When Guru Nanak Dev Ji came to Baghdad, he sat down and sang.
Bhai Mardana Ji played, and Guru Ji sang, the way they had done in a hundred places already.
And in Baghdad it caused an uproar.
Music was not allowed there. It was against the law of that place, and Guru Ji had sat down near a shrine that everybody in the Muslim world honoured, and started singing beside it.
People complained. Then they complained to the great teacher who kept that shrine, a man whom pilgrims came from every country to see.
He sent a message. Stop the music. It is not permitted here.
And Guru Ji sent one back. We will not stop, he said, until the teacher comes himself.
Which, in the end, he did.
And whatever the old man had been expecting to find, he sat down and started talking instead, and the talking went on a long time.
Music, said Guru Ji, does not make a mind loose. It gathers a mind up. It softens what has gone hard.
Then they came round to the size of the world.
In those days learned men said there were fourteen worlds. Seven above and seven below, and that was that, and everybody knew it.
Guru Ji said there were more than that. Not fourteen. Countless.
And the old teacher, who was a good man underneath all the trouble, felt his mind open at that instead of shutting, and he said: can you show me. Not fourteen but millions. Can you show me that.
Now, sitting beside them was the teacher's son, a boy, listening to the whole conversation with his mouth open.
And the boy said: could you show me.
His father laughed and said: he wants it more than I do. Show him. That will do for me.
So Guru Nanak Dev Ji took the boy's hand.
Close your eyes, he said.
And the boy closed his eyes, and the two of them went up.
He saw suns. Not one sun. Suns beyond counting, and moons, and planets, and stars, and every one of them turning in good order, and behind them more, and behind those more again, further and further out until his eyes ached from looking and he lost his place in the counting.
And the words up and down stopped meaning anything at all.
He looked back and saw the earth, and it was small.
Then he came near the planets and found they were not small at all. Some were as big as the earth, some bigger. Some blazed like the sun. Some were empty and silent, with nobody on them.
Then Guru Ji said: you have seen what you thought was the sky. Now look the other way.
And the boy looked, and there were millions that way too.
And somewhere in all of that, he came upon a gathering of people, sitting together, singing.
By now he was tired. It felt as though they had been travelling for a very long time.
Let us go back, said the boy.
Your father will not believe you, said Guru Ji. Take something with you.
And the boy looked round, and among the people who were singing there was a tray of prasad, the sweet food that gets shared out.
Fill my bowl from that, he said. I came with it empty. When he sees it full he will have to believe me.
So they filled his bowl, and down they came.
And he opened his eyes and he was sitting in Baghdad in front of his father, exactly where he had been.
Tell me what you saw, said his father.
And the boy told him. The suns without number, the stars that turn out to be suns, the earth so small, the worlds going on and on past where the eyes give up. And how strange the time had been. I thought I had been gone for days, he said, and here it has been no time at all.
And his father said, carefully: did you bring anything back. Or was it only something you saw.
And his son held up the bowl.
It was full.
Goodnight. Look up tomorrow night, and remember that a boy in Baghdad went and had a proper look, and came back tired.