Faith

Miracles in Sikhi

by TEJWANT SINGH

I used to be a keen runner.

I have run several half (13.1 mile) and full (26.2 mile) marathons in Brasil, where I lived for nine years.

It all started one early morning, at 3 AM to be exact. I ran three times around the block out of sheer vanity with my fellow drinking buddies. I was the only one to do three laps. Most of the others stopped after one or two and started sharing their consumed Martinis and Brahmas (as in Brahmin - yes, a famous beer brand in Brasil), with the pavement. On the second day, I could only run two blocks, and on the third only one.

This is the way it all began.

I started running more and more miles. My first half-marathon took place after six months, on September 7, a national holiday in Brasil. My best time was 1 hr 45 min, whereas the winner finished his in 1 hr 1 min. I was the happiest man in the world that day.

The goal in running marathons is not the speed, but reaching the finish line! In the end, all runners end up being winners.

Two months after my first half-marathon, I ran my first full marathon in the picturesque city of Rio de Janeiro. It was a tough run due to humidity from the ocean.

For those unfamiliar with long-distance running: the runner hits the proverbial "wall" at Mile 20. In a nutshell, it means that all energy is depleted and the last six miles become mind-over-matter; because of the accumulation of lactic acid in the legs, fatigue sets in. It was the most difficult six-mile finish I had to endure, my body hurting with each breath.

I finished my first full marathon in 3 hrs 45 mins. A great accomplishment as far as I was concerned, having progressed from running three blocks in a drunken stupor to finishing my first marathon within a mere eight months thereafter.

The year was 1979. I ran quite a few more of them with improved timings.

Fast forward to 1985. 

I was vacationing in the southern part of Brasil, a beautiful place called Foz de Iguacu which has the most beautiful waterfalls in the world. I got a phone call from my older brother Harsimran who was living in London then. He told me that Mum had had a car accident and was in critical condition. She had gone to Wajirpur Sahib gurdwara near Ferozepore, my home town, with her friends on masyah (new moon). The vehicle she was traveling in on the return trip flipped on the wet road and the gear rod hit her head.

The world changed in a flash for me. I had left India at the age of 16 to go to London and then to Brasil and had not seen my parents for 14 years.

I was reduced to a 30-year-old crying like a baby for his mum who was on her deathbed thousands of miles away. It was time to go back. I needed her.

I quickly rearranged my affairs and, in a few days, headed back to my Mumland. During the preparations, I got one more call from Harsimran informing me that Papa ji had suffered a stroke and was in a coma and was in the same hospital as Mum. One more thing for my mind to grapple with.

I reached Heathrow, London, England, on February 10, 1985 and had an inkling that Papa ji had left the world. Anjana bhabi, with whom I had had a very close relationship because she had helped raise me since I was 16, came to pick me up at the airport.

My first few words were, "Is Papa ji still alive"? The answer came in a hug and lots of tears. He had just passed away, ten minutes before my arrival at Heathrow.

My family has been devout Sikhs since I can remember. My dad with his good knees used to go to Amritsar during every masyah and walk with the jatha from Harmandar Sahib to Taran Taaran Sahib - a 15-mile trek during the night, barefoot. They sang shabads and visited all the gurdwaras en route all night long. In the morning, after reaching Taran Taaran and taking a dip in the sarovar, he headed home.

He did this for twenty years for his sick mum - Mata ji - who had not moved from her bed for years. The only person who looked after her was my granddad, who was a physician and a lawyer by profession. Pita ji had given up his medical practice to fight for Punjabi Suba and to liberate the gurdwaras from the mahants. He also spent some time in jail for his activism. After that, he was her only nurse. He bathed her, cleaned her and did everything for my feisty strong-willed Mata ji.

My mum and dad were deeply in love with each other. My dad had weak knees and depended on my mum a lot during that time. He had recited the whole paatth of the Guru Granth Sahib in five days on his own, during my mum's stay at the hospital, so that when she - "Joginder" - came home, he would do the bhog in her celebration. That day never arrived.

I think he could not bear the shock of his beloved on the deathbed and being alone without her; hence the stroke. He was in a coma for three days and then passed away. It seems as if he had offered his life to Waheguru for the survival of his beloved. The hospital brought his body to her hospital bed so my mum could bid him her final goodbye - in her semi-comatose state.

This happened on February 10, 1985. I arrived at my mum's bed on February 12. Seeing her after fourteen years in that state was overwhelming. Eventually, with the grace of Waheguru, she got better.

Mum, lovingly called Ami ji by all, passed away a decade later, on April 4, 2004.

My running kept me sane. I ran eight miles daily without fail and fifteen on Sundays. I enjoyed it and rather cultivated this solitude.

After having lived outside India for fourteen years, I could not get used to its climate. I developed nasal ulcers during the summer and asked my mum if I could go to the U.S. The brave woman, who always thought of others rather than about herself, gave her consent and, after living in India for 16 months, I headed to the U.S. I settled in Los Angeles and then, later in 1998, moved to Las Vegas.

My running continued. I did not run any more marathons.

One Sunday in January 2003, I went out for my daily seven-miler and was feeling good. After three miles, all of a sudden I felt something in my chest. My heart was pounding very fast and I was short of breath. I stopped running and started walking back slowly with chest pains. Stupid me, in denial that nothing serious had taken place.

It took me 55 minutes to get back home. My wife was at work. I did not say anything to our two children, Jaskeerat and Trimaan, and went upstairs, changed and lay down with a heating pad on my chest. The pains would not go away.

Finally the macho in me mellowed a bit and I called my wife to come home.

After her arrival, we decided to go to Quick Care - a place for minor aches and pains, rather than to the hospital, out of sheer stubbornness and denial of the seriousness of what was happening. I walked on my own and told them about my chest pains. They took me in immediately. They checked my pulse and it was 175/min. The doctor on call stopped everything, called others and gave me something through IV, which reduced the chest pains but the pulse failed to drop.

He called for an ambulance. I could see the color change on his face. I was very lucid. The ambulance arrived and I left the Quick Care center while thanking everyone. They gave me more drugs through IV on the way; it still did not work, as the pulse-rate remained high. I was talking to the guys in the ambulance all the way to the hospital, still very alert and lucid.

At the hospital; the emergency crew was waiting for us. The doctor at the ICU pumped some more medicine. Nothing changed. He told me that the last resort was to give me a shock.

I asked him to let my wife out of the room before he did that. She left and he gave me a couple of shock-jolts; my pulse came down to 104. The doctor said it was a miracle that I had had the pulse at 175  for more than two hours and still lived. It was a V-tach, when the heart suddenly goes berserk.

I watched the playoff football game while perched on my hospital bed and was pleased to see my Raiders win and get to the finals. They finally lost.

The doctor installed a defibrillator in my chest - a "mini me" version of the shock-giving device that the doctor had used in the emergency room. It has given me electric kicks several times since. This is the last resort for the heart to come to its normal pace. This is the only one common thing I share with Dick Cheney.

This defibrillator is like my mala and because of this I am still here.

When it is about to give the shock, people feel dizzy, some pass out before it happens. And when it does activate, it gives a kick of a donkey, a very painful jolt for a second or two. I have never felt the former but always felt the kick which makes one scream. It takes some time for one to recover from this.

I had to stop running because of this but I walk seven miles daily instead.

I was reminded by my kids the other day that the last time I had the shock was on Valentine's Day in 2008, while lying in bed and talking to my wife who was standing nearby. No, she was not screaming at me, although I am one of the few henpecked souls left in the world, a dying species.

Some people miss a beat or two on Valentine's. For me that day, it was a shocking experience, literally, figuratively and metaphorically.

Last Sunday, on January 11, after my seven-mile morning walk in the crisp desert winter, I was explaining the meaning of the hukam in English at the gurdwara, which I have been doing for years. And, in the middle of it, I felt the shock out of the blue. My body shook for a moment; one could see the concerned and fearful looks on the faces of the sangat.

The amazing part was that I did not feel the proverbial donkey kick. No pain. Nothing. Nada. Zip. I kept on for a while till I was done and then helped distribute the parshad and told the concerned sangat what had taken place.

We are all products of our environment. In Punjab, I remember when someone used to die, people used to hire professional chest-beaters to set up the mourning scenario so that others could join in. Crying for the others who came to mourn for the dead became easier because of the chest-beating drama. This influence on us Sikhs is from Hinduism and Islam because, in true Sikhi, death is a time to celebrate.

We laugh when we watch a happy and comedic movie, we cry with the help of the melodramas offered to us by Zee TV.

In the same way, when we are at the gurdwara, the aura of positive energy that the sadh sangat brings in is very powerful.

Terms like miracles - and reincarnation, evil spirits, and other catch phrases - are sadly imported into the Sikh way of life and terminology from Hinduism and the Semitic religions  (Judaism, Christianity and Islam), where they are used regularly as snake-oil rub for all cures, because they are attributed to the God deity who is vengeful, evil, jealous, just and a punisher to His followers.

The followers of this angry God accept Him and follow Him like blind sheep and are unashamed of having a blind faith. They would rather flaunt it and mock others who are not birds of the same feather.

If Sikhi believed in miracles, then the hot plate Guru Arjan was put on and tortured to death would never have gotten hot. Or no one could have had the power to behead our ninth Guru, Guru Teg Bahadar. The walls built around the two chotei (young) Sahibzadey to bury them alive would have crumbled, brick by brick.

If Sikhi believed in miracles, then Bhai Mani Singh would not have been cut into pieces, joint by joint, limb by limb, nor could any one have taken the scalp off Bhai Taru Singh.

We would have no need to utter the following during Ardaas if Sikhi believed in miracles:

Remember those who were broken on the wheel, cut up limb by limb, who gave their scalps but not their hair, and those mothers who, for the sake of Truth, sacrificed their dear children and suffered through hunger and pain at the hands of the fiends, but never gave up their faith in Ik Ong Kaar and their determination to live in Sikhi, to their last breath.

All the above incidents are not miracles, but are miraculous indeed.

Now the question may arise for the miracle-believing people, including some of Sikh faith, that if the above are not miracles then where did the Sikhs get their inner strength.

It is all in the will attained through Naam. Guru Granth is full of tools that let us sharpen our will and determination and help us elevate our level of normalcy. What may have been impossible yesterday can become probable today and ought to become a piece of cake the next day.

One can open the Guru Granth randomly on any page and find the inspiration, motivation, determination, perseverance and, last but not least, the acceptance of Hukam.

Ik Ong Kaar - The Creative Energy which Guru Nanak calls Ajuni Saibhang in the Mool Mantar is always manifested in the sangat. Thanks to the sangat, the donkey-kick in the chest was taken off me like the proverbial monkey off one's back.

Sikhi does not rely on or propagate miracles, but Sikhs themselves make miracles when they are seeking the ONE together, in sangat.

Isn't this the true essence of "mil sadh sangat bhaj keval naam'?

January 14, 2009

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