TL;DR
In Salok Mahalla 9, Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji observes that when life is good, many become our companions — but when life turns hard, almost no one remains. This is not bitterness about people. It is the Guru showing us a truth: the only companion who stays to the end is the One Lord. The pain of abandonment is the moment we are most ready to recognize Him.
ਸੁਖ ਮੈ ਬਹੁ ਸੰਗੀ ਭਏ ਦੁਖ ਮੈ ਸੰਗਿ ਨ ਕੋਇ ॥ ਕਹੁ ਨਾਨਕ ਹਰਿ ਭਜੁ ਮਨਾ ਅੰਤਿ ਸਹਾਈ ਹੋਇ ॥
In times of comfort, many became my companions; in times of pain, no one stayed beside me. Says Nanak: meditate on the Lord, He alone will be your help in the end.
— Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji, Salok Mahalla 9 (Ang 1428)
You have lived this. Almost everyone has.
When life is going well — when there is money, success, energy, good news to share — companions appear easily. Friends are present. Family wants to be near you. Strangers want to know you. The phone rings. The invitations come. The room is full.
Then something turns. A loss. An illness. A failure. A reputation damaged. A long depression. A bankruptcy. A divorce. A grief that does not lift.
And the room slowly empties.
Most do not leave dramatically. They simply stop calling. The invitations thin. The same people who wanted to be close when you were rising find reasons to be elsewhere now that you are falling. A few stay — and you will remember the few for the rest of your life. But many, perhaps most, do not.
This is the experience Sri Guru Tegh Bahadur Ji is naming.
The Guru is not bitter
It would be easy to read this salok as a complaint against false friends. It is not.
The ninth Guru is not asking us to resent the people who left. He is showing us something larger: this pattern is a teaching. The departure of fair-weather companions is not human cruelty. It is the world doing what the world does. Attachment moves where success moves. The crowd follows the rising figure. When you stop rising, the crowd disperses naturally — not out of malice, but out of its own nature.
The Guru is asking a deeper question. If this is what human companionship is — abundant in comfort, absent in pain — then what kind of companion would actually stay?
The answer is in the second line of the salok.
The One who stays
Kahu Nanak Har Bhaj Mana Ant Sahaee Hoe.
Says Nanak: meditate on the Lord, He alone will be your help in the end.
There is only one companion who does not leave when life turns. The Creator. The One Lord. The presence that Sri Guru Nanak Dev Ji called Ik Onkar. This companion is not present in proportion to your success. This companion does not measure your bank account before deciding whether to stay. This companion does not have other plans on the day of your grief.
This companion is with you in every state — in comfort and in pain, in success and in failure, in the crowded room and in the empty one. The Sikh's task is to recognize this, slowly, over a lifetime, and to begin building the relationship that does not depend on circumstances.
The cruelty of fair-weather companions is, in this light, a strange gift. It clears the room. It removes the noise. It leaves space for the relationship the Guru is actually pointing to.
Why this teaching matters in the diaspora
Diaspora Sikhs experience this pattern in particular ways. The community success metrics — the house, the car, the degree, the kids in good universities, the visible markers of "we made it" — invite a certain kind of companionship. The visible markers of struggle — a divorce, a child's mental illness, a business failure, a parent's dementia — quietly close those same doors.
Many diaspora families live with the unspoken pressure of having to appear successful. Showing pain has costs. The salok offers a counterweight: the One Lord does not require us to appear successful before He stays. He is already with us, in the appearance and in the actual. The relationship is available even when the social one is not.
What the salok asks us to do
Not to harden against people. Not to become cynical. Not to test our friends. The Guru is not interested in any of that.
The Guru is asking for one thing: remember. Remember the One Lord. Make Him your companion through the practice of simran, of reciting His Name, of returning to Him daily — not only when crisis hits, but in the quiet of ordinary days. Build the relationship now, when it is easy, so that it is already there when you need it.
The fair-weather friends are not the problem. The problem is having no companion underneath them — no presence that remains when they leave.
The salok is the Guru's quiet warning, given in love: there will be a day when you need Someone. Make sure you have built that relationship before that day arrives.
ਅੰਤਿ ਸਹਾਈ ਹੋਇ ॥ He alone will be your help in the end.
ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕਾ ਖਾਲਸਾ ॥ ਵਾਹਿਗੁਰੂ ਜੀ ਕੀ ਫਤਿਹ ॥