A festival of happiness!

By: Vaasvik Kaushik

Gurpurab is a festival of happiness, celebrated to mark the birth of Guru Nanak Ji, the first guru and founder of Sikhism.

He travels around the world on foot to spread his teachings of equality, love, peace, and respect for everyone in the world. 

Guru Nanak Ji was born in 1469 in Punjab (Pakistan). He lived in a time of huge inequality, caste, and gender discrimination. He openly stood and talked about it. He was a nobleman with a pure heart who wanted to see everyone with equal respect.

He started langar in Gurdwaras, where everyone gets free food to eat. In Gurdwara’s everyone respectfully offers their services like cutting and preparing food, serving food to everyone, even cleaning the floor and dishes, and taking care of the Gurdwara.

Everyone who comes to the Gurdwara offers prayers and respects to Guru Granth Sahib.

Let me tell you a small story on Guru Nanak ji –

Guru Nanak ji use to go to different places with his two friends to spread his teachings. One was a Hindu boy and other was a Muslim. One day he went to a poor carpenter named “Lala”. The poor man got so happy that Guru Nanak came to his house. He and his wife served them chapatti and chutney, they all happily ate the food. 

The king of that village saw that Guru Nanak was eating in lala’s house, so he also invited him to come to his palace and eat food. In king’s palace Guru Nanak took lala’s chapatti in one hand and one chapatti of king’s in other hand. Then he squeezed them both and from lala’s chapatti sweet milk came out and from kings blood came.

This means that king did not love and respect his village people whereas lala always work hard to serve his family. 

From this we understand that Nanak ji was a fairy god in human body.