The Kabir dohe always end with "kahat Kabira" which can be translated as "says Kabira". An alliterative take on such a moniker for Saint Tulsidas would be " Tells Tulsi." I would like to play a little on this title. I want it to read "Tulsi Tales" because the two tales i am going to talk of tell us a very interesting story indeed.
Seemingly, as a child, Tulsidas was known as "Rambola Dubey". Dubey was the family name. As for the first name, there is this very interesting story. Apparently, the gestation period before his birth was a full year, proper twelve months. As a baby, he had a perfect set of teeth. He looked more like a boy than a baby. Most interestingly, his very first enunciation in this wicked world of ours was not a cry like the rest of us.
He uttered "Ram" as the first ever sound he enunciated. So his name "Rambola". His parents were a little upset due to all such unusual aspects. So the dai looked after him. Soon she, too, died. Thereafter, Goddess Parvati herself fed him in the guise of a Brahmin woman, it seems.
I find this story most interesting. His very first utterance in a way precludes his destiny as a devotee-cum-saint poet. His childhood signifies, moreover, how the society creates the cast-away's, and most importantly, how the rejects, the downtrodden, the outsiders are helped to survive in a hapless world which one day they might make different.
Yet another story about Tulsidas that has fascinated me for a long time is how his amour turns in to devotion for the Lord. Apparently, he loves his wife to distraction. Once she goes to her parents' place. He cannot tolerate the separation.
He swims across a river in spate, and climbs up a rope, which is actually a snake hanging, so that he can see her. She is not flattered, however. In fact, she chides him for his obsession which drives him not only to the holy shrines, but also to his greatness as a poet-saint who made the life of Lord Rama accessible to the common man.
I love these Tulsi Tales because, in my opinion, they show how a reject, a common man can be the center of an entire Bhakti sect which changed the very course of Indian identity, I would say!
Pratima@The turns and twists life takes/ banality by magic it in to grandeur makes!
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