The two lines
This salok stands in the Guru Granth Sahib, living scripture for Sikhs, and we never put it in a game or quiz. Its Gurmukhi is exact, checked against BaniDB and SriGranth; the Shahmukhi is our transcription and awaits a native reader.
How to read it
Five phrases, one breath each.
Farida
Farid calls his own name, O Farid. In Arabic, Farid means unique. Some hear him talking to himself; the Faridkot Teeka, an old commentary, sees his signature on advice to us. Either way it lands on whoever is reading, and today that is you.
je tu akal lateef
If your mind is truly subtle. Je is if, tu is you. Akal, mind, is the Arabic aql; Kahn Singh’s Mahan Kosh dictionary says it first meant the rope that tethers a camel, because a mind is what keeps us steady. Lateef is subtle, fine, gentle, and the Mahan Kosh adds ‘kind’; we also hear al-Lateef, the Gentle, a Name of God in Islam.
kaale likh na lekh
Don’t write black marks, faults set down in ink. Kaale is black. Na is not. Likh and lekh share one root, write and writing, so the sound repeats the meaning. ‘Against others’ is not in the Punjabi; our English adds it from the first reading below.
aapanre gireevaan meh
Into your very own collar. Aapanre is your own; the dictionaries give plain own, and we hear its extra -r- as ‘very’. Gireevaan is Persian for collar and meh is into. Urdu and Hindi still say girebaan: ‘look into your own girebaan’ means check yourself before you judge. Sahib Singh explains gireevaan as bukkal, the fold of a wrapped shawl, to tuck your face into.
sir neenvaan kar dekh
Bow your head and look. Sir is head, and ego in SriGranth’s glossary and the Faridkot Teeka, so bowing the head bows the pride. Neenvaan kar, make low, is the bow; the scripture writes a nasal dot on neen, where everyday Punjabi says neevaan. Dekh, look, ends the couplet on a command and rhymes with lekh.
Why we still need it
Back to that message. This part is ours: we write black marks all day now, comments we would never say to someone’s face, screenshots that stay. Bow your head, and the only person in your collar is you.
Salok 7, the very next couplet, goes further: if someone hits you, don’t hit back; kiss their feet and go home. Its ‘your own home’ uses the same word as aapanre, and Sahib Singh explains that home as your own self, a state of peace. We hear the collar and the home as one place.
The Mahan Kosh counts the collar line among the Gurbani lines people use as proverbs. So when your thumb hovers over send, remember Farida je tu akal lateef, and look down first.
Who was Baba Farid?
Baba Farid was a 13th-century Chishti Sufi of Pakpattan, in what is now Punjab, Pakistan. The verses under his name are among the earliest poetry in Punjabi. In 1604 Guru Arjan placed them in the Adi Granth, where they are still read and sung: a Sufi’s words, at home in Sikh scripture.
Sources & further reading
- Guru Granth Sahib, Ang 1378, saloks 6 and 7 of Baba Farid. The Gurmukhi is reproduced exactly and checked against BaniDB and SriGranth on 11 October 2026. Our say-it hint follows BaniDB’s pronunciation, and SriGranth’s word glossary gives sir as ego.
- Sahib Singh, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Darpan, his explanation and word meanings for saloks 6 and 7 (gireevaan as bukkal; home as your own self, a state of peace), read through BaniDB.
- Faridkot Teeka, its commentary on saloks 6 and 7, read through BaniDB.
- Manmohan Singh, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, his English and Punjabi translation, read through BaniDB.
- Sant Singh Khalsa, Sri Guru Granth Sahib, his English translation, read through BaniDB. Our ‘black marks against others’ follows his ‘black marks against anyone else’.
- Bhai Kahn Singh Nabha, Gur Shabad Ratnakar Mahan Kosh (1930), for akal and the camel’s tether, lateef (fine, subtle, kind, and among the Names of God it lists under tasbih), aapanre (plain own), gireevaan and Farid, both meanings of black writing, and the collar line’s place among the Gurbani lines people use as proverbs.
- Rekhta Dictionary, for the idioms built on girebaan.
- The Encyclopaedia of Sikhism, entries on Shaikh Farid (his life, and the doubts over authorship it traces to M. A. Macauliffe and rejects) and on the Faridkot Teeka (the earliest full-scale commentary on the scripture).
- The Shahmukhi is our own transcription from the Gurmukhi. We found no edited Shahmukhi text of this salok, only machine conversions, so it awaits a native reader’s review.
- The English translation, the word-for-word gloss and the commentary on this page are ours. Where we follow a commentator, we name them.
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