qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review
Hearing what your lord has done — you drink it in, and you never get tired of it.
Ram and Lakshman and Sita live inside your mind.
Rasiyā comes from rasa: juice, flavour, the taste of a thing. A rasiyā is somebody who relishes — in ordinary Hindi it is used of a lover of music, or simply a lover. Here it is attached to listening. He is a connoisseur of hearing the story told.
Śravaṇa, listening, stands first in the nine forms of bhakti the Bhāgavata names, ahead of singing and remembering and service, and there is something quietly startling about finding it here. This is a hymn in praise of Hanumān, and at its centre it describes him sitting down to hear about somebody else. The hero of the poem is, in the poem, the audience.
Mana basiyā — they dwell in his mind. Not visit; live there. Hold the phrase, because the Chalisa comes back to it at the very end: the closing dohā asks Hanumān to come and take up residence in the singer's heart, with Rāma and Lakṣmaṇa and Sītā along with him. What he already has is what the poem will finally ask for.
What is the story you would happily hear again tonight, even though you already know how it ends?
qMonk literal translation — draft, pending review·Devanagari checked against two printings·Draft — awaiting reviewer·How these texts were made