An incoming Northwood High School freshman was initiated into the Sikh faith on Saturday in a rite of passage ceremony.
Sitting cross-legged on the floor, a boy with a black beard and a turban cupped his hands to his mouth and led a celebratory call-and-response. "Bole so nihaal," shouted 16-year-old Harmanas Singh in Punjabi, an Indian dialect spoken by members of the Sikh faith. In English, the statement roughly means, "All those who repeat after me will be blessed." Most everyone else packed tight in the Gurdwara, or temple, at the Sikh Center of Orange County on Saturday responded to Singh's traditional greeting in a louder, unified voice. "Sat sri akaal," they said, or roughly, "God is timeless..." Moments earlier, several great uncles of Arjun Singh Ahuja gathered around their nephew at the front of the Santa Ana temple. With slow precision, the men streamed a maroon cloth around the boy's unshorn hair, a requirement of the Indian-born monotheistic faith. The final wrap left a snug-fitting turban atop 14-year-old Arjun, whose full beard belied his young age.
The precocious boy told relatives and friends who attended the rite of passage ceremony not to lavish monetary gifts on him. Instead, the contributions they left behind would go to benefit starving children in Sudan, Burma and other countries in the United Nations World Food Program. By the end of the two-hour ceremony, the altar at the front of the temple overflowed with cash. A family friend, Kanwar Anand, joked that his own kids would have been more inclined to ask for Xbox 360s. "I don't have money, but I have everything I need," said Arjun, an only child who will be starting his freshman year at Northwood High
School in a few weeks. Arjun's father, Gurpreet Singh Ahuja, a head and neck surgeon at Children's Hospital of Orange County, said that Sikhs are compelled to give unselfishly of themselves. Helping others is not charity, he said, but an act that demonstrates all human beings are equals. Such a ceremony, though, is not required for Sikhs, who number about 150,000 in the U.S. In the wake of Sept. 11, 2001, Sikhs have been the target of several violent attacks by those who mistake their turbans for Islamic clothing.
Jasjit Singh Ahuja, Arjun's mother, said she once chased down a group of men who walked by her family outside a fast food restaurant and whispered, "Osamas." She said her only son was "shell-shocked" by the men's action. Still, the boy elected to undergo the rite of passage and don his turban until death to demonstrate his commitment to the faith, he said. Anand, the family friend, explained the importance of upholding Sikh tenets in the U.S., where practitioners of the faith are a visible minority.
"When you're growing up in India, you're surrounded by it. You don't
have to make as much of a conscious effort... but if you don't know
your culture, you're not going to have pride in it."
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