Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
In this life, her "parents' home," the soul never thinks of her Beloved.
She is robbed by "the second thing," and in the end she weeps and wails.
Her life has turned the wrong way, ungraceful and out of harmony. She never meets the Beloved — not even in a dream.
This life is our short time to get ready to meet the Beloved. This verse shows what happens when that time is wasted.
Raag Maajh often tells a love story. The soul is a young bride, and the One is her pir, her Beloved. This verse adds an important word: pay-ee-arhai, the parents' home. In Guru Amar Das's time, a young woman lived in her parents' home before her wedding. Then she went to her new home with her husband. In the verse, the parents' home is this present life. It is our short season to prepare for meeting the One. So the big question is: what are you doing with your time here?
Pay-ee-arhai pir chaytay naahee — in this life, she never thinks of her Beloved. Her attention is all somewhere else. Doojai muthee — she is robbed by "the second thing," the love of things that pass away. Notice the word "robbed." Those passing things do not just distract her. They steal her time and her heart. Think of a phone game that eats a whole afternoon you meant to spend with your grandmother. The game did not just distract you. It took the afternoon.
Rovai Dhaahee — in the end she weeps and wails. Her sadness is the ache of missing the one thing that mattered.
Now the next words sound harsh in old English: "ugly," "from an evil family," "vile." They must be read as a picture of the heart, never as a judgment of any real person, and never of women or anyone's family. Kharee ku-aali-o kuroop kulkhanee describes a heart, not a face or a birth. Kuroop means a life that has lost its grace because it is full of grabbing and forgetting. Kulkhanee means lacking the good qualities that make a soul lovely to the Beloved. The "family" she belongs to is the company of forgetting. We become like the company we keep, and here that works in the wrong direction.
Supnai pir nahee paavni-aa — she does not meet the Beloved even in a dream. The forgetting has gone so deep that He does not appear even in sleep.
This picture is here for one reason: to make us want to use our own season well. Spend it thinking of the Beloved, so the meeting in the next verse can be ours.
If this life is a season of "getting ready" to meet what you most love, what are you filling that time with — and is it preparing you, or quietly robbing you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI