Guru Nanak

On Saturday morning, my usually lazy late sleep was shattered by a cacophony of Hindu music, chanting and crowd noise.  At first I thought the neighbors downstairs had turned up their television and spent the next few minutes laying in bed trying to figure out why they would do that at 8:00am on a Saturday morning.

The noise, though, grew louder and I concluded in my morning haze that this was no television.  I rolled, literally, out of bed and made my way to the balcony.  The is what a saw.....

WTF!  What made matters worse was that we had been out at an Indian Wedding (here they just call them weddings) boozing it up the night before.  

To an uninformed foreigner, the scene looked like this:  An hour procession of different types of trucks, with different types of people singing different songs watched by a horde of people eating free food from tables that magically appeared in front of my home.  Yep, that about summed it up.  I stood on the terrace and watched for a while, but the curiosity to find out what was really happening on my usually lazy, quiet street was killing me.  I needed pants.

With pants on, I made my way to the street into a scene that would rival most town art shows.  Tables were lined up on the sidewalk dishing out some kind of Indian delicacy, while women plied the crowd with buckets of what looked like Indian Chex-Mix.  My landlord's family was sitting in a line in front of the house in traditional Indian dress with their heads covered, while the crowd buzzed about them.  I must have had a puzzled look on my face, because the woman standing next to me began to explain...

Tomorrow, apparently, is the birthday of the founder of Sikhism and first of the 10 celebrated Sikh Gurus, Guru Nanak.  The day before his birthday, a procession is organized which is led by the Panj Pyaras (Five Beloved Ones). They head the procession carrying the Sikh flag, known as the Nishan Sahib and the Palki (Palanquin) of Sri Guru Granth Sahib. They are followed by teams of various singers singing hymns (check) and bands playing different tunes (check), and devotees sing the chorus (check).  The leaders also spread the message of Guru Nanak (I assume that what they were saying, so check).  

So it looks like my morning wake-up call was the equivalent of the Macy's Thanksgiving Day Parade, only without the 40 foot Underdog balloon and in better weather.