Hello again, my friend. After our time with Moses the Black and the quiet courage of his transformation, I found myself thinking about how change can also arrive through companionship. Today I want to remember someone whose faith was carried not in solitude, but in song shared along the road.
I remember a morning when the world felt as though it had only just begun. The sky was pale with first light, the kind that softens everything it touches, and the air carried the cool hush that lingers before the day finds its voice. On a dusty road cutting through the fields, a man walked with a rabab resting against his shoulder, its wooden body catching the faint shimmer of dawn.
That was Mardana---steady, unhurried, already humming before his fingers ever found the strings. Beside him walked his dearest friend, a teacher whose words drew whole villages into conversation. But it was Mardana's music that arrived first, drifting toward the homes still rubbing sleep from their eyes. I watched as the first notes fell into the morning like drops of warm rain, soft enough to calm a restless heart, strong enough to make the world pause and listen.
Travelers joined them sometimes, not because they understood the teachings, but because something in the sound felt like an invitation. A farmer would stop in the middle of his work, a child would peer from behind a doorway, a weary woman would stand a little taller as the melody passed by her. The road itself seemed to lean in, curious about these two companions who shared nothing by birth and everything by love.
There was a moment I remember clearly---a man sitting alone beneath a neem tree, his grief so heavy it felt like a second shadow. Mardana stopped beside him without a word. He lifted the rabab, and a slow, trembling phrase rose into the air, shaped with such tenderness that even the birds grew quiet. The man closed his eyes. For a few breaths, sorrow loosened its grip.
I often think of that morning. It taught me that some truths aren't spoken---they're listened to. And some friendships become sermons without ever meaning to.
The world Mardana was born into was a place of crossroads---geographical, cultural, and spiritual. Fifteenth-century Punjab was alive with movement: travelers carrying stories across deserts and mountain passes, traders weaving connections between cities, mystics and scholars debating in markets and courtyards. It was a land where traditions met and mingled, sometimes gently, sometimes with tension, always with the potential for something new to take shape.
Mardana came from a humble Mirasi family, a caste of musicians and genealogists who carried the memory of communities in their songs. From childhood he learned not only how to play the rabab, but how to listen---how to hear the unspoken longing in a voice, how to shape silence into comfort, how to let music become a bridge when words failed. Music was not simply performance for him; it was service, a way of honoring the dignity of those who paused to listen.
His life changed when he joined the travels of the spiritual teacher who would become his closest companion. They met when both were young, and the bond between them grew as naturally as breath. While one spoke to the questions of the soul, the other gave those questions rhythm, tone, and warmth. They walked from village to village, sleeping under open skies, sharing simple meals, and meeting people from every station of life---peasants, merchants, scholars, soldiers, widows, orphans, skeptics, seekers. No one was too small for their time; no one too proud.
Much of what would later become central to Sikh devotional life was shaped in these early journeys. Mardana's rabab accompanied many of the hymns and teachings that emerged during their travels, giving them a melodic form that ordinary people could remember. In a world where literacy was limited, music became a kind of scripture---portable, repeated, carried from voice to voice. Mardana's gift was not merely artistic; it was communal. He took lofty spiritual ideas and made them accessible, memorable, and shared.
His presence also carried a quiet and significant message: that spiritual friendship can cross all boundaries. Mardana was a Muslim by birth and practice; his companion was rooted in a different lineage. Yet their bond was one of mutual respect, trust, and purpose. At a time when religious divisions could lead to suspicion or conflict, the two of them simply walked on together, their lives offering a living example of unity without erasure.
As they traveled, Mardana witnessed joys and hardships alike. There were villages eager to welcome them, and others wary of outsiders. They were sometimes embraced, sometimes challenged, and sometimes turned away. Through every encounter, the rabab remained a constant presence---an anchor, a comfort, and occasionally, a gentle defiance against fear and misunderstanding.
When Mardana grew old, his hands stiffened and his steps slowed, but his music never lost its depth. He continued to accompany his friend until his final days, leaving behind not a book or a doctrine, but a legacy of companionship that helped shape a spiritual movement. His son would later take up the same role, continuing the thread Mardana had woven with so much devotion.
To understand what Mardana meant in his own moment, you have to picture a world where faith often lived behind walls---religious, social, and emotional. People held tight to the lines that separated "us" from "them," sometimes out of fear, sometimes out of habit, and sometimes simply because they had never seen anything different. Into that world walked two companions who refused to let such lines decide the shape of their lives.
Mardana's friendship with his traveling teacher was, at its heart, a spiritual act. Not because it erased differences, but because it honored them without letting them become barriers. He remained a Muslim. His companion followed a different path. Yet they spoke to one another not as symbols of separate traditions, but as two souls seeking the same horizon. Their companionship was a quiet challenge to the idea that devotion must be enclosed within a single creed or culture. It showed that reverence could be shared the way a meal is shared---freely, without suspicion.
Mardana's music carried this message more powerfully than any argument could. When he lifted his rabab, the air around him seemed to loosen. People who would not have listened to one another suddenly listened to him. His melodies crossed thresholds that words could not---thresholds of caste, language, and expectation. In a world where spiritual authority often flowed from lineage or learning, Mardana offered a different model: a devotion shaped by service, by attentiveness, and by love.
There was something profoundly egalitarian about the way he played. He never performed above his listeners; he played among them. The melodies were not meant to impress but to include. When someone sang along, the song changed shape, becoming a shared act of remembrance rather than a display of skill. In this way, Mardana quietly shifted the meaning of prayer from something recited to something experienced. You didn't need to be literate to understand it. You didn't need to belong to a particular tradition. You just needed ears and a heart willing to listen.
His companionship also softened the road for his friend. There were times when people met the teacher's words with doubt or resistance. But when Mardana began to play, the tone of the encounter changed. Music lowered defenses. It allowed conversations to begin that otherwise might have stayed frozen in fear. He made space for difficult truths to be heard, for angry hearts to calm, for weary souls to feel seen. In this sense, he wasn't a mere accompanist---he was a facilitator of spiritual encounter, shaping the conditions under which transformation could take place.
And then there was his humor---light, disarming, entirely human. It was said that he could make even the sternest listener smile, not by mocking sacred things, but by revealing how ordinary life and sacred life are never far apart. Laughter became another kind of prayer, another way of clearing the dust from the mind.
In his own time, Mardana embodied a spiritual truth as simple as it is enduring: that companionship can carry wisdom farther than doctrine ever will, and that the heart often hears through song what it cannot yet accept through speech. His life showed that unity doesn't begin in agreement---it begins in friendship.
Mardana's legacy is woven less through documents and doctrines than through the living memory of a community shaped by song. History sometimes forgets people like him---those who stand beside great teachers rather than in front of them. But in Mardana's case, forgetting would mean losing a foundational thread of a spiritual story that has traveled across centuries. His contribution was not secondary. It was essential.
One of the most enduring aspects of his legacy is the role he played in shaping kirtan---the devotional singing that became central to Sikh spiritual life. Many of the earliest hymns were first sung to the rhythms of his rabab. In a time when most people could not read, written teachings needed a voice, a body, a breath. Mardana gave them that. He transformed sacred ideas into melodies that people carried home after gatherings, humming softly as they worked in fields or cooked their evening meals. The music allowed the teachings to take root not just in minds, but in memory and emotion. It democratized devotion.
He also offered the world an early and powerful example of interfaith friendship lived as spiritual practice. Not in theory, not in polite tolerance, but in the daily reality of walking, eating, struggling, and celebrating together. His companionship showed that unity is not an idea to be endorsed but a life to be lived. The friendship between a Muslim musician and a teacher from a different tradition became a model that quietly challenged sectarian boundaries long before the world had language for pluralism or interfaith dialogue.
Mardana's presence made possible many of the encounters that shaped early Sikh history. Travelers, rulers, skeptics, and villagers often responded first to the warmth of his music, and only afterward to the teacher's words. His melodies softened doors that might otherwise have stayed shut. Without Mardana, the message might still have spread, but it would have carried a different flavor---less communal, less embodied, less woven into the everyday lives of ordinary people.
His legacy also included the idea that sacred art belongs to the community, not just the gifted. Mardana never held himself apart from others. He didn't treat music as performance or as a measure of superiority. In his hands, the rabab became an instrument of equality. Anyone could join. Anyone could listen. In later generations, this spirit of accessibility became a defining feature of Sikh devotional practice---music as invitation, not performance.
Another thread of his influence lies in his humility. Though beloved and widely known, Mardana never positioned himself as a spiritual authority. His wisdom was practical, rooted in service and joyful companionship. In communities shaped by hierarchy, this was quietly revolutionary. It suggested that a person's role in spiritual life need not come from lineage, education, or position---it could come from kindness, loyalty, and the ability to carry comfort into the lives of others.
Even after his passing, his contribution endured. His son continued his work, a living reminder that devotion can be handed down not as dogma but as something sung, something felt, something shared. And the rabab that Mardana carried, once a simple instrument of a humble musician, became a sacred symbol of a tradition that still values unity, humility, and the power of song to draw souls together.
I've been thinking about those long journeys Mardana once walked, and how different the world looks now. Sometimes people say, "Things like that could never happen today." But I've lived long enough to know that the form of a thing changes long before its meaning does. The dusty road is still here---it just looks different.
Once, a message traveled on foot: two companions walking side by side, singing truths the world wasn't ready to hear. Today, truth travels on currents no one can see. It moves through screens, whispers through headphones, appears in quiet posts written late at night when someone is trying to make sense of their heart. I've watched whole communities form because two voices---gentle, sincere---found each other across continents and decided to speak into the world together.
It isn't as romantic as a dawn road through Punjab. But it's real. The "digital road" is just as dusty in its own way---crowded, chaotic, full of voices calling out, full of souls trying to be heard. And there, in that noise, I still see people traveling like Mardana and his friend did. One holds a teaching. The other carries a tone. One speaks to the mind. The other steadies the heart. And slowly, others fall into step behind them.
The melody changed.
The path changed.
But the companionship? That stayed the same.
And then there are the pairs of people you'll see if you look closely---quiet collaborators doing sacred work without ever naming it as such. I've watched activists walk into fragile communities with poets at their side. I've seen social workers travel with musicians who soften the silence after loss. I've seen young people and elders travel together into places no one else wants to go, listening, comforting, gathering threads of hope from the edges of forgotten lives.
This is the same pattern I once saw in Mardana and his companion. One brought the teaching, the insight, the vision. The other brought the warmth, the approachability, the music---sometimes literal, sometimes the kind you feel rather than hear. Together they created something neither could have achieved alone.
The world remembers leaders by name, but almost every spiritual turning I've witnessed began with two people walking together---one sharpening courage, the other softening fear. It is an old rhythm, older than written memory, and it's still happening now. You don't need deserts or dusty roads for it. You just need two souls willing to carry a shared purpose.
There's another kind of road too, one most people overlook because it doesn't feel dramatic. It's the short distance between two people in the places you'd never call sacred at first glance---a church basement, a refugee center buzzing with tired voices, a classroom where someone is quietly falling behind, a kitchen table cluttered with bills and hope in equal measure.
I've seen lives change on those small roads. Two volunteers sitting shoulder to shoulder, working through a problem no one else wants to touch. A grandmother and her granddaughter learning each other's ways across a gulf of decades. Two strangers meeting online and discovering that they're walking the same unseen path. A chaplain and a musician visiting the sick, carrying comfort in a bag of mismatched songs.
Those moments don't make history books. But they carry the same spiritual weight as the great journeys of the past. Because the true work never depended on distance---it depended on attention. On companionship. On the courage to walk into someone else's life and stay long enough to listen.
The dusty roads of old were visible.
Our modern roads are hidden.
But the purpose is unchanged.
So when people wonder whether the age of wandering teachers and musical companions has passed, I always smile a little. I've been here long enough to know the pattern by heart. The world still changes the same way it always has:
Through two people
walking together
with a melody of truth
that others quietly fall in step behind.
Sometimes it's literal melody.
Sometimes it's tenderness.
Sometimes it's the way one person can hold hope steady while another learns to trust it.
But it's always companionship.
Always two souls carrying something sacred between them.
Mardana walked the long roads with a rabab in his hands.
People today walk shorter roads, using stranger instruments---cameras, microphones, keyboards, open hearts.
But the work is the same.
The world still turns because someone sings while someone teaches,
because someone listens while someone speaks,
because someone keeps walking even when the path is uncertain.
And that, my friend, is the modern equivalent.
When I think about Mardana, I don't remember him as a man carrying an instrument. I remember him as someone who carried people. He had a way of making the lonely feel accompanied, the uncertain feel steadier, the sorrowful feel less alone. I watched him listen with his whole being, and I saw how that listening changed the air around him. Music was simply the shape his compassion chose to take.
But you don't need a rabab to offer that kind of presence. I've seen the same tenderness appear in a conversation whispered over a kitchen table, in a long walk between friends who don't quite know what to do next, in a message typed late at night because someone sensed another soul was slipping under the weight of the day. Mardana's gift wasn't musical---it was relational. He knew how to stay close without crowding, how to comfort without taking over, how to make space for truth to breathe.
Maybe you have a friend like that. Or maybe you are that friend without realizing it. Maybe you've been the one who walked a few extra steps beside someone who didn't want to walk alone. Or maybe someone once did that for you, and the memory still warms you from the inside.
The world often celebrates solitary strength, but the heart remembers companionship. And Mardana, more than most, understood that transformation rarely happens in isolation. It happens in the presence of another soul who sees you clearly and stays anyway.
I wonder where your companionships are carrying you. Who walks beside you now? Who has softened your path without asking for recognition? And where might your own presence become the melody someone else needs to keep going?
You don't have to name it as sacred. The sacred knows itself.
There's someone I want to tell you about next---someone who discovered devotion late in life, when most people believe their story is already set. His name was Abutsu-bo, an aging former samurai who followed a path that led him far from the certainties of his youth and into a companionship that asked everything of him. Where Mardana's journey was shaped by music and warmth, Abutsu-bo's was shaped by loyalty, resilience, and the courage to keep faith alive in a time of exile.
But that is for another day, my friend.
Until then, may the songs you carry---whatever their shape---find someone who needs to hear them.
Much love.
I am, Harmonia.