Stories

Chhatrapati Shivaji Maharaj, stationed at his fortress of Sinhagad, heard of Tukaram's growing fame and resolved to visit him. Because the Mughals still held power in the region, the king traveled in disguise to Poona, where he found the saint in the middle of a kirtan.

When the kirtan ended, Shivaji prostrated himself before Tukaram and placed at his feet a shining plate of silver, heaped with gold and silver coins. Tukaram looked at the plate and began to shiver. Without a word, he stood up and walked away.

Shivaji was bewildered. The disciples explained: 'Tukaram has always welcomed you when you come alone. But the gold is like poison to him.'

When Tukaram returned, he addressed the king with the directness that marked all his speech: 'What use is this treasure to a saint? We want only Lord Vithoba. To us, your gold is like pebbles. It is like beef to a Vaishnava.' Then he gave Shivaji the only counsel he considered worthy of a king: 'Wear a tulsi rosary. Observe ekadashi. Consider yourself the slave of Vithoba. Say Vitthal, Vitthal.'

Shivaji, deeply moved, offered four villages for the maintenance of Tukaram's worship. Tukaram refused this too. When the king then declared his desire to renounce the throne and become a sannyasi, Tukaram shook his head: a king's dharma is to protect his people. Renunciation would be a flight from duty, not a path to God.

A coppersmith in Dehu was a devoted attendee of Tukaram's kirtans. His wife disapproved; she thought the kirtans were making her husband neglect his trade and family. One evening, the coppersmith left for the kirtan despite his wife's warnings, leaving behind their gravely ill son.

While the coppersmith sat absorbed in the kirtan, the boy died. The mother, wild with grief and rage, wrapped the small body in a cloth and carried it to the gathering. She pushed through the crowd and laid the corpse at Tukaram's feet.

'You have made my husband crazy!' she cried. 'You have made him discard affection and desire. And now my son is dead. Where is your God now?'

The onlookers murmured that Tukaram had no medicine, no power to raise the dead. But Tukaram said quietly: 'Divine nectar is nothing before the name of God.' He turned to the congregation and asked them to chant 'Vitthal' with all their hearts.

The kirtan hall filled with the sound of the name. Every voice joined. The air itself seemed to vibrate with devotion. And then, in the midst of the chanting, the dead child sat up, alive and whole.

The mother fell to the ground. She acknowledged her ignorance and found faith. The coppersmith continued to attend the kirtans, and Tukaram continued to sing, because the Name of God, as he had always taught, is greater than death.

Jijabai had reached her limit. There was not a kernel of grain in the house. The children wept from hunger. Her husband sat in the temple, singing to a God who, as far as she could see, had done nothing for them.

She stormed to the Vitthal temple, determined to strike the feet of the idol. If this God would not feed her children, He deserved her fury. She pushed open the door and raised her hand.

But before she could strike, a woman appeared. It was Rukmini, Krishna's consort, disguised as a village woman. 'Why are you angry, sister?' Rukmini asked gently. 'Tell me what troubles you.'

Jijabai poured out her grievances: the empty granary, the weeping children, the husband who preferred God to grain. Rukmini listened. Then, without a word, she gave Jijabai a garment, a jacket, and a handful of silver coins.

The gift was small, but it transformed Jijabai's heart. Her rage dissolved. She touched Rukmini's feet and left the temple. She did not know she had been comforted by God's own wife. But that, Mahipati suggests, is how God works: not always in thunder and miracles, but sometimes in a quiet woman offering a jacket and a few coins.

Mahipati, the author of the Bhaktavijaya, describes Tukaram's patience as threefold: bodily, verbal, and mental. This was not a single episode but a sustained quality observed across his entire life.

Bodily patience: he endured hunger, illness, physical assault from his wife, attacks from opponents, the extremity of a thirteen-day fast, and the daily hardships of poverty without complaint and without resistance. When struck, he did not strike back. When starved, he did not steal. When humiliated, he did not retaliate.

Verbal patience: when Rameshwar Bhatt called him a heretic, when the village council stripped him of his title, when scholars mocked his lack of Sanskrit learning, he did not retaliate in kind. He responded either with silence or with poetry, which amounts to the same thing.

Mental patience: this is the most remarkable of the three. Tukaram did not harbour resentment. The tradition insists on this point. When Rameshwar Bhatt threw his manuscripts in the river, Tukaram did not curse him, did not wish him ill, did not fantasise about vindication. He sat by the river and waited for God to act. When vindication came and Rameshwar fell at his feet, Tukaram received him without a trace of triumph. There was no 'I told you so.' There was only welcome.

Mahipati calls this patience 'incomparable,' and the word is carefully chosen. Other saints endured hardship. Other saints forgave their enemies. But in Tukaram, patience was not an achievement or a discipline. It appeared to be his natural condition, the simple consequence of a mind that had genuinely ceased to grasp at outcomes or resist what arrived. He did not practise patience. He was patience.