He Dug the Pool Before There Was a City

There is a corner of Lahore called Chuna Mandi, the lime market, and in the 1540s a boy worked it with a basket of boiled grams.

He was called Jetha, which means the firstborn, and he was on his own. He was born on the 24th of September, 1534. He lost both his parents at about seven and was taken in by his grandmother at Basarke. What he had was a basket, some boiled chickpeas, whatever wheat he could cook, and a place in the market to stand.

Tradition remembers that he gave the food away to wandering holy men more often than was good for business. Take that as the community's affectionate memory of a boy rather than an entry in a ledger. But the boy in it is recognisable, and the man he grew into kept doing a version of the same thing.

What he was born into

Ram Das was a Sodhi, a Khatri clan, and from him onward the only one that mattered. Every Guru after Ram Das was a Sodhi, and six of them were his own descendants.

The house he was born into was a Hindu Khatri house, like Nanak's and Angad's and Amar Das's before him. He came to the Sikh path the way many Punjabis of his generation did, not by a sudden conversion, but by marrying into it and staying.