Abhanga 2597
You are my mother, you are my shade; I keep watching the path, Pāṇḍuranga. You alone are mine — elder and younger; you alone are my own kin-life. Tukā: my jīva is with you — without you, all directions are desolate.
The verse
तूं माझी माउली तूं माझी साउली । पाहातों वाटुली पांडुरंगे ॥१॥
तूं मज येकुला वडील धाकुला । तूं मज आपुला सोयरा जीव ॥२॥
तुका म्हणे जीव तुजपाशीं असे । तुझियानें ओस सर्व दिशा ॥३॥
Literal translation
You are my mother, you are my shade; I keep watching the path, Pāṇḍuranga. You alone are mine — elder and younger; you alone are my own kin-life. Tukā says: my jīva is with you — by your absence, all the directions are desolate.
What it means
This abhang is one of Tukārām's canonical bhakti-prayers, sung across Vārkarī households as a daily āḷavaṇī (calling-prayer). The first line tūm mājhī māulī tūm mājhī sāuli — pāhātōm vāṭulī Pāṇḍurangē compresses three foundational bhakti-relations:
- māulī — mother (the Vārkarī's primary metaphor for Viṭhṭhala/Pāṇḍuranga)
- sāuli — shade, the cool refuge from heat (life's heat, suffering's heat)
- vāṭulī pāhātōm — I keep watching the little path (the small village-road by which the beloved comes)
The image of watching-the-path (vāṭa-pāhaṇē) is one of the deepest Marathi bhakti-tropes — Yaśodā-watching-for-Krṣṇa, the lover-watching-for-the-beloved, the warkari-mother-watching-for-the-pilgrim-son. Tukārām collapses all of these into one prayer.
The second verse expands the kinship-claim: yēkulā vaḍīla dhākulā — the only one — elder and younger — meaning, you are simultaneously the elder (father-figure, protector) and the younger (the child-figure I get to care for), and āpulā sōyarā jīva — my own kin-life, sōyarā (kinsman by blood or by marriage) being the warmest possible word for chosen-family. The bhakti-claim is total: you are mother, shade, elder, younger, kin, life itself.
The closing verse jīva tujapāśīm asē — tujhiyānēm ōsa sarva diśā — my jīva is with you — by your absence, all directions are desolate — has become one of the most quoted Tukārām couplets. Ōsa (desolate, uninhabited) — the same word as in 2594's brahmāṇḍa-vōsa — names the four-directions of the world as empty when the beloved is not there. The geography itself depopulates without the māulī.
This is the canonical tūm-mājhī-māulī prayer of the Vārkarī tradition — sung daily, sung at samādhi-anniversaries, sung at the death of a bhakta, sung when a parent dies and the bhakta turns to Viṭhṭhala as the only mother left.
For someone today
There is a moment in adult life when you realize that what you are looking for is a mother — not necessarily your literal mother, but the relation: someone whose shade you can stand under, someone you can keep watching the path for, whose absence makes every direction empty. The Vārkarī tradition does not embarrass you about this longing; it hands you Pāṇḍuranga and says — here, watch this path. Pray the prayer as Tukārām wrote it: you are my mother, you are my shade; I keep watching the path. The grown bhakta is allowed to be motherless-toward-the-mother, and the directions are honestly desolate when she is not there. This prayer is the language that fits.
Where this applies
- The first deep grief of losing one's mother in adult life
- A daily morning prayer in which one names what is missed
- The Vārkarī householder watching the path in the month before Āṣāḍhī Ekādaśī
- Sung at a bhakta's samādhi-anniversary or funeral
- Any night when the directions feel suddenly empty and the heart turns toward a presence