After all the travelling, Guru Nanak Dev Ji came back to Talwandi.
He did not go to the house. He stopped outside the town, at a well, and sat down there, and word ran through the streets faster than any messenger.
His mother came first, hurrying, not caring who saw her hurry. Then his father came, and his uncle after him.
Come home, said his mother. Please. Just come home.
But he stayed where he was.
Then his uncle said the one thing that would move him. Rai Bular Ji is waiting for you, he said. He has been aching for you.
That got him up.
Now, Rai Bular Ji was old by then. He was sitting on his cot when they came in, and he began to rise, so that he could bow properly. But he was not quick enough. Guru Ji reached him first and put his arms around him and held him upright, so that the old man could not bend.
Then Guru Ji sat him at the head of the cot and took the low place himself.
And Rai Bular Ji wept. Not loudly. He simply sat there while the tears came down, and Guru Ji looked at him with such kindness that the old man could not stop.
Bless me, said Rai Bular Ji at last.
The Lord has already blessed you, said Guru Ji.
Then bless me yourself, said Rai Bular Ji, because I want it from you.
And Guru Ji said: wherever I am, you are there too.
That should have been enough for anyone. It was not enough for Rai Bular Ji.
Let me touch your feet, he said. Only then will my heart be quiet.
They tried to stop him. He was old, and he was the greatest man in that whole country, and the young man in front of him was the son of one of his own officials. He got down off the cot anyway, and he bowed his head all the way to the ground.
And what happened in him when he did it, he could never afterwards describe. All the waiting went out of him, and the missing, and the ache, and what came instead was a gladness that stayed.
Later they asked Guru Ji to stay for good. His family asked. Rai Bular Ji asked. You may live any way you like, said Rai Bular Ji. Be a holy man if you wish. All this land is yours. Nobody will say a word to you.
And Guru Ji answered: farming, a shop, trading, a job. The Lord's Name is all of those to me. That is what I have been given to do.
Rai Bular Ji, who understood him better than his own family did, let him go.
But there was one more thing that happened in Talwandi.
One afternoon Guru Ji was lying on a cot in the verandah with his eyes shut, and the food was ready, and his mother called the servant girl, whose name was Tulsan, and told her to go and wake him.
Tulsan went. And she stopped.
She could not bring herself to shout at him. She bent down and touched his feet instead, and the moment she did, something opened in her, and she saw.
She saw a ship far away on the sea, going down. She saw a man on it, praying, calling out a name over and over. And she saw help arrive, and the ship come safely in to the shore.
She sat right down and held on to his feet.
Wake him, Tulsan, called his mother from the kitchen. The food is getting cold.
And Tulsan called back: do not say wake him. He is not asleep. He is out at sea, saving a ship, and I did not dare.
His mother, of course, thought she was being teased, and was hurt, and went to wake him herself.
Afterwards Bebe Nanaki Ji took Tulsan aside and said something worth keeping.
If you are given something to see, she said gently, that is a gift, and it is yours. Do not go announcing it. The world does not love the Lord's beloved ones, and when you praise them without thinking, you only give people something new to laugh at. Put a lock on your tongue, Tulsan. Keep the gladness inside.
And Tulsan did. And she was at peace ever after.
Goodnight. Some things are true whether anybody believes you or not.