ਬਾਬਾ ਕਾਲੂ ਜੀਬਾਬਾ ਕਾਲੂ ਜੀ

Baba Kalu Ji, known as Mehta Kalu, was the father of ਗੁਰੂ ਨਾਨਕ ਦੇਵ ਜੀ, the founder of Sikhism. A village patwari at Talwandi, now Nankana Sahib, he spent years trying to settle his unusual son in a trade, and finally sent him to ਸੁਲਤਾਨਪੁਰ ਲੋਧੀ, where Nanak's true work began.

Who was Baba Kalu Ji?

Baba Kalu Ji was born in 1440, in the village of Patthe Vind, a place now extinct, at the site where Gurdwara Dera Sahib stands today, about six miles east of Naushahra Pannuan. His full name was Kalyan Chand Das Bedi, and he is remembered under several names: Mehta Kalu, Kalu Rai, Kalu Chand, Kalian Rai and Kalian Chand. Mehta was a title of respect given to a village official, and it is the name that stuck. He was the eldest son of Shiv Ram Bedi and Mata Banarasi, a Hindu Khatri family of the Bedi gotra, and his younger brother was Baba Lalu Ji.

Kalu Ji is remembered less for anything he did himself than for the son he raised. Yet without him there would be no story of Guru Nanak at all: it was his house, his trade, his worry and his decisions that shaped the first twenty years of the Guru's life. The old ਜਨਮ ਸਾਖੀ accounts, the traditional life stories of Guru Nanak, return to him again and again, as the practical father who could not understand his son and would not stop trying to set him on a worldly path.

The patwari of Talwandi

When Kalu Ji was still young, his family moved to Rai-Bhoi-Di-Talwandi, the village now known as Nankana Sahib, about 65 kilometres west of Lahore. His father Shiv Ram became the patwari of the village, the keeper of the land and crop revenue records, and Kalu Ji took over the post when his father died. A patwari measured fields, kept the accounts of what each farmer owed, and collected the landlord's share of the harvest. Kalu Ji served in that post under Rai Bular Bhatti, the Muslim landlord of Talwandi, and he farmed land of his own alongside it.

He was a man of the world, careful with money and proud of his standing. The old accounts describe him as sharp-tongued at home, above all with his wife Tripta, and anxious about what the neighbours would say. But he was also respected: Rai Bular held him in regard, and when the landlord's household needed anything, it was Kalu Ji who was trusted with the accounts. In a village where a man's name was his credit, Mehta Kalu was a man who counted.

A father who worried about his son

Kalu Ji's son Nanak, born in April 1469, was unlike other children. He was quiet, fond of sitting alone, and quick to question what he was told. His father enrolled him at the village school, where his teacher was a Brahmin named Gopal. The Janamsakhi stories say the boy astonished his teacher by explaining the hidden meaning of the first letter of the alphabet, the figure one, as a sign of the oneness of God. Kalu Ji sent him on to other teachers, and at Rai Bular's suggestion to a maktab, a Muslim school, to learn Persian. Nanak learned quickly, and none of it made him want a trade.

When the time came for the janeu, the sacred thread worn by Hindu boys, Nanak asked his father what good a thread could be that would break, get dirty and have to be replaced, and whether there was not a thread of a different kind, one made of mercy and truth. Kalu Ji set him to graze the family's cattle instead, and one day a farmer complained to Rai Bular that Nanak's buffaloes had trampled his crop. When the field was inspected, the crop stood unharmed, and the place is now marked by Gurdwara Kiara Sahib at Nankana Sahib. He tried him at farming, and then at trade: he gave Nanak twenty rupees to buy provisions and sell them at a profit. On the road Nanak met hungry holy men and spent the money feeding them, and came home saying he had made a true bargain, a sacha sauda. Kalu Ji was furious. In 1485 he arranged Nanak's marriage to Sulakhni of Batala, hoping a wife and a household would settle him. Two sons followed, Srichand in 1497 and Lakshmidas in 1500, but Nanak's mind stayed elsewhere.

Sending Nanak to Sultanpur Lodhi

Kalu Ji's daughter Nanaki had married Jai Ram in the mid-1470s and moved to Sultanpur Lodhi, where her husband worked for Daulat Khan Lodi, the governor of the region. When Jai Ram learned that his young brother-in-law cared for no worldly work, he wrote to Kalu Ji and suggested that Nanak be sent to Sultanpur, hinting that he could find him a post there. Kalu Ji had tried everything else, and the family agreed. Nanak went to Sultanpur in 1484, though one traditional chronology gives 1504, and Jai Ram found him work in the modikhana, the state storehouse where the revenue paid in grain was kept.

It was there, weighing out rations, that the most famous story of Nanak's working life took place. The weights ran to thirteen seers, and thirteen in Punjabi is tera, which also means Thine. As he weighed, Nanak would repeat the word in devotion, tera, tera, Thine, Thine, and give generously. Complaints reached Daulat Khan that the stores were being given away, and the accounts were checked. Nothing was found short, and Nanak kept his post. When word reached Talwandi that Nanak had turned from the world, Kalu Ji sent Mardana, Nanak's childhood friend, to Sultanpur to see how his son was doing. Nanak worked in the modikhana for years, until 1507, when he disappeared into the river Bein for three days and came out with the words that began his mission: there is no Hindu, there is no Muslim.

His last years at Kartarpur

After his travels began, Nanak returned to Talwandi more than once. The Janamsakhi accounts tell how Kalu Ji rode out with a horse to bring the wanderer home and show him the new house he had built, but Nanak would not settle back into the life of a householder. He reproached his son for neglecting his parents for twelve years, and Nanak sent them home with the promise that they would soon be consoled. In the end it was the father who came to the son. Nanak settled at Kartarpur, on the banks of the Ravi, and built a community there, and he brought his old parents to live with him. Kalu Ji died there in 1522, at the age of 82, in the town his son had founded. A few accounts give the year of his death as 1520.

How is Baba Kalu Ji remembered?

Baba Kalu Ji left no writings and has no shrine of his own. He lives in the stories Sikh children still hear: the anxious, practical father who could not understand his son and yet kept providing for him, and whose decisions, the school, the trade, the marriage, the move to Sultanpur, each pushed Nanak a step toward his calling. The old Janamsakhi paintings show him holding the newborn Nanak in his arms, and sitting with Mata Tripta as the grown Guru comes home to visit his parents. His home at Talwandi is now ਨਨਕਾਣਾ ਸਾਹਿਬ, whose gurdwaras draw pilgrims from around the world. Through his children his name carried on: his daughter Nanaki is honoured as a saint in her own right, and his grandson Sri Chand, Nanak's elder son, founded the Udasi order.