Kabir uses the allegory of a wife who, separated from her husband, tries to reach him with the help of a guide who claims to know the way through the thick forests that lie in between. Evening has fallen, dark clouds have gathered, and the guide has himself lost his way in the dense forest. The folded blanket the wife was asked to carry as protection against the cold is getting wet in the rain and becomes heavier every moment.

The soul is the wife, separated from the Lord, her Husband. Scholars, ritualists and priests, who claim to be guides, have lost their way in the forest of dialectics, rituals and ceremonies. The dark clouds of ignorance and delusion have gathered, and the daytime of human birth is turning into the evening of age and infirmity. The fourfold blanket of chanting (jap), penances (tap), worship (puja) and reading holy books (path), instead of being a help, entails an increasing load of karraas, and the more one indulges in these practices the heavier the burden becomes. The soul, in its pure state, cannot bear the slightest weight of karma, not even as light as a flower's; she now suffers in agony because the prescribed acts of piety only add to the ever-increasing load of her karmas.

Dark clouds have gathered,
The evening shadows have spread;
In the maze of the dense forest
The guide himself has lost his way.
The wife is here, the Husband elsewhere,
And she carries on her head
A fourfold blanket.

The delicate wife,
Who could not even
Bear a flower's weight,
Complains to her friends,
Her eyes filled with tears:
As my blanket becomes
Every moment wetter and wetter,
Heavier and heavier,
So too, alas, does my burden.

Bijak, Ramaini 15
Unhi badariyā