જળકમળ છાંડી જાને બાળા

This is the Kaliya-daman — the taming of the serpent Kaliya from the Bhagavata Purana, in which the child Krishna leaps into a poisoned pool of the Yamuna and dances the many-hooded black snake into submission. But Narsinh Mehta, writing in the fifteenth century as the founding poet of the Gujarati language, refuses to tell it as cosmic spectacle. He opens instead on the serpent's frightened wife, the નાગણ, who mistakes God for a lost boy and pleads with him to leave before her husband wakes: જળકમળ છાંડી જાને બાળા, સ્વામી અમારો જાગશે — "leave the water-lotus and go, child; my lord will wake." Her fear is entirely domestic and entirely misplaced; she believes she is shielding a stray child from a monster, not knowing the child is divine and the monster is doomed. The dramatic irony carries the whole poem.

Almost the entire piece is built as samvad, rapid dialogue. The wife warns; Krishna answers with unnerving calm that he has not lost his way — મથુરા નગરીમાં જુગટુ રમતાં, નાગનું શીશ હું હારિયો — he lost the serpent's head in a dice game at Mathura, and has come to collect his winnings. When she tries to bribe him with a necklace and cord to slip away unseen, "a theft hidden from my husband," he refuses in kind. Only then does she wake the snake, pressing his feet and twisting his whiskers — ચરણ ચાંપી મૂછ મરડી — and the battle detonates in two lines: the thousand hoods hiss જેમ ગગન ગાજે હાથિયો, like an elephant trumpeting until the sky roars. The folk diction is vivid and affectionate — Krishna calls himself નટવર નાનડો, the little dancer-boy, and કૃષ્ણ કાનુડો, Krishna the darling — collapsing the distance between the terrible god and the neighbourhood child.

The arc bends from fear to recognition to sharanagati, surrender, the very heart of bhakti. The naginis fold their hands — અમે અપરાધી કાંઈ ન સમજ્યાં, ન ઓળખ્યાં ભગવંતને, "we are offenders, we did not recognise the Lord" — and the wife who once offered pearls to smuggle Krishna out now heaps a platter of pearls to worship him: થાળ ભરીને મોતીડે, નાગણે કૃષ્ણ વધાવિયો. The closing line stamps the poem with Narsinh's signature chhap, નરસૈંયાના નાથ, the Lord of Narsaiyo — the only authorship mark on a song he never wrote by hand, transmitted orally for five centuries. Long a fixture of Gujarati school textbooks and a prabhat and Janmashtami standard, it remains one of the most widely memorised poems in the language, and modern listeners increasingly hear an ecological plea in it too — Krishna cleansing a poisoned river — though that reading is a contemporary overlay on Narsinh's devotional design.