Complaint, the kind names and the cruel deed
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
कनवाळ कृपाळ । उदार दयाळ मायाळ । ह्मणवितोसी परि केवळ । गळेकाटू दिसतोसी ॥1॥
काय केलें होतें आह्मीं । सांग तुझें एकये जन्मीं । जालासी जो स्वामी । एवढी सत्ता करावया॥ध्रु.॥
भलेपणाचा पवाडा । बरा दाविला रोकडा । करूनि बंधु वेडा । जोडा माझा विखंडिला ॥2॥
तुकयाबंधु ह्मणे भला । कैसें ह्मणताती तुजला । जीव आमुचा नेला । अंत पाहिला कांहींतरी॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
You call Yourself compassionate, merciful, generous, and kind, yet You look like nothing but a throat-cutter. What had we ever done to You in any single birth? Now that You have become the master, You wield such authority. You have made a fine show of Your goodness, plain for all to see: You drove my brother mad and broke apart our bond. Says Tukya-bandhu, how can people call You good? You have taken our very life and tested us to the limit.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
You call Yourself compassionate, merciful, generous, and kind. Yet You look like nothing but a throat-cutter. What had we ever done to You, in any single birth? Tell me. Now that You have become the master, You wield such power over us. You made a fine show of Your goodness, plain for all to see. You drove my brother mad and broke our bond apart. Tukya-bandhu says: how can people call You good? You have taken our very life and tested us to the limit.
What it means
The poem holds God's tender titles against the hard thing He has done. Compassionate, merciful, kind: He is called all of these, yet to the family it feels like a throat being cut, the bond between brothers severed and one of them carried off into God-madness. The stinging line is that He showed off His goodness by this very ruin. By demanding what crime in any birth deserved it, Kanhoba refuses the easy verdict that what God does must be good. The grief is real and the love is real; the poem lets the bhakta say out loud that grace can feel exactly like cruelty when it takes someone you love.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
More in this theme →