Metaphor, the loss in the game
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
खेळों लागलों सुरकवडी । माझी घोंगडी हारपली ॥1॥
कान्होबाचे पडिलों गळां । घेई गोपाळा देई झाडा ॥ध्रु.॥
मी तों हागे उघडा जालों । अवघ्या आलों बाहेरी ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे बुिद्ध काची । नाहीं ठायींची मजपाशीं ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
While playing the gambling game, my blanket was lost. I have flung myself around Krishna's neck, pleading: Give it back, O Gopala. Give me a full reckoning. I was squatting to relieve myself when I was left bare, exposed to everyone, out in the open. Says Tuka, my wits were thin clay; I never truly had them.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
I joined the gambling game, and my blanket was lost. I have flung myself around Kanhoba's neck and plead: Take it, Gopala, and give me a full reckoning. I was squatting to relieve myself when I was left bare, out in the open before everyone. Tuka says: my wits were thin clay; I never really had them.
What it means
Tukaram stages his self-surrender as a child who gambled and lost. The blanket is what he called his own, his body and standing, and in the play of the world it has slipped from him. So he throws his arms around Krishna's neck and demands a settling of accounts, half claim and half clinging. The image of being caught bare and exposed before all is his confession of helplessness, stripped of every covering he trusted. He closes by admitting his own foolishness: the cleverness he relied on was as fragile as unfired clay, and was never truly his to begin with.
Worldly Metaphors
Poems using images from games, occupations, and daily life as spiritual teaching.
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