Janabai and the God Who Helped Her Work
A household servant in Pandharpur whose songs are still sung — and who, tradition says, had Vitthal himself sitting at the other handle of her grindstone.
Janabai was born around the thirteenth century in Gangakhed, Maharashtra, to a poor family. After her mother died, her father brought her to Pandharpur and left her in service at the house of Namdev.
She remained a servant in that household all her life — grinding grain, gathering cow dung, scouring vessels, sweeping the yard.
And in the middle of that work she composed hundreds of abhangas.
There was no distance in her devotion. She called Vitthal Vithu majha — my Vithu. One of her best-known lines runs:
Dalita kandita, tuj gain Ananta — "Grinding and pounding, I will go on singing of you, O endless one."
Tradition holds that Vitthal came and shared her chores — sat at the other handle of the grindstone, walked with her to collect dung, combed her hair. She argued with him too, and complained to him.
Once a necklace went missing from the temple and Janabai was accused of the theft. She was taken away for punishment. The story says that even then she called only on her Vithu, and the truth came out on its own.
Her abhangas carry both the pain of her caste and her station, and the conviction that devotion is nobody's private property. The Warkari tradition calls her Sant Janabai, and her verses are still sung on the pilgrimage to Pandharpur.
The spirit of it: She did not abandon her work for devotion — she made the work itself devotion. The kitchen, the yard and the grindstone are temples too, if the name keeps running there.
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