“It was paddy-harvesting time when Bhai Lehna arrived,”
Buddha begins to recount. “Baba, together with other Sikhs, Sri Chand and
Lakhmi Das, who were reluctantly helping Baba, had labored hard and long and
were hungry. I returned to the dera to fetch lunch for them and when I walked
into the courtyard of Baba’s house, Lehna, who had just arrived from Khadur,
wearing white clothes, was giving Bebe Nanaki a sack of pink salt from the
mountains for the langar. He was eager to meet Baba and I told him I would take
him to the fields after I had packed some lunch.
“When Bhai Lehna and I arrived at the field, an argument was
in progress. Baba, who had just finished tying up the harvested paddy in three
bundles, had asked his sons to carry them home, and they had refused, insisting
that he pay laborers from the village to do it.
“Sri Chand said, ‘I have done enough labor for one day. I
have to meditate.’
“Lakhmi said, ‘Here comes Buddha, tell him to carry them.’
“I wasn’t about to pick them up, either. The bundles were
heavy and oozing mud. Even as we argued, Lehna asked me to help him put the
bundles on his head.
“‘But your white clothes!’ I exclaimed.
“‘They’re just clothes,’ he said, bending down, picking uup
a bundle, and putting it on his head. He asked me to hand him the second one,
which I did, and he put it on top of the first one on his head.
“Oh the look Sri Chand and Lakhmi Das gave him! There was
instant hatred in them for Lehna. If they could have killed him with their
gaze, they would have.
“We
were all amazed because Bhai Lehna didn’t bend down with the heavy weight of
the two bundles, but stood straight and erect. He asked for the third one, too,
and placing it on the second one, began to walk towards town gracefully, as if
he was dancing beneath his burden; as if his burden was air!”
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