gaṃgāmāīcī āratī

The Marathi āratī of Gaṅgā, sung with the refrain jaya devī jaya devī jaya Gaṅgābāī, and unusual in this cluster for being almost entirely confession rather than praise. Mother, by the mere sight of you a creature is lifted up; you take away sin and make the whole world pure — and then immediately: I have piled up heaps of sins by wrong deeds, and now, remembering, what will become of my understanding? The second stanza continues in the same voice, saying that circumstances came and he acted accordingly, that he was caught in the delusion of the senses and took pleasure there, and drowned in an ocean of his own bad acts. The third asks her to guard him at the hour when the pitiless messengers of Yama come, and to wipe out the balance standing in Yamadharma's ledger — an image from accountancy, and the sharpest line in the piece.