My parents insisted on sending us, my sister and cousins, to the day camps at the Gurdwara every summer. It was futile to resist, but we would still argue that summer vacations were meant to spend at home in front of the TV or with new Harry Potter books. My mom would laugh, and say that one day I’d see the reason why they sent us to the camps, and emphasized the importance of the lessons taught there. Recently, I have seen different reasons on many days.
At the gurdwara, we would sit through lessons on prayer, history, and classes where we were taught to read and write in Punjabi. My cousins and I would sometimes slip away from these classes and search for our grandmother in the langar hall, where food is prepared and served. I loved curling up against her back and sleeping against her soft warmth, as she and the other grandmothers cut and prepped vegetables for the evening meals.
The Movement of a Snake
by Bavaneet Kaur Maan
Each summer, it was Baba who taught us the prayers. When we would walk into the large prayer hall, it was never hard to locate Baba in the back corner. Sitting straight with a rigid back, his beard white with two streaks of black and his orange turban. It was always an orange turban. Even to this day, I never see Baba without his orange turban. People strolled in to pay their respect to Guru Sahib, our scriptures; they would cast curious glances at us, but never interrupted our classes.
An aisle down the center of the hall led to the dais where Guru Sahib is kept elevated to be seen from every corner. The dais was decorated with colorful cloth from Punjab, embroidered with gold thread were images of flowers, swords and even lines from our prayers.
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We were in a corner farthest from Guru Sahib. Disappointed with our unbalanced recitation of the chandhs, in Jaap Sahib, Baba asked us to hand back our gutkas. With our heads hung low, we returned them to the elevated box on a table to his right. When we settled back in front of him with our legs crossed, Baba repeated his lecture.
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“Each chandh, of which there are ten, is labeled with the metric with which it is to be sung. Jaap Sahib was written by the tenth guru, who in his childhood had studied the intricacies of poetry and music from great teachers, as well as the art of gatka.”
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We nodded, a group of children ages eleven to thirteen, but Baba shook his head again. He asked in a loud voice, the meaning of Bhujang Prayat Chandh.
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“A snake. Bhujang means snake?” A boy piped up. Baba stared him down, but also nodded. His eyebrows were usually mismatched, the left one dropped lower than the right. But the two would often meet on his forehead at the same level, leaving us wondering if he was angry with us, or just lost in thought.
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“The chandh, is based off the movement of a snake.” The priest stood up and asked we do the same. He put his hands out in front of him, as if grabbing ahold of a horse’s reign."
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“Warriors would ride into battle against the Mughal army, arrows would be shot at them, but they would loudly recite the chant of the snake, while maneuvering their horses back and forth as a snake does. Thus, they would weave between the arrows and forge ahead, unharmed. The enemy would tremble in fear, as they witnessed an army advancing towards them in a serpentine blur. From within it the loud chanting of warriors praising god and god’s good virtues. All this before a single sword met another on the battlefield.”
I wish you could speak Punjabi—a mere translation of his words doesn’t do justice to the poetic images of past battles that he painted for us. Baba turned to his right, facing Guru Sahib. He dropped the reigns, and with one hand moved it left and right, as smooth as a snake. Namastang akale, namastang kripale. Namastang aroope, namastang anoope.
We repeat after Baba, and he began to walk the length of the prayer hall still reciting the rest of the chandh. We followed behind after some hesitation, snaking our way down the battlefield, hair rising on our arms. People were seated in various spots on our side of the hall, there to listen to the prayers coming from the speakers. We were meant to have stayed in our corner for our lessons, but Baba snaked past them, so we did as well. Baba moved on to chachri chandh, hands slashing through the air as he turned to shephard us back to the corner where we held class. “This is the lightning chant, recite as if you are slashing a sword through the air, or a spade into the ground.”
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A little embarrassed from the glances of those people we walked by, I did neither, but followed him back with the others, watching his movements. A few of the other kids were giggling and hitting one another. Many from our audience in the hall would have known what he was teaching us, having sat through lessons of prayer like these in their childhood, or read it in history books that collect dust in the gurdwara library.
Those moments have a way of coming back to me these days. When the university campus is dark, and I’m making my way between the dark buildings, to the parking garage, down the steps, and to my car. I hear those lessons and the chanting coming back to me. When there is a puddle on the ground, I swing over to the left, and then the right again to avoid walking into the gray Prius. The prayer comes back to me, and I hold my keys like weapons between my knuckles, as I have seen other women doing the same.
Bavaneet Kaur Maan is an educator living in the San Francisco Bay Area. She is currently an MFA candidate in Fiction at SFSU. Her work focuses on the intersection of tradition and modernity. She is currently working on a re-telling of the Mahabharat epic in the form of a fantasy novel, and a novel set in the 1960's Punjab, inspired by the life of her grandparents.