Guru Nanak Dev Ji spent about fourteen years at Sultanpur Lodhi working as the storekeeper of the modikhana of Daulat Khan Lodhi. His sister Bebe Nanaki Ji lived there, married to Jai Ram, who found him the post. Both his sons were born in this period.
The account says he bathed each morning in the Kali Bein, the rivulet that runs past the town, and that on one morning he did not come out. He was gone three days. When he returned he said ਨਾ ਕੋਈ ਹਿੰਦੂ ਨਾ ਕੋਈ ਮੁਸਲਮਾਨ, there is no Hindu and no Musalman, and left Sultanpur to travel.
There is a second story attached to the storehouse. Weighing out grain he is said to have reached thirteen, terah, which is also the Punjabi for yours, and to have carried on saying terah, terah, giving away the stock. An audit was ordered. The books were found in surplus.
The Kali Bein was an open drain by the 1990s, taking sewage from towns along its 165 kilometres. Sant Balbir Singh Seechewal began clearing it by hand with volunteers in 2000, section by section, without government money at the start. The river was walkable again within a few years and the method has been copied on other Punjab streams. It is one of the few restoration efforts in the state that worked.
Gurdwara Ber Sahib stands at the spot on the bank, built around a jujube tree said to date from the Guru's time.
Guru Nanak Sahib Ji worked here in the Nawab's granary for years, married and had his children here, and it is where the account of the disappearance into the Bein is set.
The town is old, a sultanate period administrative centre, and it holds a set of gurdwaras, the Hadira, a Mughal serai and the Bein running past it.
The 550th anniversary in 2019 brought a large construction and beautification programme. What the town still lacks is any account of itself that is not about one man.