ಶ್ರೀ ಅನ್ನಪೂರ್ಣಾ ಜೀ ಕೀ ಆರತೀ

A Hindi arati to Annapurna sung to a refrain that is only a bow — again and again my salutation, mother, again and again — and its two middle verses are held together by sound rather than by sense. One runs on the letter ca and stays there: the clever four-faced one kisses her feet, and the lovely dark discus-bearer, and the moon-crested and moon-faced one stands as her servant. The next does the same with da, on the word for pity, in a wretched state pity is your name. Between them she is given a place above the great gods in a line that is startling for a household arati: through dissolutions and world-ages and births, where is Krishna, where is Rama? What the singer asks for at the end is shelter rather than food.