Across South Asia, Bhakti saints and Sufi mystics developed a shared language of intimacy with the Divine. Through the poetry of Lalon Fakir, Rumi, Kabir, Bulleh Shah, and others, God emerges as a friend, neighbour, beloved, boatman, and craftsman — bringing the sacred into the folds of ordinary human life.
In the early nineteenth century, the Bengali mystic poet-saint Lalon Fakir wrote: barrir kaachey aarshi nagar, setha ek padosi basat korey / aami ek dinow naa dekhlaam taarey (…) ki bolbo se padosir katha / tar hasta-pada-skandha-matha nai rey / khonik thakey shunyer opor, khonik bhaasey neerey / aami ek dinow naa dekhlaam taarey. (There’s a city of mirrors near my home; my neighbour lives there / I never see him! (…) What can I say / he doesn’t have limbs or a head / sometimes he floats in the air, and sometimes he floats in his nest / I never see him!)
In his song-poetry that still echoes through Bengal in the voices of ‘baul’ or syncretic mystic minstrels, Lalon framed god as a neighbour and a friend — a familiar figure who lives nearby even though you may not see them. In India, this has precedence in Hindu scripture: in the Bhagavad Gita, likely composed in the second or first century BCE, one of the many modes of worship is called ‘sakhya bhava’ or the mood of friendship.
In Bhakti theology, ‘sakhya bhava’ refers to the idea of god as a friend. Unlike the reverential posture of awe and subservience towards god that characterises many religious traditions, ‘sakhya bhava’ encourages the devotee to approach the Divine as an equal, a close friend, and an eternal companion in the journey of life. The stories of friendship between Krishna and the cowherds of Vrindavan, Krishna and Sudama, and Krishna and Arjun are examples of ‘sakhya’ worship.
A similar idea exists in Sufism as well. Sufi mystics such as Rabi’ah al-Adawiyya (718-801), Abu‘l-Hasan Kharaqani (963-1033), Shams Tabrizi (1185-1248), and Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi (30 September 1207-17 December 1273) often addressed god as a friend and a beloved in their poetry. In India, sufi mystic poets and scholars such as Khwaja Mo’inuddin Chishti (1 February 1143–15 March 1236), Amir Khusrow (1253–1325), Nizamuddin Auliya (1238–3 April 1325), Kabir Das (15th Century), and Bulleh Shah (1680–1757) were proponents of this tradition.
"God Almighty answered me / 'You’ve been seeking me for sixty years? / I’ve spent an eternity to eternity / befriending you.'"Abu‘l-Hasan Kharaqani (963-1033)
Although their approaches differed, they were united by a shared vision of intimate divine love. While Rabi’a al-Adawiyya emphasized selfless devotion to God beyond fear of punishment or hope of reward, Abu’l-Hasan Kharaqani imagined a deeply personal friendship with the Divine, and both Shams Tabrizi and Jalal al-Din Muhammad Rumi celebrated love as a transformative force that dissolved the boundaries between the seeker and the sought after. Bulleh Shah’s ‘ranjha ranjha’, later adapted by Gulzar for Maniratnam’s ‘Raavan’ (2010), and Javed Akhtar’s ‘O Paalanhaare’ from Ashutosh Gowariker’s ‘Lagaan’ (2001), based on the idea of God as ‘nirgun’ from Kabir’s couplets is an example of how India’s Bhakti and Sufi poets rose above abstract depictions of God by imagining the Divine as familiar, relatable figures.
Contemporary qawwalis and folk songs have continued this tradition with songs such as Prasoon Joshi’s ‘O Rangrez’, which speaks of the beloved, or god, as a ‘rangrez’ or dyer who gives colour to life; several folk songs from the riverine Bengal delta which refer to god as ‘majhi’ or the eternal boatman; and Clinton Cerejo’s ‘Madari’, based on a Punjabi folk song frame god as an elusive street magician pulling at the strings of destiny.
By using familiar everyday archetypes such as the divine dyer (Rangrez), the boatman (Majhi), and the street performer (Madari), these songs bring the sacred into the ordinary routines of human life. Historically, this framing of god as a familiar figure also allowed poets to bypass rigid religious hierarchies. By democratising the divine, they argued that God is not a distant entity, but a companion: a craftsman working on your soul, a sailor guiding your boat, or a performer orchestrating the theatre of life.
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The Divine In Plain Sight: Unpacking The Everyday Aesthetics Of The Sacred In India
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