MATA KHIVI... Excerpts of a story from 'Into the Great Heart'
After meeting Guru Nanak, Bhai
Lehna returns to Khadur. An excerpt from that chapter:
Khivi turns eagerly to Lehna.
“Something has
happened to you,” she said. “I can see it in your eyes. You have never looked
like this before, except when you told me you had heard Bhai Jodha singing.
That day, too, you had the same look in your eyes that I can’t describe. They
are glowing with fire. And where are your ankle bells?”
“O Khivi,” Lehna begins, tears gathering in his eyes. “I
have taken them off to dance to the Invisible Lord and Lady of the Galaxies! I
danced for the goddess in the temple, but now my whole existence will be a
dance!”
He is silent a long time and Khivi sits quietly by his side.
“I have found what my soul has been searching for, what I
didn’t even know I was looking for!”
After another silence, he narrates to his wife the events of
the last few days.
“When I started out with the pilgrims I had hoped I could
persuade them to make a stop in Kartarpur so I could meet the author of the
song that so moved me. I didn’t think they would agree, but I hoped anyway. We
were delayed upon starting out, as you know, on account of some of the pilgrims
being late, and by the time we broke our journey for the night I realized I was
very near Kartarpur. I mounted my horse, took Amro with me, and arrived at
Kartarpur just as the new moon shone brightly in the evening sky. I asked an
old man and a young boy...”
And here Lehna bursts into tears. “I am so blind and full of
pride! I let him lead me on as if he were my servant while I sat like a lord on
my horse! I let him feed and water my horse! That’s how humble he is!”
It was a while before he could tell his wife the rest of the
story about the evening he had spent in Kartarpur, the meal, Nanaki, and
Sulakhni.
After he tells her about the aarti, and sings a few lines, he
stops his narrative once more to explain the impact the meeting with Nanak has
had on him.
“My skull blew off and infinity poured in. No, Khivi, I
cannot explain the experience. It felt like I had been living in a small, dark,
sunless cave all my life and Baba’s voice and words blew off the roof of my
brain, crumbled the walls and something unbounded, immeasurable and utterly
mysterious poured in.”
Khivi sits quietly in his silence.
“I experienced a different way of being, of living in such
an open, spacious way... my little version of ‘god’ was blown apart to include
the universe and everything in it. I saw another way of dancing, Khivi, with my
whole being, as if ‘I’ didn’t dance but was danced... do you know what I mean?”
“I think so. Sometimes I think I do not live but am
lived through.” “Exactly. Baba calls this sehaj, that which is natural,
spontaneous, like a flower, folding from the inside out. I know with absolute
certainty that this is the path for me now. I have given my small self away.”
“You’ve abandoned Ma Durga?” Khivi asks after her husband
grows silent. Her heart is full of trepidation and fear for her husband,
herself, her entire family. Their families had worshipped Durga as far back as
she can remember.
“Don’t be afraid of the unknown, Khivi. Baba says when you
fear Akaal Purukh, all other fears are frightened away. And Akaal Purukh, who
we mirror in our souls, is nirbhao, and nirvair: without fear and
enmity.”
The night I spent in Kartarpur I had a dream... many dreams, in fact.
But let me tell you one. I am in Baba’s courtyard and it is morning. A woman
wearing a sari, the moon like a bouquet of jasmines in her long hair like a
stream of night, is bent over something, near her, on the floor, is the sea...
the huge roaring thing right there at her feet in the courtyard!
She is taking
a jar full of water, like liquid moonlight, and pouring it on something.
I go closer and see that Baba is lying on his manji, his hair open and hanging down, like this,” he demonstrates.
“She is washing his hair, very lovingly, with a lot of devotion.
She turns around,
and it is Ma Durga! She smiles at me, then continues washing his hair.”
Lehna
laughs long and hard.
“Ma Durga whom we worship washes Nanak’s hair, Khivi! It
is a sign that she herself has led me to Nanak.”
~
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