The Child from the River

For a long time, the story goes, Hindus and Muslims had lived side by side in Sindh without trouble. Then a new ruler named Mirkhshah came to the throne at Thatta. His advisers pressed him, and he gave an order. Every Hindu in his country was to become a Muslim or die.

The Hindus went down to the bank of the Indus, the river they called Sindhu, and they prayed to the god of the waters. They fasted and prayed for forty days.

When the forty days were over a voice answered them. Varuna would be born among them as a child, it said, in the town of Nasarpur, and he would turn the danger away.

The child was born in the spring month of Chaitra, on the day Sindhis now keep as Cheti Chand. His parents were Ratanchand and Devaki, and they named him Uderolal.

When the baby opened his mouth, his parents looked in and saw the whole river Sindhu flowing there, and an old man sitting on a palla fish. And his cradle rocked by itself, with nobody's hand on it. That is how he got the name everyone knows him by. Jhulelal means the lord of the swing.

Word reached Thatta that the Hindus had begun to worship a child. Mirkhshah sent a minister to look into it.

The minister came with a rose petal dipped in poison and held it out to the baby. A breath of wind took the petal away. Then, in front of the minister, the child became a young man, then a bearded man in his prime, then an old man, and then a child again. Another time he was seen as a warrior on a horse, and another time riding up the river on the back of a fish.

The minister went home shaken and told the ruler what he had seen. Mirkhshah was afraid. But his advisers told him to stand firm, and in the end he decided to meet this wonder himself.

Jhulelal came and stood before him.

"The one you call Allah and the one my people worship are the same," he said. "And your own book forbids you to force anyone's faith."

Mirkhshah listened, and he was moved. But his advisers were not. "Do not let a boy talk you out of your order," they said. "Arrest him."

The guards stepped forward. At that moment the river rose and poured into the palace, and fire broke out in its towers. Water and flame came on together, and there was nowhere for the court to run.

Mirkhshah gave way. "Forgive me," he said. "I take back my order. Your people may worship as they please."

The water went down and the fire died. From that day, the story says, Jhulelal had followers among the Muslims as well, and the ruler was one of them. Before he left, he asked for one thing. A lamp was to be kept burning always, so that people would remember he was there.

Every year Sindhi Hindus keep forty days of thanks, called Chaliho, for the forty days their people prayed. And Cheti Chand, the day he was born, is the first day of the Sindhi year.

There is a village in Sindh called Odero Lal, not far from the town of Tando Adam, and the end of the story is told there.

When his work was done, the Hindu telling says, Uderolal did not die. The earth opened and took him in at this spot. The Hindus built a temple over the place. The Muslims built a tomb beside it. The buildings that stand there now were finished in 1684.

The Muslims who look after the tomb tell his story in their own way. The boy called Odero Lal, they say, met a Sufi saint from Multan when he was still young. He became a Muslim and took the name Shaikh Tahir, and he lived and died a holy man. It is his grave that they keep. Other Muslims of Sindh call the same figure Zinda Pir, the living saint, and some speak of him as Khwaja Khizr.

Nobody at Odero Lal has settled which telling is the true one, and the shrine does not ask anyone to choose.

There is a temple and a mosque inside the same walls. The Muslims say their prayers, and the Hindus sing the evening arti, in the same compound. A visitor rings a bell on the way in. There are Hindu keepers and Muslim keepers, and both have their work to do.

In the temple a lamp is kept burning without a break. It is the lamp the story speaks of.

And when the new moon appears, the Hindus go out to the water nearby. They light lamps there and make their offerings of rice, sugar candy, spices and fruit. It is the same river god their people called on from the bank of the Indus, in the days of Mirkhshah.