#Janabai

“A servant girl from an untouchable caste signed her poems "Nāmdev's dāsī" — turning the lowest name society gave her into an author's name — and the tradition she served thought those poems worth preserving for seven hundred years.”

“Devotion does not need leisure, learning, a temple or a priest. God, she sang, gets up before dawn and does the housework beside the servant who loves him — grinding grain, sweeping floors, carrying out the rubbish — and a woman scrubbing pots has as much standing to talk to him, scold him and adore him as any brahmin at any altar.”