Nanati Batuku Natakamu (Annamacharya) — Complete Lyrics

This day-to-day life is but a drama, a play; and that which is glimpsed beyond all ordinary seeing is liberation (kaivalya). (This is one of Annamacharya's most loved Telugu keertanas on Lord Venkateswara, teaching detachment.)

To be born is real, and to die is real; but all the doings in the middle, between the two, are only a play. This world spread out before our very eyes is here — yet at the very end of it all stands liberation.

The food we eat, the cloth we wrap about us — these in-between affairs are merely a play. The two kinds of karma, good and bad, that we gather up in our lap — only when we cross beyond them is there liberation.

Sin is not so easily cut away, nor merit so easily spent; and so, laughing and laughing, time itself is a play. Up above, Lord Sri Venkateswara rules over all — and that which lies beyond even the sky is liberation.