“It was paddy-harvesting time when Bhai Lehna arrived,” Buddha begins to recount. “Baba, together with other Sikhs, Sri Chand, and Lakhmi Das, who were reluctantly helping Baba, had labored hard and long. They were hungry. I returned to the dera to fetch lunch for them, and when I walked into the courtyard of Baba’s house, Lehna, who had just arrived from Khadur, wearing white clothes, was giving Bebe Nanaki a sack of pink salt from the mountains for the langar. He was eager to meet Baba and I told him I would take him to the fields after I had packed some lunch.
“When Bhai Lehna and I arrived at the field, an argument was in progress. Baba, who had just finished tying up the harvested paddy in three bundles, had asked his sons to carry them home, and they had refused, insisting that he pay laborers from the village to do it.
“Sri Chand said, ‘I have done enough labor for one day. I have to meditate.’
“Lakhmi said, ‘Here comes Buddha, tell him to carry them.’
“I wasn’t about to pick them up, either. The bundles were heavy and oozing mud. Even as we argued, Lehna asked me to help him put the bundles on his head.
“ ‘But your white clothes!’ I exclaimed.
“ ‘They’re just clothes,’ he said, bending down, picking up a bundle, and putting it on his head. He asked me to hand him the second one, which I did, and he put it on top of the first one on his head.
“Oh, the look Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das gave him! There was instant hatred in them for Lehna. If they could have killed him with their gaze, they would have.
We were all amazed because Bhai Lehna didn’t bend down with the heavy weight of the two bundles, but stood straight and erect. He asked for the third one, too, and, placing it on the second one, began to walk toward town gracefully, as if he were dancing beneath his burden; as if his burden was air!”
“Ah!” Mardana exclaims, and then again, “ah!” His face grows mushy with emotion as he shuts his eyes. When he opens them again there are tears in them. “It reminds me of an incident when Baba and I were imprisoned by the emperor, Babar.”
“Tell us,” Buddha and Aziza say, simultaneously.
“First, you finish your story,” Mardana says, putting some food into Dharam Chand’s mouth.
“By the time all of us reached the dera, Bhai Lehna was a sight, his white clothes all stained and dripping with mud! Nanaki and Sulakhni greeted us. While Nanaki laughed delightedly at the sight and clapped her hands loudly, Mata Sulakhni’s mouth fell open in horror.
“ ‘Is this how you treat a guest?’ she screamed at Baba.
“ ‘He’s not a guest,’ Baba said, quietly. ‘He is here to stay.’
“ ‘But look at his new clothes stained with mud!’ she screamed.
“ ‘It’s not mud; it’s saffron,’ Baba said, quietly.”
Buddha pauses in his tale. Mardana and Aziza know from hearing so many of his stories that pauses always precede some significant observation.
“My vision of the battlefield is just one incident of something inexplicable that is happening to me. It began on the day I bowed before Baba as usual and he smiled at me very affectionately and touched me on my head. Since then I see things differently because I am different. Before that touch, I was living in a cave full of shadows and tight spaces. The very next day my archery jumped to another level. I used to think, ‘I have to get better at it; I have to practice more and harder.’ But that day it was as if the arrow shot itself, effortlessly, like a river flowing or the wind blowing.”
“Sehaj,” Mardana smiles. “You are in the flow of the river of life.”
“Something else was moving through me, not me …”
“But also you,” Mardana adds.
“Yes, also me. I experienced a way of being in flow and rhythm without effort. I mean effort must be, just like I must practice and become very good with the bow and arrow, and also with the sword, both of which Bhai Jodha is teaching me, then let it happen.”
“I also want a sword! I also want a bow and arrow!” Aziza cries.
“Well, you can’t have it!” Nasreen replies. “You are not a boy.”
“Yes, you can have it. I’ll ask Bebe Nanaki,” Buddha says.
“See? He will ruin her!” Nasreen shouts.
“I did not mean real ones, bhabijee,” Buddha explains. “I meant the weapons of the mind, without which all our physical weapons are like armor without a warrior. All of us have to use the sword of discrimination and the bow and arrow of the mind to hit our targets.”
“I don’t understand this rigmarole, nor do I need to,” Nasreen replies tersely.
After another silence, Buddha resumes his story. “When Baba said, ‘It’s not mud; it’s saffron,’ I saw Bhai Lehna suffused with madder-colored saffron. He was dripping with it, as if someone had squirted it on him playfully. Baba was laughing aloud, and Bhai Lehna, too, looking down at himself, burst into laughter. I think Mata Sulakhni saw it too, for I saw an expression on her face that I have never seen before. It was disbelief, confusion, awe, as if something had shattered her certainties.”
“What is saffron?” Aziza asks.
“It is the color that Hindus bathe the idols of their gods in,” Buddha explains.
“Is it the spice Daadi puts in the rice during Ramadan, that makes it yellow and orange?”
“Yes,” Fatima replies. “It’s very rare, precious, and expensive. You know how saffron is dried? The flowers are picked and then put into burning charcoal. Saffron is a symbol of faith, which is often tested by fire. When we survive the fire we become as precious as saffron.
“And Bhai Lehna is passing that test. As gold is tried by the touchstone, so is Baba Nanak trying Lehna. He serves Baba with body and soul, like a servant, carries and washes his clothes, shampoos his hair. We had a bitterly cold spell last month. We tried to dissuade Baba from going on his daily ritual of bathing in the Ravi River several hours before dawn, but he insisted on going.”
“It is an old habit of his,” Mardana explains.
“I was a bit concerned, so I thought I too would accompany Baba and Bhai Lehna to make sure nothing untoward happens. Our breath was smoking out of our mouths, and the edges of the water had crystalized into ice. I had my blanket wrapped tightly around myself and was shivering violently. I couldn’t even imagine touching the river, let alone taking a dip in it. I have no desire to die early, though I always try to remember that I can go at any time. But Bhai Lehna stood on the shore as if it were springtime. A little later, he said, ‘It isn’t right for me not to follow my guru.’ He stripped off his clothes and went into the river. I was really worried because at least Baba was used to it. When Lehna came out he was almost frozen to death. But Baba’s embrace, and a fire I had made for them, restored him to health.
“Then the other night, at midnight, in that heavy rain we had, a part of the wall of Baba’s room collapsed. He called out to his sons to do something, and they both said, ‘take another quilt and go to sleep, old man. We’ll get masons in the morning to fix it.’ But Lehna got up right away and began to rebuild the wall. When he was done, Baba said to him, ‘it is crooked, throw it down!’ Lehna obediently did so. Again Baba said ‘but the foundation must be moved back.’ Quietly, without complaint, Lehna started to build the wall for the second time. The sons said to him, ‘you’re a fool, Lehna, for listening to a senile old man! Refuse him!’ Mata Sulakhni also yelled at Baba for being unreasonable. But Baba wanted it torn down a second time. Baba was pleased by the third attempt, and we all got some rest. Baba did it another time, too, with his clothes; said he wanted them washed in the middle of the night. Bhai Lehna did so without complaint, as if it was the highest honor.
“Baba’s affection for Lehna jee, as for a son, is growing visibly, just as is Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das’s bitter animosity toward him. I adore Bhai Lehna, too. The other day, determined to excel at archery, I was practicing very seriously. I had placed a hundred targets in the mango tree, in different locations, angles, and heights. I felt full of power and strong as an ox. I was on my knees, reaching for the topmost one when Bhai Lehna came to me and said, ‘Oi Buddha jee, what are you aiming at?’ I was very focused and didn’t want to be disturbed. I turned around and my gaze was not friendly. Bhai Lehna was imitating my posture, bow drawn, brow concentrated, kneeling on the ground, aiming at the topmost branch, muscles tense, only he had no bow and arrow. He sang, spontaneously,
“ ‘If an arrow is shot at the sky, how can it reach there?
The sky above is unreachable—know this well, O archer!’
“I stopped in my tracks. His words were arrows that tore through a veil in my head. My mind bloomed wide open, like a flower, and the whole mystery was present in that instant, all at once. I felt awake like I had never felt before. I understood, no, experienced something profound, though I cannot say what.
“I was still amazed when Bhai Lehna told me to put my bow and arrow down by the root of the tree, and when I turned around, he lunged at me and wrestled me to the ground. I was unprepared and he had the advantage, but soon I was into the game and it was wonderful, at once serious and playful, and very exhilarating. He is very strong, perhaps from being a dancer.
“There is so much I admire about him. He’s very emotional and it seems to me that he dances fluidly between his emotions, like a river, seamlessly, from thought to thought, emotion to emotion, action to action. He is like a child of the universe.”
“But why was Bhai Lehna plucking the longest feathers? You haven’t told us!” Aziza says. “And you still have to tell us the story about when you and Baba were imprisoned by the evil emperor Babar, Daadu.”
“I’m coming to it! I’m coming to it!” Buddha teases.
“You’ll learn when you grow up, Zizu, that sometimes we have to take detours to stay on the path. Stories are like trees and rivers, winding and bending this way and that to get to where they need to go,” Mardana explains.
“Tell me now!” Aziza orders, and Buddha resumes the thread of his narrative about Bhai Lehna plucking the feathers of dead birds in the middle of a raging battle.