It’s Not Enough — Dhumāvatī and the Death of the Miracle

A wilted lotus rests on grey ash under pale morning light — beauty surviving its own extinction.

At first hearing, “Are you hoping for a miracle?” sounds like mockery — but beneath the irony is the voice of Dhumāvatī, the Widow-Goddess who appears after every hope has burned away.

She arrives when the temple is closed, when the incense has gone cold, when even the idea of redemption feels tasteless.
Her question is not cruel; it is surgical.
It pierces through the last sweetness of expectation — through the childish wish that someone, something, someday will descend to make it all right.

Bloc Party’s “Miracle” unfolds in that post-miracle atmosphere — a civilization still dressed in bravado, running on the fumes of youth and belief.
The song’s pulse is the same rhythm as Dhumāvatī’s breath: dry, ironic, yet alive with an unsentimental compassion.
Each verse dissects a different disguise of hope — cultural, generational, spiritual — until all that remains is the bare truth that no miracle is coming because nothing has ever been missing.

To listen properly, one must do what Dhumāvatī demands:
stop praying for visions, stop reaching for the next transcendence, and hear the silence inside the question.
That silence is the threshold to Her realm — the womb of ash where even miracle is devoured.

Verse 1 

North to south, empty

Running on, bravado

As if to say, as if to say

As if to say, he doesn't like chocolate

He's born a liar, he'll die a liar

Some things will never be different

The song opens like a wasteland map.
“North to south, empty” — a whole axis of experience exhausted, the compass itself stripped of magnetism.
This is the landscape after the Goddess has withdrawn: all directions equal, all meanings spent.
What still moves in that emptiness?
Only bravado, the reflex of life pretending it still believes in itself.
In Dhumāvatī’s realm, this is the ghost that keeps walking after death — ego running on residual heat, a body animated by momentum rather than purpose.

“As if to say, he doesn’t like chocolate”

“He’s born a liar, he’ll die a liar”

The “chocolate” here is sweetness — pleasure, devotion, sentimental spirituality.

To claim to reject it is just another pose; the “liar” who denies desire is still ruled by it.
Dhumāvatī exposes this paradox: those who most loudly renounce the world often crave its approval the most.
The line burns through false asceticism as much as through consumer vanity.

“Some things will never be different”

Her laughter hides inside that sentence.

It is the bleak mantra of samsāra: the wheel turns, yet nothing new appears.
But for the Kaula, this sameness is not despair; it is Śakti’s still face, the moment where seeking exhausts itself.
When nothing can be different, there is at last the possibility of seeing what has always been.

Thus the first verse sets the cremation ground:
a world emptied of direction, populated by masks of rebellion, repeating its own lies until they collapse into silence.
In that silence, Dhumāvatī waits — not to grant a miracle, but to reveal the futility of ever asking for one.

Pre-Chorus 

Stop being

So American

There's a time and there's a place

So James Dean

So blue jeans

Gonna save the world, he's gonna

Here the Goddess turns her gaze from the individual to the collective dream.
“Stop being so American” is not a jab at nationality but a strike at a mindset—
the faith that progress, optimism, and charisma can purchase transcendence.
In the Kaula sense, it is the delusion of rajas: movement mistaking itself for awakening.
Every revolution, every start-up, every new yoga that promises to “save the world”
is another reincarnation of the same restlessness.
Dhumāvatī whispers, You cannot out-run Me; I am the exhaustion that follows your sprint.

“There’s a time and there’s a place / So James Dean / So blue jeans / Gonna save the world”

The icons of rebellion—James Dean, blue jeans, the romantic savior— are invoked like cheap mantras.

They once carried the perfume of freedom; now they are incense in an empty shrine.
In Dhumāvatī’s mirror, they appear as corpses still wearing makeup:
beauty without breath, passion without presence.
She exposes the glamour of individuality as the last disguise of conformity.

The rhythm itself tightens here, as if mocking the urgency of the modern initiates
who chase style in place of substance.
The pre-chorus becomes a short-circuited prayer, a civilisation’s self-advertisement
echoing into Her silence.

And when the chorus breaks— “Are you hoping for a miracle?”— it lands like Her verdict. Not anger, not denial, but the question that ends all questions: What is left when even hope feels counterfeit?

Chorus

Are you hoping for a miracle?

Are you hoping for a miracle?

Are you hoping for a miracle?

Are you hoping for a miracle?

The question repeats like a hammer — not to elicit an answer but to wear down the one who asks.
Each repetition is a blow against the spine of desire, a scraping of every subtle form of begging.
By the third time, it is no longer addressed to the listener but to the echo inside their own chest.

In the voice of Dhumāvatī, this refrain is not cynicism; it is sacred erosion.
She asks because She knows that hoping is how the ego survives.
So long as there is something to come, the present moment remains desecrated.
The miracle is always deferred — a horizon used to avoid the radiance already here.

When She asks, “Are you hoping for a miracle?”, She means:

Do you still think God must arrive from outside?

Do you still imagine there is a future more divine than this breath?

The repetition becomes a tantric wheel:
each turn empties meaning, until the phrase becomes silence in motion.
This is the mantra’s hidden function — not to summon power but to grind the mind into dust.

By the time the refrain fades, what remains is a strange clarity —
a world without promises, yet unbearably alive.
In that desolation, Dhumāvatī smiles:
for when hope has died, vision becomes real.

Verse 2

Three out of five, three out of five (It's not enough)

Six out of ten, better luck next time

Just like his dad, just like his dad (The same mistakes)

Some things will never be different

Hungry and dumb, hungry and dumb (So wait in line)

Queuing up for some more junk food

It's not my fault, it's not my fault (Just this once)

They're getting so much younger

This verse opens like a classroom of samsāra — the endless grading of life by numbers, metrics, karma-points.
Here the human being is no longer a pilgrim but a statistic, born into a world where mediocrity is ritualized.
“Three out of five… six out of ten” — this is the rhythm of the half-awake: good enough to survive, never enough to awaken.
Dhumāvatī looks upon this repetition not with disgust but with recognition: this is what happens when consciousness forgets its own source.

“Just like his dad, just like his dad (the same mistakes)”

Inheritance becomes imprisonment.

The same habits, the same defenses, the same frightened hunger get recycled in new bodies.
Every generation prays for a miracle, but they only reproduce their parents’ karma under different slogans.
In Her eyes, this is the deepest exhaustion of the world — not violence or sin, but the inability to learn through seeing.
So She lets the wheel spin until nausea itself becomes revelation.

“Hungry and dumb, hungry and dumb (so wait in line)”

This is not an insult but a diagnosis.
It is the human condition before awakening: a spiritual famine covered with slogans, an endless queue for substitutes of aliveness — food, news, doctrines, miracles.
Dhumāvatī’s grace appears in the waiting line itself.
The long, dull queue is Her temple, the place where time stretches thin enough for the lie of progress to die.

“It’s not my fault, it’s not my fault (just this once)”

Here She exposes the ego’s final strategy — innocence as defense.

The same voice that sins cries victim, hoping to escape consequence through confession or guilt.
But Dhumāvatī, the mirror of karma, gives no absolution.
She does not punish; She simply reflects, until the soul sees that there was never anyone to blame.

“They’re getting so much younger”

This is the last shiver of the verse — the image of souls incarnating earlier into numbness, the decline of maturity.

Children raised inside the mirage before they can even question it.
A civilization devouring its own youth — that, too, is Her dance.
The widow devours the bride, time consumes promise, and from that ruin, clarity is born.

Pre-Chorus

Why can't you be

More European?

Bastard child of guilt and shame

Bury your head

In the sand

I'm thinking six, six, six, I'm thinking six

If the first pre-chorus mocked the arrogance of rajas — motion, ambition, the American dream of saving the world —
this one exposes its opposite: the tamasic decadence of intellect and guilt.
“Why can’t you be more European?” is not about geography; it is the whisper of the tired mind that hides behind sophistication.
Where America burns with naive optimism, Europe folds in on itself, polished by centuries of irony and defeat.
Dhumāvatī appears here not as the storm but as the fog that follows it — the aftermath of too much knowing.

“Bastard child of guilt and shame”

This is the lineage of the overcivilized soul: refined, self-aware, yet paralyzed.
Its rebellion is already neutered by remorse; its skepticism, another cage.
The Goddess laughs at this too — for guilt and shame are both children of the same mother: the sense of I.
She feeds on them until only impersonal seeing remains.
To Her, both guilt and pride are offerings of equal taste — dry ash upon the tongue.

“Bury your head / In the sand”

Even the intellectual retreats to the primal defense — denial.
When meaning collapses, he hides in theories, art, or nostalgia.
But in Dhumāvatī’s domain, there is no sand deep enough to hide in.
She uncovers the buried face gently, almost maternally, forcing it to look at what it tried to escape:
the end of narrative, the futility of both empire and enlightenment.

“I’m thinking six, six, six, I’m thinking six”

This is the heartbeat of desecration, the recognition that even the “holy” is entangled in shadow.
Not a satanic boast, but an admission of wholeness — that divinity and its distortion are not two.
Dhumāvatī smiles at this thought; for Her, the number of the beast is not blasphemy but completion,
the return of God to the places where He was denied.
Every impurity She reveals becomes a gateway; every blasphemy, a mirror turned upright.

Thus the second pre-chorus completes the polarity:
the brash savior and the guilty cynic are one organism, two lungs of the same delusion.

Both kneel before the same false altar — the hope for a miracle that will spare them from seeing clearly. 

Final Chorus 

At the end, the question returns — but the air around it has changed.
No longer a tease or social commentary, it resounds like a cosmic echo.
The music lifts, the voice strains, and the words blur into a single vibration:
Are you hoping for a miracle?

And then the answer appears, not from the singer but from the Void itself:

“It’s not enough.”

This is the voice of Dhumāvatī — the final verdict of the universe stripped of promise.
Every form of devotion, rebellion, art, or love that still depends on a result
is tenderly, ruthlessly declared insufficient.
Her words are not condemnation; they are liberation disguised as defeat.
“It’s not enough” means: no act, no vision, no miracle can complete what is already whole.

The repetition turns hypnotic.
Each “It’s not enough” peels another layer of hope,
until hope itself becomes sound, then breath, then silence.
This is not nihilism but the highest śānti — peace born from the exhaustion of asking.

In tantric language, this is mahā-śānti: the stillness after the final disillusionment.
When even God refuses to perform, only pure awareness remains.
The miracle we sought dissolves into the miracle of perception itself —
a miracle so constant we forgot it needed no announcement.

As the chorus fades, Dhumāvatī stands amid the ashes of all expectations.
Her silence is not void but fullness too vast for words.
In Her presence, the world does not need saving, only seeing.
And when She asks again, “Are you hoping for a miracle?”,
it is no longer a question — it is the sound of the miracle already here.

The Widow’s Gift

At the end of “Miracle,” everything collapses —
the culture, the hero, the child, the savior, the cynic.
All voices fall into the same refrain: It’s not enough.
This is not despair but initiation — the entrance into Dhumāvatī’s mandala,
where insufficiency itself becomes the sacred doorway.

She does not destroy because She hates;
She devours because She loves too purely to allow delusion to survive.
Every glittering idol — of progress, rebellion, enlightenment, or vision —
must be consumed before truth can stand naked.
In that devouring, the human cry “I want more”
is slowly transmuted into silence.

Dhumāvatī is the end of the miracle as event
and the revelation of the miracle as being.
Her question — “Are you hoping for a miracle?” —
is the last test of the seeker who still expects to see light as proof.
She denies all proofs, because what She gives cannot be witnessed.
Her gift is non-arrival — the sudden realization that the long-awaited dawn
was simply one’s own sight clearing.

When all directions are empty, when lineage, youth, and intellect fail,
She remains: the Widow of Time, the smoke that cannot be burned.
Her compassion is not soothing but surgical.
She does not console; She disarms.
And when there is nothing left to hope for,
She smiles — for the miracle has already happened.
It is called this.