The young yogi was known for his tantric (occult) powers. The yogi did not feel hesitant to play pranks on the visitors and saints. This lasted one day, in 1708, when he happened to meet the 10th Sikh guru, Guru Gobind Singh. The guru who had stopped at the yogi’s monastery at Nanded occupied the cot used by the yogi. The yogi was not present in his hut but when informed by his followers about the guru’s act, he summoned the secret spirits to overturn the cot but to no avail. It was a meeting of transformation and realisation.
The following conversation, recorded in the Zikr-i-Guruan wa lbtida-i-Singhan wa Mazhab-i-Eshan by Ahmad Shah of Batala, shows the spiritual angle of the encounter between the guru and the yogi, Madho Das.
Madho Das: Who are you?
Guru Gobind Singh: He whom you know.
Madho Das: What do I know?
Guru Gobind Singh: Think it over in your mind.
Madho Das (after a pause): So you are Guru Gobind Singh!
Guru Gobind Singh: Yes.
Madho Das: What have you come here for?
Guru Gobind Singh: I have come here so that I can make you a banda (human).
Madho Das: “I submit, my Lord. I am a banda (slave) of yours.”
Then started the transformation of an occultist into a saint. The young yogi was none other than Banda Singh Bahadur, the Sikh warriorwho was a saviour of the poor and the oppressed. Before being executed, Banda Singh was, says the poet, ordered to kill his own son holding him in his hands.
