Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
My heart aches just to see you, my teacher — to lay eyes on your face. I cry out like the little rain-bird crying for the raindrop, the one that will drink nothing else. Until I see you, my thirst will not go away, and I cannot find any peace at all. Nothing else will do. I only want you.
This opens one of the most famous and tender compositions in the whole Guru Granth Sahib. Tradition holds that the young Guru Arjan wrote it while separated from his father, Guru Ram Das, aching to see him — which is why the longing feels so personal, so much like a child missing a parent. The page itself is touching: the line "Seven Four-Verse Hymns of the Fourth Mehl" closes the preceding group of Guru Ram Das's hymns, and this shabad's own header then names the Fifth Mehl — the son's voice following the father's, the one light flowing between them.
The keyword is lochai — to long, to yearn achingly. Meraa man lochai — "my mind longs" — for nothing less than darshan, the sight of the beloved teacher. And the image is the signature bird of Raag Maajh: the chaatrik, the rain-bird who bilap karay (cries out) and will drink only the falling raindrop. The seeker's trikhaa (thirst) cannot be quenched by anything but the one thing it craves.
This is viraha in its purest form — separation-pain that nothing can soothe except reunion. Notice there is no peace (saant na aavai) without the beloved. The longing is total. But this is not despair; it is love so complete that it refuses every substitute. The bird will die of thirst with a whole river beside it, waiting for its single drop. That is how this seeker loves.
Has there ever been something you wanted so much that nothing else could take its place? What does that kind of longing feel like?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI