9. “You Are Alive!”
Chapter 9
“You Are Alive!”
In late spring 1912 it was time for Sundar to set out for Tibet once again. This time he decided to follow a trail over the Kailas Range farther to the east from his previous crossing of the Himalayas. This region was where the Hindu gods were said to reside, and many Hindu hermits lived in caves amid the mountains. Many nomadic bands of robbers also wandered through the area, attacking and robbing Hindu pilgrims and Tibetan caravans. But walking barefoot and carrying only his blanket, Sundar must have seemed an uninviting target to them, and no robbers attacked him as he made his way past Lake Mansarovar. The lake was surrounded by mountain peaks, wild swans swarmed over the lake surface, and many crumbling Buddhist temples dotted the shoreline. After he had passed the lake, Sundar began the arduous climb up and over the mountain range. Eventually he crossed the main ridge and descended into Tibet.
After leaving the Kailas Range behind him, Sundar walked for many miles before he came upon a small village. He tried to talk to the people who lived in the village, but when they realized he was a Christian, they grew hostile. So even though his bare feet were bleeding by now, Sundar decided to walk on until sunset. He asked which way he should go, and an old woman pointed to the southwest toward a high mountain pass. Sundar trudged off in the direction she had pointed.
It was bitterly cold, but Sundar pressed on, reciting chapters of the Gospel of John to himself as a way of encouragement. After about two hours of walking, he realized that he had been tricked. This was not the way to anywhere. The trail ended at the bank of a swiftly moving river. The water was icy cold, and there was no way for Sundar to cross it.
Suddenly the enormity of what he was doing overcame Sundar. He sat on a rock beside the river and cried with despair. It seemed that no one wanted to listen to him, no one would help him, and no one would care if he died and his body was washed downstream.
A few minutes later he wiped his eyes and glanced across the river. On the other side was a man warming himself by a fire. This made Sundar feel worse. Now he was within sight of warmth and comfort but had no way of reaching it.
Sundar watched transfixed as the man stood up and walked toward the river. Then, without even slowing his step, the man waded into the current, first up to his knees, then to his waist, and finally to his shoulders. Within a minute he was standing in front of Sundar.
“Sit on my shoulders and do not fear,” the man said, reaching down to grab Sundar by the hand.
A great sense of calm came over Sundar, who did what the man asked. The man was very strong, and once Sundar was seated on his shoulders, he did not hesitate as he reentered the icy water. He carried Sundar to the other side and gently put him down. Sundar shut his eyes for a brief moment of thankful prayer. When he opened his eyes, the man was gone. There were only rocks within one hundred yards of the river, and they provided no place for the man to have disappeared to. Nonetheless, the man was nowhere to be seen.
Sundar sat with his mouth open, wondering what had just happened to the man. He waited, but the man did not reappear. Eventually Sundar continued on his way, thanking God that He had not forgotten about him after all.
The reception Sundar received at the next village and the one after that was also hostile. Sundar decided that his reputation was spreading throughout the region. This belief was reinforced when villagers began hurling insults and rocks at him before he even started to preach.
Finally Sundar reached the village of Rasar, located on a high plateau. As was his custom, he made his way to the marketplace, where he began to preach. A crowd soon gathered, and much to his surprise, they listened attentively. Indeed, some of the people asked questions about what he was saying and seemed satisfied with his answers. Then, to Sundar’s surprise, the mood of the crowd suddenly changed. Many people walked away while others began to yell abuse at him.
Sundar soon discovered what had changed the demeanor of the crowd—servants of the region’s grand lama were stirring them up. Once the people learned that the grand lama was unhappy with Sundar and his preaching, they lost all interest in what he had to say. Moments later the crowd that was left separated as the monastery guard marched forward and arrested Sundar. Rough hands dragged him off, and he was taken before the grand lama.
“It is against the law to teach a foreign religion in Tibet. You have been caught in the very act of doing that,” the lama snarled. “Do you have anything to say for yourself?”
“No,” Sundar replied. There was no point in pleading innocence. As the lama had already pointed out, he had been caught red-handed preaching the gospel.
“Very well, your punishment is death,” the grand lama announced.
As he was led away, Sundar wondered about his fate. Was he to be sewn inside a wet yak skin like Kartar Singh and left to be crushed to death, or did some other fate await him?
Sundar soon discovered that the Tibetans had other creative ways of slowly killing people. He was dragged to the edge of town, where there was an abandoned well. A key was turned in the lock that kept the cover over the well in place, and the cover was pulled back. Sundar was then hurled down the dry well shaft. He landed with a painful thud at the bottom and watched as above him the cover was pulled back into place and locked down.
The air at the bottom of the well was putrid, and Sundar gagged as he breathed it. As he felt around him in the dark, he learned why the air smelled so bad. He was not the first person to be thrown into the well to die. Everywhere around him were human bones and rotting flesh, all that remained of the previous victims. Sundar soon discovered that he could not move without brushing against human remains, and he began to despair. As he stood in the bottom of the putrid well, Sundar found himself wishing for the wet yak skin that had slowly crushed Kartar to death. Kartar’s death out in the fresh air suddenly seemed to him a better way to die.
Sundar leaned against the side of the well and tried to pray, but he felt like his prayers were not even making it out of the well. Desperation and loneliness washed over him, and he wished for a quick death. But his wish did not come true, and by his third night at the bottom of the well, Sundar was so weak he could barely move. He knew that he had only a short time left to live, and he welcomed the approaching hour of his deliverance from his hellish surroundings.
Then above him Sundar suddenly heard a clinking and a rustle. It sounded like the lock on the cover over the well was being undone, and then he heard a shuffle. Someone was sliding the cover off the well. Or was he? Sundar wondered whether his weary mind was hallucinating. And was that really moonlight streaming into the well? Suddenly a rope with a loop on the bottom was being lowered into the well. Was it real? Sundar reached his weak and shaking hand out and felt for it. It was real. Mustering all his strength and concentration, Sundar put one of his legs through the loop and wrapped his arms around the rope. Moments later he felt himself being pulled up out of the well.
Sundar gasped in lungfuls of fresh air as he collapsed onto the ground. In his semiconscious state, he heard the cover being pulled back into place and the lock being snapped shut. He turned to see who had rescued him from the well, but nobody was around. Whoever rescued him had disappeared into the darkness.
The fresh air felt and tasted wonderful to Sundar as he lay there, but he knew he would soon be noticed. He stumbled to his feet and staggered off into the night, guided by the light of the full moon that shone above. Finally he found some bushes near a stream and crawled behind them and fell asleep. When he awoke, the sun was high in the sky and baking down on him. It felt so warm and good.
Sundar lay in the sun awhile longer, feeling his strength return before making his way to the stream, where he washed himself and his robe and turban. As he sat waiting for his clothes to dry in the sun, he prayed and thanked God for sending someone to rescue him from the well. He wondered what he should do next. His first inclination was to get away from Rasar as fast as possible. But the more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that that was not what God wanted him to do. It was too good of an opportunity to miss. So Sundar pulled on his robe and turban and headed back into Rasar.
The people in the marketplace were wide-eyed when Sundar began preaching there again. As far as they knew, Sundar was dead. How could he now be preaching to them once more? News traveled fast, and it was not long before the monastery guard came and arrested Sundar once again.
“How can this be?” the grand lama stormed. “You were thrown down the well and left for dead. Who rescued you? Who is the traitor among us?”
Sundar tried to explain his rescue, but he had been so weak and semiconscious that he had not even noticed who it was that rescued him.
The grand lama was determined to get to the bottom of the matter. If there was a traitor in their midst, then, he declared, he was going to find him. That was when one of the lama’s officials stepped forward and pointed out that there was only one key to the lock on the well cover, and that key was still clipped to the lama’s belt.
The grand lama suddenly looked alarmed, and Sundar thought he noticed terror in the man’s eyes. The grand lama abruptly stopped questioning Sundar.
“Get out of Rasar,” the grand lama ordered Sundar, “and never return here lest the power that protects you bring disaster on us.”
Sundar left the grand lama’s presence and walked out of Rasar, sure that his return to the town had had a profound effect upon both the grand lama and the people of the town.
From Rasar, Sundar wandered on from village to village preaching the gospel. But soon it was fall and time for him to return across the mountains to India before the winter snow closed the way.
Back in India, Sundar kept busy visiting villages around the north and north-central regions of the country. The work was exhausting, but he kept at it. At the same time Sundar read and reread the Gospels, and as he did so, the more he felt God was calling him to fast as Jesus had done after His baptism.
Sundar remembered a forest at Kajiliban where he had spent time in the past. It was a lonely place located along the banks of the Ganges River between Dehra Dun and Haridwar, and Sundar decided that it would be a perfect place to fast. He climbed aboard a train for the long trip to the forest. The train was overcrowded as usual, with the people who could not get inside the carriages sitting on top of them or clinging to the sides as they rolled along.
For part of the journey, Sundar sat beside an Englishman. The man introduced himself as Dr. Smith, and he and Sundar fell into conversation. As they talked, Sundar explained that he was going into the forest to fast and pray, and that he hoped to do so for forty days just as Jesus had.
Dr. Smith was astounded at this revelation and asked Sundar many questions about his health. Finally he said, “I believe you will not survive such a fast, and I urge you not to do it.”
Sundar insisted that he had to undertake the fast because he felt that was what God wanted him to do. So the doctor made a different request. “Very well,” he said, “if you will not take my advice, at least give me the names of some of your closest friends that I may keep in touch with them and assure myself that you are safe and well.”
It seemed like a reasonable request to Sundar, so he wrote down the names of Susil Rudra, Bishop Lefroy, and several other men.
At the next station, Nimoda, Dr. Smith left the train, leaving Sundar to complete his journey alone. Sundar arrived at the station near the Kajiliban Forest on January 26, 1913, and clambered off the train. Clutching his blanket and his New Testament, Sundar made his way into the forest and found a quiet place to fast and pray among a dense thicket of bamboo. He then gathered forty stones together into a pile. He planned to roll one of the stones away from the pile each morning to keep track of how many days he had been fasting. Sundar then began his forty days of prayer and fasting.
Each morning as the early sunlight filtered through the trees, Sundar rolled another rock off the pile and then spent the day reading his well-worn New Testament, singing chants, and praying. Soon one day melted into the next, and with each passing day Sundar began to feel a little weaker. In fact sometimes he found it hard to concentrate, and occasionally he forgot whether or not he had rolled away a rock that morning. Finally, after twenty-three days, Sundar lapsed into unconsciousness. He lay amid the bamboo thicket, alone and hidden from sight by the thick vegetation.
The next thing Sundar knew, he was being lifted onto a stretcher and hoisted up onto strong shoulders. He again lost consciousness, until he was lying in a bed. He felt crisp, white sheets enveloping him and heard a soothing voice.
“Ah, you are awake at last, I see,” the voice said.
Sundar lifted his head half an inch off the pillow and nodded. He opened his mouth to speak, but no words came out.
“Do not strain yourself, Sadhu,” the voice said. “You have been on quite a journey. Some bamboo cutters found you in the forest and brought you by train to Dehra Dun. Then some Christians brought you here to Annfield by bullock cart. You are now at Pastor Dharmajit Singh’s home. He is away, but I am his son, Bansi, and I will take care of you.”
Sundar managed a weak smile.
“They knew you were a Christian because they found a New Testament in your pocket, but I must confess that I did not recognize you until I read your name inside the front cover. I heard you speak once and was greatly impressed with your message.”
Sundar listened to Bansi, but the effort exhausted him, and he drifted off to sleep.
It was three weeks before Sundar was fit and healthy enough to travel again, and when he did, Sundar was in for a big surprise.
“You are alive! You are alive!” a man in the train station at Chandigarh yelled when he spotted Sundar. “You are Sadhu Sundar Singh, aren’t you?”
“Yes, and as you can see, I am indeed alive,” Sundar replied. “Why do you suppose otherwise?”
“A month ago I went to your memorial service…” The man stopped and looked at Sundar. “Are you sure you are Sadhu Sundar Singh?”
“Of course. What memorial service?”
“The one at the Anglican church here. Many people were there: Christians and Hindus, and the priest read a letter of consolation from Bishop Lefroy. Surely you have heard you are dead? Your obituary has appeared in every newspaper in India.”
It took Sundar several more hours to get to the bottom of the story. He visited the church in Chandigarh where his memorial service had been held. After startling the vicar, he learned that Dr. Smith had sent out a peculiar telegram to the men whose names Sundar had furnished him with. The telegram read, “Sundar Singh slept in Christ. Signed Dr. Smith.”
All that Sundar could conclude was that Dr. Smith, the man he had met on the train, had been so convinced that Sundar would die during his fast that he had sent out the telegram heralding his death. The whole situation astonished Sundar, who hurried to the Simla area to show everyone that he was very much alive and well and ready for his next missionary journey.