December!

and the cultural burden of grief and joy

It has been a while since I wrote here, but here’s a little note from me to you on the contradicting pulls of this season:

Annual winter picnic(s). This one was at Sunder Nursery, Delhi.

My Instagram tells me it is the season to be merry. My friends in Europe are sharing stories of going back home, sitting around dining tables, under the red and green of which two tables have been joined with as little imbalance as possible, accommodating a family member who needs more than one plate for the courses of meals they have learned to identify in their time away. Requests that everyone eat their way are galloped over with distractions of food, pictures, and wine. I have time off from work, giving me a week long break between this email and that. In Gurgaon and Delhi, streets we frequent are lit up with reindeer lamps, and children are seen walking around in Santa costumes around Christmas trees which seem to have grown in place since last year. We make a list of all Christmas markets in the city and manage to go to two of them. We go to Galleria market one evening to see the Christmas tree, and find ourselves admiring the book tree at one of the bookshops. There is plum cake and gingerbread shaped muffins at home, and our parents find themselves attending parties where everyone is supposed to wear red. It was probably their idea.

At home, a different story remains true. For Sikhs around the world, the latter half of December is a period of remembrance, where we reflect on the sacrifices of Guru Gobind Singh Ji’s sons, the eldest aged ~17 and youngest, five. Along with the four children, Guru ji’s mother, Mata Gujri Ji also attained shaheedi during the same time. The intensity and recency of this history, and the presence of children at the centre of it tugs at all hearts, and the storytelling and poetry around it makes it even more poignant. The first and last time in many years that my grandmother stepped out of the house for anything except a wedding or funeral, was to watch the movie “Chaar Sahibzaade”, when the theatres were full of older people and children, and whole families of Sikhs out to witness a story in mainstream theatres, a story they already knew by heart.

Practising or not, a Sikh is likely to encounter this history culturally in their community. They might not be able to piece together the events and timelines, or identify the reasons of battle, but they are likely aware of the sadness of this inheritance, and the role it plays in a Sikh consciousness. As Guru Gobind Singh ji is considered the father of all Sikhs, this history also has a particular flavour of being an event in the family, rather than an abstraction from the past. It is common for children to grow up in religious Sikh households, learning about the Sahibzaadas as their brothers. As children, it was common for me and my sister to ensure we find time to go to the gurdwara and participate in the remembrance, while our friends and neighbours planned Christmas get-togethers, winter picnics, and brunches. When the history of the sahibzaadas was shared, we cried and compared our ages to theirs, year after year. When the year-end festivities began around us, we laughed and sang with friends and family, with a keen awareness that it was probably a happy lunch for us, not “a time of laughter and festivities”. I don’t think we ever thought about it, this splintering of emotions between our past and the celebrations of an increasingly multicultural present. It is possibly similar to that of anyone not able to give in fully to a happiness, as an old memory holds their attention. It is possibly a cousin to the grief of whole cities, as their children grow up in the middle of war, regardless of the New Year lights around the world.

I started thinking about it when Instagram stories remembering the sahibzaadas and pictures of people celebrating year end holidays started to appear side by side. I was pleasantly surprised at how effortlessly social media and individual lives had managed to put these two emotions where they belonged- next to each other. As much as I find public displays of everyday love and life on social media passé, for the first time it made me realise how they allowed a document of contradictory emotions, remembrances, and celebrations to coexist, similar to how they do in us- all together and complex. It reminded me of how people from minority communities use creative expression, and the process of documenting their personal histories. They use it not as a rebellion or a rejection of what’s around them, but as an acknowledgement of what goes on inside the home, of what is seen on their vernacular TV channels, of what is remembered (if not believed) in the standing hair of their arms, from childhood stories of sacrifice.

It helps remind us of the way we live well- denying nothing, and making space for the pain and joy of others.