After long travels abroad, the Guru usually set up on short excursions nearer home. So, one fine morning, With Mardana by his side, he sallied out on one such venture. When he reached Dipalpur, a Small town near Pak Pattan, night overtook him, in a desolate part skirting the town, he saw a hut.
Battered and broken by time and merged in the gathering gloom, The Gun knocked at the door and asked for the night’s shelter now in that hut there lived a leper He continued his days on the edge of existence with nota ray of hope to cheer his gloom. “The leper wondered who this merciful one could be who, spurning the hospitality of the rich, had chosen to stay with a miserable wretch like him, shunned and scorned by one and all.
Welcoming the guests, in a feeble voice he said, “Day in, day out, drag on a miserable existence. Not to’ Speak of in en even beasts tend to avoid me. But who are you, O Compassionate One, that come to share my pain‘and soothe me in my sorrow?”
The Guru replied, “Let your heart be at peace! Pray to the Giver of all things and all will be well with you.” The Guru and Mardana sat down on a straw mat near him. The Guru, then, lifted his voice into a song of ineffable beauty, with Mardana playing on the rebeck.
When the last strains of the song faded in his ears, the leper found a new life awaken in him. He looked about his limbs and found them whole. Every fiber of his being bowed to the divine singer who had sung ‘away his anguish.
Article extracted from this publication >> October 15, 1993
