Exhortation, the squandered birth
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
आयुष्य वेचूनि कुटुंब पोसिलें । काय हित केलें सांग बापा ॥1॥
फुकाचा चाकर जालासी काबाडी । नाहीं सुख घडी भोगावया ॥ध्रु.॥
दुर्लभ मनुष्यजन्म कष्टें पावलासी । दिला कुटुंबासी कामभोग ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे ऐसें आयुष्य नासिलें । पाप तें सांचिलें पतनासी ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
You spent your entire life nourishing your family; tell me, father, what good did it do you? You became a free laborer, a drudge, without a moment's happiness to enjoy. This rare human birth you won through great effort, and you gave it over to family and sensual pleasure. Says Tuka, you have squandered your lifespan like this, only heaping up sin to hasten your fall.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
You spent your whole life feeding your family; tell me, father, what good did it do you? You became a free servant, a drudge, without one hour of happiness to enjoy. This rare human birth you won with great pain, and you handed it over to family and the pleasures of the body. Tuka says: you have wasted your lifespan this way, only piling up the sin that hastens your fall.
What it means
Tukaram confronts a man at the end of an ordinary working life. He spent every year of it providing for his household, and the saint asks him bluntly what he gained for himself: nothing but the lot of an unpaid drudge, with no real happiness in it. The stakes are the birth itself. A human life, hard to obtain, is the one chance to seek God, and this man traded it for family duty and bodily pleasure. The verse is a shaking-awake: a life poured out only on the world is not merely empty but actively ruinous, heaping up the consequences that drag the soul down.
Appeals and Exhortations
Direct calls to action: wake up, seek God, do not waste this human birth.
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