In a town called Eminabad there lived a carpenter named Bhai Lalo Ji, who made wooden pegs for a living. He was a plain man with rough hands and little to his name.
One day a voice outside his door called out: the Lord is great.
Bhai Lalo Ji came out, and saw who was standing there, and went down at his feet.
So Guru Nanak Dev Ji came into that little house, and Bhai Mardana Ji came in behind him, thinking his own thoughts.
Bhai Mardana Ji was remembering Sultanpur: the government store, the good salary, the comfortable house, the sister who loved them. All of it left behind. And now, this. A mud room. No bed. No chair. Not even a proper sheet on the floor.
Bhai Lalo Ji went out and found a chair from somewhere and brought it in, and Guru Ji sat down, and for a while nobody said anything at all.
At last Bhai Mardana Ji could not hold it in. Who is this man, he asked, that you have come all this way to see. You left your home and your town. Where have you brought us.
And Guru Ji laughed and said: I have come to a house where people are good, Bhai Mardana Ji. Here there is honest earning, and a mind that loves the Lord.
Then the food came. It was coarse bread and a green vegetable, the plainest meal in the world, and Bhai Mardana Ji looked at it and thought, this will never go down. But he ate it because his master was eating it.
And it tasted, he said afterwards, like nectar.
Now there was also a rich man in Eminabad, an official named Malik Bhago, who collected money from farmers and traders and had grown comfortable doing it. He gave a great feast and invited everybody who mattered, and there was fried bread and milk pudding and sweets of every kind.
He invited Guru Ji too. And Guru Ji did not come.
That was noticed. People said things about it, and Malik Bhago grew angry and sent men to bring the visitor whether he wanted to come or not.
So Guru Ji went, laughing, and stood in front of him.
You eat with poor people, said Malik Bhago, and you will not come to my table.
I am the Lord's man, said Guru Ji. Wherever the Lord gives me food, I eat.
You should have come to my feast.
Very well, said Guru Ji. Send for some of the fried bread from your feast.
And he sent for Bhai Lalo Ji, and asked him to bring one piece of his own coarse bread from the little house.
When both were brought, Guru Ji took the rich bread in one hand and the poor bread in the other. He lifted them up so that the whole room could see. And he closed his hands.
From Bhai Lalo Ji's coarse bread ran drops of milk.
And from the rich fried bread of the feast ran drops of blood.
Nobody in that room said a word.
The money that bought this, said Guru Ji, was squeezed out of people who work. A farmer sweats all day on his land and pays what you ask and has barely enough left to eat. That is not a feast. That is blood.
And Malik Bhago felt something turn over inside him. He came the next day and asked to be forgiven.
And Guru Ji answered him gently.
Do not worry about insulting me, he said. Worry about what you have done to yourself. Look at the birds. All day they go about finding their food, and they eat, and they are healthy and glad. Work honestly and eat what you earn. That is the whole of it.
But I am old, said Malik Bhago. How can I do hard work now.
And Guru Ji said: a king on his throne is doing hard work if he does justice. A shopkeeper is doing hard work if he weighs true. You are doing hard work right now, if you are honest and take nothing that is not yours. Any job is honest work, if it is done without cheating.
So Malik Bhago gave back what he had taken, all of it, to whoever he could find, and lived plainly on what he honestly earned after that.
Goodnight. Two pieces of bread on one table, and only one of them was really food.