Far away in Ghazni, up in the mountains, a boy was born who would one day write some of the most beautiful poetry anybody has written about Guru Ji.
His name was Bhai Nand Lal Ji.
His father, Chhaju Ram, had come from Punjab looking for work. Several children had been born to him before and every one had died. He was fifty when this son came, and loved him the way you would expect, and put him in the best school there was and taught him at home besides.
The family were Vaishnavs, and in that tradition there is a ceremony where a holy man puts a necklace on a child and the child becomes his follower from that day.
A wandering ascetic came through Ghazni. In a town full of Pathans that was a rare piece of luck, and Chhaju Ram fixed a date and invited him home.
Everything was ready. The right hour came. The ascetic picked up the necklace.
And the boy said, very politely: excuse me. Why do you want to put that on me?
Because we are making you a Vaishnav, said the ascetic. This necklace will keep you safe. It is the sign that you belong.
And here is what that child said.
If I wear it, I am tied. You become my Guru and I become your follower, and the door shuts. I will never go looking again. And what if the true one is still out there, and I have not met him yet?
His father must have gone very still.
It is a family custom, said the ascetic. Though what you say is cleverly said. Perhaps it is written that you will find a true Guru. But there is no harm in wearing this meanwhile.
Taking one Guru and then another, said the boy, turns it into a game.
What I want is scripture. Something I can say with my own tongue, that is praise of the Lord.
And the ascetic, a decent man even if he did not have what the boy wanted, said: child, that longing is a great thing. May the Almighty give you that scripture. I do not have it.
Guru Ji who has it will give it to you himself.
Then he went away.
Chhaju Ram was sure the man was offended, and worried what people would say, and tried to talk his son round. Son, it is the custom. The family will get a bad name.
And the boy folded his hands and said: Father, I respect what you want. But he says that necklace makes him my Guru, and I have not felt him to be my Guru.
His father sat with that a while, then let it go, because the boy was right.
He went round to apologise. And the ascetic said: your son already knows more of religion than most. He is looking for a real saint, and he will not be at peace until he finds him.
The family kept trying, teachers and cousins and friends all having a go, and he would not budge. If I take a guru I do not feel to be my guru, he said, I will be miserable.
After that his father never raised it again.
Five more years went by. He wore no necklace, did not marry, and simply studied. Then his mother died, and soon after his father, and he was left alone in a foreign country.
He went to Punjab, to Multan, built a house near the Delhi Gate, and in time married.
And then he noticed something about his wife. Every morning she rose very early, bathed, and sat quietly. Then she recited something under her breath, so softly you could hear the tune but not one word.
One day he said: whatever you do in the mornings, and whatever you recite, I like it enormously. I think you say it quietly because you are afraid I will mind.
I am not against it. Please, I would love to hear it.
So she began to recite the way she had at home in her father's house, out loud.
And Bhai Nand Lal Ji sat and listened, and his ears filled up with it, and something in his chest went cool.
That was how he found out that his wife was not a Vaishnav at all. She came from a Sikh family. And what she had been whispering every morning of their marriage was the bani of Guru Nanak Dev Ji.