આવકારો

This is a geet of instruction, written in the second person the way a grandfather speaks: if someone asks their way to your courtyard, then give a sweet welcome. Dula Bhaya Kag came from the Charan community, the hereditary bards of Saurashtra, and his gift was to compress that tradition's public morality into lines a farmer could carry home from a night of santvani. Here the subject is the oldest duty of the village world — the guest — but Kag skips the mythological framing entirely. There is no god disguised as a traveller in this poem, no reward promised. The welcome is owed simply because someone came.

What lifts the poem above homily is its clear-eyed middle stanza. માનવીની પાસે કોઈ માનવી ન આવે રે — no one comes to a person; તારા દિવસની પાસે દુ:ખિયાં આવે રે — the suffering come to your days, your good fortune. It is a startlingly unsentimental account of why anyone knocks on a door: not for your company but because you have something and they, today, have less. And having said this plainly, the poem draws the opposite of the cynical conclusion — since it is need standing in your doorway, the courtesies matter more, not less. So the instructions become small and precise: don't ask why they've come, let them get to it slowly, don't look away while they talk, nod, give the હોંકારો — the little grunt of assent that tells a Gujarati speaker they are being heard. The final stanza carries Kag's signature in the Charan style, the poet stepping in by name to give the last three commands: water them, eat beside them, and walk them all the way to the ઝાંપો, the village gate.

The song entered the Gujarati school curriculum and never left, which means it has been recited by children for longer than most of them ever realise; sung on the folk stage, it became one of the most beloved items of the Saurashtra repertoire. Its afterlife is unusual for a poem: it functions less as literature than as etiquette, quoted at weddings and funerals and shop counters — આવકારો મીઠો આપજે — whenever someone needs reminding of how a guest is received.