Gurdwara Chubara Sahib, Machhiwaraਗੁਰਦੁਆਰਾ ਚੁਬਾਰਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ, ਮਾਛੀਵਾੜਾ

Gurdwara Chubara Sahib at Machhiwara, in Ludhiana district, Punjab, marks the house of Gulaba, the local masand who hid Guru Gobind Singh Ji and his three Sikhs for a night in December 1704, while Mughal patrols searched the countryside for them after Chamkaur. Pilgrims know the house as Gulaba da Chubara, Gulaba's upper room, and the shrine still keeps the large earthen pot in which, tradition holds, the Guru's clothes were dyed blue for the escape that followed.

Why is it called Chubara Sahib?

A chubara is the room built on the first floor of a Punjabi house, raised above the courtyard and the street. When the Guru came into Machhiwara town from the garden where he had rested, he was taken into the house of Gulaba, the masand, the local representative of the Guru's court, and lodged in that upper room. The room gave the house its lasting name, and the gurdwara that rose on the site kept it: Chubara Sahib, the shrine of the upper room. It is a domestic name for a domestic act of courage, a family opening its best room to a hunted guest.

From the garden to Gulaba's house

The Guru reached Machhiwara on foot through the thorny jungle after leaving the fortress of Chamkaur Sahib at night. His first halt was a garden about a mile east of the town, kept today by Gurdwara Charan Kamal Sahib, where three of his Sikhs, Bhai Daya Singh, Bhai Dharam Singh and Bhai Man Singh, found him again. A garden is no shelter in a manhunt, so the small party moved into the town itself, to Gulaba's house. Accounts of the family remember two brothers, Gulaba and Punjaba, who in quieter years had carried rations to the Guru's court at Anandpur Sahib. When word came that the Guru was in the area, they asked that he come under their roof, knowing that patrols were out with orders against him. He stayed the night in the upper room while the town held its breath.

Mata Hardeyi's offering

One of the tender details kept at Chubara Sahib concerns an elderly devotee, Mata Hardeyi. In earlier years she had taken a set of handmade clothing to Anandpur Sahib as her yearly offering, but age had kept her from the journey for some time. Hearing that the Guru was now in her own town, she brought the garments she had made and offered them here. The Guru accepted them with thanks, and the offering was about to matter far beyond one old woman's devotion: within hours, those same clothes became part of the plan that carried him out of Machhiwara alive.

What is the dye pot preserved at Chubara Sahib?

From Gulaba's house the Guru moved to the home of two Pathan horse dealers, Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan, whose shrine is told on Jugti's Uchch Da Pir page. The brothers judged that the Guru could only pass the patrols in disguise, dressed in blue as a Muslim holy man, and the clothes Mata Hardeyi had offered were taken to a local dyer to be coloured. The dyer warned that his dye was raw and not ready. Tradition at the shrine holds that the Guru answered that the dye was ready, the clothes were dipped, and they came out coloured better than anyone expected, to the dyer's astonishment. The large earthen pot, the matt or matti, used for the dyeing is still preserved at Chubara Sahib, and visitors are shown it as the house's treasure: an ordinary clay vessel that became part of an extraordinary night.

The shrine today

Chubara Sahib stands in the old town of Machhiwara, a short walk from both the garden shrine of Charan Kamal and the house of Ghani Khan and Nabi Khan, so the whole of the Guru's stay can still be traced on foot, house to house. The gurdwara keeps the rhythm of a living town shrine rather than a monument: daily worship in the Darbar Sahib, and the Gurpurabs of the first, fifth and tenth Gurus kept as its great days, the tenth Guru's Gurpurab carrying the memory of the house itself. Pilgrims who come in December, around the days of the Machhiwara stay, find all the town's shrines full together.

How do you reach Chubara Sahib?

Machhiwara connects by road to the Ludhiana to Chandigarh highway at Samrala, about 42 kilometres away, and to Ropar, about 46 kilometres, by the Guru Gobind Singh Marg, the marked route of the Guru's 1705 journey on which Machhiwara is an early stop. In the town, ask for Gulaba da Chubara in the old quarter: the shrines stand close together, and the natural order is the Guru's own, garden first at Charan Kamal, then the upper room here, then the house of the Pathan brothers. All three appear in Jugti's guide to Gurdwaras in India.