Bridal defiance
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
वाळो जन मज म्हणोत शिंदळी । परि हा वनमाळी न विसंबें ॥१॥
सांडूनि लौकिक जालियें उदास । नाहीं भय आस जीवित्वाची ॥२॥
नाइकें वचन बोलतां या लोकां । म्हणे जालों तुका हरिरता ॥३॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Let people excommunicate me, call me fallen. I will not release my grip on Vanamali. Casting off worldly regard, I have become a renunciant. Neither fear nor hope for life remains. I do not hear the words these people speak. Tuka says: I am dyed in Hari.
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Let people cast me out. Let them call me a loose woman. I will not let go of Vanamali. I have dropped my good name and stopped caring. I no longer fear for my life, and I no longer hope for it. I do not even hear what these people are saying. Tuka says: I have been dyed through with Hari.
What it means
Tukaram sings as a woman whose love for God has broken every rule of respectability, and who no longer cares. To the world she looks shameless; to herself she is simply unable to release her beloved, Vanamali, the garlanded Lord. The poem is about what happens when love for God outgrows the fear of being judged: the names people throw stop landing, because she can no longer even hear them. The closing image is dyed cloth. The color has soaked all the way through, and there is no washing it out.
Devotion to Vitthal
Poems of praise, invocation, and intimate address to Lord Vitthal at Pandharpur.
More in this theme →