Longing, the deathless one questioned
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
माझी मेलीं बहुवरिं । तूं कां जैसा तैसा हरी ॥1॥
विठो कैसा वांचलासि । आतां सांग मजपाशीं ॥ध्रु.॥
तुज देखतां चि माझा । बाप मेला आजा पणजा ॥2॥
आह्मां लागलेंसे पाठी । बालत्व तारुण्यें काठीं ॥3॥
तुज फावलें तें मागें । कोणी नसतां वादिलागें ॥4॥
तुका ह्मणे तुझ्या अंगीं । मज देखिल लागलीं औघीं ॥5॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Many of mine have died; yet You, O Hari, remain exactly as You are. Vitthoba, how have You survived? Tell me this. Before Your very eyes my father died, my grandfather, my great-grandfather. Childhood and youth have both followed us relentlessly to the very end. You have had it easy all along; there was no one left to contend with You. Says Tuka, looking upon You, I find all the tides of age washing over my own body.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Many of mine have died. Why, Hari, do you stay just as you are? Vithoba, how have you stayed alive? Now tell me this. Before your very eyes my father died, my grandfather, my great-grandfather. Childhood and youth have hunted us down to the end. You have had it easy all along, with no one left to fight you. Tuka says: looking at you, I feel all the tides of age washing over my own body.
What it means
Tukaram half-grieves, half-teases God for being deathless while everyone he loves is carried off. He has watched father, grandfather, and great-grandfather die under God's own gaze, and the stages of life, childhood and youth, hound mortals all the way to the grave. The complaint that God has had it easy, with no rival to outlast Him, voices the ache of a perishing creature standing before the one who does not perish. The stakes are mortality itself: gazing at the changeless Lord, Tukaram feels his own aging more sharply, and the poem turns longing for that deathless refuge into a cry.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
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