Travel
Together in Prayer
by JAY TOKASZ
The beat of hand drums doesn't quit.
Bold and clear, it summons worshippers to enter the gurdwara. It slows and softens at other times, pulling the gathered into deeper contemplation.
The rhythm accompanies the lush, exotic sound of a harmonium, and a singer chants verses in Punjabi from the Guru Granth, the revered scripture of Sikhism.
Sikhs filter, heads wrapped, shoes off, into the service, stopping initially at the altar to bow before the Guru Granth and deliver a weekly offering.
For prayer and reflection, everyone - men and women - ends up seated on the wool-carpeted floor, an expression of the equality among all peoples professed by the religion.
"We are all busy in our everyday life, taking care of family and trying to teach kids," says Mohan Singh Saran of Grand Island, who takes a seat on the floor alongside about 100 other Sikhs on a recent Sunday morning. "This is a moment for me to reflect on my life."
The music, says Mohan, "makes you more attuned to the message."
Sikhism began in the Punjab region of the Indian subcontinent (now divided between India and Pakistan, with Sikhs now living only in the Indian half) in the 15th century as a reaction to both Muslim and Hindu traditions. With close to about 30 million adherents, it is the fifth-largest religion in the world. And just as with Islam and Hinduism, the Sikh presence in Western New York has expanded from basically nothing into a small but well-established community with multiple generations of adherents.
They begin gathering at 11 am inside a former Niagara Falls banquet hall on 19th Street for worship, which consists primarily of spiritual hymns and culminates with a random reading from the Guru Granth.
Three classically trained musicians from Punjab are visiting the gurdwara and they play for more than an hour. At the altar, the "Granthi," or caretaker, gently fans the 1,430-page bible with a large whisk of yak's hair in a display of respect for the collection of poetic hymns - believed to be the revealed truth of God.
The poems were collected over more than a century from the Ten Sikh Gurus and a number of wise people of other faiths.
Like Christian mega-churches, the Sikhs have gone high-tech in at least one respect: They project hymns, translated into English, onto a large screen, allowing younger Sikhs who grew up in this country and don't understand Punjabi to follow along.
The lyrics are similar to what Christians and Jews find in Old Testament passages.
"The clay is the same, but the Potter has fashioned it in various ways," reads a line translated from Punjabi. "There is nothing wrong with the pot of clay. There is nothing wrong with the Potter."
Sikhs are renowned for their hospitality and, prior to worship, some attendees enjoy a light breakfast meal of gently fried eggplant, a sweet cookie and chai tea in a dining room separated from the worship area by a hallway.
A hallway sink allows everyone an opportunity to wash hands before entering the sanctuary, where clean hands are required for receiving the Karrah Parshad, a thick, doughy pudding of flour, butter and sugar handed out, sacrament-like, toward the end of the service.
A pair of children hand out napkins before the Granthi spoons a dollop of the sweet pudding into recipients' cupped hands, a ritual similar to Christian communion. The karrah parshad is considered a blessed food - to leave a sweet taste in one's mouth after praising God. It's also a reminder to Sikhs that all blessings come by God's grace and everything received in life is sweet because it comes from God.
Inside the gurdwara, men and women are required to cover their heads out of respect for the Guru Granth.
Many of the Sikh men enter wearing their distinctive turbans, which cover hair that never gets cut - a Sikh tenet dating back to the founder, Guru Nanak, who instructed followers to keep their natural form as created by God.
In the Niagara Falls gurdwara, about half the men wear turbans.Men without a turban don a head scarf from a bin near the door and remove their shoes upon entering the gurdwara.
At an elaborate altar decorated with brass planters and several lamps, the Guru Granth sits under a silk cloth known as a rumala through most of the service, until the Granthi rolls back the material and opens the book to a random page for reading.
When not in use, the book gets stored away - much like the Torah scrolls in synagogues - in a side room under special linens.
A congregational prayer, during which the Ten Gurus and martyrs for the faith are remembered and God's forgiveness and blessings are inoked, is the apex of the Sunday service.
"We are reminded of the sacrifices of those people," says Mohan Singh. "We are the descendants of those people ... they had the courage of conviction to stand for this way of life."
The service concludes after about 90 minutes with the partaking of the karrah parshad, but few Sikhs leave right away.
Instead, most of them move into the dining room, where they sit on the floor together and share a meal of traditional Punjabi curry, unleavened bread and apples and onions.
Visitors, too, are always offered food, notes Mohan Singh.
"It will be simple fare, but you will be given a meal," he says.
[Courtesy: Buffalo News]
August 21, 2010