It was a friend’s birthday bash last night and I hit the sack at around 5 in the morning. A few smokes and songs later when I finally decided to call it a day, i was ruffled by the sounds of firecrackers.
I wondered who the hell would be burning crackers at 5:30 a.m.! that too more than two weeks after Diwali. Just as reached the window to take a look, sounds of dholkis and daflis and gurbanis started reverberating in the air and it was then that I realized that the celebrations to mark the festival of Gurpurab had begun. (The festival will be celebrated on Nov 10)
The morning prayers better known as ‘Prabhat Fairy’ start a week before the main festival. It involves devotees singing gurbanis and taking a round of the locality in which the Gurudwara is situated.
However, the fairy that is taken out on Gurpurab is huge. It involves hundreds of people and there are lots of firecrackers, food and drinks offered by residents en route. The heart of the procession is the ‘palki’ or a modified tempo decorated with garlands, flowers and balloons carrying the Guru Granth Sahib.
So as I was lying down on the bed, fond memories came rushing back as to how I loved the fairies when I was growing up.
When I was a kid my mother would take me and my cousins living nearby to these fairies every year which meant lots of free samosas, bread pakodas, badam milk and what not. The combination of gorging on piping hot food in the chilly winter morning amidst gurbanis was truly divine.
Years later I was a teenager in school the celebrations began early. Me and my group of friends would get together to decorate the ‘palki’ late into the night. We would return home at around 2 a.m. catch a couple of hours sleep and were again on the road by 5.
Couple of years down the line when we entered college, things changed a bit. The fairies were now a pass for us to stay at each other’s house and drive around on our bikes toe whole night searching for food and cigarettes.
But when the fairy began we were right there not to feast on the bread pakoras or milk but on the neighbourhood girl that we had a crush on.
And then came the sad part-- not sleeping the whole night and returning home only after 8 or 9 a.m. meant that when we hit the sack it wasn’t before 6 or 7 in the evening that we woke up.
And it was then that we realized that we had to go to school or college the following day and the festivities were all over.
That was severe depression for us and we tried our best to somehow cajole our parents into letting us take an off the next day but year after year we failed terribly.
In conclusion, had it not been for the neighbourhood gurudwara and the fairies, I think I wouldn’t have had some of the best days, experiences of my life.
