Thakur ji ki marzi hai

My father believes in karma.

Prārabdha.

When he sees me struggling, he says it like a balm:

“This will free you.”

My father doesn’t say it like a sentence.

He says it like reassurance.

“Jab saath chhod dete hain,

tab Thakur ji haath pakad lete hain

aur apni sharan dete hain.”

When people leave, God holds you.

I’ve leaned on that thought many times.

Especially when I was too tired to question anything.

When believing felt easier than breaking apart.

Because pain with meaning feels survivable.

Pain without meaning feels cruel.

So I nodded.

I let it soothe me.

I let it tuck me in when the nights felt too long.

But another truth kept rising, quietly, stubbornly.

Because I’ve seen suffering harden people.

Make them bitter.

Make them sharp with those closest to them.

I’ve seen pain turn people suspicious of love.

Turn tenderness into weakness.

Turn faith into a shield instead of a doorway.

And I’ve also seen people suffer endlessly —

not become free,

just become used to the ache.

That’s when the comfort started cracking.

If pain itself liberated us,

why do so many people grow smaller inside it?

Why do some people age without ever touching peace?

And then an even more uncomfortable thought came.

How often do we use God to soften what we don’t want to see?

How often do we say yeh bhi Thakur ji ki marzi hai

because sitting with the raw truth would undo us?

Because sometimes suffering doesn’t point upward.

Sometimes it points inward.

And that’s much harder to face.

Slowly, something shifted for me.

Maybe Thakur ji doesn’t give pain to rescue us from life.

Maybe pain is given so the stories fall apart.

So we can’t hide behind roles.

So we can’t pretend anymore.

So we are forced to see ourselves without decoration.

Our bare truth.

The truth we keep running from.

The patterns we repeat and call destiny.

The wounds we protect and call faith.

Because God doesn’t meet us in endurance.

He meets us in truth.

And truth is not comforting.

It is stripping.

It asks questions we don’t want to ask.

What has this pain made me avoid?

What part of me keeps choosing this?

Who am I becoming while calling this surrender?

This realisation didn’t give me peace.

It unsettled me.

Because it means pain is not holy by default.

It becomes holy only when it brings honesty.

Otherwise, it’s just pain —

wrapped in prayer,

passed down as wisdom,

used to survive another day.

And maybe Thakur ji doesn’t hold our hand

to pull us away from suffering.

Maybe he holds our hand

so we don’t look away

when suffering finally shows us

who we really are.

Only there —

in that naked seeing —

have I felt even a glimpse of him.

Not in comfort.

Not in explanations.

But in truth I could no longer escape.