I think I was too busy enjoying my Fruit & Nut flavoured ice cream for I could not see beggar kids sitting and staring at us across the road divider. It was Dhanteerus - the day when people buy metal (utensils or gold) considering it to be auspicious for the coming year ahead. I did not know about this and was just accompanying Sachin, Shashank and Neearaj for some shopping that Sachin wanted to do for this day. Buying something in Gold from Tanishq for his mother at the Paradise Crossing in Hyderabad. May be the extra rush on the road or me liking the flavour could be blamed for me not watching around whats happening...
Suddenly I could see a child in filthiest shorts and torn shirt, almost hopping towards us, his hands in air begging for some money. For those who have been in Hyderabad for a while would definitely know that there is abundance of beggars present in Hyderabad especially on S.P. Road. You can find a variety of them: Some being beggars just because of laziness, some with lost limbs, and some with crutchers which can be thrown away in a corner when they walk back home after the city falls asleep and is no longer watching them. So here was one of them standing in front of Neeraj begging for anything that could come out of Neeraj's pocket.
Giving a rupee or two doesn't really hurt anybody these days but the pain of paying it to next 10 beggars who would rush to you seeing you pay it to one of them, does give everybody a headache. He tried to shoo away the kid and finally handed him over the ice cream that he was eating. I am sure even if my vocab was best in the world then also I would have been unable to describe the smile that was there on that child's face. While I got entangled in that smile, the mother of that kid was busy in pushing the rest of her kids to us; as she could see potential donors standing on this side of street. Soon we were surrounded by alteast 4-5 kids all begging for money and eyeing what was there in our hands. We all handed over our ice creams to those kids who seemed to happy as if they had earned their Dhan on this Dhanteerus day.
One of us quickly pointed out..."Arre yaar...bache ko jhoothi ice cream kyun de di khaane ko??" Lekin every one of us pratically knew the answer that us bache ko fresh ice cream to shayad hi koyi leke deta. I am pretty sure those last few spoons of ice cream would have given him more happiness and content than 1 or two rupees which would have gone to his Mom's pouch. Though they would have been added in the Monthly Family Savings but it would have definitly not brought that smile on his face.
It was definitely a Dhanteerus day for us and for that kid, while we earned the Dhan of that kid's smile and a silent thanks in a language which we all could understand inspite of being from diff regions; and the child earned the Dhan of enjoying the flavour of a Baskin Robbins ice cream which he may not be able to afford.....may be not in this life.
Monday, October 20, 2008
Wednesday, October 15, 2008
My world last few weeks
I am almost absent from all the places where I could be found at and also not doing what I normally do in free time. It will actually soon be a month since I wrote my last blog supporting the fact that I have lots more to do these days! I am not online on messengers, hardly login in orkut...once in 2 weeks, lesser STD calls and no songs! In facts weekends have been busy to the extent that I now agree to the rest of the Soch members when they say 'Thank God its Monday!' ;-)
The last few weekends have completely been at the Khalsa House. Waking up at 3:15 getting ready and reaching Khalsa House at 5. And then the normal routine. Weekends are now completely at the Khalsa House, doing Path, Kirtan, discussions, preparing and having Langar, sleeping in afternoons, pulling each other's legs and cracking jokes, and learning lots from them. I think I have made a lot of good friends since I joined them. Though its a different story that my existing friends are feeling that I have suddenly vanished from earth and are unable to understand my sudden bonding with Soch.
The thing I am most happy about these days is that I have started doing Kirtan again & thats all because of this group! Thanks to them once again! I had last played Harmonium around 12 years back and to my surprise I could recall many of the Shabads I recited when I was a kid & learning music at my school. It will take some more time but I think I will be able to recall some more.
Actually last couple of weeks we were lucky to have Harpreet Veerji with us. Basically a Mechanical Er with specialization in Robotics from some abroad university, he actually is specialized and skilled in lot of other things than technical stuff. He stayed for around 5 years in Damdami Taksal and we were learning Gurbani pronunciation and some other religious aspects from him. So last few weekends have been extremely busy trying to learn whatever we could from him.
We used to have classes conducted by him where he started with ੳ ਅ ੲ (ABC of Punjabi) and learned pronunciation of each letter after putting 10 different matras on each letter. It was actually a shame when he asked how many of you remember ੳਅੲ and it was only one in our group. And then we learned and wrote all this and yes we had vivas and written tests too! :) But the best was his patience and his will to make people learn correct pronunciation. Anyone would be irritated with the number of mistakes that we made, or because some of the folks could not pronounce few letters at all. But any mistake would make him say 'Waheguru' in a very humble tone, instead of 'Offo' or 'Oho' which would have come out of our mouths had we been in his place while teaching all this. It was basically most challenging with the members who were not born in Punjab and had difficulty in pronouncing letters which are not there in Hindi like ਘ ਝ ਢ ਣ ਧ ਭ ੜ. But we all failed when it came to ਙ ਞ. Thanks to his efforts we all can pronounce all these letters now and we also have many videos from him which we will be watching in coming days to learn more.
There are a lot of his statements which I will remember for lifetime but the best one "Kutte nu kadi kise nu nahin kehna pehnda ki tu kutta ban te bhaunk, billi nu meayun karan layi nahin kehna painda, ik banda hi hai jehda rab di raza vich rehna bhul gaya hai...isi nu kehna pehnda hai ki banda ban ja!" :) Dekho hun bande banan vich kinni der lagdi hai...
But the office life is soon gonna kill all my plans! Got into a new project which is in high visibility mode with escalations and missed deadlines. So unfortunately I had to cancel my plan of going to 'Bidar' with Harpreet veerji and Soch group. They all are leaving this weekend and I know I will be missing a lot! :(
The last few weekends have completely been at the Khalsa House. Waking up at 3:15 getting ready and reaching Khalsa House at 5. And then the normal routine. Weekends are now completely at the Khalsa House, doing Path, Kirtan, discussions, preparing and having Langar, sleeping in afternoons, pulling each other's legs and cracking jokes, and learning lots from them. I think I have made a lot of good friends since I joined them. Though its a different story that my existing friends are feeling that I have suddenly vanished from earth and are unable to understand my sudden bonding with Soch.
The thing I am most happy about these days is that I have started doing Kirtan again & thats all because of this group! Thanks to them once again! I had last played Harmonium around 12 years back and to my surprise I could recall many of the Shabads I recited when I was a kid & learning music at my school. It will take some more time but I think I will be able to recall some more.
Actually last couple of weeks we were lucky to have Harpreet Veerji with us. Basically a Mechanical Er with specialization in Robotics from some abroad university, he actually is specialized and skilled in lot of other things than technical stuff. He stayed for around 5 years in Damdami Taksal and we were learning Gurbani pronunciation and some other religious aspects from him. So last few weekends have been extremely busy trying to learn whatever we could from him.
We used to have classes conducted by him where he started with ੳ ਅ ੲ (ABC of Punjabi) and learned pronunciation of each letter after putting 10 different matras on each letter. It was actually a shame when he asked how many of you remember ੳਅੲ and it was only one in our group. And then we learned and wrote all this and yes we had vivas and written tests too! :) But the best was his patience and his will to make people learn correct pronunciation. Anyone would be irritated with the number of mistakes that we made, or because some of the folks could not pronounce few letters at all. But any mistake would make him say 'Waheguru' in a very humble tone, instead of 'Offo' or 'Oho' which would have come out of our mouths had we been in his place while teaching all this. It was basically most challenging with the members who were not born in Punjab and had difficulty in pronouncing letters which are not there in Hindi like ਘ ਝ ਢ ਣ ਧ ਭ ੜ. But we all failed when it came to ਙ ਞ. Thanks to his efforts we all can pronounce all these letters now and we also have many videos from him which we will be watching in coming days to learn more.
There are a lot of his statements which I will remember for lifetime but the best one "Kutte nu kadi kise nu nahin kehna pehnda ki tu kutta ban te bhaunk, billi nu meayun karan layi nahin kehna painda, ik banda hi hai jehda rab di raza vich rehna bhul gaya hai...isi nu kehna pehnda hai ki banda ban ja!" :) Dekho hun bande banan vich kinni der lagdi hai...
But the office life is soon gonna kill all my plans! Got into a new project which is in high visibility mode with escalations and missed deadlines. So unfortunately I had to cancel my plan of going to 'Bidar' with Harpreet veerji and Soch group. They all are leaving this weekend and I know I will be missing a lot! :(
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