Confession, refusing a hollow vocation
Original Marathi from the Tukaram Gatha · About Sant Tukaram
मराठी मूळ
काय आतां आह्मीं पोट चि भरावें । जग चाळवावें भक्त ह्मुण ॥1॥
ऐसा तरि एक सांगा जी विचार । बहु होतों फार कासावीस ॥ध्रु.॥
काय कवित्वाची घालूनियां रूढी । करूं जोडाजोडी अक्षरांची ॥2॥
तुका ह्मणे काय गुंपोनि दुकाना । राहों नारायणा करुनी घात ॥3॥
Tukaram Gatha (Marathi Wikisource)
English Translation
Should I now merely fill my belly and go on deceiving the world, calling myself a devotee? If so, then tell me this clearly, sir, for I am deeply, sorely distressed. Should I make a show of poetic craft, merely stitching letters together? Says Tuka, should I stay enmeshed in this shop, O Narayana, and bring only ruin upon myself?
We ask forgiveness for any inaccuracies in rendering Tukaram ji’s original Marathi.
In Plain Words
Should I just fill my belly now and go on fooling the world by calling myself a devotee? If that is all, then tell me plainly, sir; I am deeply, sorely distressed. Should I make a show of poetry, just stitching letters together? Tuka says: should I stay tangled in this shop, O Narayana, and bring nothing but ruin on myself?
What it means
Tukaram interrogates his own calling and rejects every counterfeit version of it. He refuses to be a devotee in name only, someone who lives off the role while deceiving people. He refuses to treat his poems as mere craft, clever arrangements of words with no living God behind them. The image of a "shop" names the danger sharply: turning devotion into a trade that profits him and ruins his soul. He puts the question to Narayana directly, asking for clarity rather than letting himself drift into a comfortable fraud. The poem is a vow against spiritual self-deception.
Confession and Sin
Raw, unflinching accounts of personal failure, weakness, and the weight of sin.
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