A seemingly devout Sikh guy inboxed me on Facebook few days ago, seeking my comments on a film hed made about the crisis of vanishing turbans from Punjab. I started to think. I admit, right upfront, of feeling sad at various times in the past at the above phenomenon. But Im not for linking it inextricably, as some people are wont to do, to the Sikh religion. Turbans predate Sikhism. By a LOT. And if you went back long enough or far away from a national highway, ALL India wore it. But why do we Sikhs make a big deal of it? Because its an intrinsic part of WHO we are. Also, theres the small matter of Guru Gobind Singh having commanded ALL Sikhs to wear it. It became a prize at the end of a rite of passage. A primal ritual, albeit only 300 years old. Through it we tell others--this boys gonna be a man soon. At my pagg-bannhaai, the whole clan got together. My entire pind and my naanke. We held an Akhand Path. Like now, you didnt just turn up, all nattily dressed up for the bhog only! Na ji na! You came a few days earlier, helped out with the arrangements. On my big day, I wore a long beige Rajasthani silk kurta with matching pajamas that my two sisters--Didi and Picku went with me to buy from Khadi Gram Udyog, CP. It cost a princely ₹ 400. I was threatened with dire consequences were I to even think of staining it. Theres no way I was going to. You just didnt mess with Didi. Surinder veerji, my fuffarhs cousin was carefully chosen amongst many suitable candidates to tie the turban around my head because he bore a good character and tied a fair turban himself. We hired a proper photographer to cover the event. In time those black & white photographs assumed a velvety preciousness. They were ritually unveiled with care every time a bhua or mama/maasi came over. There was even a small drama over how, callous we, didnt post some copies to my two bhuas even after several reminders. I was gifted a notaan da haar, which I later hid away from my parents behind a tall bookshelf and whose notes I kept plucking away all autumn. Aah! So you get the idea, turban is a big deal to us. And yes! We make a deal of it. In Delhi, we saw just the one Patiala shahi style of turban. The epitome of its form were my schools hockey team members and everyone else in the city was at some stage of the forms descent into entropy. My father seemed well near total chaos. It didnt help that it was he who tied one on me everyday at the start of VII standard (Yup! Thats how they wrote 7th back then.)! Too polite to refuse his help, Id wear it in the school bus to robust jeering and take it off just before reaching school. I wasnt the only one, I found out. There were others with turban issues. Together, to save our fragile behinds from any unpleasant scholastic treatment from teachers/peers whom might disagree with the sartorial interpretations on our crowns, we--the turban illiterates lined up before Harpeeet & Pritpal, the two savants of turban tying in my class and begged, cajoled and emotionally blackmailed them to make one appear on our heads before the assembly. The Assembly! It was our Shawshank Redemption. Where the only way the inmates could communicate and show they cared for each other was by passing on the silaai to the next guy to shove it up his turban to relieve the point where the second larhs fold bored in on the first one and into our soul. You didnt forget the guy who didnt pass it in the morning. And then there was the pind. Woah! It was the Wild West. North West actually. The elderly all wore 8 metres of single length white turban to broadcast their personal belief in hygiene to all. The young ones all wore small orange parnas except when they were going to a viah or the like. No one fetishised the Patiala shahi form here. They just wrapped it long enough till some form emerged of its own accord and then just stuck the loose end wherever they could. And these werent your dainty Delhi poseurs or Chandigarh kakas. These were sardars. Actual sardars. They represented 300 years of an unbroken Sikh way of life. An involuntary Vaheguru escaped their lips as they splashed their faces with chilled gharha water in the piercing winter dawn. They muttered Japuji Sahib as they bathed under the bambi. A few muttered five Japuji before hitting the fields. Every now and then someone went away to become a Nihang and came back with the distinct round dumala on his head. Like my cousin Kallia. Their lived view of the turban was not just definitive, it seemed final. You see, in Delhi you tied the turban because someone said you should. While in my pind, you just did. One was conscious, the other unconscious. So therein lies my quandary/ies. Arent the new age pagg-advocates making us evermore self-conscious of the pagg-tying? The naturalness of the act receding with every shrill entreaty? Can turbans really be isolated from the general state of Punjabi/Sikh culture? Should they be? Arent they but a facet of the same? This culture, under the unquestioned (and self-proclaimed) righteousness of globalisation along with the manipulations of commercial media lifted all check and balances that kept it from being overwhelmed. And now as it drowns, all unconscious detail is swimming up to the surface, into the conscious. An unavoidable psycho-physiological consequence. Pagg-loving being one of many. But when youre drowning, can you stop yourself from being sucked in by every memory, every past occurrence? Can you realistically be expected to try to plug the leak? Can you save yourself while youre mesmerised by selective nostalgia? Can you? Really? The answer mere veer, is floating on the foam. Its floating on the foam, mere veer.ursou
Posted on: Sat, 27 Sep 2014 20:59:01 +0000
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