The king of Sirhind had a garden people came a long way to see.
It is broken bricks and weeds now, but in those days it had summer houses, marble seats, fountains, little lakes, waterfalls and avenues of cypress trees.
The head gardener was Ghulu Shah, and his wife was Mehtab. They lived on the east side. On the west stood the king's palace.
Working in that quiet green place had done something to Ghulu Shah. He had grown fond of holy people and of the quiet, and he had served saints for eight years and got nowhere, and it bothered him.
Then one morning a stranger came and sat in the garden early and sang.
He was dressed like anybody, and nobody knew who he was. It was Pir Budhu Shah Ji, who was staying at Ghulu Shah's own house and had not said a word about being anybody in particular.
Ghulu Shah listened, then went and sat beside him.
Will you help me, he said. I have served holy men for eight years. I understand there is a God, and that I have a soul. But none of it goes in. It stays on the outside of me.
That song you sang went in.
There is one Lord, said Budhu Shah Ji. There cannot be two. If you go about saying I am God, then that makes two.
Then he smiled and said: but yes. You can be joined to the Lord, the way you join one plant to another in this garden of yours.
For the Lord's sake, said Ghulu Shah, show me how.
You will get this at Anandpur, said Budhu Shah Ji. The image of the Lord is living there at present. That song I sang comes from there.
If you want your heart to open, he said, go and put your head at his feet.
And then Budhu Shah Ji's eyes filled up and he could not say any more.
Something went into Ghulu Shah and his wife that morning that never came out.
Budhu Shah Ji stayed a couple of days and left. Before he went he gave them one shabad in Persian, and the two of them learned it by heart and said it every day.
After that the garden was different. For eight years he had walked past those trees and seen nothing. Now everything seemed to be saying something to him.
But they had a difficulty, and it was a serious one.
They were servants of the king of Sirhind. And Sirhind was not a town where it was safe to love Guru Ji.
If a Sikh was ill-treated in that town, there was nowhere to complain and nobody to complain to.
So Ghulu Shah did what he could, quietly.
Sikhs travelling through began to find one house in Sirhind where they were safe. Somebody fed them. Somebody hid them if they needed hiding.
In a town where it was dangerous to be a Sikh, a small secret shelter had grown up, and the man running it was the king's own gardener.
Whenever a Sikh came through, the two of them felt it like a current: here is somebody who belongs to the one we belong to. Their heads went down by themselves.
And when that Sikh left, safe, the two of them would stand before him with folded hands and ask one thing.
Pray for us, they would say. Pray that these longing eyes get to see him.
Then the days went on as usual, with the king's people wandering about the garden.
But at night the garden was empty.
And late at night, when everybody had gone in, a gardener and his wife would come out and sit in the wet grass under the stars with blankets pulled over their heads, and quietly sing kirtan.
Bhai Sahib laughs at this in his book. Look at it, he says. A garden built for rich people to amuse themselves in, and holy people singing in it in the dark.
And Ghulu Shah's love kept rising, like a river coming up in flood, until one night his mind made itself up.
Let whatever happens happen, he said. A life is not worth much, and money is worth less, if a man lets all his breaths go by without once seeing him, only because he is afraid of a king.
Then he pulled the blanket back over his head, and the two of them went on singing in the dark.