It is so very sweet to love the way only a woman can love.

Here's a beautiful story, titled 'Kitchen' , from my latest book, "INTO THE GREAT HEART" 

Before you start reading it let me introduce you to some of the characters in this story;  Mata Sulakhni was the wife of Guru Nanak, Nanki was Guru Nanak's sister, and Jayaram was Nanki's husband. 

Mata Sulakhni and Bebe Nanaki, silently washing the dishes in the kitchen after the evening meal, hear the sounds of a horse’s hooves clattering on the cobbled street. Nanaki, the older of the two women, her grey hair tied into one long braid behind her, looks out of the window and exclaims,

“Guests! A young man and a lovely little girl! Vir Jee and Buddha are leading them here!”

“Guests!” Sulakhni scoffs. “When we’ve just finished with the kitchen for the day! Just wait, he’s going to come in here and say we have to feed them! And there are no left overs!”

Having washed, dried and shelved the dishes, they are about to leave the kitchen when Nanak comes in. Sulakhni says curtly:

“Dinner is finished. We’ve cleaned up. There’s nothing left.”

“But we can make more,” Nanaki volunteers.


“The little girl is hungry and though the father won’t admit it, he is too.”


    “We’ll make something. Lakhmi hasn’t returned from the hunt, and he’ll be hungry too.”

Nanak leaves. Sulakhni, says to Nanaki. “You offered. You cook.”

 “Okay, but could you please send Dhanvanti?”


“Dharam has a fever and she’s taking care of him. You are on your own. You want to be good, be good yourself, Bebe. Don’t drag others into your goodness.”

“You can be bad and still help me a little?” Nanaki asks, very sweetly.

“No,” Sulakhni says, leaving the kitchen.

Nanaki gathers her ingredients, flour and lentils from earthenware jars, a few small red onions, potatoes, tomatoes, cloves of garlic, ginger and an eggplant from a basket, and goes to work lighting a fire with cow dung patties. Jairam, Nanaki’s husband, always tuned into her needs, comes into the kitchen and quietly begins to help her wash and chop the vegetables.

Shortly thereafter Sulakhni enters the kitchen, reaches for the bowl with the flour in it, pours some water into it, and begins to mix and kneed it aggressively.

“See?” Smiles Nanaki. “You do have a streak of goodness in you, Bhabi.”

“Don’t you believe it,” Sulakhni says. “I’m in the habit of doing my duty as a wife whether I feel like it or not, whether I’m tired or not.”

“Jairam is helping me now. Go take your rest. I’m sure your husband won’t say anything if you don’t cook.”

“Go ahead, believe the best of your Guru brother, and thank God you’re not married to him. It is impossible to be the wife of a guru. You have to live up to his standards; become what he wishes you to be when you’re made very differently; talk sweetly when what you really want to do is bark.”

 “I’m sure you can bark sometimes! But tell me, does he speak sweetly to you, Bhabi?”

“You heard him. ‘We have guests, cook dinner even though you have just finished cleaning up and are tired.’”

“It was a request. He asked sweetly, I thought. He was thinking of the strangers.”

“But not of his wife. I’m sick of being sweet. All my life I’ve had a lock on my mouth.”

“I don’t remember that!” Nanaki laughs good-humoredly.

“Boiling water has to speak to let us know it is speaking, or it will burn down the pot and set your home on fire.”

Jairam listens and marvels at the aptness of yet another of Mata

 Sulakhni’s metaphors, of her expressive face and her wide gestures.

“What do you know what I have had to endure as his wife from the very beginning?” Sulakhni continues.


“I do know,” Nanaki says.
“You were there at the wedding and saw how he made me the butt of jokes when he took only four pheras around the fire and stopped the ceremony! I think it is because he didn’t want to get married from the start!”

“Bhabhi, you are so wrong!”


“Yes, I’m always wrong and everyone else is always right!” “Nanak’s quarrel was with the ceremony itself! He wanted the

whole universe to witness your wedding, not just fire! Vir Jee had said, ‘I marry her with all of Nature as my witness.’ He did the same thing during his janeu31 ceremony. The pandits were all there, the goats had been sacrificed, the guests had arrived and he refused to wear it! They are just meaningless rituals, he said.”

 “I understand your point of view, Mata Sulakhni,” Jairam says.

“Yes, I’m the one who had to suffer the ridicule of the entire village. ‘She’s marrying a madman! She’s marrying a madman!’ They said. And when he went off on his journeys with Mardana and left me all alone in Sultanpur, without a roof over my head, with two little boys to take care of and feed, with everyone whispering ‘He’s left her! He’s left her!’ How do you know what I felt? Only my heart knows and it will shout and scream its story when it bursts in the fire of my pyre, and the whole world will hear what happened to the Guru’s wife!”

Jairam and Nanaki go over to her to hug her, but Sulakhni’s body is armored, rigid. Memory, in all its presence, its wounds still bleeding, has obliterated time and has her in its unyielding grip. In the absence of a pleasant present, she clings to the past, pressing its thorns against the pulp of her heart.

“But I did help out by adopting Chand,” Nanaki offers.

“By taking away my child, you mean! By making me choose which one I should give away!”

“Bhabi, you know it was your mother’s decision to give us one of the boys, and you agreed. Who were we to demand or insist on it?” Jairam says softly.

“You couldn’t make a child of your own and wanted to grab one of mine!” Sulakhni, with flour on her face, turns towards them with rage.

“I hadn’t even thought about adopting one of your children, Bhabhi, I swear. I had been through my quarrels with Akal Purakh for not giving us a child, and surrendered to Him the heavy burden of what He chose not to give me. I had already begun to see my barrenness as a gift when you and your mother came to us and made the suggestion. From resisting it initially, I came to see the rearing of Chand, too, as a gift.”

“None of this would have happened if your Guru hadn’t abandoned me!”


“And I was there when Vir jee told you before he left that he would be faithful to you,” Nanaki reminds.


“Faithful! It is worse to have a husband who is married to Akaal Purukh! God is his first wife and my rival! He only loves Her.”

Jairam’s laughter disperses some of the gravity in the air.


“He calls Akaal Purukh his husband,” Nanaki corrects.


“Of course! It has to be a husband. If Akaal Purukh was a wife, your brother would have abandoned her long ago. Only a male can be Akaal Purukh. If it was Akal Istri, she would have made a better life for us females.”

Jairam and Nanaki laugh together.

“It is so very sweet to love the way only a woman can love,” Nanaki says. ‘That’s why so many saints think of themselves as females in their devotion to Him who is both male and female and neither.”

“Yes, yes, you know so much. Whatever or whoever he is married to I am her rival. Now he is upset at the boys for not being what he wants them to be. He had very little to do with their upbringing so why is he complaining now? And I am to pretend to myself that everything God does is for the best when I want to scream, “It’s not right; it’s not fair!” Sulakhni says, clattering the metal bowl rather loudly on the stone floor as she pounds the dough with both her fists.

Nanaki says, “Shhh! Our guests will hear you and feel unwelcome.”

“Good! Let them hear this kirtan of life.”

Nanaki and Jairam laugh again, delightedly.