Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Some people cling to what's false, and so the fruit they harvest is false too. In love with "the second thing," they waste a precious life. They sink themselves — and drag their whole family down with them — speaking lies and swallowing poison instead of nectar.
This stanza is the dark mirror of Pauri1's radiant devotee, and the contrast is exact and deliberate. In Pauri1, the true devotee lifted others — "themselves devoted, and causing others to be devoted." Here, the false-clinging person does the opposite: aap dube sagle kul dobe — they drown themselves and drag their whole family down with them. This is the shadow side of the same truth: just as a genuinely transformed life radiates and lifts everyone around it, a life sunk in falsehood pulls others under. We are never spiritually alone; our orientation ripples outward, for good or ill. The devotee carries the family across (Shabad 62); the false-clinger drowns the family alongside.
The root, named again, is koorh (falsehood) and dooja bhaai (love of the second thing). And there's a precise, almost legal logic in the first line: koorh laage koorhe phal paae — cling to the false, and the fruit you get is false too. You harvest the nature of what you planted (the "whatever you truly want, you get" of Shabad 60). Build your life on flimsy, unreal things, and the rewards will be just as flimsy and unreal — they'll crumble exactly when you reach for them, like fruit that turns to dust in your hand. The false can only ever pay you in falseness.
And the closing image gathers the whole Mehl's warning into one line: koorh bol bikh khaavnia — speaking lies, they eat poison. We've met this bikh (poison) before, set against the amrit (nectar) the same world offers (Shabad 65, Shabad 66). The tragedy isn't that some cruel fate poisons these people; it's that they keep choosing the poisoned cup — feeding on lies, grasping, the love of separate things — while the nectar rains free overhead. And birtha janam gavaae — a precious human life wasted. As always in this tradition, the deepest sorrow named is not damnation but waste: a rare, beautiful life spent drinking poison and dragging loved ones down, when the same life could have radiated nectar and carried them home. The stanza isn't a threat; it's a mirror held up to the cost of clinging to the false — and an implied plea to choose the other cup, and so lift others rather than sink them.
How do your choices — good or bad — ripple out to affect the people closest to you? Have you ever been lifted or pulled down by someone else's path?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI