Abhanga 15

After the leave-taking, what arrives is not loneliness. It is a solitude with one companion — the only companion left, who turns out to be enough.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

The gopī-narrative arc closes here. After defiance (0007), turning (0008), arrival (0009), public disclosure (0010), deafness (0011), identity-dissolution (0012), borrowed-strength (0013), rest-after-cycling (0014) — now finally: the quality of life on the other side. It is solitude with one companion. [T]

The opening verse is striking: "आम्हां आम्ही आतां वडील धाकुटीं" — we are now elder and younger to ourselves. The speaker has become both her own elder (the one who guides) and her own younger (the one who follows). The two roles that previously located her in a generational hierarchy — daughter, daughter-in-law, mother, mother-in-law — have folded inward. She is now her own family. The line "नाहीं पाठीं पोटीं कोणी दुजें" — no one behind, no one in front — completes the picture: no past-generation to defer to, no future-generation to provide for. She is alone in time. [T]

Verse 2 names what fills that aloneness: फावला एकांत एकविध भाव — solitude has come, with single-pointed feeling. And then the crucial reversal: हरि आम्हांसवें सर्व भोगी — Hari experiences all things along with us. The solitude is not lonely because Hari accompanies every experience. The एकांत (solitude) and the सोबत (accompaniment) coexist. This is the abhang's quiet philosophical claim: the deepest solitude turns out to have a quiet companion in it, and that is what makes solitude bearable. [T]

The closing — अंगसंग एके ठायीं, असों जेथें नाहीं दुजें कोणी — bodily union in one place; we exist where there is no other — is the final destination of the nine-abhang journey. The bhakta has arrived at the place where there is no other. Not because she has eliminated others; because she has arrived at the singular point where she and the Infinite are one location. [T]

For someone today

English: This abhang is for the moment after the leave-taking when you find yourself in a quietness you did not expect. You have left a job, a family system, a religious community, a relationship, a city — and the days afterward are unexpectedly silent. The temptation is to read the silence as loneliness and try to fill it. Tukaram is offering a different reading: this silence may be एकांत — solitude with a quiet companion in it. The single-pointed feeling. The sense that someone (or something) is experiencing all of this along with you. If that companion-quality is present, the silence is not deprivation; it is the solitude that the previous noisy life was preventing.

The verse "आम्हां आम्ही आतां वडील धाकुटीं" — we are now both elder and younger to ourselves — is for a particular life-stage. For people in midlife or after, when the parents have died and the children are grown, there comes a moment of having no one ahead and no one behind. Most cultures treat this moment as loss. Tukaram treats it as arrival. You are now your own elder and your own younger. The hierarchies that organized your time are gone, and what you find at the center is a strange single-pointed companionship with whatever sits at the heart of you. Don't refill the position with substitutes. Inhabit the singularity. Hari, in this verse, experiences everything along with you. The accompaniment is the gift of the silence.

मराठी: ही ओवी सोडण्यानंतरच्या त्या क्षणासाठी आहे जेव्हा तुम्हाला अनपेक्षित शांतता सापडते. तुम्ही नोकरी, कुटुंबव्यवस्था, धार्मिक समुदाय, नातं, शहर सोडलं आहे — आणि नंतरचे दिवस अनपेक्षितरीत्या शांत. मोह असतो — ती शांतता एकटेपणा म्हणून वाचून भरून काढायचा. तुकाराम वेगळं वाचन देतायत: हीच शांतता एकांत असू शकते — आत एक शांत साथीदार असलेली. एकविध भाव. कुणीतरी (किंवा काहीतरी) सगळं तुमच्याबरोबर भोगतंय ही जाणीव. ती साथीदार-जाणीव असेल, तर शांतता वंचना नाही — तो एकांत आहे जो आधीच्या गोंगाट-जीवनाने मिळू देत नव्हता.

ओवी "आम्हां आम्ही आतां वडील धाकुटीं" — आम्हीच आमचे वडील आणि आम्हीच आमचे धाकटे — एका विशिष्ट जीवन-टप्प्यासाठी. मध्यम वयात किंवा त्यानंतर, जेव्हा आई-वडील गेले आहेत आणि मुलं मोठी झाली आहेत — मागे आणि पुढे कोणी नसण्याचा क्षण येतो. बहुतेक संस्कृत्या या क्षणाला तोटा मानतात. तुकाराम याला आगमन मानतात. आता तुम्हीच तुमचे वडील आणि तुम्हीच तुमचे धाकटे. वेळेला रचणारी पदानुक्रमे गेली, आणि केंद्रात तुम्हाला सापडतं — एक विचित्र एकविध साथीदारत्व — तुमच्या हृदयाच्या केंद्रात जे आहे त्याच्याशी. ही जागा substitutes ने भरू नका. एकात्मता राहा. हरि आम्हांसवें सर्व भोगी — हरि सगळं तुमच्याबरोबर भोगतोय. तीच साथ ही शांततेची भेट आहे.

Where this applies

• When the leaving is complete and you find yourself in a quietness you didn't expect. The diagnostic: is there a sense that someone or something is experiencing this along with you? If yes, what you have is एकांत, not loneliness. Inhabit it.

• When you have no one ahead of you and no one behind you — and you have to learn what to do with the strange middle position. Tukaram's claim is that this position is not deprivation; it is the position where the Infinite becomes the only available companion. Trust the singularity. Do not refill with substitutes.

• When solitude has stopped feeling like deprivation and started feeling like a place where you are accompanied by something quieter. That shift is what Tukaram is naming. It is real, it is the gift of the gopī-arc, and it is permission to stop trying to populate your life with people who would only restart the cycling.

Related verses

• Abhanga 6 — The mark of the real one is that comparison stops working — 'he is not like the others' is
• Abhanga 11 — Once you have left, the next discipline is becoming deaf to the people who keep calling yo
• Abhanga 12 — When a single thing has come to occupy your whole heart, the polarities that used to organ
• Abhanga 13 — The strength a bhakta wields is not their own. It is borrowed from the strongest, by being