Kids Corner

Columnists

Coming of Age As a Young Sardar:
Part II

SARBPREET SINGH

 

 

 

Continued from yesterday …





My first reaction was pure, unadulterated anger. A sense of betrayal and a sense of being injured. A powerful sense of identification with Sikhs who had suffered unspeakable atrocities. For the first time in my life I started to think about the accident of birth that had bequeathed this identity upon me.

In hindsight, the desire to learn more about who I was was the natural consequence of the turmoil in my mind.

Other things were happening in parallel. I would visit my Maasi (Aunt - mother‘s sister) who lived in the Los Angeles area with her family, during vacation. I allowed myself to be dragged to various gurdwaras in the LA area during my
visits, my cherished position as the family’s ‘golden child’, a term my long-suffering younger cousins used for me with affection laced with more than a bit of derision, precluding any show of reluctance on my part.

During one of my trips, I was taken to an elaborate Gurpurab celebration organized by the IIGS (International Institute of Gurmat Studies), that my maasi was very involved with at the time.

For the first time in my life, I had the opportunity to observe young Sikh men and women of my age group, who seemed to be very comfortable in their Sikh skins. As I sat in the congregation and listened to my peers singing gurbani, I could not help observing the sense of pride that was palpable in their demeanor and the way they carried themselves.

I felt an unfamiliar feeling. My admiration for these young Sikhs, so secure in their Sikh identity, was tinged with envy.

During another visit with my maasi’s family in California, I had an encounter that was to have a profound impact on my life as a Sikh.

I arrived at my Aunt’s home to find that a Gurbani Kirtan (Sikh Sacred Music) program was in progress. A family of Sikhs -- a middle aged man, his wife and their two teenaged daughters -- were leading the congregation in song. All four of them were impeccably dressed in white and wore dastaars (turbans) on their heads.

I was somewhat intrigued by the fact that the family of singers seemed ‘white‘, but infinitely more interesting to me was their demeanor. They seemed to be literally bursting with pride, and joy was writ large on their faces. They had exactly the same aura that my peers at IIGS seemed to have.

I was puzzled. I looked at the young women in particular with great perplexity.

Where was the angst?

After the kirtan ended, I engaged the man who had been singing, in conversation. A million questions bubbled in my mind and I tried to ask him about his family’s journey as Sikhs, guessing correctly that they had not been born into the faith.

It turned out that the person I was talking to was Vikram Singh Khalsa, well known as one of the Mukhia (most prominent) Sikhs in Harbhajan Singh Yogi’s 3HO organization.

In his previous life, Vikram had been Vic Briggs, a well know rock star, who played lead guitar in the hugely popular band, “The Animals“, and rubbed shoulders with the likes of Eric Clapton and Jeff Beck, who were among my pantheon of heroes at the time!

His wife was the former Kristen Lindholm, a model and actress. Both of them had embraced Sikhi and were raising their daughters as Sikhs. Vikram Singh had become a kirtaniya (singer of Sikh Sacred Music) of note and had sung, among many places, at the Harmandar Sahib in Amritsar.

I was flabbergasted!

I was face to face with the same Sikh identity that I had semi-reluctantly dragged around for 25 years. Mine sat so uneasily on my shoulders. He and his family, on the other hand, wore theirs like a crown!

Vikram Singh  had a profound influence on my progression as a Sikh and for that I owe him an eternal debt. He has become a friend and we have stayed in touch. He has been writing his memoirs about his journey in Sikhi, which by the way, is far more interesting than mine, and has been generously sharing them with me, in support of a book that I am working on.

With his permission, I will be delighted to share his veru engaging story, but that is a topic for another day.

Back at college, for the first time in my life, I felt an urge to associate with other Sikhs. I somehow ended up at the nearby home of S. Ujjagar Singh, who had been mentoring young Sikhs in the Northeast for decades, running what was probably the oldest Gurmat Camp in the US.

There would be regular get-togethers at his home that I started attending with a bit of trepidation. It was inspiring for sure to interact with many peers who were every bit as secure in their Sikhi as the young people at IIGS and Vikram Singh’s family had been.

It was also rather intimidating.

Many of the young people sang gurbani with effortless ease. Most could recite the Nitnem (Sikh daily prayers) by rote. I sat mutely in these gatherings when they sang and awkwardly attempted to keep up with the nitnem using clunky transliterations from romanized gutkas (Sikh prayer books), fully expecting to be derided for my obvious ineptitude.

I never was, and I kept going back.

Something powerful had started to build within me. The freedom to ponder my Sikh identity without the crushing burden of opprobrium that was the lot of every Sikh in India at the time; the inspiration that I derived from the young Sikhs I met after leaving India, the mysterious power of sangat (congregation); all of these combined to create a burning desire to learn more about my roots.

I graduated from college and left New York for a job in Milwaukee, where I found more sangat and started my journey in gurmat sangeet, a story that will also have to wait for another day.

Studying the history of the Sikhs became my passion. I had already started to understand at an intuitive level that there was something unique about the Sikh character. I had a burning desire to understand how this character had been forged and I immersed myself in history books.

A visit to “Singh Brothers“, publishers and booksellers in Amritsar, brought me a well-stocked library and the friendship of Gursagar Singh, who has been an invaluable resource and dear friend over the years.

I started by reading Khushwant Singh; I went on to read Cunningham and Macauliffe and then a plethora of historians who have written about the Sikhs. I read with insane intensity for the next few years.

In parallel, under the guidance of Bhai Nazar Singh of Milwaukee and with the generous help of my good friend and gurmat sangeet aficionado, Baldev Singh, I started immersing myself in gurbani kirtan.

By the time I moved back to New Jersey in 1991, my identity as a Sikh sat as light as a feather on my shoulders.

My sixteen year old son is now entering a phase in his life, where he has to come to terms with his identity as a young Sikh and discover what it means to him, for himself. I would like to believe that he is better equipped to begin his journey than his father ever was. This young man has grown up in the warm cocoon of sangat from his very birth.

Most Fridays and Sundays of his young life, he has spent with his peers, learning, singing, playing. He has been studying gurmat sangeet since he was five and he is developing into a fine kirtaniya and table player. He has attended many gurmat camps and has revelled in his Sikhi with his peers in innumerable ways.

Yet, a parent cannot help worrying. Life can be cruel and angst can be crushingly debilitating.

As I sit back and reflect on my own journey, I can only hope that he and every young Sikh will be as fortunate as I have been, in encountering visionary mentors and inspiring peers, who will serve as beacons on their respective journeys.


CONCLUDED

 

Part I can be accessed by clicking on the "COLUMNISTS" box at the top of the sikhchic.com homepage, and then clicking on SARBPREET SINGH'S "PREVIOUS COLUMNS". 

March 25, 2014

Conversation about this article

1: Chintan Singh (San Jose, California, USA), March 25, 2014, 10:54 AM.

Truly inspirational for me who has young kids. My son turned eight just yesterday. What a transformational journey. Seems like in all the events you have described in your journey, you had a powerful force working behind the scenes to pull you into Sikhi. Waheguru! Would love to read about your journey into gurmat sangeet.

2: Inni Kaur (Fairfield, Connecticut, USA), March 25, 2014, 12:14 PM.

A truly inspirational read ... Thank you!

3: Gurpreet Singh (Washington, DC, USA), March 25, 2014, 7:18 PM.

Your story is something I related to at every step. Growing up in Delhi and moving to the United States, I feel like I was "Born Again." Thanks for putting this together so simply yet eloquently. I look forward to a successful conquering of angst from your young Sardar and his generation.

4: Kulbir Sandhu (Santa Rosa, California, USA), March 25, 2014, 11:11 PM.

Thanks for sharing, Sarbpreet. I am glad you found yourself.

5: Sarvjit Singh (Massachusetts, USA), March 26, 2014, 9:54 AM.

Nice article, Sarbpreet ji! Growing up in Delhi where Sikhs were a minority instilled feelings about self-doubt and non-conformity within me. It always ends up with either your mother, grandfather or some elder who touches you and helps you to connect with roots. In my case it was my Naani ji (maternal grandmother) who taught me the Urdu script and made me remember Japji's first five paurris. On the other hand, Sikhs growing up in Punjab, where they are a majority, have no such self-doubts and yet they drift away from Sikhi. I never understood why.

6: A. Singh (New York, USA ), March 27, 2014, 7:59 AM.

Every Sikh around the world goes through six levels of discrimination. They are: 1) School bullying (this is where a young kid gets picked on due to his/her appearance). 2) Peer pressure (this is where the friends try to influence the Sikh with visible identity to become 'normal' like them. 3) Media discrimination (this is where the media, particularly Bollywood, make movies or TV shows attacking the Sikh identity, ideology). 4) Random airport screening (this is where a person sporting a visible separate identity is picked out by airport staff for "random screening"). 5) Employment discrimination (this is where the employer may not want to hire a person who stands out in the crowd). And, 6) The Wars of the Sexes (this is where a young Sikh encounters the challenges of finding a like-minded mate). But, when a Sikh survives these, he/she becomes the Superman or Superwoman he/she is meant to be!

7: Steve Henshaw (Worcester, Massachusetts, USA), April 01, 2014, 7:34 AM.

When you wrote about reading media accounts of the assassination and the anti-Sikh pogrom that followed, I feel kinship as a Muslim-American. I am, at times, ashamed of the actions of a tiny per cent of those who call themselves Muslim. Then retaliation comes ... and it spills innocent blood. Why must the innocent pay the price?

Comment on "Coming of Age As a Young Sardar:
Part II"









To help us distinguish between comments submitted by individuals and those automatically entered by software robots, please complete the following.

Please note: your email address will not be shown on the site, this is for contact and follow-up purposes only. All information will be handled in accordance with our Privacy Policy. Sikhchic reserves the right to edit or remove content at any time.