Zikr in Six Movements: On Sai by Satinder Sartaaj
Some songs arrive like weather. You notice them, feel them, and move on.
Others arrive quietly and stay.
Sai by Satinder Sartaaj did that to me.
I’ve listened to this song many times over the years, often without thinking too much about it. And yet, every time it returns, it does something subtle: it slows me down. It thins the noise. It brings me back to a place where language feels secondary and listening feels primary. Not listening to the song alone, but listening inward.
There is something profoundly disarming about Sai. It doesn’t ask for agreement. It doesn’t demand belief. It doesn’t even insist on understanding. It simply stays, repeating a name, dissolving certainty, and gently pressing the ego to step aside.
Over time, I realized that what Sai was doing to me could not be captured in a single essay. It wasn’t just a song I admired; it was a state I kept returning to. And so this six-part blog series was born, not out of analysis alone, but out of response.
This is not a project of critique. It is an act of listening.
What Sai Invokes in Me
When I listen to Sai, I feel emptied, but not diminished.
I feel closer, but not certain.
I feel addressed, but not instructed.
The song reminds me that some truths do not want to be named, only approached. That hunger, literal or spiritual, can sharpen attention rather than weaken it. That repetition, when done sincerely, is not redundancy but erosion: it wears away what is rigid, performative, unnecessary.
Above all, Sai makes me feel unhurried. And in today’s world, that may be its most radical gift.
Writing about this song felt less like explaining something and more like walking around it slowly, from different angles, over time. Each part of this series looks at Sai from a different vantage point – biographical, spiritual, cultural, philosophical – without ever trying to pin it down.
Each part will be published on a Monday, intentionally. Mondays are beginnings. They invite rhythm. And this series, at its core, is about rhythm – of sound, of repetition, of return.
The Six Parts, Briefly
Part I – The Making of a Voice
This opening part looks at Satinder Sartaaj before Sai: his education, his years at Panjab University, his grounding in Punjabi and Sufi literature, and the quiet discipline that shaped his voice. It establishes context, not to glorify biography, but to understand the soil from which the song emerged.
Part II – Surrender, and Remembrance
Here, I explore the role of hunger, not as suffering, but as attentiveness. This part reflects on the period when Sartaaj wrote Sai while skipping breakfast for over a year, and how hunger aligns with Sufi practices of restraint, humility, and ego-thinning. This is where Sai begins to reveal itself as zikr rather than composition.
Part III – Lineage, Language, and Punjab
This part situates Sai within the Punjabi Sufi tradition – the world of Bulleh Shah, Shah Hussain, Waris Shah, and a mysticism that lives in song, not doctrine. It looks at language, repetition, dance, and how Sai continues a lineage without imitating it.
Part IV – Dissolution and Silence
Here the focus turns inward. This part explores ego-erasure, non-arrival, and the way Sai refuses closure. It looks at how the song moves toward silence, not as absence, but as presence and how the self slowly disappears from the center of the frame.
Part V – What Remains After the Song
This is a reflective piece on what Sai leaves behind. Not answers, but orientation. Not conclusions, but nearness. It considers how the song lives on in the listener, how it resists spectacle, and why its quiet persistence feels especially necessary today.
Part VI – Sai, Line by Line
The final part steps aside completely. It presents the full annotated translation of Sai, line by line, in Gurmukhi, Roman Punjabi, and English, with brief Sufi and philosophical notes. This is not interpretation as authority, but accompaniment and what it invokes in me. A coda. A place to sit with the song itself.
Why write about it weekly
Spacing these essays a week apart is intentional.
Sai does not reveal itself in a rush. Neither should the writing around it. Publishing each part on a weekly allows time for reading, reflection, and return. You don’t need to remember everything from the previous part. You only need to stay open.
This series is my way of honoring a song that has quietly shaped how I listen, not just to music, but to myself.
If you choose to read along, read slowly.
If you miss a week, come back when you can.
Like the song itself, this series isn’t going anywhere.
It will wait.
For now, just enjoy the song,
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