Anandpur
Sahib: The unexpected pilgrim
WHAT induced a loud-mouthed
agnostic like to me agree to go to Anandpur Sahib for the
Baisakhi of the establishment of the Khalsa Panth? Only
to wallow in applause and receive a Siropa head
scarf of honour. Either they do not read what I write
against established religions or are large-hearted enough
to overlook my verbal and written misdemeanours.
I find myself in
Chandigarh escorted by my grand-daughter, Naina. She is
more eager than I to acquaint herself with the Sikh side
of her heritage. She has also never been to Chandigarh
before and is keen to make up for the shortcoming.
As usual the
Delhi-Chandigarh Shatabdi Express is late by
half-an-hour. A very patient Sharda Kaushik and Inderjit
SinghSandhu have been deputed to look after us, await our
arrival. By the time we are in our respective rooms in
Shivalik View Hotel, it is past 9.30 p.m. Shardas
husband Anil Kaushik joins us for drinks and dinner. He
gets into a contentious argument with Naina about the
pre-eminence of Hindu gods during the Vedic period. He
insists he knows about them because of his Brahmin
ancestry; Naina insists she is right because she has read
and taught the Vedas in St Stephen College. By the time
the Chinese dinner has been eaten and the arguments
resolved, it is past-midnight three hours after my
switch-off time.
Morning papers forecast
a scorching hot day with dust-blowing winds. They also
report a stampede at Anandpur Sahib Gurdwara which was
brought under control by the police before anyone was
injured. Crowds assembled for the occasion are said to
number over 20 lakh. The Chandigarh-Anandpur Sahib road
is said to be clogged with marchers, trucks, tractors and
cars. What normally takes one-and-a-half-hours to cover,
takes four. VIPs are being flown to the site by
helicopters. I am not among them.
We set off around 11.30
a.m. I had visions of crawling along at a snails
pace all the way. It was nothing of the sort. We went
along at a galloping pace through an endless succession
of arches with words of welcome in Gurumukhi Jee
aayaan noo or lakh lakh badhaaee hovey. And
every few yards a chabeel offering sharbat and
a free meal. Men with yellow flags force you to halt to
drink and eat free of charge. The closer we get to our
destination, there are more arches and hoardings with
Guru Gobind Singh pictures and quotations. No road
blocks till Ropar. We are far too early, so we decide to
take a roadside break to refresh ourselves. There is a
dusty dhaba with a friendly name Saanjha Chulha
Vaishno (vegetarian). We sit under the shade
of a tree to sip ice-cold soft drink. Though a warm wind
blows, it is cooler out than in the air-conditioned car
with its air-conditioner not working.
At Kiratpur on the
Sutlej, the scene changes dramatically. There are police
check-posts, buses loaded with men and women in bright
yellow or dark blue, kirpans, spears. A burly fellow
knocks the bonnet of our car with his kirpan and tells us
to be patient. We get out of the car and await clearance
by the police. An old, wizened Nihang high on bhang dances
his way through the traffic shouting Boley So Nihaal and
disappears into a dhaba. After a while we seek
shade under the thatched roof of the same dhaba and
find ourselves next to the Nihang now busy combing his
beard. He bids us welcome. The siren of a train going
towards Anandpur Sahib disturbs him. He laps up and
brandishes his kirpan challenging the bhootnee (railway
engine) to a duel. The cowardly bhootnee does not
accept the challenge and runs for sanctuary toAnandpur
Sahib.
The police gives us the
green signal. We march along behind a slowly moving kafila
of automobiles and humans and arrive at Anandpur. As
I step out of car, the first person to greet us is
B.L.Sharma "Prem" who was baptised to
the Khalsa Panth a month ago. He has grown a full beard;
the turban sits nicely on his head. What could be more
auspicious than meeting a new Khalsa in the original
place of baptism, Anandpur, the city of bliss!
At 3 p.m. we are in an
open-air stadium, a maidan, which nature has made to be a
sports ground. Low hillocks enclose a large, flat ground
in which simultaneously many competitive sports are going
on. Directly beneath where we are seated on sofas clay
pigeons are blown up and blasted mid-air by Randhir Singh
Sidhu and other competitors. A little further one can see
competitions being held in kabaddi, tug-of-war and
wrestling (India versus Pakistan). Farthest from us are
horsemen riding around in clouds of dust kicked up by
their steeds getting ready for tent-pegging. It is a most
colourful scene with too much going on at the same time.
I hardly notice a young lad lift a plough with his teeth,
another take the full load of tractor with seven men atop
on the belly, and yet another pitting his strength
against a tractor and bringing it to a halt. There were
too many hands to shake and exchange Baisakhi greetings.
I shared the sofa with Sukhdev Singh Dhindsa, MP and
Nawab Nusrat Ali Khan of Malerkotla, Minister of Sports.
The guest of honour was Roob Lavrie, High Commissioner
for Australia.
Then there was the
actor-wrestler Dara Singh, Didar Singh Bains, the richest
Sikh in America, known as the peach King of America. The
trouble with VIPs is that they are keener to chat up each
other than enjoy matches arranged for their pleasure.
Sharda Kaushik and Naina
are back after having made their obeisance at the main
gurdwara.Inderjit Sandhu had to muscle through the
milling crowd to get them in and out. They look somewhat
dishevelled but triumphant that they were able to make
it. I take worship as having been performed and take my
leave of the VIPs to return to Chandigarh.
We start our return
journey confident that we will find our road free of
traffic.And so it is for half the way to Chandigarh;
while the other side is a seemingly endless queue of
vehicles crammed with blue turbans, with flowing black
beards and women in bright yellow head scarfs.At Ropar we
decide to spend a few moments on the lawns of the Boat
Club to see the sunset over the Sutlej.We sit under the
over-hanging branches of a weeping willow and watch the
sun go over the range of hills on the other side of the
river.We drive to the spot under a banyan tree where
Maharaja Ranjit Singh received Lord William Bentinck, the
British Governor-General.
As it starts getting
dark, we rejoin the main road to Chandigarh. This time
buses and trucks have banners pronouncing their loyalty
to the Tohra-Bhai Ranjit Singh faction of the Akalis.
They are from different parts of India: Calcutta, Patna,
Delhi, Haryana and towns of Punjab. Between their long
line of vehicles are a few trucks from Chowk-Mehta
headquarters of the late Jarnail Singh Bhindranwale.All
of them in bright yellow. The kafila on the road
brings the one-way traffic to a halt. It is time for the
evening prayer. It is being recited loudly over the
microphone, and till it is over, no one will move. No one
does.
American
sardarni
In a recent issue of Outlook
dedicated to recounting the saga of the Sikhs on a page
devoted to the community in America, it had a photograph
of Dr Surjit Kaur.She is the daughter of the late Sardar
Jodh Singh, a scholar who served with AIR for many years.
When I first met her she was an attractive young lady
with dimpled cheeks and a very svelte figure. It was hard
to believe that she was a distinguished sociologist and
mother of a teenaged daughter. She was very kattar (bigoted)
in her religious views: I found it difficult to
communicate with her. She went to the USA, got a
Masters degree in education from Idaho University
and decided to settle in America.
Once when she came here
to visit her family and take a Bharat darshan
tour, we found ourselves together in Aurangabad.We
visited the Ajanta and Ellora caves and had a lot of time
to interact. She was as devout a Sikh as ever but able to
take my teasing her about being narrow-minded in good
spirit.We started writing to each other.
When I went to the
Wilson Centre in Washington to update my history of the
Sikhs, I was entitled to take on a research assistant:
she agreed to help me out with material in Gurmukhi.We
spent a couple of hours together everyday. She was then a
grandmother of two children but as perky as ever. Also,
as devout as before.
In her tiny apartment on
Falls Church she had a cubicle set apart for the Granth
Sahib for morning and evening prayers. She spent the
hour travelling from Falls Church to Arlington, where she
worked, reciting Sukhmani. And every Sunday she
cooked chhola-bhatura to take to the gurdwara. I
take the credit for saving her from the clutches of local
Khalistanis.Despite being a religious fundamentalist, she
got on very well with whisky-swilling agnostic like me.
Dr Surjit Kaur is now a
licensed professional counsellor for the state of
Virginia and an esteemed member of the Indian community
in Washington D.C.
Great
automobile engineer
A foreigner visited
Ludhiana and after making a comprehensive round of the
town, he could see innumerable signboards such as Guru
Nanak Engineering College, Guru Nanak Auto Workshop, Guru
Nanak Mechanical Works, Guru Nanak Motor Parts etc. He
asked his host who was this Guru Nanak?
"He was our first
Great Guru," replied his Sikh host. "It appears
this Guru of yours must have been a great automobile
engineer."
(Contributed by
Jaswant Hans, Gurgaon)
|