Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Why do you water salty, barren ground? You are wasting your life away.
This wall of raw mud is going to crumble. Why bother patching it with plaster?
Watering barren ground and patching a crumbling wall use up a life; your care can go where it will grow.
This is the rahaa-o, the "pause" line, the center of the shabad. It turns to farming and building images, fitting for a spring raag. Watering kalraa (salty, barren soil) and plastering a kaachee divaal (a crumbling mud wall) are efforts poured into things that cannot last. It is a gentle, practical question: where is your care going, and will it ever grow? The next verses show the ground that does grow.
Where do you put a lot of effort that does not grow into anything?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI