Come with me to the river Ganges, very early, before the sun is up.
The water is green and clean and moving slowly. On the marble steps above it sits a man in a woollen shawl. His eyes are shut, but his heart is wide open, because somebody is living inside it. His name is Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji. Behind him, across the water, stands the town of Patna.
While it is still dark, a husband and wife come down the steps. They put a little packet of cardamom in front of him as a gift, bow very low, and sit a small distance away, waiting.
After a while Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji opens his eyes. Welcome, he says. What brings you so early?
The husband is King Fateh Chand Ji Maini, and though he is a king he speaks like a beggar. We have no child, he says. There is nobody to look after the kingdom after us. People say you have blessed other families with sons. Bless us too.
And Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji shakes his head.
That is not true, he says. I have never given anybody a son. Those things are the Lord's own doing, not mine.
Then he says something that makes the king lean forward.
He has come, says Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji. He has come himself, in a body, here, in our own town. I tested him every way I could think of, and every way, he is the one. Guru Ji, who comes down whenever the earth is suffering, has come down again.
And as he says it his eyes fill up, and he cannot speak for a while.
Then take us to him, says the king. We will fall at his feet.
No, says Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji. That is not how love works. Go home. Sit in your own house and long for him. Want him from the very middle of your heart, until the wanting swells up in you. Then my Prince-beloved will come to you himself.
The king looks at him for a moment and says, gently: so this is why you have given up worshipping idols.
And Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji answers with the tears running down.
The Lord is not in wood, he says. Not in stone. Not in metal. The living Lord, the one who gives life, has come to the earth, and now he lives in my heart. He is not a picture I have made for myself inside my head. He is really there.
The love-tears fall off his face into the cold water of the Ganges. The king and his wife go quietly home.
The sun comes up. The bank fills with people, crowds of them, come to bathe and to worship the sun and to say their prayers.
Then all at once there is a great sound, as though something heavy has dropped into the river, and the water swells and rises and comes right up over the bank.
And every single person there runs.
The sun-worshippers run. The people saying prayers stop in the middle and run so their clothes will not get wet. In a moment the whole bank is bare and empty, and the instant it is empty, the water goes quietly down again.
Only Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji is still sitting there.
And standing between him and the rising sun is Guru Gobind Singh Ji.
Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji goes straight down flat on the ground. Guru Ji touches his forehead very softly with his toe and says, Get up.
Was that a foot touching him, or was it the whole sea pouring into him? He gets onto his knees and can say nothing except my Prince-beloved, my Prince-beloved, and when he tries to look he sees two suns, one in the sky and one standing in front of him, and his eyes close by themselves.
Look, Panditji, says Guru Ji. They all ran away.
They could not stand a little water. They left their worship half done so their clothes would stay dry. That is how thin their love has become, and that is why nothing in this country is growing.
Then Guru Gobind Singh Ji goes down into the river and swims, easily, with eight or ten of his companions splashing in after him, until the current carries them so far off that Pandit Shiv Dutt Ji cannot see them any more.
He stands there a long time, crying and smiling at once.