રેતીની ઓટલી

This is a બાળગીત — a children's song — from Rang Rang Vadaliyan (1939), Sundaram's collection of verse for the very young, published the same year as his major adult volume Vasudha. The premise is entirely a child's: on an empty seashore, children have built a રેતીની ઓટલી, a tall and solitary terrace of sand ("ઊંચી અટૂલી"), the kind of raised sitting-platform found outside a Gujarati home. Having built it, they issue a decree — binding it with "રામજીની આણ," Ramji's oath, a child's most binding pledge — that every visitor must leave behind exactly one footprint. What follows is a sequence of grave, courteous invitations to three guests who happen to be the elements themselves.

The genius of the poem is the arc it traces between its playfulness and its imagery. Each મહેમાન (guest) is asked for a single પગલું (footprint), and each footprint is a small universe. The Sun is to press a golden print patterned with "નવલખ તારાની ભાત" — nine-lakh, or countless, stars — with two smears of dusk's colours; the Wind, a fortunate print inscribed with tales of fairyland and filled with the scent of flowers; the Sea, a pearl print housing a seven-storeyed palace of all seven netherworlds, lit with "માણેકના દીવા," ruby lamps. Sundaram fuses the cadence of folk lullaby — the plaintive "જી રે" that closes nearly every line, the incremental "પહેલા… બીજા… ત્રીજા" repetition — with the lush, jewelled excess of miniature painting. The diminutives keep the register childlike and fond: not just ઓટલી but ફૂલડાં, પાંદડી, બાળુડે.

Then the final stanza turns, and the whole cosmic pageant collapses into tenderness. "ધીરે મહેમાન જરા ધીરેથી આવજો" — come softly, guests, softly — the children beg, so that the delicate "પગલાંની પાંદડી," the petal of each footprint, will not dissolve, "બાળુડે ઓટલી બનાવી જી રે," because a child made this terrace. The escalating grandeur of stars and undersea palaces gives way to the plain fact that any wave or breeze could erase it all. In a child's voice, Sundaram has written a quiet meditation on the impermanence of the beautiful things children build — which is why the song has stayed in Gujarati school readers and on the lips of children for generations.