I feel like I don't deserve any kindness or grace — am I beyond help?
The bent, the lisping, the broken are God's most-beloved guests at the meal.
There is a particular kind of tiredness that says: I have used up my allowance of mercy. Other people might be worth saving — I'm not. Look at what I've done, look at what I am. You don't argue with it; you just quietly stop expecting to be wanted. You hide your flaws before you approach anything good, certain that if you were truly seen you'd be turned away.
Tukaram answers this not by flattering you, and not by pretending you are better than you fear. He does something stranger: he tells you that the very brokenness you're hiding is the thing most loved. In his Vrindavan meal-scene, it is वांकडे बोबडे खुडे मुडे एक लुडे — the bent, the lisping, the broken, the wobbly — whom Krishna loves most, because they carry more bhāva (raw feeling) than the polished. The deity, he says again and again, is सोयरा दीनाचा — the kin of the lowly — and what he reaches for is never your wealth or your record but the small inner sweetness you still have.
So the honest answer to "am I beyond help?" is: no — and your sense of unworthiness, held without shame, is closer to the door than any merit would be. What keeps people out is not their flaws; it is the shame that performs them and turns away. Tukaram's whole instinct here is to take your hidden, disqualifying past off the table and replace it with a single posture: stand there, lowly and empty-handed, and you are already inside.
Abhang 148 — The bent and the lisping are most-beloved
वांकडे बोबडे । खुडे मुडे एक लुडे । कृष्णा आवडती पुढें । बहु भाविक ते ॥६॥
In this long meal-scene Krishna gathers every child's food-bundle, undoes it, mixes it all into one kālā and hands a share back to each — and the ones he loves most are the bent, lisping, broken and wobbly, because their need is more visible and so their feeling runs deeper. The lesson is aimed straight at the instinct to hide your flaws before approaching: stop hiding the bentness, bring it. The polished have less grace available, not more, because goodness-without-need is its own poverty — even the watching gods envy the broken children at this meal.
Abhang 209 — The meek one is not left apart
लाजे त्यासि वांटा नाहीं । जाणे अंतरीचें तें ही । दीन होतां कांहीं । होऊं नेदी वेगळें ॥ध्रु.॥
This abhang draws a fine, freeing line between two states that feel identical from inside. Lāja — shame, the self-reproach that recoils and keeps you outside the feast — gets no share. But dīna — honest lowliness without performance — "he does not let become apart." The deity reads the antara, the interior, so you cannot posture your way in and don't need to; you only have to stop the shame-performance and let plain meekness show. And the way in is not some technique you've failed to master — beyond all upāya-apāya (means and remedies), it is simply जोडुनियां पुढें हात उभे नुपेक्षी: stand with hands joined, and you are not deserted.
Abhang 35 — God is the kin of the lowly
अंतरींची घेतो गोडी । पाहे जोडी भावाची ॥१॥ देव सोयरा देव सोयरा । देव सोयरा दीनाचा ॥ध्रु.॥
If you feel disqualified because you have nothing worth offering, this abhang is permission. The "enough" you imagine is external — money, polish, a clean record — but what is actually taken is अंतरींची गोडी, the inner sweetness, the small gathering of feeling. Of that the lowly have at least as much as anyone. And देव सोयरा दीनाचा is not consolation-flattery: it claims that God's preferred place is with the resource-poor, as kin, not as a charity case. Whatever feeling you can give is, structurally, the whole of what is asked.
Abhang 258 — Your past does not disqualify you
न व्हावी तीं जालीं कर्में नरनारी । अनुतापें हरी स्मरतां मुक्त ॥६॥ तुका म्हणे पूर्व नाठवी श्रीहरी । मूळ जो उच्चारी नरक त्यासि ॥७॥
When the voice of unworthiness is really the voice of your history, Tukaram answers with a long roll-call of revered figures — Gaṇikā, Ajāmiḷa, Vālmīki, Vidura and many more — every one of them with an irregular or stained past, and every one of them freed. "That which should not have been — happened — in men and women; with anutāpa (heartfelt repentance) and remembering Hari, they were freed." The closing rule is the mercy itself: पूर्व नाठवी श्रीहरी — Hari does not remember your past — and it is the one who keeps reciting a past who is condemned, not the one who carries it. So when you rehearse your record against yourself, you are doing the one thing the deity refuses to do.
Abhang 2381 — The Name costs nothing and excludes no one
नाम घेतां न लगे मोल । नाममंत्र नाहीं खोल ॥१॥ नाहीं वर्णाधमयाती । नामीं अवघीं चि सरतीं ॥२॥
If part of feeling unworthy is feeling unqualified — not learned enough, not initiated, not the right sort of person — this abhang removes the gate entirely. Taking the Name has no price, and the Name-mantra is not deep: no esoteric initiation, no Sanskrit, just two letters — Rāma Rāma. And the famous line नाहीं वर्णाधमयाती — नामीं अवघीं चि सरतीं: there is no caste, no station, no birth-group in the Name — all are included. Whatever made you think you were outside the circle of those who may approach, this says the circle has no edge you can fall off of.
Abhang 320 — Your low place may be the thing that saved you
बरा कुणबी केलों । नाहीं तरि दंभेंचि असतों मेलों ॥१॥ भलें केलें देवराया । नाचे तुका लागे पायां ॥ध्रु.॥
Here Tukaram thanks God for making him a kuṇabī, a humble farmer — "otherwise I'd have died in dambha (pretense)." Had he been given learning and status, he says, he'd have fallen into harm, missed the company of the saints, and walked the path of death by pride. The reframe is bracing: the very lowness you resent as proof you don't deserve grace may be exactly what kept you reachable, while greatness carried with abhimāna (self-importance) is what actually ends in ruin. Your disadvantage might be a gift in disguise — received not with resignation but with honest thanks.
Abhang 323 — Even your fear of rejection has a claim
तुमचा जाईल ईमान । माझे कपाळीं पतन ॥ध्रु.॥ मनीं न विचारा । तुका म्हणे हे दातारा ॥३॥
This short petition meets you exactly where the fear lives — "the deity will throw me away." Tukaram doesn't pretend the fear is silly; he turns it into honest leverage: तुमचा जाईल ईमान — माझे कपाळीं पतन — if I fall, your own honor falls with me, because you are the one who recognized me from the start. The relationship has mutual stakes; you are something placed in trust, not refuse to be discarded. And the closing plea — मनीं न विचारा, don't even think the rejection — asks that the cast-off never so much as cross the giver's mind. Your standing is not yours alone to lose.
In one breath
You are not beyond help — the brokenness you're hiding is the very thing most loved, and the deity Tukaram knows is kin to the lowly, forgets the past you keep reciting against yourself, and turns no one away for caste, history, or having nothing to offer. Stop performing the shame; stand there empty-handed and lowly, give the small inner sweetness you still have, and you are already inside the door.