In Lahore there lived a very rich man called Duni Chand.
He was rich in a way you could see from the street. On the roof of his house flew seven flags, and everybody in the city knew what the flags meant. One flag for every million rupees he owned.
Seven flags. In those days you could count the men in the whole country who had that much.
Duni Chand had heard a great deal about Guru Nanak Dev Ji, and one day he went down to the riverbank and saw him, and something in him turned right over.
Come to my house, he said. Please. Let my family see you.
I will come, said Guru Ji. You do not even need to send for me. I will come myself.
And Duni Chand went home so pleased with himself that it felt like putting up an eighth flag.
Guru Ji came. The house was full of relatives, and there was food, and everything was as fine as money could make it.
And in the middle of it all, Guru Ji turned to Bhai Mardana Ji and asked him for a needle.
Bhai Mardana Ji had one stuck in the side of his rabab. He worked it out and handed it over.
And Guru Ji held it out to Duni Chand.
Take this needle, he said. Keep it safe for me. Give it back to me in the next world.
Duni Chand took it. He was so glad to be given anything at all by Guru Ji that he simply said yes, and bowed, and carried the needle inside to his wife.
Her name was Bhagwanti Ji, and she was serving out the food.
What is that, she said.
He gave it to me to keep, said Duni Chand. To give back to him in the next world.
And his wife stopped, with the ladle in her hand.
My dear, she said. Guru Ji is showing us something and you have not seen it.
Take that needle back to him. And ask him this. How am I to carry a needle to the next world, when not even my own body is going there.
Duni Chand stood in his kitchen holding a needle and understood.
He walked back out to Guru Ji and asked exactly what his wife had told him to ask.
And Guru Ji smiled and said: Duni Chand. What are those seven flags on your roof.
Duni Chand told him.
If you cannot take a needle with you, said Guru Ji, how will you take that.
And Duni Chand said, quietly: while I am alive, it makes me glad. I have millions. People stand around me. But my father did not take any of it with him, and neither will I. I know that. You have made me look at it. Most of us go out of this world with grief in our hearts and greed still in our eyes.
Then Guru Ji told him something he never forgot.
A person has three companions, he said.
Your money goes with you as far as the day you die.
Your family and your friends go with you as far as the burning ground.
Past that, only what you did.
Then Guru Ji said: your whole life has gone into piling this up, and your mind is wound round it like a coil. If you want to be free, do the opposite of what you have always done. Give it away in the Lord's name, to people who have nothing. You wrung it out of your own self, and that is exactly why it holds you so tightly. Go and talk to your wife.
So he went inside, and told her, and she did not hesitate for a second.
If Guru Ji says the wealth must go, she said, then let it go. Throw the whole heap of it away. You will earn again, and I will cook, and we shall be glad.
And they gave away seven million rupees.
Then Bhagwanti Ji came out herself and went down at Guru Ji's feet.
Who was it, she said, who wrote seven millions on our foreheads. If we are throwing it away, we are only throwing away what you gave us in the first place. Now give us something that we can take with us.
And Guru Ji, hearing that, had tears in his eyes.
Goodnight. They kept the needle. It was the flags they let go of.