Jagjot Singh

Childhood
I was born and raised in Ottawa, to a typical Punjabi family. Parents were not very religious but I think they were just a bit confused about the whole thing. So from a young age my parents had my brothers and my hair cut and they gave the typical reasons, you will not find a job, get teased. The interesting thing is that my dad never cut his hair and hated people of his generation that did it when they came here. Ottawa in those days was basically "Hicksville", and the Sardars would wear hats or cut their hair when outside but to the Gurdwara where these huge Punjabi boat pugs. There were only a few Sardars who actually kept there hair.

So anyways, from A YOUNG I HAD THIS INTEREST IN RELIGION, I WOULD LOVE GOING TO the Gurdwara and listening to the keertan, I remember that my hair on all of my body used to stand up. Whenever I used to see a Sardar I used think wow the pag is so nice, I want to wear one too. So when I went to the Gurdwara I used to bring my turban and ask someone to tie it for me, although I used to look hilarious. In those days we did not have very many keertan tapes, but I used to mumble keertan in my own gibberish language kind of just mumbling to these beautiful tunes and my hair used to stand up but I never knew where those tunes came from.

Also in those days we had the two parts pothi at home and my dad used to read once in a while from them, and he would tie a pag on me I used to love it. I also use to take my dictionaries and school books and pretend I was doing prakas of Guru jee and then take some capree of my moms and cover it then do chaur sahib with a newspaper and keertan play tabla on yogurt containers then sing my gibberish language in those tunes mentioned above then do the gibberish ardas then "sammaptee". So one day I told my dad I am going to keep my hair and to take me to the Gurdwara to get Amrit, he said absolutely not, you are not going to do this thing. So hey I did not do it although I was mad.

So time went on I got more and more longing to wear a pug. And folks we are talking about Ottawa hardly anybody in those days did this. So time went on and I started wearing a pug on weekends and tying my hair up with one of those bands girls use. One day my dad said to me look you either keep your hair or stop this fooling around. During that time there was a huge strike and schools were closed for a month as I remember, the last weekend came around and we found out that we are going back to school I could not sleep I had to make a decision, so with Guru's grace he made me keep my hair. That morning I woke up early tied my red turban, this was in grade 5, and I never wore a patka I tied a full turban, it was not very good but hey what can you do, and headed for school.

Incidentally during this time my brother and sister thought I has lost my marbles, and kept asking me why I would do such a thing, but I had no answer for them. So I am on my way to school. I get there and my two best friends, Cliff and Chi-Chi, break out laughing so hard they fell on the ground. They said hey it's not Halloween it’s the middle of May!!!What are you doing man? So I gave them my explanation it was my religion, I got all the encouraging comments we usually get like "towel head", "turbinator" ,"paki" etc etc. I even got beat up my first week by a bunch of kids. But hey I was happy.

Then we moved from that place to Kanata which is within Ottawa just more west. There were a few Sardars that lived here like I mean the next street close by, so this was great, it was like living in Khalistan, as opposed to where we lived before there weren't any Indians at all except us. So I started doing parkash of the pothies we had although I could not read them and managed to do a bit of paath here and there because my dad told me that you can't just keep the turban and not do paath. Grade 6 was pretty good there was another guy who had pug as well in my school who went on to become my best friend "Harvey" short for Harvinder he lived right up the street from us.

Guru Jee Coming home to be with us!!!

Around this time I started learning keertan from our granthi Giani Subodh Singh, and a bit of tabla. He was really nice to me and encouraged me to learn baanee, I used to be so exited about going to the Gurdwara every Friday because there was a kids program and they would let me do chaur sahib. I wanted to take Amrit badly and wear a Kirpan in these days. In those days there were World Sikh Organization Conferences in Vancouver and they asked my dad that year to attend along with others, so he went. My dad and his friend Ajit Singh Sahota who was one of the few amritdharis at that time went looking around in Vancouver after the conference and visited the first Gurdwara that was ever built there and the granthi told my dad to take this Saroop (pad ched) back and take care of it in your home, my dad thought ok this would be good for us so he agreed and brought it back. We had no idea how to take care of babjee's saroop, he brought it back, and me with my laal turban and my brother who does not keep his hair came to get my dad from the airport, there he was in the Ottawa airport surrounded by hundreds of people with babajees saroop in his lap sitting down, with his warm smile on his face, he knew I would be happy.

So we came home and my dad put babjees saroop on the coach in the living room where only guests sit, he cleared out his walk in closet and put babajee saroop there and told my brother to make a manji. We only had one set of rumalas, and not even any pillows for prakash we took a bunch of kapra and made the manji ready for prakash, this was night time so we would do prakash in the morning. My dad brought me back a tabla so I chuked out my old yogurt containers and started playing on the tabla. So I could not sleep all night. Wow I thought a BABA Jee saroop in our home that's great. I woke up at around 5 am without taking a bath, my dad was so exhausted from traveling he did not wake up, and so I decided to do prakash.

First Prakash

So I thought hey I can do this. The saroop was on a shelf and man it was so heavy, I was only 11 with no muscle at all, and it seemed like it weighed more than me. So I managed to get it to the manji, I started the parkash, I ended up doing parkash the wrong way around like the words facing the wrong way, but I was so over taken by seeing the sarroop that I could not say a word not even say satnam waheguru, I even ended up putting all the rumalas back words, I ONLY NOTICED WHEN I STOOD UP TO MATHA TEK. So we ended up clearing out a room in our home for the baba jee saroop and we did prakash there, keep in mind that I could not speak or read or write Punjabi. My dad sent me to Punjabi school and there is were I learned Punjabi, my teachers name was Mrs. Gidda, she was so nice, she taught me how to read, so I started reading from baba jee saroop, and my mom would correct me when I MADE A MISTAKE AND THEN MY DAD would explain the meaning in his own confusing way, I used to need my mom to translate the translation from my dad. So time went on. I used to do the prakash and sukhasan every day and was very content with service. I use to just sit and do chaur sahib for long time like this.

Receiving Amrit

I had already made up my mind to take Amrit but it was just a matter of time, I needed that Sangat, and Satguru provided just that. In those days there was a camp in Toronto which later closed. But there I learned about Sikhi the real way learned how to properly read nitnem and some of GGS. The first time I went they gave me a Kirpan, I thought man this is great, when I came back home I would wear the Kirpan AT HOME but not at school. The following summer I went back to the same camp and stayed for 2 months were I was blessed with the gift of Amrit and so was my sister. Incidentally after the first I came back, I had to struggle to have all the meat stopped in our home, it was quite a fight at home but in the end they stopped making it, and to this day my elder brother who does not keep his hair does not drink nor eat meat, my sister received Amrit at this time as well. So after receiving the gift of Amrit wow what a gift, I fell so deeply in love with bani when I came back home, I did not want to study just sit and do simran all day. My parents got worried and scolded me into going to school and told me to do this when I got older and to study now, so I only did simran in the morning and evening. I was in grade 7 at this time, and started to where my Kirpan to school the following incident happened at my French-immersion school which is worth mentioning here:

For gym class we had to change to shorts in the change room with all grade 7 and 8 boys and my Kirpan had somehow come loose and was visible one boy shouted what are you wearing? So I explained it to them and they all accepted the fact that I wore it, and used to say" don't bug him he is wearing a sword" jokingly. I showed it to them and they really enjoyed this lesson. On my Kirpan it was written "SS" one boy asked me what it meant. I told him this is one of the biggest kept secrets in the Sikh Panth don't tell any one other wise I will have to punish you. I told him it meant "STAINLES STEEL". We all broke out laughing and this created a really positive environment, I went on to graduate from high school with these same people.

I started to wear a dumala to school around this time but my dad scolded me and made me promise to wear a regular pag when going out, in order not to be branded as a fundamentalist, so from here on in I wore a dumala in fear of my dad’s reaction and the promise I made to him.

So then after that I came into the Sangat of this same camp and learned quite bit. At this time I still was not doing Guru jee's seva properly and there was a quench inside me to learn more about it, which the granthis could not answer. Satguru then again provided the Sangat but this time not in physical form. In those days there was not much Sangat in Ottawa, I had come across the "Sikh International Diary" in that diary there was an ad for satnam trust that they provide books and kakars, and can even send them by mail. I sent away for a list of the books they had, and then ordered these books and kakars. In this package they sent me the book "Gurmat Rehni" by Baba Gurbachan Singh Bhindravale, this was my first meeting with baba jee who would become the very sap of my understanding of Guru Granth Sahib and subsequently a big part of my life. I went on to order many many books which increased my understanding of Sikhi, and allowed to meet many great maha purshes like baba Nand singh, bhae sahib Randheer singh, sant Attar singh mastuana etc through the books they wrote. Because there was no Sangat of Gursikhs here these books of these sants were my Sangat and to this are still my Gursikh Sangat, everything I have learned was from them they all helped me out. Although I had never met them in physical form I felt such pull to those books like I had met someone after a long time. I used to take them to school and read them in the library, and I remember the tears used to roll down my eyes. Baba Gurbachan Singh Jee writes in a lot of detail how to take care of baba jee saroop and I did all of the things he said, and started to do long raihraas. I used to sit with some of my singh friends and we would plan how we would save money leave home and then go to the taksal and fight for Khalistan. God if only we had gone, what a great life this would become, but it was not in the command of god. Around this time our camp had closed and I was in the need of Gursikh Sangat so I found out about the local TO retreats and AKJ, so I started hanging out with them even though I was branded as "Taksali" of which to this day I have no idea what it means. So here I am so many years later still trying to understand this gift of naam. So that pretty much is it, it is a bit long but I thought I should write everything in detail.