Build the raft while the water is calm, save your heart for the color that lasts — and when the Beloved calls, the swan flies home.
The Arc
Farid's second Soohee shabad, in the Lalit mode, gathers three luminous images. Build the raft in calm times, before the waters churn (Pauri0). Do not pour your heart into the safflower's fast-fading color (Pauri1, rahaao). Time flows one way, like milk that cannot be gathered back — so treasure the moment (verse 2). And when the Beloved calls, the soul-swan flies home (verse 3). Like 1727, this is rendered comfort-forward, with the closing death-image turned entirely toward homecoming.
Key Vocabulary
bayrhaa — the raft; the love and steadiness gathered in calm times to carry us through storms.
kasumbhrhaa — safflower, a cheap fast-fading dye; Gurbani's classic image for fleeting pleasure, set against the fast true dye of majeeth (madder).
dholaa — my dear; a warm term of endearment.
hans — the soul-swan that flies home when the Beloved calls.
Themes and Cross-Connections
The safflower-versus-madder dye contrast runs across Gurbani (Tilang's Dyer's Vat, the fast dye of love). The soul-swan flying home is again the Alaahnian's central comfort. Build-the-raft-in-time echoes Kabir's begin-before-you-need-to in 1719.
For Raag Soohee
Soohee's love is asked to be a fast, true dye — poured into what lasts — so that when the call home comes, the swan flies to a Beloved it has loved all along.
Translation Notes
Farid is rendered with full interfaith reverence. The closing literal (this body becomes a heap of dust) is dropped per wellbeing rules and the Alaahnian precedent; kept is the soul-swan flying home to the Beloved who waits with love — homecoming, not dread. Milk-does-not-return-to-the-breast is rendered as time's one-way flow making the present precious, not as loss.
Build the raft while the water is calm, save your heart for the color that lasts — and when the Beloved calls, the swan flies home.
The Arc
Farid's second Soohee shabad, in the Lalit mode, gathers three luminous images. Build the raft in calm times, before the waters churn (Pauri0). Do not pour your heart into the safflower's fast-fading color (Pauri1, rahaao). Time flows one way, like milk that cannot be gathered back — so treasure the moment (verse 2). And when the Beloved calls, the soul-swan flies home (verse 3). Like 1727, this is rendered comfort-forward, with the closing death-image turned entirely toward homecoming.
Key Vocabulary
Themes and Cross-Connections
The safflower-versus-madder dye contrast runs across Gurbani (Tilang's Dyer's Vat, the fast dye of love). The soul-swan flying home is again the Alaahnian's central comfort. Build-the-raft-in-time echoes Kabir's begin-before-you-need-to in 1719.
For Raag Soohee
Soohee's love is asked to be a fast, true dye — poured into what lasts — so that when the call home comes, the swan flies to a Beloved it has loved all along.
Translation Notes
Farid is rendered with full interfaith reverence. The closing literal (this body becomes a heap of dust) is dropped per wellbeing rules and the Alaahnian precedent; kept is the soul-swan flying home to the Beloved who waits with love — homecoming, not dread. Milk-does-not-return-to-the-breast is rendered as time's one-way flow making the present precious, not as loss.
Last updated: 2026-07-08