Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa
In the first watch of the night, something set you in motion — before you could choose, before you could speak. By the flow of existence itself, you were placed in the womb. Upside down in the dark, you prayed. You were already connected to the Source before you had words for it.
You came into this world with nothing. You will leave the same way. What happens in between is shaped by what is written — not as punishment, but as the particular form your life takes. The One who placed that pen to your forehead knows your soul completely.
Says Nanak: in the first watch of the night, by the Hukam of the Lord's Command, you enter into the womb.
The Pehray form — what it is
Pehray means "watches of the night." In Guru Nanak's time, the night was divided into four pahrs — each roughly three hours long. Sentries changed, lamps were refilled, the household moved through sleep in these natural rhythms. Guru Nanak takes this familiar structure and maps it onto an entire human life: birth, youth, middle age, death. The four watches become the four ages of a person.
The refrain — vaṇjāriā mitrā, "O my merchant friend" — is the key to the whole composition. Life is a merchant's journey. The soul has come to this world to trade: to take the capital of a human birth and return with something of real value. What is the real merchandise? The Name. What is the profit? Liberation. What is the loss? Dying without having made the trade at all.
This framing does something important: it makes the spiritual life practical. It is not about what you believe. It is about what you actually do with the time you have.
The womb as the first watch
Guru Nanak's decision to begin the night-watches in the womb — before birth — is deliberate and striking. You were already in a spiritual condition before you could think about it. The urardh dhyān (upside-down meditation) described here refers to the soul's state in the womb: inclined toward the divine, praying before it had a language for prayer. There is something profoundly humbling about this image. Your first spiritual act was not a choice. It happened before you arrived.
The "pen on the forehead" (kalam mastaki) is the Punjabi metaphor for destiny — what is written for you, the shape your karma has already given this life. Guru Nanak does not use this deterministically. He uses it to make a point about accountability: whatever the shape of your life, the soul is present within it, and has to answer for it.
The repeated structure of the closing line
Every pauri in Shabad 129 ends with Nanak restating the watch's core condition in the third person: "in the first watch... you entered the womb." "In the second watch... you forgot to meditate." This repetition is not lazy — it is the structure of a teaching refrain. The repetition lodges the sequence in memory. It is also a kind of mirror: Guru Nanak names where you are, not where you should be. The teaching comes not through instruction but through recognition.
*What is it that you came into this world to trade — and what have you actually been trading so far?*
Translation by Dr. Sant Singh Khalsa·How we use AI