Secular songs Introduction

Introduction

I never believe in the artificial division of ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’.  In fact, for me secularism is also sacred and sacred has its own secular views.  However, the reason for me to keep these two divisions of my poems is that while I express my bhakti giving theological explanation to them, in secular songs I give expression to my free thought without limiting to any theological interpretation.  In fact, there are few secular songs in which I also used the word ‘god’.  This expresses how artificial the division is.  Above all I use secular songs to express my view on the current events in the society whereas my bhakti songs express my personal sadhana. 

Though I began to write songs back from my college days, I never shared them with any of my friends. I always wrote poems only for my personal needs.  As one or two of my attempts to publish my poems through some Tamil weekly magazines failed, I stopped sharing with others.  But I recorded them in a notebook and left with one of my friends.  But one day his mother sold old books and paper to the person who collects them. I lost that note book in which I recorded more than 400 poems as his mother didn’t know that it was my personal notebook. Then I stopped even writing songs for some time.  Though I resumed it later, I never recorded them in any notes but always wrote on back side books which I was reading or in some papers and never preserved them separately. So, I don’t know how many poems I wrote.  However, once I began to write bhakti poems, I also started to write secular poems side by side.  As usual I never shared any of my poems with anyone—even to my close friends.  But as I don’t want to keep it buried in my computer, I have decided to post them on Facebook.

As I never shared my poems with others, I don’t expect others to read or write their comments.  Even if they write any comment (both positively and negatively) it is not going to affect me much.  At the same time, I recognize others’ right to express their view.  But if someone reads and is entertaining, I will be happy about it.

Every criterion that we create is to have some category for our convenience to remember and express them. Though I too don’t believe in the (artificial) division between ‘secular’ and ‘sacred’, yet in those songs in which I refer to God or my bhakti (relation) with Him, they become non-secular (religious/spiritual) songs. Whereas any song in which I directly or indirectly not referring to my bhakti (experience) is a secular one. For example, in Bhakti Theology Song 317 I wrote: ‘Others may think that this has nothing to do with bhakti theology. But as a bhakta of the Lord as well as a human being I struggle several times where to involve and where to withdraw. And as usual my final refuge is God alone.’

As we are an integrated being with body, mind, and atman, every area of our life is spiritual or secular depending upon one’s approach to the solution to the issues.

I will first share the Tamil text followed by a rough English translation.