Abhanga 1429

It is honest, not irreverent, to confront God directly with grief over how death takes everyone you love while God alone seems unchanged.

The verse

Literal translation

What it means

My-family-died-but-you-Hari-survived abhang. A striking, almost-aggressive Hari-tāḍ. The opening: mājhī mēlīm bahuvarī — tūm kām jaisā taisā Harī — mine (= my whole family-line) — have died — many; — why, Hari, are youjaisā taisā(= just-as-you-were)? The bhakta confronts Hari with mortality-asymmetry: my whole family-line has died; you alone are unchanged. (Compare 1416's avaghā-ākāra-grāsiyēlā-kāḷē — all-form-swallowed-by-Time; here Hari is the only-form-Time-couldn't-swallow, and Tuka asks how.)

The pointed question: Viṭhō kaisā vāñcalāsi — ātām sānga maja-pāśīm — Viṭho —howhave you survived? — now — tell me —near. Tell me, in private, your secret of survival. (= the bhakta wants the immortality-trick from Hari himself.)

The reckoning: tuja dēkhatām chi mājhā — bāpa mēlā ājā paṇajā — in your very (chi) sight — my (people) —bāpa(father),ājā(grandfather),paṇajā(great-grandfather) — died. In your sight — my father, grandfather, great-grandfather all died; you witnessed them all.

The autobiographical: āmhām lāgalēmsē pāṭhī — bālatva tāruṇyēm kāṭhīm — after us —bālatva(childhood) andtāruṇya(youth) — has been (chasing) — at thekāṭhī(= edge / banks / staff). Childhood and youth are chasing-after-us (= we're now past them, they're behind on the bank). (= I'm aging too; only you don't.)

The accusation: tuja phāvalēm tēm māgēm — kōṇī nasatām vādī-lāgēm — whatfell-to-youin the past — when no one was — to-witness. The strange, dark line: whatever you got-away-with in the past, no one was around to bear witness against you. (= you survived in the gap when there were no witnesses, with strong implication of something irregular about Hari's surviving.)

The closing: Tukā mhaṇē tujhyā angīm — maja dēkhila lāgalīm aughīm — Tuka says — in youranga(body); — I have seen — has come (lāgalīm) —aughīm(= each-and-every). I see in your body — every death (of my family) has come to rest. (= all our deaths show on you — striking inversion: Hari carries the family-deaths in his body even while himself unchanged.)

[T]

For someone today

So many of my own have died, one after another — why is it, Hari, that you go on just as you always were? Vitthala, how have you managed to survive? Tell me plainly, close to my ear. Right before your eyes, my father died, my grandfather died, and my great-grandfather died too. Childhood and youth have both slipped behind me now, like a riverbank falling away. Whatever secret let you go on when there was no one left to witness it, I don't know — but Tuka says, in your very body, I can see the mark of every one of those deaths gathered together.

मराठी: माझी माणसे एकामागोमाग एक मरून गेली — हरी, तू मात्र जसा होतास तसाच का राहतोस? विठोबा, तू कसा वाचलास, ते मला जवळ येऊन सांग. तुझ्या डोळ्यांदेखत माझा बाप, माझा आजा, माझा पणजा — सगळे मरून गेले. लहानपण आणि तारुण्य दोन्ही आता माझ्या मागे पडली आहेत, नदीकाठासारखी. तू कसा टिकून राहिलास, कोणीही साक्षीला नसताना, ते मला ठाऊक नाही — पण तुका म्हणतात, तुझ्या अंगातच मला माझ्या या सर्व मृत्यूंच्या खुणा एकवटलेल्या दिसतात.

Where this applies

• When you have outlived parents, grandparents, and feel strange grief and anger that life goes on around their absence
• When you cry out to God in raw honesty instead of polished, polite prayer
• When you notice your own youth slipping behind you and feel the passage of time in your body
• When you sense that God carries the weight of every loss you have suffered, even while seeming untouched by time

Related verses

• Abhanga 2477 — Like a child too absorbed in play to notice how tired he is, let go and trust the parent c
• Abhanga 4481 — Tukaram promises that sincerely calling on the Lord's name, knowingly or unknowingly, with
• Abhanga 4482 — Tukaram teaches that no ritual equals sincerely speaking the Lord's name, that self-center
• Abhanga 4495 — Tukaram tells how Krishna's mother and the cowherd families, absorbed in their own practic