In Hoshiarpur there was a Sikh called Bhai Devu Ji who looked after a rich man's garden. Men of every caste worked under him, and he taught them all to garden, patiently, because that was his way.
He and his wife had a daughter of ten or eleven, and she loved that garden. She carried the watering cans, and hoed, and spread manure round the roots, and touched the leaves to smell them.
But she never once picked a flower. It did not seem right to her.
There was a grafted pomelo tree she thought of as hers. In spring it came out in so much white blossom it looked like a green sky full of stars, and she was delighted, thinking of the fruit coming.
Then summer came, and every other tree in that bed set fruit, and hers set none. She looked after it anyway, right through the heat.
Then the rains broke, and poured for two hours and washed everything clean, and when she went out afterwards there on her tree was one flower.
She stood in front of it and prayed.
O Guru Ji, she said. Please turn this flower into a fruit, and ripen it quickly, so I can carry it to you and put it at your feet.
Her mother saw her praying and prayed too. O Guru Ji with the plume, she said, the child is asking for something. Let her ask for your love, and nothing against the Lord's will.
The flower did become a fruit. The other blossoms blew off in the storm and that one held on and grew, and by December it was pale and ripe, with a cloth bag tied over it to keep it safe.
The man who owned the garden was Jaswant Rao. He was rich and well educated and of good family, and none of it had made him kind.
He had once been on Guru Ji's side. Then he had gone off with a group who said, this Guru Ji is too young, he does not do things the way his father did. And he had stayed away ever since, too embarrassed to come back.
He came strolling through the garden with a servant, saw something white the size of a melon hanging in a bag, and had the bag taken off.
The girl saw from across the garden and came running.
She caught the servant with both hands and said four words in a voice that should have stopped him.
Oh, do not pluck.
Months of her care were in it.
Get away, girl, said Jaswant Rao. Pluck it.
The branch came off in the servant's hand, and the girl went down on the ground.
Jaswant Rao had not expected that. But he thought being gentle now would look weak in front of a servant, so he walked away.
The servant followed him with his feet weighing tons, knowing what he had just been part of.
Now here is why this sakhi does not end there.
Her father came, and did not spend one minute being angry.
He sat with her and explained something instead. That pomelo, he said, was never ours. It grew on the master's tree in the master's garden. We are the servants here. You began to think of it as yours, and that is the mistake that hurt you.
Later, when the master's wife came, the girl stood before her with folded hands and said it back in her own words.
It was my mistake, she said. This pomelo belongs to the master. We are only his servants. I thought it was mine.
That went into Jaswant Rao like a nail. He had heard Sikhs say such things for years and had never once seen it done, and now a child he had knocked down was standing there doing it.
I have stayed away from Guru Ji, he said to Bhai Devu Ji, and the fault was mine. It was my own embarrassment all this time.
So they all went to Anandpur together.
The hall was full when they came in. The girl went first and put her head at Guru Ji's feet, and Guru Gobind Singh Ji reached down, picked her up, sat her in his lap and said: My daughter.
And behind her, Jaswant Rao took off his gold embroidered coat and laid it on the floor at Guru Ji's feet, and stood there in his plain clothes, and gave away every gold coin he owned.