Kohida Kiya Manda Kiya

Not knowing where, not knowing why, I came,
and on the journey of life, you are my dear and lovely friend…..
The taste of love, and its fruit as well, I learned from you,
with my whole life, with a devout heart, I give you my thanks…..
In this fleeting world, in the sorrow of parting, darkness became my lot,
like the wind across a desert, I set out, alone…..

This is a short, reflective hymn about God as the companion who walks with us through a bewildering life. It opens with a very human confession of not understanding one’s own existence, “not knowing where, not knowing why, I came.” Into that uncertainty comes the one steady thing the singer is sure of, “on the journey of life, you are my dear and lovely friend.” God is met here not first as judge or king but as the faithful friend at one’s side.

The gratitude at the centre is tender and specific. “The taste of love, and its fruit as well, I learned from you.” Whatever the singer knows of real love, its sweetness and the good it bears, he traces back to God, and answers it with thanks offered from “my whole life” and “a devout heart.” It is a quiet acknowledgment that the capacity to love at all is a gift.

The last lines do not pretend life is easy. “In this fleeting world, in the sorrow of parting, darkness became my lot,” and the closing image is of setting out “like the wind across a desert, alone.” Yet placed after the earlier verses, that loneliness is held within a larger trust: even the one who feels like a lone wind in a wilderness is accompanied by the friend of his life’s journey. What the listener is left with is a gentle, honest faith, aware of impermanence and loss, and steadied by the presence of a God who is, above all, a companion.