Majhe Maher Pandhari

The old saw that “you can take the boy out of the country but you cannot take the country out of the boy” holds true for me. Of course, country refers to a rural area and not to a city or a modern nation state. It acknowledges that it is hard to replace one’s mindset with another merely by moving to another setting. 

You carry your conditioning with yourself. We love what we are familiar with, and the most familiar bits are those that we know from our childhood. I was born and brought up in Nagpur but I lived most of my adult life in the United States. For all that, I’m still that boy from Nagpur.

That meditation was motivated by what I was listening to today. I was enjoying Marathi abhangs written by the 15th century saint Eknath. They are devotional songs expressing love and devotion to Vitthala, another name of Bhagwan Vishnu. Though my mother tongue is Bengali, I understand Hindi and Marathi somewhat. I am richer for that. I left my home long ago but carry still within me the love of the music I grew up with.

So here’s one that I would like you to listen to. The singer is the lovely Kashmiri singer Shameema Akhtar. 

Reference is made to Pandharpur, a city in Maharashtra associated with Vitthala.  The abhang — Majhe Maher Pandhari — expresses the poet’s deep devotion and sense of belonging to Pandharpur, referring to it as his true home, much like a mother’s home holds a special place in one’s heart.

Majhe means mine in Marathi. Maher means my mother’s. Majhe maher pandhari means my mother’s home is Pandharpur. That’s all that I am going to bother with right now. Now let’s listen to Shameema Akhta, a Kashmiri singer. 

But wait, there’s more! Let’s listen to Kumar Gandharv’s bhajan “Sunta Hai Guru Gyani”:

Thank you, good night and may your god go with you.