Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
When someone is completely wrapped up in chasing stuff — money, things, appearances — they stop remembering the One at all.
So they end up trapped and aching, as if locked in a city of fear with no way out.
They become like a person who is blind and deaf to what really matters, seeing nothing true. This is the **manmukh**, the one facing only their own ego, slowly wasting away inside.
This is the darkest verse of the shabad. It shows what happens when a heart is too full of the world to remember the One.
Maa-i-aa mohi har chaytai naahee — caught in love of Maya, they don't think of the One. Maya is the world of things and appearances. Moh means clinging. The problem isn't money itself. It is gripping the world as if it were everything. When that grip fills the heart, there's no room left. Forgetting isn't a separate wrong. It just happens when your attention is fully booked, like a calendar with no empty slot.
The verse draws the manmukh, the person facing only their own ego. It speaks of the "City of Death," jampur, a picture Gurbani uses often. It helps to read it less as a place after dying and more as a way of living now. A person eaten up by wanting is already trapped by their own attachments. They are not free to speak or move. Then comes annaa bolaa — blind and deaf. The One is everywhere, hidden in plain sight, as the first verse said. Yet the manmukh "sees nothing at all." The sad part isn't that the One is missing. It's that the eyes are closed.
Hear Guru Amar Das's tone. Manmukh and gurmukh are not two kinds of people, labeled for life. They are two ways the same person can face, at any moment. This verse is a mirror for all of us when we forget. The "rotting away" isn't a punishment from outside. It is what happens to a life that feeds only the ego. And the good news hides inside it: anyone can turn around. Closed eyes can open. That turning is the rest of the shabad.
Is there something you want so badly right now that it's crowding out your ability to notice anything else? What is it making you "blind and deaf" to?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI