her for it.

But their disdain didn’t matter. Mirabai’s devotion to Krishna was…all-consuming, uncompromising, and now, absolutely captivating to me. 

(Pause) 

Soon, Mirabai became a significant presence in both my intellectual and imaginative world. 

I became enthralled with how Mirabai’s words contributed to her music’s allure. 

[cuts to me sitting on a couch with a pillow.] 

Then, this one night, I fell asleep listening to another Meera bhajan by Lata Mangeshkar. I had a vision that Mirabai and I sat together, talking and singing so softly. 

Besides Mirabai, my home, Tokyo, has been on my mind. I haven’t been back in ten years and I’ve been missing it terribly. (Pause) So, it felt natural to ask her about what she considered “home.” She paced by the window, her feet making quick, rhythmic steps before answering: 

“Home…is where I’m unconditionally loved and understood, Pallavi.

(she addressed me by my Hindi name) 

Home…where even the desolate weather is endearing. 

Where the bleak clouds collide with the beautiful sun. 

Home where I can run free.

Where I can bloom with the flowers 

And stroke their thornless stems. 

Home where I can be 

Childlike and wise. 

Where I can 

Balance innocence and infinite perception.” 

She placed her hand on mine, and sighed, “Don’t you see? Krishna is home. He is everywhere, in Tokyo, in India, in your heart..” she said, as she gestured to my chest. 

I nodded, holding my locket. “I’ve been reading so much of you…about you, Mirabai” I said, “I think I understand, but I'm afraid only superficially.” 

She giggled, then wheezed, weeped? I was a little taken aback by this sudden outpouring of emotion. 

“No, don’t go” she cried, reaching for my hand, “You know, you’re not the only one who doesn’t get it. They call me crazy, you know that? But…I’m grateful for your questions.” 

(Pause)

“I can’t help what I feel, where I’m from…what I am.” 

“Where are you from Mirabai?” I said, still confused. 

“How could a God feel like home?” 

When she didn’t answer, I followed with a simpler question, 

“What do you feel? Say it again, I might be able to understand.” 

She closed her eyes, and it took her what felt like hours to make her next remark. When Mirabai finally opened her eyes, she said, 

“I feel…I feel

Homesick for something interstellar. 

Like a bird that gazes all night at the passing moon, 

I have lost myself dwelling in Krishna (Unbreakable, O Lord.)

“Sing with me,

dance with me, Pallavi” she continued, guiding my hands in the air,  

“Let me show you His wonder, 

And I promise we’ll get lost together.

Come come, 

Travel in his heart, 

And he’ll travel in yours.” 

Our hands clasped, 

And she twirled around me

For a while, time stopped as 

Mirabai leapt into motion. 

My voice was croaky, 

And my accent annoyingly Western, 

But it didn’t matter. 

Our bodies danced in harmony. 

She seamlessly changed key and rhythm, immersing herself in a new bhajan, 

entitled “Sanwra Mhari Preet Nibhajonji.” She sang this in the direction of the gleaming moonlight. 

“Saanwraaaaa!” she sang, pressing her hand against the windowsill. The timbre of her high voice as she called out to her beloved was so silvery and pure, my ears were buzzing. She paused for a moment, letting the echoes of her song subside, before murmuring the same wavering melody again quietly, “Saanwraaaaa!” Mirabai then kneeled down, and started to slap her knee to mimic a tabla. 

She continued: 

“Mhari Preet Nibhaajonji…

Mhari Preet Nibhaajonji…

[You must reciprocate my love toward you. 

You are the ocean of Gunas…

You must forgive my meanness…]” 

Saanwraaaaa!” (Saawara Re Mhaari Preet). 

Her lips curled into a knowing smile. The steady beating against her knee combined with her buoyant melody felt so playful and joyous. Mirabai’s light hearted song strikingly contrasted the “meanness” she confessed. 

In those moments, it suddenly occurred to me that her laughter, her weeping and her confessed jealousy of other gopis, were all one and the same. Mirabai was indeed reaching for the moon, and its gravitational pull had released her from all worldly attachment, including organized emotion. We kept dancing in circles, and I lost track of time. Every movement, every emotion was fluid; Divinity never felt so natural.  

My jaw dropped when she finally stopped and looked up at me. Her dizzy eyes were the color of Krishna’s blue complexion. Before I could process this however, Mirabai was singing and dancing again: 

“Come, Charmer of Hearts

For your speech is sweet. 

O Krishna, did You ever rightly value 

My childhood love? 

Without Your sight I feel no ease, 

My mind swings this way and that” (Alston, 75).

She always ended her song with the signature phrase: 

“Mira says: I am Yours. 

I will proclaim this, with Your permission, 

To the beat of the drum.” 

It reminded me of my own childhood letters to God, which I occasionally leafed through when I came home from college: 

“Dear God, Can you hear me? It’s me, Vivi. I’m nine years old.” 

And another one: 

“Dear God, Are you here yet? It’s me, Vivian. I’m ten years old today. 

We have so much to say to each other. Why do I always have to speak first?” 

My family members called them “adorable.” But since meeting Mirabai, I started to remember them as timeless, sacred and terribly important. 

Our voices, our childhoods and our homes overlapped as Mirabai and I whirled

about each other’s bodies. 

She called, 

“Who will listen to me? 

To whom can I speak?

Come, my Beloved, and quench my pain.” (Alston, 75).

When we finally rested to catch our breath, I came to my senses, and felt inclined to dismiss Mirabai’s poeticism as delusional, unhinged even. But then I swiftly hushed my adult, logical brain and tried to think like an imaginative child again: that child who wrote about a woman who turned into a goose, that child who wrote letters to God, that child within me who still wanted to go home…

[Music continues, our hands making shadows of foxes on the wall to signify childhood.]

In the lull of our conversation, Mirabai interrupted the silence with a question for me this time, “Tell me, Pallavi, if you could describe your mind, what would it look like?” 

“Hmm, that’s a good question,” I replied, and then after some thought, “A goose.”

“Sometimes I feel like I’m living the sequal to that play I wrote, this time entitled ‘Pallavi is a Goose.’ I’m waiting to wake up as a human again…waiting to reintroduce myself to the world as something more whole, more aware.” 

I looked up from my lap and we locked eyes before erupting into chuckles, a sublime rupture in our interview. 

“You’re never going to fully wake up, Pallavi.

You will never be fully aware, as you’d like to be.

You will simply enter deeper, wider dreams of reality.” 

“I know…” I thought aloud, “I’ll probably never know very much about anything.”

“But your bhajans, Mirabai,” I added, “They inspire me. I’ve been so worried, so guarded, all my life. They inspire me to surrender to my intuition, my own Krishna.” 

She smiled and stilled my racing heart, 

“You are good, Pallavi, you are good…” She closed the curtain while whispering, 

“Good night, Pallavi. You’ve been cautious all day, You can be clairvoyant now.

You can enter a better, kinder home, within and without.  

…Something wonderful is happening.”