As mentioned in a previous post, most may come to conclude that this Blog has run its course and will remain inactive. However, things are looking up and it appears there is a definite hope that there will be regular posting in the near and distant future. So again, this blog is NOT dead. There are some good excuses why I have been posting once every few months. It appears things have a way of turning into something completely different than what their creators had envisioned. This blog is just that sort: unexpected and different.
Around 2002 a group of Singhs got together and discussed how the recitation of Gurbani would be improved and pronunciation corrected. It was just after the Saturday morning Asa Ki Vaar Kirtan at Khalsa School and in attendance were powerhouses such as Dr Davinder Singh UK, Giani Amolak Singh Jee UK, Bhai Jasbir Singh Jee Tapoban and Bibi Harsharan kaur Jee Mithapur (Colonel-nee). At the end of our time together I realized that something needed to be done so that people who sing Kirtan could be made aware that there are lapses in thought when singing Kirtan or reciting Gurbani Paath.
One thing that directly came out of that meeting was weekend Santhayia. There used to be around 20 of us and it was a complete eye-opening experience for me. I was corrected on many occasions and still remember vividly where I went wrong and what the corrected pronunciation was.
The funniest thing of these days came early. The Sandhu Triplets were sitting there in the main hall reading Japjee Sahib and the baniaan before Shri Rag. He was flying past pauree after pauree, shabad after shabad. He did Japjee Sahib from a Larivaar pothi in less than 7 minutes. As soon as he was done he hit the Shri Raag page like a brick wall. All eyes peered at him intently. Bhai Balbir Singh Jee let out a huge sigh of laughter. That was our sign, that we were all granted the freedom to laugh as a sangat. We all laughed for a long time. Mandeep Singh laughed with us too. It was after that the serious Santhayia began. It is still one of the most memorable events of all time.
So that was that. The other thing that we did was post Gurbani Related things on Yahoo E-Groups and the old AKJ site. A short while after the Tapoban.org forum was established and many threads were posted relating to Gurbani and pronunciation. The most memorable was perhaps this one which had close to 250 posts under just this one thread. Most of them got deleted because of a server issue but many of them have survived. It all sprang from an E-Groups email I had sent out.
So where does this Blog come from. It was such a chore to write Gurmukhi before the Unicode system for windows came out that was the main reason; people just didn’t have the proper fonts.
Once the blog was set up I totally got carried away with it and ended up being majorly sidetracked. I have to leave it at just this and continue on later. But this blog has now officially come out of hibernation! Rejoice one and all.
YAY
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