The ‘One-dollar vegetarian restaurant’

I heard this one in Orange County, California...A Sikh child psychologist from Canada conducted a survey amongst Sikh children born outside India to first generation Indian parents in Northern America in line with doing some research on their mental well-being. He tells of one amusing (sad?) answer to the question – ‘Why do you go to gurdwara?’

Answer. When mum does not want to cook and dad does not want to go to a restaurant we go to the gurdwara because “we can get good vegetarian food for one-dollar metha-tek!” So folks, for some, the gurdwara is a one-dollar vegetarian restaurant. How often have we heard...or said – “Chelo, metha-tek aonay-han, naalay roti kha avangay!” Is that all a gurdwara has degenerated into?

This month the 'Dya Singh' group toured Southern California (LA, Orange County and San Diego), Bay Area (San Francisco, Fremont etc.) and Texas (namely Dallas) so I have decided to call it... ‘THE CALTEX TOUR’!!

I arrived back in Adelaide from Melbourne after spending some quality time with my lovely grandchildren, Saahiel and Saffal, and their mum and dad – Jamel and Har. I had been in Melbourne on business for the last few days of April. I arrived from Malaysia one day before Vesakhi. Celebrated Vesakhi (my birthday too!) in Adelaide after a number of years because I am normally on tour somewhere or other for Vesakhi. Next year is no different – we have been booked for Vesakhi at the Los Angeles Convention Center for Vesakhi 2005. After Vesakhi this year we were on tour in Western Australia. I arrived in Melbourne after that and headed for Adelaide on May 1st..

I returned by road by about 2am on May 2nd and made it to Adelaide Gurdwara (my favourite gurdwara in the world) just as Dr. Harbans Gill and S.Charan Singh were finishing Asa-Dhi-Vaar!! Always a pleasure to come to ‘home’ gurdwara Adelaide. A very sweet lady from Kuala Lumpur did a Path-dha-Bhog which was followed by the whole sangat on booklets. Yes – ‘swarag’!

A few days ‘lying low’ in Adelaide before the tour starts! Spent some quality time with recent Christian-turned-Sikh friend Angadh Singh (formerly John Buckleigh) who has formerly changed his name and expects to spend a year in India doing further studies in Sikhi.

LOS ANGELES
May 6th. was a long, L-O-N-G day. It started in Adelaide at 9am as we set out for the airport. Then, a flight to Sydney to catch a connecting 13 hour flight to Los Angeles. We were picked up by our good ‘American Sikh’ friends Simran Kaur Khalsa and Niranjan Singh Khalsa – three hours rest and our very first program at the Guru Ram Das Ashram Gurdwara in LA. My good friend Bicky Singh of sikhpoint.com was there to whisk us away to Orange County which we reached by midnight. We had clocked almost 30 hours from start in Adelaide through a program in LA, to finish at Orange County but showed only 15 due to travelling backward over the international date line!

Always a pleasure to do kirtan amongst American Sikhs because they come with the singular purpose of listening and joining in, and doing Naam Simran.

ORANGE COUNTY/SAN DIEGO
Orange County and Sikhpoint.com (Bicky Singh) who had sponsored this mini-tour was a swirl of programs over ten days including four ‘interfaith’ events, one full concert in San Diego and programs in Orange County Sikh Center and Buena Park Gurdwara Sahib.

A few ‘episodes’ stood out...
One was an increase in the number of ‘mainstream’ programs we had been organised to do – something I am always urging Sikh communities to do, and very successful ones at that. The highlight was a very successful Inter-faith Evening at the Laguna Hills Community Center organised by the Orange County Sikhs which raised funds for further Sikh activities and also saw about 200 non-Sikhs besides about 250 Sikhs paying $100 each have a great interactive evening with good food and entertainment by a number of spiritual-orientated groups from amongst the First Nations people, a Jewish cantor, a young American Sikh western singer, HarGobindHari Singh Khalsa (watch this young third-generation white American Sikh lad...he is going to go far as a contemporary Sikh soul singer), a Hindu dancer, a gospel choir and our group. A prominent senator who will probably be the next Attorney General of California also spoke for about 15 minutes.

Sikhs into the 21st. century need to take a more center stage and promote Sikhi in the mainstream. Orange County are certainly leading the way with young Sikh professionals fully involved in organising such events.

Can I bring my homework?
An amusing episode was a young teenager sitting in front of us enjoying kirtan and doing his homework at one of the weekday gurdwara programs. This young lad arrived early and settled himself right in front of us, in the ‘ladies’ side of the gurdwara, pulled out his books from his satchel and proceeded to do his homework right through the duration of the one and half hour kirtan. His mum and dad brought him to see me after the program and apologised explaining that the young lad had said that he had homework and always did it to a Dya Singh cd, so what more could he ask for, than to have ‘Dya Singh’ live on stage and him doing his homework! The night before he had also come to the gurdwara to hear the group do kirtan and had missed doing his homework. He had received detention that day because of that. He was so eager to come the next night as well, that after an argument with his parents he made a deal with them that he would do all his homework one way or another. That was the only way his parents were going to let him come! So, if any other youngster wants to do homework at any of our weekday programs and if it means you coming to gurdwara, I am all for it! BUT, that does not mean that mums bring your knitting and dads your newspapers!!! This only applies to youngsters with homework.

I do not like your style of kirtan!!
This happened at Perth (Australia) new gurdwara last month and I narrated it in Orange County. Thought you might like to enjoy it.

An elderly Sikh came up close to me after our Sunday program at Perth when we were there last month and growled, “Dya Singh, I want you to know that I totally dislike your style of kirtan!” While I was recovering from that, he smiled and said, “I also want you to know that my wife and children listen only to your cd’s!” We laughed and he explained that he was the Bhai Awthar Singh, Bhai Dharam Singh Zakhmi type of kirtan listener but just cannot get his family to listen to that. We discussed kirtan for a while and we parted on amicable terms. He did compliment me that I did have ‘touches’ of these ragis and understood what I was attempting to do with kirtan in making it more pallatable to the younger generation and gave his blessings.

Manmohan Singh as PM of India!
This historic news hit us in San Francisco after Bicky confirmed it in Orange County. For me, what a great day! We wish Manmohan Singh well and Waheguru Ji’s blessings. I turned my back on my ‘Indian’ heritage one generation ago – well 20 years to be precise, almost to the day - the 1984 Massacre of Sikhs. With Manmohan Singh being declared Prime Minister perhaps I shall reclaim it. BUT, that does not mean I shall barrack for India when they play Australia in any sport – especially cricket and field hockey! I am, and will remain a one-eyed Aussie sports fan all my life!!

SAN FRANCISCO
The most pleasant 'surprise' in San Francisco was seeing my wonderful mother at one of the private functions. Bebe Ji has been with my sister Sarandeep (San Jose) and my nieces', one in Sacramento and one in Vancouver for about seven months - she travels wherever she wants to go - the fruits of a hard life and Waheguru Ji's grace. My niece from Sacramento and nephew-in-law knew of the program and it turned out that the program organisers were related! So, they came bringing Bebe Ji with them. I happen to be the 'black sheep' of the family but I think she is now very proud of me! My mother's story is an amazing one ... one day perhaps, we shall perhaps write about it...

We travelled (Parvyn and I by air and the ‘boys’ by road) to San Francisco on Wednesday May 19th. after a very pleasant day off with Gurshabad Singh Khalsa and HargobindHari in San Diego (La Jolla). We also made an input in Gurshabad’s latest cd recording which he appreciated very much. I spent Tuesday with Bicky and family – a well earned rest after ten fairly hectic days!

Dr. Chani Pangali and Gugi are our wonderful hosts in San Francisco. We went to a new restaurant – the Janta Indian restaurant in Pleasanton for lunch as soon as we landed. Dinner next day was with dear friends Rani and Jim Hillyer.

A social-come-spiritual evening had been organised by SACHAA (Sikh American Cultural Heritage Awareness Association) in Fremont. What a lovely evening! Little kiddies (from about five to seven years) from the Genius Kids School sang a number of songs followed by Sikh youth doing bhangra culminating with our performance. No one minded the odd Hindu bhajan, old spiritually based Hindi song, ghazals, shabads and qawalis that we presented. All in all, a great evening. A friend from Yuba City who met me later in the week commented, when he heard about the event, “but that mob has nothing to do with Sikhi!” I told him that our cd sales (which are all gurbani) reflected that it goes down as a very productive evening and more Sikhs who do not often listen to kirtan will be doing so! Thank god, the Pp. Singhs of this world were not present! “Khuda valon se Khuda hi bechaaye!”

The weekend passed with a whirl of very uplifting private programs and ‘haajri’ at the Hayward Gurdwara Sahib. Rani and Jim Hillyer, thanks for a great evening! It was also good to see great friends Shakti and Upkar Khalsa and surprise of surprises, when my good friend Vickram Singh Ji of Hawaii also showed. Vickram Singh is former Vic Briggs, lead guitarist of 60’s pop group, the Animals.

We also managed to spend time with Dr. Kapany of The Sikh Foundation discussing the oncoming opening of The Kapany Sikh Arts Collection at the Smithsonian Institute in Washington DC scheduled for July 24th.

DALLAS, TEXAS
Our first visit. All I know of Dallas is – cowboy ‘westerns’, assasination of JFK , Southfork Ranch and JR Ewing!!

We left for Dallas and Ramneek Singh Randhawa and family, on Tuesday May 25th. for our last stop this tour. Keith left for ‘home’ on the Monday night from San Francisco – he was not coming to Dallas.

We met Ramneek and family for the first time and the rapport was instantaneous. When like minds get together... Living in a pallatial home with two pre-teen sons, a three year old daughter, wife, mum and dad and seeped in Sikhi and Panjabi – this is a great family and may Waheguru bless them.

My daughter was very impressed with the way they would speak nothing but Punjabi in the household. She said that all she would need to do is spend a month with them and she would come back knowing full ‘theth’ Punjabi. Now every time I speak to her she reminds me “Bapuji, Punjabi bolo!”

Wednesday and Thursday saw two lovely private programs. On Thursday we went to our first (and maybe last!) attendance at a baseball match!!! Ramneek, our host decided that he would take us for a USA minor league game between a Dallas and a Los Angeles side. Well, the hot-dogs, the crowd atmosphere and the free baseball caps we got were great but... the game...it was not rounders, nor 'guli-denda' or 'kaunda-kaundi' that we used to play with a short wooden stub and a longer stick to whack it with. The trousers of the players were just too tight and the most impressive moments were when they trotted on and off the field displaying all their muscular bulges in their tight trousers! I am still trying to work out how it was being scored. Luckily, we decided to cut the trip short just as the sun was getting to become bothersome. Thanks to Ramneek though - we can say that we have been to a baseball match in USA!!

On Friday, Sikh luminary Dr. Harbans Lal took us to Dallas downtown to savour the Arts District. An amazing place with Arts centers, exhibition halls, muzeums and the highlight for me – the Meyersen Symphony Center – a feat in sound engineering! I wish every committee intending to build a gurdwara would do the tour we did where it was explained as to how the hall was constructed to get the perfect sound even without sound equipment!

The other highlight was ‘Asa-Dhi-Var-by-the-Lake’. Ramneek owns a speed boat and spends a fair bit of time on one of the many man-made lakes around Dallas with his family – a real outdoor type! So he organised an outing by the lake starting at 7am with Asa-Dhi-Var followed by degh, dhal-valay-prothay and cha and culminating in speedboat trips and soccer. A great Saturday morning.

We parted company immediately after the Sunday (May 30th.) program at the Garland gurdwara – Parvyn and I heading toward London and Andrew and Dheeraj heading for ‘home’.

I wish to record my grateful ‘thank you’ to Bicky and family, Chani and family, and Ramneek and family without whom this wonderful tour would not have been possible. Your love and assistance in my personal ‘mission’ shall be rewarded – Waheguru Ji’s blessings to you all and Cherdhi Kala.

Parvyn and I spent two days with Bai Ji (Principal) Gurmukh Singh and Bhabi Ji, in Southall. I think Parvyn loves getting spoilt by Thaya Ji and Thayi Ji!

We have no tour in June, but I shall still write a reflective column on a number of issues like ‘chedava’, ‘seropas’, fees for kirtan, cleanshaven/sehajdhari Sikhs etc...just giving myself a ‘to do’ list.

Cherdhi Kala.

Dya Singh