The story begins on the sandy banks of the Ganga on its way down the rocky slopes of the Garwhal Himalayas. Her roar slows to a grumble as breathless from her 233 km journey she rests on the plateau at Hardwar. She likes it here where the pine and deodar harbor dozens of sadhus. The sadhus too find icy winds and loneliness, their inescapable companions. This is where they can worship Ganga’s lord, Siva in peace.
But look who is this? In the early part of the 20th C, not many women are out so late at night, not alone. There under the starry sky sits Ruqi, astonishingly beautiful, dreaming of the time when she and her husband, would hear the sweet songs of gurubani on this very shore.
The blue rocks tonight are empty, as sunset has driven the sadhus to their caves and ashrams. Most rise before the sun is a blush in the sky. They then line up to drink in its rays in communion. Don’t they tire of this day after day, she wonders?
She remembers the nightlong talks they, she & Prem had with the sadhus. Many had left comfortable homes and families to answer the call of their spirit. They came from every part of the country and were often not willing to say much to strangers. And now that she was alone, they wouldn’t talk to her at all.
She shivers, perhaps at the memory of those emaciated men of god, perhaps. She herself can’t imagine living in penance like them. She is cold and draws her silk cover over her head wishing she had brought something warmer. This is madness, sheer folly, she thinks. She & Prem had been looking for the key to this madness. He had died early, searching. And here she is, looking for an answer.
As she floats another paper boat in the chilly waters, lost in a haze of worry she hears a sound. Startled she looks around. Nothing stirs but the breeze, rippling the empty waters.
Again there is a sound, and now she can catch words. She sees a faint vision of a bearded figure, arms outstretched as if to welcome her. There is no one there. Feeling almost drunk she stumbles to her austere room in the dharamshala, a few steps away. The next day she waits for the moon to rise. She can’t remember whether she ate or drank through the day, though she must have.
At the riverside she asks the bearded one who he is and hears him say, ‘We are Sakhi Data your spiritual father’, followed by ‘We are waiting for you to come here’.
She whispers. ‘How do I get there?’
‘Someone will come for you,’ says the Angel, for there is no human around.
Next morning as she prepares to leave for home, in Shikarpur, a few hours away, the lady in the room next to her announces she is headed for Daraz in a few days. In Daraz she says is a holy man who looks just like Guru Nanak, a living saint who can help bring peace to you.
Ruqi asks to go with her but is refused.
The old lady says instead ‘you can easily get there by yourself. Just take a train from the local station halt at Ranipur, take a tonga to the dargaha and you will be there. It’s 30 minutes from the station.’ She does not seem to think it improper for a single woman to be traveling, so far from civilisation. The presence of Ruqi’s companion, foisted on her by her husband’s family, might have led her to believe she was accompanied.
With this scant evidence of her calling Ruqi walks away from her wealthy home a child and life as she knows it, to travel to a remote outpost called Daraz, alone and unsure. She manages to shake off her companion for she knows she needs no one on this journey.
On disembarking at the station she discovers the same nonchalant old lady who had refused to be her companion in Hardwar. The tonga driver does look at her inquisitively though not unkindly as she pays for her single ticket.
Daraz was then as it is today a dusty outpost in present day Pakistan consisting of a cluster of hovels set in a clearing in the forest, a day and a half from Shikarpur.
The dargaha is the most important destination here second only to the shrine of Sharmast Sheikh, the pir who established the dargaha. She knows none of this as she stands looking at the small square structure, frightened yet oddly resolute. Sakhi Data is inside. She does not know his name or his ascendancy as the 6th of a line of Sufi saints that have lived and worshipped here for over 300 years.
He comes out and says softly, ‘It took you a long time to get here my beloved. Why are you still outside do come in?’
Confused from the journey and the unexpected words she turns and runs away, crying.
In the village, blind to her surroundings she rests at the tomb of Sachal Sarmast, Sakhi’s guru.
As the crickets announce the onset of night an exhausted Ruqi walks back to the Dargaha.
The angel in a green turban expects her. They say ‘you have flown from your worldly cage. We were waiting knowing you would come. You are our Beloved as you are a friend and we have been waiting for you. And you go complaining to Sachal Sarmast.
Repeating as earlier, ‘What took you so long?’
Welcomed like the long awaited daughter ‘niani’, terms of endearment meaning ‘little girl’, she can only bow her head.
She moves into a hut in the grounds ready for the new birth.
Then her family comes looking for her, furious at her disappearance convinced she has been spirited away for her considerable wealth. Sakhi Mastan tells them ‘God has sent another bird in her body. A new bird has come to dwell in this. She cannot breathe in your world. She can only go if God has a desire.’
The old men in her family can barely meet her eyes, their worlds’ having separated. They offer money, comforts, servants, none of which she needs.
She had become Nimano Fakir and lived to serve the 6th, 7th and 8th successors of Sachal Sarmast, whose name means ‘God’s Intoxicated Man’.
She was poet, saint and philosopher and when on partition of India, she moved to Baroda on invitation from devotees, she personified Sufism, the universal belief. Her mission was to take the message of ‘love’ to India.
To date almost 100 years after she was born and 50 years after she took Samadhi, satsangs’ called Chowkies are held once a month by her followers in Mumbai, Baroda and wherever else they live.
Her Urs and the ‘barsi’ of all her Pirs are held with necessary pomp every year.
She is called ‘They’ and is the most ‘Beloved.’
‘Haq Maujood’, her followers greet each other. ‘God lives.’
It was only recently that I stumbled across this ‘little tradition’ of belief and was charmed by the very thing that has kept it ‘little’ for over 75 years.
This tradition is driven by nothing but ‘Faith’. The source of this faith lies in an ineffable ‘mystery’. Its continuation is a tradition that is fragile, yet no less complete for being so quite, so unselfconscious.
The ‘little tradition’ is that of the origins and life of this Sufi Master, Shaieen Nimano Fakir.
The Sufi Master is female, Hindu and part of a ‘silsila’ that has existed for more than 300 years, an all-Muslim male group with its base even today in a dusty town of the Indus in Sindh, that was India and is now Pakistan.
Saieen Nimano Fakir lies in Samadhi at her resting place in Baroda, far from her spiritual birthplace, though she is celebrated there as well by name and in song.
Every month on the 24th a gathering of her devotees, some as young as 15, meet across the world, with the largest numbers in Mumbai, Baroda and Hong Kong, invoking her name and her ascendants to sing ‘kalaams’ written by her half a century ago, and by her Pir, Sharmal Sarmast, a couple of centuries ago.
As a granddaughter of Partition I am fascinated by the tradition that has crossed the LOC.
Then as now ‘spirit’ recognizes no barriers.
There is in this quite marriage of different faiths and traditions a message.
There is no quarrel about the names and forms of masters, traditions, principles, and their limited groups, for they are one in what unites them.
Hindu, Muslim, Sikh, Isaaai are but names given to distinguish followers, because there is one master, the guiding spirit of all souls, who constantly leads his follower’s towards the light.
‘Haq Maujood’, as Saieen Nimano Fakir’s followers say, ‘God exists.
The End
sisterindia 