People

The True Measure of Mohar Singh

Bhai HARBANS LAL

I do not recall his exact name. Let’s call him Mohar Singh.

He ran his father’s grocery store in the main bazar of Haripur Hazara. In the local lingo it was known as ‘pansaari di dukaan‘.

Mohar was a humble and lovable person who was always found softly murmuring something that was not intelligible to others. He was actually reciting gurbani, either the nitnem or shabads from the Guru Granth.

He belonged to one of those sehajdhaari Sikh families who converted their first-born sons to khande-da-pahul Sikhi. Such a practice was very common among the Potohari sehajdhari Sikhs of Hazara. Mohar was the eldest son in his family.

He was an interesting fellow and I often visited his shop to engage in conversation with him. One of those discussions, I recall, was about the stones or rocks he used as weights for the store‘s scales.

Let me explain.

In the days of my childhood, it was customary in our town for a shop keeper to sell grains, pulses, fruits, flour, etc. by weight. The goods were sold for ‘x’ annas (currency coins) per ‘ser’ (a weight measure, close to a kg) … just as we buy things here at so many cents for pound, for example.

A crude, rusty set of scales -- known as a 'tarazu' -- consisting of two pans suspended by strings, each from an opposing end of a wooden crossbar, served as a weighing appliance.

Mohar, like all who were in trade, plied the scales by holding it by with one hand from a grip suspending the bar from its mid-point. The goods being weighed would be placed in one pan; the opposing pan would be loaded with rocks of various sizes until the bar achieved a horizontal position, indicating a balance between the loads of the two pans.

Thus, a mid-sized rock, accompanied by two smaller ones, could achieve the required equilibrium.

The metal weights with printed digits and letters to indicate their correct measure were available in the marketplace, but Mohar was not a rich merchant and therefore could not afford even the standard necessities.

So he managed with stone weights of unverified values. And all the while, he would continue the muted murmuring that emanated from his lips.

To any bystander today, Mohar’s weights would automatically appear as tools for easy cheating; the contrived ‘weights’ could not be verified for accuracy.

Mohar was far from having any plans for his weights checked by any external authority or apply any other measure of demonstrable honesty.

But his integrity was never in question. 

When asked about it, he would exhibit great confidence and consider the situation not at all unusual.

A verse from the hymns of Guru Nanak was his certification of honesty.

“To take what rightfully belongs to another, is like a Muslim eating pork, or a Hindu eating beef, both of them strongly forbidden in their respective religions. The Guru stands by those who eat not the carcass of deceit. By mere talk, no one earns passage to Heaven. Salvation comes only from the practice of Truth. By adding spices to forbidden foods, they are not made acceptable. Says Nanak: from false talk, only falsehood is gained.” [Guru Nanak, GGS:141]

Whenever I talked to him about it, it became increasingly clear to me: when Mohar used the weighing rocks and continued to murmur gurbani silently, it provided him with an opportunity to test his Sikhi. He earned the confidence of his neighbors and thus added to his neighbors’ faith in Sikhi and the teachings of Guru Nanak.

For Mohar, the rocks had become the means by which the Guru talked to him as a Sikh.

Thus Mohar practiced Sikhi while living the life of an ordinary person in this world, and used every opportunity to connect to the Creator.

August 18, 2013

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