Metaphor, God the taker
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
मुळींचा तुह्मां लागला चाळा । तो गोपाळा न संडा ॥1॥
घ्यावें त्याचें देणें चि नाहीं । ये चि वाहिं देखतसों ॥ध्रु.॥
माझी तरी घोंगडी मोठी । गांडीची लंगोटी सोडिस ना ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे म्यां सांडिली आशा । हुंगिला फांसा येथुनियां ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Your old habit clings to You from the very beginning. You will not give it up, O Gopala. You only take; there is nothing You give back. This is all I ever see. My blanket is a big one; You will not even loosen the rag over Your backside. Says Tuka, I have abandoned all hope. I have sniffed out the trap from here.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Your old habit has clung to You from the very start; You will not give it up, Gopala. You only take; there is nothing You ever give back. This is all I have ever seen. My blanket is a big one, yet You will not even loosen the rag over Your backside. Tuka says: I have given up all hope. From here I have sniffed out the trap.
What it means
Tukaram accuses Krishna, with a lover's tartness, of being a born taker. From the beginning the Lord has had this habit and will not break it: He seizes everything and returns nothing, and that, Tukaram says, is all he has ever witnessed of Him. The contrast is bitter and comic: Tukaram surrenders a whole blanket, while God will not part with so much as the loincloth covering Him. So he gives up hoping for any bargain on equal terms. What looks like complaint is really recognition: he has caught the scent of the trap, that to deal with God is to be taken wholly and given nothing of the old self back.
Worldly Metaphors
Poems using images from games, occupations, and daily life as spiritual teaching.
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