“We turned our steps toward Talwandi because I insisted on it,” Mardana picks up the thread. “When we reached the outskirts of the forest, Baba spread his blanket on the ground and told me to go into town. I couldn’t for the life of me understand why he didn’t want to visit his wife and family. I was so excited and in such a hurry to get home that I stumbled many times. I wanted to see Fatima again, to look into her eyes, to touch her; I wanted to see my son and daughters, to eat a meal cooked by Fatima, and just sit around in the courtyard surrounded by love! But Fatima wasn’t very nice to me on my return at all!”
“What did you expect? You were gone for so long without thinking about your family. Mata Sulakhni is absolutely right!”
“I thought about my family all the time! Ask Baba! I was like a parrot repeating, ‘home, home, home!’ And we made up, didn’t we? Remember?” Mardana looks at Fatima, as if sharing a secret all their own.
Fatima blushes and turns away.
“So, to get back to the story, I ran all the way home,” Mardana continues. “I had hoped nobody would see me, but a few villagers saw me hurrying home and started whispering, ‘Mardana is back! Mardana is back! But where is Nanak?’ They feared he was dead. I was in a very awkward position. I had to lie and say he was in another town. But I got caught in that lie by my desire to take Baba a good meal, and as I was hurrying out at dusk, I was seen again, and the rumors started all over again.”
“Let me pick up Mata Sulakhni’s story from here,” Buddha interposes.
She said to Baba, “You were camped outside Talwandi, you didn’t want to see me. I was nothing to you! But I heard everyone whispering, and your father, mother, and sister wouldn’t hear Mardana’s pleading that you didn’t want to see anyone. They got ready to go with food and clothes, but they wouldn’t let me come! I sat at home with my burning heart turning to cinders. The maid, who went with them, carrying all the gifts for you on her head, told me everything when they returned, without you! She told me how your father had tried to tempt you to return home: ‘I will build you a new home!’ he said. ‘I will get you a new wife because I know Sulakhni is a shrew and has a big tongue!’
“And what was my reply to my father?” Baba turned to Mata Sulakhni. “I said, ‘I have exchanged hearts with those to whom my body is attached. God arranges marriages. He joins them forever, for this bond between man and wife is the battleground where we learn love.’ But if you want to know why I didn’t come to see you, Sulakhni, it was because I was afraid I would get attached to you and the children all over again and I didn’t want to because my pilgrimage was not over, because I hadn’t yet learned how to be detached in my attachments.”
“ Pilgrimage, shmilgrimage! Go to hell!” Mata Sulakhni, who wasn’t really listening to Baba, shouted.
“ Mother, we have heard this story many, many times,” Sri Chand said, curtly.
“ I could see at that moment why Sri Chand never wanted to marry! He had had enough of family kalesh!” Buddha said.
Mata Sulakhni beat her breast: “What do you know? It is inscribed in the pulp of my heart. These memories are alive in my kaaljaa,70 and when I burn on the pyre it will cry out loudly so the whole world will hear my story.”
“ Time to put the past to rest, mother,” Sri Chand said again impatiently.
“ Shut up, let her talk,” Lakhmi Das said.
“ If my life was any better now, I would forget. But even now he is a lohai da thun.71 Even now he prefers Lehna to his own sons and me.”
“ What’s so special about Lehna? He is a good servant, that’s all,” Sri Chand said.
“Only he doesn’t get paid. We should pay him to make his status clear,” Lakhmi added.
“ Just because Lehna is mad like you, you worship each other!” Mata said bitterly.
“ Lehna is a gem,” Baba said, quietly, resolutely, as if he had made up his mind to finally speak his heart.
“ And your own sons, your flesh and blood, are not?”
“ What is blood to me? The same blood flows in all,” Baba replied.
“ And what is your wife to you? Get some other flesh and blood which is no different from the mother of your sons!”
“ That I will never do. We are joined forever.”
“ I hope not!” Sulakhni shouted. “I want a better husband than you in my next life!”
Baba smiled broadly, lovingly, really amused by his wife.
“ But I will want you even in my next life,” Baba said, quietly.
“ Send Lehna away now, then,” Mata Sulakhni said. I could tell she was pleased by Baba’s words.
“ That I won’t do. He is indispensable to me.”
“ Why don’t you guide your sons like you guide him? How can they learn anything unless you guide them?”
“ Nobody guided me,” Baba said. “Lehna needs no guidance. Akaal Purukh has already taken him in hand.”
“I demand you send Lehna away now!” Mata said. “I am a wife! And a wife has a right to expect things from a husband. Who else is she going to expect from?”
“You would be happier if you lived life without expectations,” Baba said.
“Then why do you expect things from your sons?” Mata Sulakhni asked.
“I did. I don’t anymore,” Baba replied.
“Then why are you unhappy with them?”
“I am not. I accept them for what they are.”
Mata Sulakhni calmed down visibly. In that space I could see in her face the hope that things may yet be right.
“Then one of them will succeed you as guru?”
“I don’t want to succeed him,” Lakhmi Das said.
“Sri Chand, then?” Sulakhni said, not very happy about Lakhmi’s refusal, but resigned.
“No, that will not happen.”
“I am not good enough for him. I never have been,” Sri Chand said, sounding like a child. “The servant will succeed you?”
Baba was quiet. Then he said, “Neither of you has the discipline to submit where submission is called for. Obedience is sometimes entirely essential. When your boat is in trouble, you have to enforce some rules and regulations.”
“You quarreled with your father, too,” Mata Sulakhni said. “He also had dreams for you that you didn’t fulfill.”
Baba was very quiet.
“He’s not saying it, but he’s not denying that Lehna will succeed to the guddi,”72 Sri Chand said angrily.
“Is that true? I’m asking you, is that true?” Mata Sulakhni shrieked her question.
“Of course it’s true!” Lakhmi Das smiled bitterly.
The family broke into such a noise, everyone speaking at once, shouting, weeping, and attacking Baba. He quietly picked up his rabab and walked out into the night.
“Why is there so much conflict in the world?” Mardana cries, sitting up in bed, after Buddha stops speaking. It was as if he felt Nanak’s pain, and he couldn’t bear it. “The human, the human, how can anyone circumvent the human?”
“Baba says duality and conflict are God’s will. The only way to transcend it is to embrace it as hukam.”73
“I take Mata Sulakhni’s side,” Fatima says.
“I can see how Baba’s need to seek his Beloved on every continent, in every person and event, conflicted so severely with his wife’s needs,” Mardana reflects. “I too was destined to be his servant, his accompanist and companion, and how hard that was for you, my dearest Fatima. One person’s destiny conflicts with another’s, and tragedy results. But I also think it is destiny that brings people together in the first place. Saints like Baba need women like Mata Sulakhni to balance and temper their divinity. I have heard of a Greek philosopher, Socrates or something. He was married to a shrew who used to empty pots of piss on his head!”
“Their difficult domestic situations enlighten them!”
Aziza asks, “And then what happened after Baba took his rabab and walked out the door after the family fight?”
“Why, we had almost forgotten that story!” Mardana says. “Thank God for young minds that don’t forget these strands! My memory is becoming a sieve. Yes, tell us, Buddha jee,” Mardana says.
70. Literally, the liver. Used interchangeably with heart.
71. An iron udder.
72. Literally, cushion, but here symbolizing the seat of spiritual authority.
73. A very rich word in Sikh philosophy, meaning “Divine Law,” “Cosmic Order.”