Columnists
The Stick & The Carrot:
Janam Da Firangee,
Sikhi Mai Mangee
FATEHPAL SINGH TARNEY
In my last column, I suggested that I have much in common with children at my Gurdwara Sahib, given that we are all living between Eastern and Western cultures.
I continue to ponder this commonality and am reminded of another.
One of my first mentors regarding Sikhi was a wonderful gurmukh who spent his younger years in pre-independence India. I always enjoyed his stories about his schooling there as well as his assistance to me with Sikh spirituality, history, and the Punjabi language.
Once over tea, we “compared notes” regarding our direct experiences with corporal punishment as youngsters. I did not experience any of that in public school but in church and Sunday school things were quite the opposite.
In those days, which for me were the 1950s, priests and nuns did not spare the rod. This Sardar told me of a Mussalmaan teacher of his who had a soetti (stick) with him at all times and used it with great enthusiasm.
He was, however, an equal opportunity ‘employer’, caning his Muslim, Sikh, and Hindu pupils with equal force and frequency. This particular teacher, I may have referred to in a previous column. He had a long beard dyed with henna and his students swore that at night, it glowed in the dark!
In pondering over my childhood as a member of a Christian family, I continue to have some feelings of guilt.
My mother was a creature of habit and on Sundays, before church, she would give me three dimes to put in the collection plate. I would usually put only two in the plate and used the remaining dime for candy, which I bought on the way home.
I recently shared this story with another wise and older Sardar Sahib at our gurdwara. His response was this: “Fateh ji, most religions consider the human body to be a sacred temple. Therefore, you gave some financial support to the church and then some sweets to your personal temple!”
He then reminded me of Baba Farid whose incentive to pray as a child was egged on by a bribe of sweets from his mother.
In a beautiful shabad in the Guru Granth Sahib, he reminisces and uses the experience to share a life-lesson he imbibed from it:
“Sugar cane, candy, sugar, molasses, honey and buffalo milk - all these things are sweet, but none come close to the sweetness of God‘s love.”
At our gurdwara, as a reward for being good students in the Punjabi class, teachers regularly distribute bags of M&Ms, gummy bears, and Oreo cookies to the kids. Many parents then, a bit later in the Langar, seem surprised that their children do not have ready appetites for daal and sabzi.
However, mercifully, there are no soettis.
March 9, 2015
Conversation about this article
1: Ajit Singh Batra (Pennsville, New Jersey, USA), March 11, 2016, 10:32 PM.
Fateh ji, in the verse right after the one you've cited, [GGS: 1379], Baba Farid says: "My bread is as hard as wood. My hunger serves as an appetizer. And those who eat the buttered bread will suffer lot of sorrows". We should not measure the glory of a person based on material advance. Farid Sahib's belief was that the remedy for all ailments, temporal or spiritual, is moderation. Moderation should be our food to please God and to attract His love. Whatever our gyanis are teaching to kids in gurdwaras, they must teach the kids the element of moderation too.