One morning Guru Nanak Dev Ji opened his eyes after sitting a long while and said: come along. Let us go.
Where to, said Bhai Mardana Ji.
There is a town near here, said Guru Ji. Somebody in it is trying hard and has got stuck.
So they walked into the town and asked the way to the house of a man called Veeran Malhar, and were told: a little further along, on the left.
They found him in his garden. He looked up, and stood, and put his hands together, and then hurried off and fetched a bed and spread a clean white sheet over it and asked them to sit.
Guru Ji sat. Veeran Malhar sat on a mat on the ground in front of him.
Well, said Guru Ji. And how is all your praying going.
I am a poor farmer, said Veeran Malhar. What would I know about the Lord.
Speak up, said Bhai Mardana Ji. There is good advice going. And he told him who was sitting on the bed.
Then the farmer bowed, and out came the whole thing, all at once, the way it does when somebody has been carrying it a long time.
I have heard that you say Hindus and Muslims are the same, he said. I am in a terrible muddle.
When I am at home, I remember the one Lord and it is quite simple.
Then I go to the mosque, and they tell me that Hindus are not let into the Lord's house. Only Muslims. And there is one friend of God standing at the gate, and nobody else may go in. There is no Ram there and no Krishna, and if there were, they would not be allowed.
And then I think: if the Hindus are not allowed in, why did the Lord make them.
And when I go to the pandit, he tells me Muslims cannot be touched and cannot be saved, and he speaks badly of the very prophet the others say is standing at the gate.
So I have taken to asking God myself. Which boat do I get into. The Muslim one or the Hindu one. Which one floats and which one sinks.
It is like a thorn in me, he said. I have no peace at all.
You tell me. You tell me truly. Who is allowed into the Lord's house.
And Guru Ji answered him with a question about his own family.
Both of them agree, he said, that one Lord made the world. So the Lord is the maker, and everybody alive is His child.
Now. Among your own children, which ones do you love and which ones do you not.
I love all of them, said Veeran Malhar at once. But the one with goodness in him, I love more.
There, said Guru Ji. You have said it yourself.
We cannot see the Lord. But we know He made everybody, and that He is a father, and to a father all of them are his. And you have just told me which one is dearest: the one with the goodness in him.
Veeran Malhar sat with that.
Then he asked the other half. And in heaven, he said. Which prophet is the beloved one. Mohammed, or Ram, or Krishna.
And Guru Ji said: in that court there is one Lord and no second. There never was a second and there never will be.
And standing at His door there are millions. Millions of Rams. Millions of Krishnas. Millions of Mohammeds. Millions of saints and millions more you have never heard of, in millions of different clothes, on millions of different roads.
And out of all those millions, said Guru Ji, the ones who got home are the ones who walked in love, saying His Name. That road is open. Walk it and you get there. It is the same for everybody standing at that door.
Then Bhai Mardana Ji played, and Guru Ji sang about the Lord's house, where the singing never stops, and Veeran Malhar closed his eyes.
He stayed like that long after the song had ended.
And when he came back to himself he looked at Guru Ji's face and could not hold his gaze, and went down at his feet.
You have taken the thorn out, he said. Now put something on the place where it was.
Goodnight. He had been asking which boat to get into. There was only ever one river.