Longing, the bow of the rejected
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
काय उरली ते करूं विनवणी । वेचलों वचनीं पांडुरंगा ॥1॥
अव्हेरलों आतां कैचें नामरूप । आदर निरोप तरि तो नाहीं ॥ध्रु.॥
माझा मायबाप ये गेलों सलगी । तों हें तुह्मां जगीं सोयइरिका ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे आतां जोडोनियां हात । करी दंडवत ठायिंचाठायीं ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
What more can I say in petition? I have spent myself in words, O Panduranga. Having been rejected, where now is name or form? There is no welcome or farewell. You are my mother and father, and I came to You with familiarity, but You seem to treat me as a mere acquaintance. Says Tuka, now with folded hands I bow down right where I stand.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
What plea is left for me to make? I have spent myself in words, Panduranga. Now that I am cast aside, what name or form is there? There is no welcome and no farewell. You are my mother and father, and I came to You as one of Your own; yet to the world You treat me as a mere acquaintance. Tuka says: now, with folded hands, I bow down right where I stand.
What it means
Tukaram has run out of petitions; he has poured out all his words to God and feels rejected. The wound is that God, whom he calls his mother and father, seems to hold him at the distance of a stranger before the whole world, with neither a warm welcome nor a clean dismissal. The poem ends not in protest but in the lowest gesture available: he folds his hands and bows down where he stands. The point is the posture of one who has nothing left to say and surrenders even his disappointment, laying it at the feet he cannot leave.
Longing and Separation
Cries from the dark night of the soul: remonstrances, complaints, and desperate yearning.
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