Abhanga 11

Once you have left, the next discipline is becoming deaf to the people who keep calling you back.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

This is the deafness phase of the gopī-narrative. After 0010's public disclosure ("what was hidden has become known; do not hold attachment toward me"), 0011 names the specific receptive discipline that follows: becoming deaf to the call-back. The progression is precise: 0010 asks the former community to release her; 0011 acknowledges that they will not, and names how she handles their continued calling — कानीं बहिरी जालें, I have gone deaf in the ears.

The list of what has been forgotten is socially-loaded: कुळ (lineage), आचार (proper conduct), पती (husband), भावे (husband's-brother), दीर (brother-in-law), घर सोय (the household-arrangement). Every term names a role-relationship by which a married woman is identified. To have forgotten all of them is to have stepped out of the entire system of identity that the speaker was placed in. It is not just leaving a house; it is forgetting one's position. [T]

The deafness is not aggression. The speaker is not refusing to listen out of anger or stubbornness — she has literally lost the receptive capacity for her former language. This is a stronger move than refusal: refusal still requires hearing. Deafness is the place where the words no longer arrive. [T]

For someone today

English: When you have left a former life — a family system, a religious tradition, a friend group, a workplace, a way-of-being — the next discipline is what to do when those former places keep calling you back. The realistic situation is not "they release you and wish you well"; the realistic situation is that they keep summoning. The phone calls, the texts, the casual remarks at family gatherings, the internalized voice of "what would they think?" — all of these are आळव-summoning. Tukaram's claim is uncomfortable but true to many people's experience: at some point the work is not to argue with the summoning but to stop hearing it. The deafness is not pretended; it is the result of the heart having become absorbed somewhere else. रातलें अनंता चित्त माझें — my heart has become absorbed in the Infinite — is the cause. The deafness is the natural consequence.

The internal version of this is the harder one. The voice calling you back is often not an actual person; it is the internalized voice of who you used to be, the obligation-voice, the duty-voice, the "but what about" voice. Tukaram's prescription works for that voice too: you do not silence it by argument. You silence it by being so absorbed elsewhere that it no longer reaches the part of you that responds.

मराठी: एखादं आधीचं जीवन सोडल्यावर — कुटुंब, परंपरा, मित्रवर्तुळ, कामाची जागा, अस्तित्वाचा प्रकार — पुढची शिस्त हीच की त्या जुन्या जागांकडून तुम्हाला सतत हाक येते तेव्हा काय करायचं. वास्तव असं नाही की ते तुम्हाला सोडून शुभेच्छा देतात; वास्तव हे की ते बोलावत राहतात. फोन, मेसेज, कुटुंबात भेटीतले शेरे, "ते काय म्हणतील" अशी आतली आवाज — हे सगळं आळव आहे. तुकाराम काय सांगतायत — हे ऐकायला अस्वस्थ करतं पण अनेकांच्या अनुभवाशी जुळतं: एका टप्प्यावर त्या हाकेशी वाद घालायचा नाही — ती ऐकूच बंद करायची. ती बहिरेपणा बनावट नाही; मन दुसरीकडे गुंतलं हाच परिणाम आहे. रातलें अनंता चित्त माझें — माझं चित्त अनंतात रंगून गेलं — हे कारण. बहिरेपणा हा परिणाम.

आणि आतली आवृत्ती जास्त कठीण. तुम्हाला हाक मारणारा आवाज बहुतेक वेळा बाहेरचा माणूस नसतो — तो आधीच्या तुम्हीच, कर्तव्याचा आवाज, "पण तरी" आवाज. तुकारामांची recipe त्यासाठीही चालते: वादाने तो आवाज शांत करता येत नाही. दुसरीकडे इतकं रंगून जा की त्या आवाजाला तुमच्या प्रतिसाद देणाऱ्या भागापर्यंत पोहोचायलाच जागा राहत नाही.

Where this applies

• When family or community keeps calling you back to who you were. The work is not on responding kindly enough; the work is on letting your absorption elsewhere become deep enough that the calling does not register. You cannot fake this; the deafness is real or it is not. The way to deafness is not effort against the voice; it is into the absorption.

• When someone keeps trying to remind you of an obligation you have already let go of. Tukaram's diagnostic: have you actually let it go, or are you still arguing with it? If you are still arguing, you have not let go; you have a hostile relationship with it. The let-go is signaled by the deafness, not by the defeating-of the obligation in argument.

• When the voice calling you back is the internalized voice of duty — not an actual person. The hardest case. Tukaram's prescription is the same: the cure is not silencing-by-effort but absorption-elsewhere. If your inner critic is loud, the work is not to argue with it; the work is to find what your heart actually rests in, and rest there until the critic falls below the threshold of audibility.

Related verses

• Abhanga 10 — Once a real choice is public, the work becomes taking leave of the people who knew the pre
• Abhanga 4 — Beauty seen and not yet possessed is the position devotion is built from. The longing is n
• Abhanga 7 — If devotion is real, the shame the world will throw at you is not a problem to solve. It i
• Abhanga 9 — English: This abhang is the verse for the moment after a real life-direction choice. Most