People

Hersh Auntie

by PUNEET PARHAR

 

Hersh Auntie is telling us a parable about our relationship with God.

"To entice your beloved, you must disengage yourself from all those distracting things; Porsches, diamonds, big houses, dollar bills", she says. "How can you entice your beloved if you are bogged down with material things?"

With no gurdwara, or Sikh temple, here in Kingston (Ontario, Canada), Hersh Auntie's home in the suburbs serves as a house of worship for the Sikh students at Queen's University who come here every week to listen, learn and pray.

After the paath, we gather around the table for a meal of rice, roti, and curried chickpeas. The conversation is in English, and all kinds of questions are raised: "What does Sikhism say about gay marriages?" "How do we feel about inter-religious marriage?" "What about the caste system?"

Hersh Auntie suggests answers, but she stresses the importance of doing your research for yourself. "You must learn for yourselves", she tells us. "Do not let anyone fool you with their interpretations of the Gurus' teachings".

Back in my hometown of Mississauga, the Dixie Road Gurdwara sits alone amidst the Ontario fields, gleaming like a gem, its imposing golden roof strung with Christmas lights lit up all year round. In the background stand a gas station and the headquarters of a trucking company, and behind them, suburban homes.

In the foyer of the gurdwara, row upon row of shoes - sparkly heels, pumps, Pumas and snowboots - crowd the hallway. Further inside is the langar area, where barefooted Sikhs from all over Ontario congregate and chat in Punjabi, share a meal sitting next to one another on the floor, and swap business contacts, gossip, and information about India and relatives back home as well as in other parts of the diaspora, all the while keeping their heads covered.

Sundays here mean we have to cover our heads with dupattas to avoid the babas  -  the caretakers  -  who are constantly on the prowl, ready to pounce on any young person whose head scarf doesn't hold up throughout the paath service.

Sundays also mean yanking from the back of our minds those sacred pearls, the Punjabi words which have become dusty during the schoolweek. One must be able to understand Punjabi to understand paath, to speak to our elders, and to communicate with our community.

Stepping into the gurdwara space is like stepping across a threshold which divides Sikh culture from the world outside. It functions much like a mini-homeland for Sikh immigrants.

"The gurdwara is being used as a community centre, a place for the older generation to conducts its social affairs", says San Grewal, a writer of Sikh descent at the Toronto Star. Except for the odd whispers of kids asking their parents for donation money, wanting an extra roti but too shy to request it in Punjabi themselves, or wondering when they're going home, little or no English is spoken here.

Says one Sikh father: "Parents take their kids to the gurdwara to be closer to the culture, to give them a flavour of the culture not available to them anywhere else".

My friend Sunny sits alone in silence in the gurdwara - that is, when he attends, which is rarely.

"I go once every couple of months or so, usually on my own", Sunny says. "Usually because it's a special event, New Year's or something like that. If I go on my own, I'm only there for like ten minutes". I sometimes wonder what Sunny's visits to the gurdwara must feel like. Most men who forego wearing the turban abide by the protocol with the help of a kerchief tied bandanna-style round their heads.

But Sunny, a fourth-year business major at Ryerson University, wears a ponytail. Not the kind he can tie up in a turban like his father or grandfather at home in Mississauga, both of whom are fully-practicing Sikhs who have kept their kesh.

Sunny wears his hair more like Johnny Depp or Antonio Banderas. An oddity in the gurdwara. Works at Holt Renfrew - it shows in his "high style" - and parties hard on weekends.

Sunny is silent in the gurdwara because he does not speak Punjabi. "I mean, there are many times I feel the urge to go", he says, "but it's like when I'm there, I can't really talk to anybody or converse with anyone. And I barely understand what's going on".

"It is the silence that isolates", explains Dr. I.J. Singh, a prominent writer on Sikh identity issues currently facing Sikh youth in the diaspora. He points out how silence defines the relationship between our parents' generation and the younger generation.

But he says this is not the Sikh way. "The Gurus taught by dialogue and discussion", he says. "It was a horizontal dialogue. In a horizontal dialogue, each side listens to the other; an answer is not thrust down the throat of the seeker, but the questioning mind derives the answer that satisfies it. This is the Sikh way".

For Rup Kaur Dhaliwal, a lawyer and founding member of Queen's Sikh Students Association, Sikhism is like a forward-moving path. "Every Sikh is at a different point on the spectrum", she says. One moves forward by asking questions and gaining new knowledge, which can only happen through a reciprocal dialogue with those in the know.

Dhaliwal, who was raised in Calgary, explains how she has successfully managed to overcome the obstacles that block many youth from constructing an ongoing relationship with Sikhism.

"My parents never forced us to do paath", she says. "But I had a lot of friends who did paath hardcore and who were heavily involved in the gurdwara - that's how I got involved. It used to take me an hour and a half and I used to get frustrated, but you need to make it a personal mission and goal and embrace Sikhism yourself. Now it only takes me ten to fifteen minutes".

She recognizes that kids like herself, who will take such an endeavour upon themselves, are few and far between. "Many of our youth need mentors [and] that's why I got involved. We try to get kids who don't speak Punjabi, who don't do paath, who don't normally go to the gurdwara".

A lack of horizontal dialogue is not the only thing that comes between young Sikhs and their traditional culture.

Take Manu.

When we met in high school, Manu was the only kid at Clarkson Secondary who kept his hair long and guarded in a turban. He let it out once in the cafe and all the girls crowded around to touch it. We used to have discussions about Sikh principles in algebra class.

One day, in grade 11, Manu slouched into school with a shaved head and a (fake) diamond-studded Playboy bunny around his neck. He was tired of being different, of being marked as an outsider because of his hair. It wasn't that Manu needed help in connecting to his religion. He speaks Punjabi fluently - he used to tease me in Punjabi in class. When I ask Manu about paath, he tells me: "I don't even go anymore, what's the point with all that bullshit on the walls".

When Manu used to go to the gurdwara, he would see the fresh young faces of boys like himself - young guys who have kept their kesh - plastered all over the walls. Their pictures are hung with care near those of the Gurus, captioned neatly by statements written in Punjabi lettering which, roughly translated, read that these men have died in this or that conflict with Indian police and have performed their duties for the Sikh religion.

I googled some of their names and learnt that most of them belong to an organization that has been outlawed and labeled terrorist by the Canadian government. Their faces are plastered all over the media, especially with the recent frenzy around the Air India bombing trials. And they look just like Manu: none of these males are older than thirty years of age and all of them were raised in either Canada, the U.S., the U.K., or Australia.

Young men like Manu face enough with the pressure to date and be attractive to girls who prefer the mainstream ideal. Add to this the fearsome image that is projected onto them in the media and their daily lives, and the pressure to sever their ties to their religion - along with their long hair - seems insurmountable.

Manu has already turned away from his religion. And Sunny is in danger of losing his bond with Sikhism if something doesn't happen soon to connect him with his faith. Rup points out that "the next generation of Sikhs are not picking up the religion. It's like a filter, the next generation knows less and less. If we, who at the least still have our parents, don't learn and promote the Sikh religion here in Canada, how are our kids going to know anything?"

And yet, back in the room with Hersh Auntie, as we listen to her tell us that "as Sikhs we must look for the same pure vibration in others that exists in all of us", it becomes clear to me at least that there is something about our religion that transcends culture and circumstance, that is worth hanging onto at all costs.

On the drive back to Queen's, Dill, one of the young men in the room with Hersh Auntie, tells me: "Back home in Brampton, I went occasionally to the gurdwara with my parents; didn't understand anything, the only thing I knew was that listening to paath made me feel calm. It wasn't until I came to Queen's that I learnt anything about my religion. It's visiting Hersh Auntie that keeps me sane in this university".

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