Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
Now look at the sugar-cane. First it's cut down; its leaves are stripped away, and its stalks are tied tightly into bundles. Then it's fed between heavy rollers and crushed completely flat.
What a hard thing to watch — its juice squeezed out and poured into a boiling pot, where it bubbles and seems almost to groan; and the crushed, empty stalk is thrown into the fire underneath.
Nanak says: come, people, and see what happens to the sweet sugar-cane.
This verse asks us to watch how sugar-cane is made into sugar, and to think about what the world does to things, and where sweetness comes from.
It pairs with the verse before it, about harvest and the mill. Guru Nanak asks us, almost firmly, to watch. "Vaykh je mithaa kati-aa" — look how the sweet cane is cut. Then he walks us through each step. The cane is cut and its leaves stripped. "Kat kut baDhaa paa-ay" — it's tied up in bundles. It's pressed between wooden rollers. Its juice is boiled in a big pot, and it seems to groan. At last the crushed stalk is gathered and burned in the fire below. "Naanak mithai patree-ai vaykhhu lokaa aa-ay" — Nanak says, come, people, see how the sweet cane is treated.
Why show us something so hard? The picture holds more than one idea, and it's worth sitting with. One idea is that nothing in the world lasts. Whatever the world finds useful gets cut, bundled, pressed and used up in time. Other verses in this set speak of a palace of smoke and of kings who vanished. They all say: don't put your whole hope in things the world will one day grind down. The cane is tied up like someone tied up by their own grabbing and wanting.
The second idea is why the cane is called mithaa, sweet. The sugar only comes out when the cane is pressed. Left alone, it keeps its sweetness locked inside. That's a hint about the proud "me." When the ego softens and breaks open, a sweetness can come out that it never gave while it stood stiff and whole. Think of an orange. You only get the juice when you squeeze it.
Guru Nanak doesn't spell out one lesson. He shows the scene and says, come and see. It's a picture to think about: what the world does to things, what it costs to be tied up by wanting, and how the hard, proud self can soften into something sweet.
Has a sweetness ever come into your life only through something that first pressed or broke you?
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI