Not in a mood to sit in office for long today, I decided to leave early. 'Lets catch the 6:45 bus!' For a person who normally leaves by 9:30PM or 10:40 PM from office, leaving the office while sky is still orange in no less than winning a lottery! Finally found a seat in one of the buses in the long queue that would be going to Mayfair.
While I was eagerly waiting for the bus to start and move, I heard a soft female voice reciting Path. The voice was very clear, melodious and coming from a source which was very close. Removing my headphones I figured the source, a girl sitting in front seat was reciting 'Rehras Sahib' (An evening path done in Sikhism religion). I was surprised, impressed, startled, happy - all at same time. Had hardly met someone from my religion who was religious in last 4 years. But why is she reciting at an audible volume level and that too in the bus? For a second I thought what is this show off for? But the pace was slow which could mean she was trying to understand the meaning (not reading hurriedly like me with the motive to just complete the path), or was she trying to make the person sitting with her familiar with the pronunciation? My mind had generated lots of questions in the last minute....The girl sitting next to her seemed to be sleeping, but path was being done for someone...and I noticed she was wearing a headphone and was on a call!! The mystery was becoming even more interesting for me now! But I had to wait till the path was over!
I passed my time talking to Shashank, while checking at regular intervals about the path. Almost at the end of the Anand Sahib, the path would soon be over and I will get answers to my questions...Good! The wait times are always paining for me! She was neatly wrapping the Gutka (The holy book from which path is done) in the cloth (Rumala) when I interrupted her. She turned back with a surprise, but I think she knew this was coming. It is not easy to ignore a turban...specially if you are from the same religion. Hey...we had seen each other before. I remember seeing her in cafeteria, we almost making out that we were Punjabis but we had never talked to each other.
I started with an apology for interruption and explained my eagerness for the query which had soared its heights of impatience till now. I was told that she was doing path with her friend on phone. Now that still sounded bit hard for me to digest. Finally I got to know the complete story...about her, about them - the group called 'Soch' and their activities....
Abt me...I think I have changed, and I feel like I am standing at a position where I am very different from what I was when I was a kid. Basically brought up in a Sikhism school 'Guru Nanak Public School, Ludhiana' I learned how to do path and kirtan while I was in school. Being in touch with all that then and now being so away from everything makes me feel sad sometimes. I often get to hear from my Mom "If you had learned all that when you were you a kid, you should not forget it now." Of course she would be feeling bad about it, she taught me all that while I was too small to understand it but I still followed it, and now when I am grown up I have forgotten to walk on the same path when I can understand the significance of it...
There has been a kind of inner awakening in the past few months, when I have been feeling I should get back to what I was earlier. I somehow feel more at peace, composed, confident when I am connected to God. I had started understanding Bani and was downloading and understanding Kirtan form various websites like sikhsangeet.com and srigranth.org. Thanks to the online web which had made this so easy for me and thanks to couple of members in Sikhism community in orkut who had introduced me to these websites.
Just when I was feeling a need to get another ray of light to guide me walking on the same path, I had heard this stranger reciting Rehras Sahib in the bus...But believe me, it is not easy to strike a conversation with a stranger. But I could not have avoided it as well, thanks to the her laggan, pace, melody with which she was doing her path which had inspired to strike a conversation, and as we talked I concluded striking this conversation was not a bad idea! She was quite enthusiastic about the group and its workings and I was too eager to know about such a group which had been existing in Hyderabad all this while. I felt like asking "Where were you all this while?" but I knew the question had to be actually framed like "Where was I all this while when she and her group were so active in this!" :-)
We discussed about the group, its regular meetings in the weekends in a house which the group had named 'Khalsa House' for there were couple of Sikhs in the house and there used to be meetings in the house on early Saturdays. Reciting Banis and practicing Kirtan were the activities that were done along with the preparation of Langar, discussions about meanings of the Bani and clarification of the doubts. The Sundays meets were at Secunderabad Gurudwara where the group recites Kirtan. And this group had its members from all IT corporates - Infosys, Satyam, Wipro, Oracle...I felt like everybody was there except me! :(
I got to see a lot of snaps of the group for the various activities - Turban tying competition which included Keski worn by lot of girls, the ones clicked when they were finalizing the video which was submitted to Sikhnet Youth Film Festival, the others of the times when their group had gone to Maharashtra to teach the kids about Sikhism and to strengthen their faith and lots of other pics as well. We were talking non stop, me sharing my experiences but I was still falling short of what I could narrate as compared to her who almost had a world to reproduce in her own words. I like these moments when I feel I am not that talkative...there are people who can give me competition! :)
I was quite sure since the start of the conversation that I had to be part of this group, but the ending had almost sealed my decision and while closing the conversation I had to change her count of group members from 15 to 16...there was a new one joining them from this weekend. I am looking forward for the coming weekend when I would be meeting all of them and am hoping to learn a lot from them. Not really sure if the journey from here is a New start for me or A U-turn to a state of life which was left behind few years back...
No comments:
Post a Comment