Gurdwara Charan Kamal Sahib, Machhiwaraਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਚਰਨ ਕਮਲ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਮਾਛੀਵਾੜਾ

Gurdwara Charan Kamal Sahib at Machhiwara, in Ludhiana district, Punjab, marks the garden where Guru Gobind Singh Ji, fleeing through the jungle after the Battle of Chamkaur in December 1704, drank water from a well and slept briefly on the bare ground. It is one of the most loved shrines of the Machhiwara jungle, where Sikh tradition sets the singing of the shabad Mittar Pyare Nu, and where three of his Sikhs, Dharam Singh, Daga Singh and Manu Singh, found him again.

Where is Charan Kamal Sahib, and what happened here?

Charan Kamal means the lotus feet, and the name itself is the answer: this is a feet shrine, a place made holy because the Guru's feet touched its ground. After leaving the fortress of Chamkaur on the night of 7 to 8 December 1704, with enemy patrols searching the country, the Guru crossed miles of thorny jungle on foot. At Machhiwara he came to a garden, drank water, and lay down to sleep on the bare earth, using his arm as a pillow. There his three devotees, who had been separated from him, joined him again. The garden ground, its well and its trees became the shrine.

The road from Chamkaur

The days behind this quiet garden were among the hardest in Sikh history. Anandpur Sahib had been evacuated under attack, the Guru's family had been scattered at the River Sirsa, and at Chamkaur Sahib his two elder sons and most of his small company had been killed. The Guru escaped the garhi at night, as his Sikhs had urged, so that the Panth would keep its head. Machhiwara was his first real rest. Its jungle, thick in those days, hid him for the days remembered as the 9th and 10th of Poh, the coldest fortnight of the Punjabi year, and the town's shrines mark that stay step by step: the garden of Charan Kamal, the house of Masand Gulaba at Chubara Sahib, and the departure in disguise as Uchch Da Pir, the holy man of Uchch, carried in a palanquin by the Pathan brothers Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan.

Mittar Pyare Nu: the shabad of Machhiwara

Sikh tradition remembers the Machhiwara jungle as the setting of Mittar Pyare Nu, Tell the beloved friend the state of his disciples, one of the ten shabads of the Shabad Hazare attributed to Guru Gobind Singh Ji. It is a song of separation sung from the ground itself: without the Beloved, the singer says, quilts feel like sickness and houses like living among snakes, while sleeping on bare earth near the Beloved is better than comfort in a village far from him. Read against the garden at Charan Kamal, where the Guru had just slept exactly so, the shabad needs no commentary. It is still sung wherever Sikhs gather, and it belongs to Machhiwara as surely as any stone of the shrine. The old Machhiwara jungle that sheltered him has largely been cut down over the centuries; the SGPC has planned to revive it by planting saplings on gurdwara land in the locality.

The shrine and its garden today

The present gurdwara stands on Charan Kamal Road in Machhiwara, near the bus stand, and the sources describing it praise a beautiful building worthy of the tradition it keeps. The garden character of the place is its real architecture: open ground, old trees and the well from which, tradition holds, the garden was watered in the Guru's time and from which he drank. Visitors will find the pace slower than at the great city shrines. This is a place to sit, to hear the shabad sung where it was first sung, and to understand why a religion that built golden temples also keeps a patch of garden earth among its holiest ground.

Machhiwara's other shrines

Charan Kamal is the first of a small family of Machhiwara shrines, all within an easy walk of each other. Gurdwara Chubara Sahib marks the house of Masand Gulaba, called Gulaba da Chubara, where the Guru spent the night after the garden; an earthen vessel kept there is linked with the dyeing of his clothes blue for the disguise. The shrines of Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan honour the two Pathan brothers who carried him out as Uchch Da Pir, and Gurdwara Kirpan Bhet Sahib recalls the offering of food to the kirpan on the road out of town. Together they form one stop on the Guru Gobind Singh Marg, the marked route of the Guru's 1705 journey, which runs through Machhiwara on its way to Alamgir, Raikot and beyond.

When is the Machhiwara fair, and how do you reach it?

An annual congregation fair is held at Charan Kamal in December, corresponding to the 9th and 10th of Poh, the days of the Guru's stay at Machhiwara, and the town's shrines fill together. Machhiwara lies on the road from Samrala, about 42 kilometres away on the Ludhiana to Chandigarh highway, and about 46 kilometres from Ropar by the Guru Gobind Singh Marg. From the bus stand the gurdwara is close by on Charan Kamal Road. Pilgrims usually walk the town's shrines in sequence, garden first, as the Guru's own stay unfolded. All of them appear in Jugti's guide to Gurdwaras in India.