Mardana clears his throat, and begins.
“Baba and I were returning from one of our travels, I forget which one, there were oh so very many! Baba was tireless, physically strong, full of vitality. He wanted to see God’s whole world, all the people in their different-colored skins, their cultures, customs, religions; he wanted to hear the rhythms of different languages, music, melody, song. And he wanted to bring all he met the message, through his words and music, that ‘we are one, we are one in, and of, the One! We are all made of the same Light. Remember it! Love it. Turn to it in your sorrows, as to the Sun that dispels darkness and shadows.’ ”
Mardana was silent. His brimming eyes contained themselves after a little spillover as his adoration turned to anger.
“What a far cry from Baba is Babar, the Butcher! Our emperors shame Islam!”
Another silence followed in which he recouped his strength, compromised by the outburst, and began in lower tones.
“Before we found ourselves in the middle of the slaughter that Babar had unleashed in India, we rested in one of the loveliest of places by a lake. Lotuses bloomed, white swans with red beaks glided in the calm waters followed by their little hatchlings, some chicks riding the backs of their mothers. And when they flew with their strong wings up into the air, trumpeting and whooping, we were filled with awe. It was such a heavenly scene that we stayed there for quite some time, singing, sleeping, wandering, looking, admiring, praising. Baba composed many shabads there. You know, of course, that the swan is a symbol of the soul and of the enlightened being, the parmahansa, the Supreme Swan.
“But you can’t take your symbols too seriously. One day a hunter with a bow and arrow shot one of them. I was very upset and wanted to kill the hunter, but when he made a fire, cooked the bird, and offered it to me, I ate it, enjoying it tremendously!”
Mardana has a good laugh before proceeding.
“One day a fox got one, too, and that was really heartrending because it was a mother nesting with her little ones. And on looking back at the event, I realized it was a harbinger of what was to come.
“Baba was like one possessed, as if the veil of time was torn away and he could look into the future. He had visions of terror, of rivers of blood; his compositions were full of images of violence and descending darkness: ‘Bodies will be shred like cloth; women will apply blood in the partings of their hair;’91 they will smear themselves with the saffron of blood.”
“I knew that his visions always came true and something terrible was going to happen. I wanted to stay longer by the lake, but Baba wanted to travel toward Saiyidpur to meet with Bhai Lalo, his longtime friend, the carpenter at whose house we had stayed many times before. When we reached his house, Bhai Lalo complained about the Pathans,92 how they terrorized the people of the town, taking what they wanted from their homes, eating their grain and raping their women. Baba said to him, ‘What you have experienced is nothing compared with what is coming. Take your family and go to the pool where the swans nest and you will be spared. Everyone in this town will be killed.’
“Then Baba composed a shabad addressed to Bhai Lalo, about how Babar, bringing a bridal procession of sin was coming from Kabul to demand wealth and power as his bride; how the devil would read the marriage service and Hindus and Muslims alike would rend the skies with their wails.
“Bhai Lalo, after cooking us a meal, left with his family, and I wondered why Baba had saved him and not us. I worried a lot about what was going to happen, and it didn’t take long for it to begin.
“We stayed the night at Bhai Lalo’s house, and it was an unholy night, loud with cries and screaming. The next day I peeped out the window and saw soldiers in red uniforms and armor on horses with lances, skewering people, dogs, children, women. The dark, violent shadow of the Moghuls had surfaced from the deep, dark roots of hell, and was walking the streets in broad daylight. It went on for days, the whole town was destroyed, and a stench of rotting corpses filled the air.
“We stayed holed up for a couple of days, and when things quieted down a bit, we ventured out. We were not prepared for what we saw: heaps of corpses of men, women, and children with flies buzzing around them; a child, her rag doll with black hair made of wool still clutched in her hand. Limbs, heads, torsos, rotting guts, but no, I will not describe it all before we sleep. I still have nightmares about it. Besides, that is not the point of the story.
“But I remember one detail very well. Walking through the blood-stained, corpse-littered street, I was surprised to find that I was very hungry! At first I scolded myself, thinking that I was unfeeling, but realized that I liked the feeling of hunger. It meant I was alive! Another detail I remember was how shaken Baba was. Usually he just moves through the terror and the beauty, dispassionately watching and experiencing the drama, but he was sobbing with grief at the sight of so much carnage. Singing was his daily practice, and he stopped singing altogether. And when he did sing again, he sang an angry song addressed to his Beloved. Oh yes, Baba’s relationship with his Beloved included quarrels and rebukes.
“ ‘Don’t you feel pity and pain at the sight of this carnage? Doesn’t your heart bleed at the sounds of wails and lamentations?’ He was very angry with God.”
“For how long was he angry with God?” Aziza asked.
“I don’t remember.”
“Remember, Daadu, you must! I want to know! Did he have to work on not staying angry with God?”
“Don’t measure yourself against Baba, Zizu. We ordinary human beings must work on it. Who can presume to know what goes on in him? But I know from knowing his shabads intimately that it couldn’t have been for too long. Nanak breathed God like fish breathe water. God was inside and outside him. Outside you, I burst and die! he says in one of his shabads. Slowly, as the days went by in Babar’s charnel house, a change came over him. It was as if he were watching God’s dark Leela.93 God’s supreme detachment became Nanak’s detachment, and he looked at the scenes before him with wonder and awe at the ways of creation and destruction. He made up with his Beloved, I know, because he sang, ‘Nanak sings the praises of the lord in the city of corpses. True is the lord, true his decisions.’
“I didn’t want Baba to sing. I was afraid it would attract the attention of the soldiers. But Baba had to sing when he was compelled to. I refused to play the rabab, wouldn’t let him touch it, but Baba sang in his deep, beautiful, strong voice suffused with feeling, glorying in life, in all of it, including senseless slaughter. I couldn’t understand him. The human in me couldn’t relate to the god in him, and I was confused and upset that he was endangering our lives by his singing.
My worst fear came to pass. We heard the hooves of horses and saw Babar’s soldiers in the distance. We hid behind a heap of corpses and I pretended to be dead, but we couldn’t fool their hawks’ eyes. Seeing our fakir’s garbs and the rabab on my shoulder, they arrested instead of killing us. One of the soldiers was Mir Khan, the superintendent of Babar’s army. He was a very fierce-looking man, with red eyes in a pale face, his starched moustaches extending two inches beyond his cheeks. Babar had given orders to his solders not to kill holy men but to convert them to Islam. Being the survivor that I am, I eagerly told Mir Khan that I was a Muslim. Baba, however, said he had no more religion than wind and fire.
“They imprisoned us. I admit I was disgusted with myself for claiming to be a Muslim to save my skin. I fumed inwardly at what power-hungry and twisted men had made of Islam, what Babar had been doing in India, and what is still going on. His generals forced people to convert to Islam. Those who did were given gifts of land and property seized from Hindu families. Babar called himself a Ghazi, a title given to Muslims who kill non-Muslims. Ghazis are ensured heaven with houri, young virgins in the next life, together with rivers of wine and honey.”
“Then I am also ashamed to be a Muslim, Daadu,” Aziza adds her voice from her prison. “Like the moon, wind, water, trees, I will not have a religion, but pick and choose the things I like from many religions and reject anything that imprisons my spirit. And then what happened, Daadu Jaan?”
“When they heard Baba sing in the prison—by some miracle of Baba’s making they let us keep the rabab—they doubled their efforts to convert him, but Baba continued to refuse them. They tried to persuade me to leave the ‘infidel,’ but I refused.”
“I am proud of you, Daadu.”
“But my rebellion did not have a good outcome. I was sent to the stables, to clean dung. Those Arabian horses sure know how to make dung! There was always heaps of it.”
“I love the smell of horse dung,” Aziza exclaims.
“So do I!” Buddha adds.
“Well, you would have been in horse dung heaven there!” Mardana chuckles. “And they gave me the worst horse in the stable to groom and train. His name was Dhanak, which means ‘wild and un-trainable.’ He looked fierce, just like Mir Khan. When I groomed him, he gave me a couple of good kicks. Just as I was doing his muzzle he snorted so loudly in my ear that I couldn’t hear for several days. He bit me many times. I still have bite-shaped scars!
“Baba was sent to carry bricks from an ancient Hindu temple they had razed to the ground to build a mosque to Allah in its place. Fools! My own labors disturbed me less than the thought of Baba’s rigorous punishment. I had many sleepless nights over it. My mental state was very disturbed during that time.
“Once I ran into Baba and he said to me, ‘Mardana, give your burdens to God and he will turn them into air.’ I didn’t quite understand what he meant, even though in my prayers I tried and struggled to surrender my burdens. I didn’t succeed and hated Dhanak even more. I wanted to kill him, actually, and even thought about ways to do it, but I knew that the punishment for that would be death.
“One day I was asked to take the horse from the stable to another building in the prison compound. I managed to bring him out of the stable, but when he saw he wasn’t going toward the field where the horses play, he just sat down on his haunches. Though I pulled and yanked at his reins, Dhanak refused to budge. Mir Khan had said that if I didn’t get Dhanak to his destination by lunch, I wouldn’t get food for two days. As it is we got such meager meals that I was a skeleton, and I was certain two days without food would kill me. I had to do it, but that beast looked at me insolently and just sat there.
“Who do I see coming toward me but Nanak, carrying a tasla94 full of bricks on his head. He saw me straining and struggling with the horse and shouted to me:
“ ‘Forget about the horse, Mardana! Go get your rabab and play it!’
I thought Baba had gone mad.
“ ‘Play the rabab? Can’t you see that both my hands are busy? Can’t you see how important it is to get this horse to his destination?’
“ ‘Trust, Mardana. Let go the bridle and play the rabab.’
“His words opened something in me, like a locked gate. No, like a tight bud that begins to unfurl into the light, and I thought, Why not, Mardana? Go, obey your guru, and fetch your rabab! Play one last time before you die.
“I let go the horse and went to my corner in the barn where I slept on straw, and lovingly picked up my rabab. I didn’t care that all the progress I had made with Dhanak was wasted, that he had returned to his stall and stood there like a stubborn mule. I ran out of the barn with the rabab. The shabad that came to me as soon as I tuned and touched the strings was: keeta loriai kam so har pai aakheeai, kaaraj dai savaar satgur sach sakheeai. Give whatever work you want to accomplish to your Merciful Beloved. He will resolve all your affairs.
“Baba was ahead of me by the time I came out of the barn and I followed him, playing the rabab and singing in the sun, happy as I could be. The music, the words lifted me out and up and I felt full of hope and joy. But just then I stopped mid-song when I noticed something really strange. Baba’s tasla full of stones and bricks was floating four or five inches above Baba’s head, as if it was carrying itself as Baba hummed and sang along with me.”
“Like Bhai Lehna and the muddy bundles!” Buddha exclaims.
“Yes. Your story reminded me of this incident. Mir Khan, who was coming toward me with his whip, stopped in his tracks and saw what I was seeing. His red eyes popped out of his head. He wanted to get angry at Baba, but what could he say? He was speechless. He turned to me in his anger and rage, and I was certain I had had it, for there were only a few minutes to lunchtime and here I was, with Dhanak back in the barn, and me with my rabab, singing. One look at Baba and his tasla was enough to reconcile me to any punishment that awaited me. It was the first bit of joy I had had in a long time. But Mir Khan’s expression changed from rage to amazement as he looked at something behind me. When I turned around to see what he was looking at, there was Dhanak, following me meekly, like a lamb, his reins dragging in the mud!”
“Music tamed him!” Aziza laughs and claps her hands delightedly.
“Baba was right,” Mardana adds. “Give your burdens to the Beloved and he turns them into air!”
Buddha is silent a long time before he speaks. “Bhai Lehna lives in this sehaj all the time. There is another little story I forgot to tell you. The other day Baba walked into the pond outside Kartarpur to take a bath and his lota95 slipped into the water. He asked his sons to retrieve it but they balked at the thought of diving into the pond. Lakhmi Das offered to buy him a new one and Sri Chand said he would fetch someone to retrieve it. But Bhai Lehna touched the pond and the lota rose to the surface, right into his hand.
“There is a way to live in which the universe works for and with you. Everything gets done without your doing it. It is as if you have caught a current of air, like a bird gliding in the air without flapping its wings, effortlessly. Even humans can catch this wave that keeps us so totally in the moment, and ride it without effort and thought.”
“How do you find it?” Aziza asks.
“By constantly surrendering, as Baba says,” Buddha replies. “It is our egos that keep us from finding the paths that rivers and streams find. The arrow shoots itself. The ego thinks, unless I do it, it won’t get done. But how deluded the ego is!”
“It struggles and pulls and strains at the reins of the horse instead of singing!” Mardana laughs.
“How can you live without effort?” Aziza wonders aloud.
“By living like a river. It does not force anything and it does not hold back. There is a space where our Mother Father Earth carries us, together with our burdens, like infants in the womb,” Buddha philosophizes.
“I don’t understand why we should burden God with our burdens instead of carrying them ourselves,” Aziza replies.
Buddha laughs. “God created one hundred thousand universes without a grain of effort.”
“Baba says in the Japji, God wrote a Word and a hundred thousand rivers began to flow. The whole universe is God’s utterance,” Mardana adds.
“He takes our burdens and gives them to the Energy that is Life fulfilling itself naturally, spontaneously, like a flower.”
“I am spontaneously falling asleep,” Mardana says, yawning loudly and sliding under the covers.
“But Daadu, you haven’t told us how you got out of prison!”
“Let Daadu rest. It is late,” Fatima reprimands.
“Tell me briefly. Then I promise I will let you sleep. I’m getting sleepy too, but I want to know or I won’t be able to sleep, imagining you still in prison, whipped by Mir Khan.”
“Mir Khan, instead of converting us, was himself converted to Baba! He told the emperor what he had seen and experienced and how Nanak’s singing in prison comforted the prisoners. Babar told him to bring us to him. Baba was not kind with Babar and told him to take a tour of the streets to see what his orders to his soldiers had accomplished. Baba fearlessly sang a shabad reminding Babar of his own death; how the victorious of today will be defeated tomorrow. Where are those kings of yesteryear, he asked? Where are their stables with wild horses, the bugles, the clarions, the palaces, the armies in red uniforms, the signs and symbols of wealth and power?
“The emperor grew furious and gripped the end of his throne and half got up. Baba signaled to me to start the rabab. The strains calmed Babar, and I could see as our shabad progressed that he was charmed by it. Just for an instant the tyrant saw the truth of life. His heart was humbled and he said to Baba: ‘Ask something of me! You are free to go, of course, but ask for something else. A chariot, a trunk full of gold, a kingdom.’
“ ‘There is only one kingdom I acknowledge, the kingdom of the Emperor of Emperors. But if you want to give me something, release all the prisoners!’ Baba said.
“The emperor did so. His compassion and change of heart was temporary and momentary, for like a pig’s tail, he refused to be straightened and continued with his carnage later.”
Mardana’s voice was slurring with sleep.
“One last little question, Daadu. What did Baba think about temples being converted into mosques?”
“Baba doesn’t care one jot for temples or mosques. He knows they can’t contain God. The spirit cannot be contained in any house, whether of bricks or the flesh. May I sleep now?”
“But why did he make a gurdwara?” Aziza asks.
“It is the place we go to, to get Prasad for our minds and hearts through music and kirtan. We actually don’t have to go anywhere to get it since it is already inside us, accessible through prayer, praise, and song. But some people need places to go to get it. We can get it from a mosque or a temple, too, if we go there humbly, leaving our egos behind with our shoes96 and go in with our hearts totally surrendered to the One Power,” Buddha explicates. “But if they are only hotbeds of corruption with priests and mullahs exercising power over the populace, and lining their own pockets, then they are all to be razed to the ground.”
Fatima, having moved to her bed, stretches out on it. Buddha gets up.
“I’ll return to the dera.”
“Be sure and return soon,” Mardana says. Though he wants to offer him a bed, he knows his daughter-in-law would object.
“Boys can roam the streets at night while girls have to be locked into rooms,” Aziza says after Buddha has left. “But I’m glad you locked me up, Ami! Do you hear me, Ami? Wake up and hear the voice of your daughter,” Aziza shouts from inside the room. “I’m sure you wouldn’t have locked me up if you knew how much fun I would have tonight listening to the stories. And I didn’t have to do the dishes!”
91. Traditional women apply a red powder in the parting of their hair as a symbol of marriage.
92. A tribe from Afghanistan and Northern Pakistan, also called Pashtuns. The men tend to be warriors.
93. Play; magical creative power of the creator; Creation.
94. A large metal bowl for carrying stones and bricks.
95. A metal jar for water.
96. It is customary in Eastern religions to take off your shoes before entering a place of worship.