Current Events

"Take! Have Another One!" - The Vaisakhi Parade in New York

by KIRK SEMPLE

For a few hours over the weekend, a stretch of Madison Avenue in the Flatiron district of New York City became an unlikely cash-free zone, a vortex of munificence. And at its center was Kulvinder Singh, a beacon of generosity in his bright yellow turban, who was practically begging passers-by to take free food off his hands.

"Take!" he implored in a dense Punjabi accent, extending plastic containers of freshly cut fruit. "Have another one!"

He was one of scores of Sikhs giving away literally tons of food and drink as part of the annual Sikh Day Parade on Saturday: plates of freshly prepared Punjabi vegetable dishes, breads and desserts, along with bottled water, sodas and hot tea.

Last week was a tough one for New York City's Sikh population: It began with a bloody brawl on April 24 among worshipers inside their gurdwara at the Baba Makhan Shah Lubana Sikh Center in Richmond Hill, Queens, and the news quickly spread around the world, in part through a video of the fight that made its way to the Internet.

But the free food on Saturday was not some sort of public relations gimmick. Rather, it has always been a highlight of the parade, which has been held 24 times in New York City. Sikh leaders said the tradition is an expression of langar, the serving of free meals in gurdwaras, which is based on the principle that all people are equal.

"It's the same food served to the same people in the same place," explained Harpreet Singh Toor, a financial consultant and former president and director of the Sikh Cultural Society in Richmond Hill, the largest gurdwara, in New York. "Money is never a consideration."

On Saturday, the Sikhs came to feed the city, or at least a respectable portion of it, from 24th to 26th Street on Madison Avenue, at the end of the parade route.

Organizers estimated that enough food was prepared to feed tens of thousands of people.

Folding tables lined the avenue, which had been closed to traffic for several blocks. By 11 a.m., two hours before the start of the parade, the tables were already laden with an abundance of food, including roti bread, lentil stew, spicy chickpeas, samosas and assorted desserts.

Lines formed almost immediately and things only got busier, with thousands of people jamming that stretch of Madison Avenue and overflowing into Madison Square Park, all carrying plates of food.

"What we tell people is: As much as you like, as much as you can carry," explained Jagdeep Walia, who worships at the Sikh Cultural Society.

And true to form, by the end of the afternoon, people were hauling home bags filled with food, with more to spare as the event drew to a close at 6 p.m.

The food was donated by more than 15 gurdwaras as well as many families and other Sikh organizations in and near New York City, organizers said.

The Cultural Society alone prepared food for an estimated 7,000 to 8,000 people, including grilling more than 5,000 pieces of roti, according to the manager of its industrial-size kitchen, Sewa Singh.

On Friday night, the Cultural Society's kitchen was a crowded caldron of sound and labor. More than 30 women in salwar-kameezes were pounding and rolling yellow corn-flour dough into thin disks of roti that were carted to men tending griddles and gas-fired grills. In another room, volunteers were smothering the grilled bread with butter using paint rollers, cooling them with large fans, then packing the disks into large coolers.

Meanwhile, other workers prepared giant vats of saag, a purée of spinach, broccoli, mustard leaves, garlic and ginger.

As they worked, the men and women chanted hymns in unison from the Guru Granth Sahib, the holy text of Sikhism.

Sewa Singh listed the ingredients that he had amassed for the occasion: 70 pounds of green peppers, 125 pounds of garlic, 150 pounds of spinach, 288 sticks of butter ("That's the key component," offered Varinder Kaur, 17, who was helping out. "It makes it sweeter."), 400 pounds of onions, 675 pounds of broccoli, 900 pounds of flour, and untold amounts of mustard leaves and assorted spices.

Similar efforts unfolded on Friday at more than a dozen other gurdwaras around the region, from Westchester County to New Jersey and Long Island, all aimed at fortifying the Saturday parade on Madison Avenue.

There were also smaller-scale preparations: At the house of a family in Glen Oaks, Queens, for instance, about 10 women gathered Friday morning and worked for 12 hours preparing a sugary concoction known as sweet rice, which they packed into 5,000 small take-out containers, each containing a spoon and secured with a rubber band.

"We do this every year," announced Manny Singh, 22, who was handing out the containers at the parade on Saturday.

Dave and Maxine Clark were feasting at the parade during a visit from their home in Sacramento. "I think they're working hard to teach people what they are and what they are not," Ms. Clark said. Some Sikhs were handing out fliers titled, "Five facts you may not have known about Sikhism!" (Fact No. 4: "Sikhism, Hinduism and Islam are all distinct religions with many different beliefs.")

In the late afternoon, Jaspreet Singh, 27, was serving food at a Sikh Cultural Society table when an earnest-looking woman bounded up and asked if he had any desserts. They were all out, Jaspreet said, so she continued on her hunt.

He smiled, amused by something. The woman was a dietitian, he explained, and had recently visited the gurdwara to give members advice on how to eat well. He chuckled at the irony of her request.

"It's good food. It's home-cooked," he concluded. "You can't resist." 

[Courtesy: New York Times. Edited for sikhchic.com]

May 2, 2011 

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