There was a time when Shri Nathji visited Kohmurree hill-station in the Punjab in 1937. There Shri Nathji met a certain Mr. and Mrs. Khera. They were purely worldly-minded people with no interest in spiritual matters.
They were given the gift of faith by Shri Nathji and developed a devotion that was to last over many years. They followed Shri Nathji to Lahore. They were in great financial difficulty at the time, but their association with Shri Nathji gave them absolute peace of mind in the midst of want.
After they met Shri Nathji, material prosperity began to follow them. Mr. Khera obtained employment in a British firm.
Both husband and wife saw God in Shri Nathji and regarded him as the avatar come to save the world.
When Shri Nathji went to Rawalpindi, the Kheras were with him. At the time in Rawalpindi, when Shri Nathji cooked chappatis with his own hands, Mr. Khera came forward on all fours and begged to be made a table.
At another time at Allahabad in 1942, Shri Nathji was examining a flower in a garden, when the maali, gardener, called out from a distance: Please do not touch the flowers.
And Mr. Khera immediately said: Why shouldn’t he touch the flowers? He created them. He is the Lord of the Universe! Yeh duniyaa ke maalik hain!
When in 1940 a certain jeweller took Mr. Khera aside in his shop in Calcutta and asked him which place Shri Nathji belonged to, Mr. Khera replied: The place you are to go to, after death!
There was the time when a tonga in which Shri Nathji and Khera were sitting, was being driven by the tonga driver at break neck speed resulting in serious jolts that were unbalancing Shri Nathji and would have caused him to fall out. When the tonga driver would not slow down despite the polite requests of Shri Nathji, Khera could no longer control himself and hit the tonga wallah on his back with a short stick that he was carrying. Instantly the tonga driver slowed down, saying Jee Huzoor! Yessir!
Later Khera was to say to Shri Nathji: Huzoor, you are so soft and so good that people take advantage of your good nature. Laaton ke bhoot baaton se naheen maante! The devils can only be brought to heel with harshness and not with gentle words!! Leave them to us worldly people.
Khera had, earlier in life, been a jailor. He would say to Shri Nathji:
Huzoor the world must never know of your weak point or it will take advantage of it!
Shri Nathji’s weak point was his gentle, kind, innocent and loving nature, and the unscrupulous always tried to take advantage of it. Lord Rama had a similar nature and had always to be guarded from the world of evil by his loyal Hanuman.
The Kheras were with Shri Nathji in various places, Kohmurri, Rawalpindi, Lahore, Dehra Dun, Calcutta, Allahabad, and Bombay.
In later years, in 1968, Shri Som Datt Khera became a renowned mahatma with numerous followers of his own. He would recite Shri Nathji’s “Message of Peace” wherever he went. He would always prostrate before Shri Nathji whenever he came before him, and kept his name on his lips till the day he passed away.