Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
The Creator Himself acts, and causes all to act. To whom else could we complain?
Pleasure and pain come by Your Will — to whom else could we go and cry?
The Commander issues His Command and beholds it all. O Nanak, we receive what is written.
Aasaa's Babar-vani ends not with an answer but with an address. If there is no second — if the One acts and causes all to act — then there is also no other door to carry the tears to; even the complaint must be brought to the One who is complained of. That is the strange, severe comfort of Ik Onkar in catastrophe: nowhere else to cry is also Someone who cannot be lost. The lament itself becomes prayer, grief becomes relationship, and the hymn lays the whole unhealed history — Saidpur, the widows, the torn letters — in the only lap there is.
Where do you take the feelings that are too big to fix?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI