tokari lyrics with meaning

Many of you might read the title of this post as "tokri", meaning basket in hindi. But actually it is to be pronounced as 'tokaari'. It is an Assamese folk song more traditionally called tokari geet or tokari naam. It is called so for it is played with a single stringed guitar like instrument called tokari or dukari. I heard it in one of the Coke Studio episodes.

Lyrics of the song:

Syama rai kalia
(oh! Lord Krishna)

ohe bi nandiya – 2

borang saraaaaaii...

Kunbone saarila dhenu he hari

kadam tale kana muruuuli bajai -2
(Under the shade of kadam tree,
with all his cattle,
 kanha plays the flute)

{Jamunar balite, syama rai kalia

kisna banhi bajai

ohe bi nandiya } -2

mathare mukuli suli he hari

kadam tale kana muruuuli bajai -2
(along the banks of Yamuna river,
lord krishna is playing the flute
mother Yashoda has heard him now)

O syam kalia, kot aji palabi

toye syam kalia, kot aji palabi

jamunar balite, kadambar talate -2

merai merai bandhiba

tuke syam kalia, kot aji palabi

toye syam kalia, kot aji palabi
(O lord krishna,
where will you run today?
to Yamuna riverside?
to the shade of kadam tree?
Mother Yashoda will catch you,
and will tie you to a tree.)

{brindabanur maje kanhu, oh syam kalia

go dhenu sarai prabhu, o syam kalia} -2

Ooo....

bankhi rawe gopi manak bhulai he

o syam kalia, kot aji palabi

jamunar balite, kadambar talate

merai merai bandhibo

tuke syam kalia, kot aji palabi

toye(o) syam kalia, kot aji palabi -7

(In the fields of vrindavan,
krishna's cows are grazing,
while he is enjoying playing his flute.
On hearing the sound of his flute,
gopis lose all their senses and get immersed into the music.)

Hello! :)

Emotions are universal. And these emotions get repressed and create anxiety if not expressed. We use many methods to express our emotions. These vary from direct methods like talking, writing letters to indirect ones like paintings, music or just letting your eyes speak for yourself. In the more commonly used direct methods, the most crucial element is the language. A language has its own rules, beauty and life (not sure about the death phase though). Its like a skin cover which our skeletal thinking process wears. We all have various mother tongues and a large fraction of us are most comfortable with the mother tongue.
A simple jugglery of sounds and characters (more often called letters), and it tends to have meaning, just because it follows the rules of a language. Now when we encounter a new language, the same jugglery becomes senseless since we are unaware of the set of rules it follows. Theories say that all languages are developed more or less on the same basis. This implies that when you know one language, its easier to learn another rather than starting from scratch i.e. learning like a child. But despite all these similarities, etc, the beauty of a language is unique to itself. It is here this beauty attracts me.
I was brought up in a largely multilingual environment. With Hindi as my mother-tongue being, English the first language at school, Marwadi (popular dialect of Hindi used in Rajasthan) being the language used by grandparents, Gujarati spoken by the society kids and the sacred texts read at religious occasions (not really occasions, they came 5 times a week or so) that were written in mainly Sanskrit. I don't really know from where but like a typical Indian Hindi speaking kid, my exposure to Urdu was also pretty decent. On top of this all, when I travel to different parts of India, I encounter a bunch of many other languages, a few of which barely possess any similarity with the ones I know. With all this exposure, I developed a desire to like master all languages on earth (I realize that in no way this is possible, but still...). And it is this desire which makes me figure out the meaning as soon as I hear something in a new language. I have managed some basic level of Marathi and Japanese recently. I want to master this and learn other languages as well. As a part of this effort, I launch this blog where I shall post the experiences of my attempts of learning a new language.