He was eleven years old. His father decided it was time to perform the thread ceremony, customary as it was for Hindu boys of his caste to start wearing the sacred thread. The boy, however, refused. He told his father that people should be identified and known by what they do or did not do and by their distinctive qualities and not by a thread.
The young boy was Nanak. Born to Mata Tripta and Kalyan Chand Das in the town of Nankana, about 40 miles from Lahore (in the undivided India) in 1469, Nanak showed signs of depth in thinking and conduct and a very different bent of mind from a young age. So, he was often at the receiving end of his father’s ire for something or the other. Whenever his father asked him to take cattle for grazing, Nanak would slip into deep meditative trances and get into trouble when the cattle wandered into the fields and ate up the crops of the neighbours!
The constant complaints from the neighbours would upset his father who scolded Nanak severely for what he thought was sheer laziness. Nanak was very fond of his elder sister Nanaki. After her marriage (Nanak was only six years old), he went to live with her and her husband in Sultanpur.
Nanak studied Hinduism and Islam extensively and the argumentative streak in him led him to frequent debates with both Hindu and Muslim sages, and the common folks. He strongly believed that it was wrong to focus on external actions like pilgrimages and penances; and that what really mattered was one’s effort to bring about internal changes in him/her.
He felt that people should be made to realise the true nature of God, blinded and obsessed as they were with only the superficial. He also believed that the ways to attain spiritual growth were meditation and music. He was convinced, and wanted also others to realise, that the divine streak was present in every human being.
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