When Guru Nanak Dev Ji was still small, his father decided it was time for school.
The teacher's name was Gopal Ji. He taught the children of Talwandi their letters, and then he taught them numbers, adding and taking away and multiplying and dividing, and how to keep the accounts of a shop. It was useful learning. A boy who learned it properly could grow up and look after his father's business.
On the first day, Gopal Ji wrote out the whole alphabet on a wooden writing board and handed it to his new pupil.
By the end of that one day, Guru Nanak Dev Ji had written out the whole alphabet himself.
Gopal Ji looked at the board. Then he looked at his pupil. Then he looked at the board again.
The next day he wrote out the tables, all the times tables that take most children months and months to learn. One day. That was all it took. Within a few more days his pupil had reached the hardest sums in the book.
He was never any trouble. He was always smiling. And whenever the teacher stepped out of the room, the other children would tell him afterwards what had happened. Their friend had gathered them all up and got them singing, every voice at once. O Lord, you are great. That was the song.
Then, for some days, Guru Nanak Dev Ji stopped bringing the writing board to be checked at all.
At last Gopal Ji called him over. You have not shown me your board today, he said.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji came, unhurried, with a quiet light in his eyes. He put one board into his teacher's hands, and kept two for himself.
Gopal Ji looked down, expecting sums.
There were no sums. Beside every single letter of the alphabet, from the first to the very last, Guru Nanak Dev Ji had written something about God.
The teacher read it once. He read it again. He kept glancing up at that face and back down at the board.
Then he asked a careful question, the way teachers do when they want to be certain. Why will you not learn what your father wants you to learn, he said. If you learn the accounts I teach, you will grow up to be a fine accountant.
And Guru Nanak Dev Ji looked at him kindly, and said this.
Take your own feelings and burn them, and let that be your ink. Let your mind be the paper. Let love of God be the pen. Now write. Write the Lord's name, and write His praise. Learn that writing, and one day, when you stand before Him and He asks what good you did in the world, that writing will speak for you.
Gopal Ji sat very still.
Then he got up out of his seat, and the teacher bowed to the pupil, and said: You are not a child. Do whatever your heart tells you to do.
His father tried another teacher after that. He took him to Pandit Brij Nath Ji, who taught Sanskrit, the old and difficult language of the scriptures. Guru Nanak Dev Ji learned the letters straight away and read back whatever was set in front of him, and within a few days he had written out a whole poem and could explain what every word of it meant.
When he had finished explaining, he added one thing more. But the way home, he said, is to praise the Lord.
And the pandit sat as still as a statue, looking at him.
Then his father took him to the Muslim priest of the town, to learn Persian, so that he might one day take over his father's work. He learned Persian faster than anyone in Talwandi had ever learned it. But there came a day when the priest said, gently, that his pupil did not seem to be studying quite so hard any more.
Guru Nanak Dev Ji handed him a copybook.
Every letter of the Persian alphabet was in it, and beside each letter, a verse in praise of God.
The priest bowed his head. You have knowledge from heaven in you, he said. This age, and this knowing.
Three teachers, in one small town. Every one of them began by teaching, and every one of them ended up learning.
Goodnight, and sleep well. The alphabet will still be there in the morning, waiting for you.