The logic of Nanak's sometimes illogical itinerary

When I began writing this blog I had read Fauja Singh and Kirpal Singh's book "Atlas - Travels of Guru Nanak" and thought that I will follow this book as to the itinerary of Guru Nanak's Travels. They seemed to have read all the available literature right from Bhai Gurdas's Vars and various Janamsakhis beginning with seventeen century to the present and had even physically travelled on some routes they thought Nanak had travelled. I was impressed by their research and imaginative link-ups in the itinerary and thought nothing more needed to be done on this count.

But, at the same time, I also wrote that I will take up the Travels as the journey of or from the point of view of a soul taken over by All Controlling Soul/One in the body of Baba Nanak. Now as I am proceeding, and try to see things from the "other side," from the side of Nanak's soul so to say, willingly or unwillingly, knowingly or mostly unknowingly, post by post, I am being made to discover new and newer truths related to Travels, to their routes, to the people Nanak interacted with on the way, and to speak the truth, I myself don't know what I will write and how in my next post.

The new truths at many times do not agree with the descriptions I have read in the "Atlas...", or in many other books in fact, and, at the same time the most amazing thing is that they mostly agree with Bhai Bala's Janamsakhi of all, whose accounts the authors of "Atlas..." have found "haphazard," not "Udasi-wise" and more meant to "bring out the supernatural aspect of the Guru's Travels." I can, however, take solace in the fact that at least Bhai Bala was the one and only person of all who was actually with Baba Nanak in flesh and blood on his Travels. (After I wrote this post I came across many writings of Sikhs doubting the very existence of the person of Bhai Bala not to talk of his actually accompanying Baba Nanak on his Travels , but I have no doubts on both counts though my explanations will come in future posts by and by. )

In terms of actual writing I have yet reached where I have found myself agreeing with Bhai Bala's "haphazard" itinerary only about which I will be writing in my next post, but whatever little I have browsed through his other stories I can't say I will not agree with him more and more. All I can assure is that I will try to provide my own kind of logic where I see that there is some truth in Bhai Bala's description and it only needs to be explained in an other way more compatible with the present times.

Seeing the above drift in my writing I have in fact already revised what I wrote at the beginning of this blog, that I will follow the book "Atlas...". Now I have inserted that I will leave the final outcome to the "khasam (Lord/Master)." So in a way I will myself be rediscovering the Travels or stories connected with them as I write. And it is a very satisfying experience for me on two other counts.

A few days ago I was telling my wife that look at the strange turn of events in my life. In my childhood, due to some peculiar circumstances related to my birth, I grew up reading Janamsakhis day in and day out, and now in my old age the circumstances have again conspired to make me do the same again. Now the satisfying thing is that while in childhood I did not understand many things in them and just carried on reading at the insistance of my mother and sisters, now I not only understand them and rather in a new way but also find my own kind of logic/truth even in some apparent miracles. And may be in so doing I am helping some other people like me too to understand the same in a new way and thus find the same satisfaction.

Secondly, and it is more personal and I dont even know if I should write it here or not, a few days before I began this blog I had a dream in which an apparently lone traveller clad in withered-red long clothes and with a long wooden staff in his hand suddenly appeared before me in some forest and then making some undecipherable gesture as quickly disappeared. I did not know then who he was and what was the meaning of his gesture. But in the morning when I went out of my room to fetch newspapers suddenly as if from nowhere a thought came to my mind that he was Nanak, giving me a nod to go ahead on the writing of the blog and eventually on what I thought about bringing Travels on world tourist map. It must again repeat that it was just a dream and I am not one of those who attach much importance to dreams, but at the same time I wonder that why its meaning should be clear to me only in the morning rather than in the dream at night itself. May be I had gone into a far deeper state in my dream so that my link with this temporal world got completely broken just as it got established with the archtypal base and so I could not link to this from there. I could do so only in the morning. Anyway it gives me the satisfaction even though it may be for me only that perhaps I am serving some greater purpose somewhere.