Metaphor, crying out before the market closes
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
घोंगडें नेलें सांगों मी कोणा । दुबळें माझें नाणीत मना ॥1॥
पुढें तें मज न मिळे आतां । जवळी सत्ता दाम नाहीं ॥ध्रु.॥
सेटे महाजन ऐका कोणी । घोंगडियाची करा शोधणी ॥2॥
घोंगडियाचा करा बोभाट । तुका ह्मणे जंव भरला हाट ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
My blanket has been stolen. To whom shall I complain? I am poor; no one brings my plight to mind. I cannot get it back now. I have neither power nor a coin. O moneylenders and elders, let someone hear me. Search for this blanket. Says Tuka, raise a hue and cry about this blanket while the market is still full.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
My blanket has been stolen. To whom shall I complain? I am poor; no one even brings my plight to mind. I cannot get it back now. I have neither power nor a coin. Merchants and elders, let someone hear me: search for this blanket. Tuka says: raise the hue and cry about this blanket while the market is still full.
What it means
Tukaram is a poor man crying robbery in a crowded marketplace. The blanket, all he had, is gone, and being poor he has no one who will take up his cause or even keep his trouble in mind. He has neither the power nor the money to recover it himself, so he appeals to the merchants and town elders to hear him and hunt for it. The urgency is in the last line: he must raise the outcry now, while the market is still full and there are people to hear, before the chance is lost. Read as the soul's plea, it is the call to seek the lost self and cry out to God now, in this life, while there is still time.
Worldly Metaphors
Poems using images from games, occupations, and daily life as spiritual teaching.
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