Reproach, the hope that ruined me
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
दाखवूनि आस । केला बहुतांचा नास ॥1॥
थोंटा झोडा शिरोमणी । भेटलासी नागवणी ॥ध्रु.॥
सुखाचें उत्तर । नाहीं मुदलासी थार ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे काय । तुझे घ्यावें उरे हाय ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
By dangling hope You have ruined many. A stumbling, bumbling impostor, that is what You are: You came only to strip us bare. There is no comfortable answer; the very principal has no footing. Says Tuka, what should one take from You when only a sigh remains?.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
You held out hope, and so You ruined many. You are a stumbling, bumbling fraud, a chief among them; You came to me only to strip me bare. There is no comforting answer here. The very capital is gone; nothing is left to stand on. Tuka says: what is there to take from You, when only a sigh remains?
What it means
Tukaram is scolding God in the voice of a man who staked everything on a promise and was left empty. He says the hope God dangled is exactly what undid him and many others: it drew him in, then stripped him of all he had. He even calls God a fraud and a thief, not in real contempt but in the bitter intimacy of a lover who has lost the principal and not just the profit. The complaint hides its true claim: a person who gives himself wholly to God is left with nothing of his own to bargain with, only a sigh, and that emptying is itself the point.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
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