Late Night Reader…
Mar 1st, 2009 by Siri Radha Kaur
One summer I was in charge of the Kitchen at KWTC. It was the first week so we were really busy organizing the kitchen. One night, I finally had some free time so I walked down to Ladies Camp. It was around 11:00 at night and no one was around, so I went in to visit the Guru. Someone was reading from the Akhand Path. I sat down and enjoyed it for a while when all of a sudden the reader looked up at me and asked me if I wanted to read. I was shocked, and almost jumped over the Palki Sahib to keep the sound current going! When the hour was over, no one came to relieve me, nor for the second hour. Around 3:00 AM, someone came in for a visit so I got her to relieve me. I went over to Ram Das Kaur’s tent and asked her, "What’s going on?! How come I wasn’t relieved for so many hours?" Well…as it turns out, the Akhand Path hadn’t even started yet, since it was the very beginning of KWTC. We laughed so hard. I had read for more than four hours!
I think we all probably have “Akhand Path Tales”. My office at SikhNet is in the Gurdwara building so I am normally the first responder during the day when someone rings the bell while reading the akhand path.
Thanks for sharing the story….
Back in the very early days of the Espanola ashram we used to have Akand Paths in “the niche” in the Sadhana Room. I was scheduled to read at 11 PM to midnight. Well, midnight came and no one came to relieve me. Then the next hour no one showed up either. Ringing the bell didn’t help. Even though people slept in the house, no one heard it. And so the night went. The person who was supposed to do wakeup overslept. I ended up reading the whole night!
In the early days of Ahimsa Ashram in DC (I first moved there in ‘72) we also had a “niche” in the sadhana room where we’d read for Akhand Paths.
The single men’s room was a rather gloomy dungeon, called the Nanak Room, in the basement of the brownstone style house that was Ahimsa, and once the men got to sleep down there, *nothing* woke them up!
It wasn’t uncommon, therefore, for someone to actually pick up the volume being read from, walk down to the basement and bang on the Nanak Room’s door while reading loudly the entire time to try to wake up the next reader. But I promise you, it was all done with the utmost respect! or at least as much as we knew how to generate in those days
This is really great to see and read the different experiences of people of other countries and places, their belief for Sikh religion and then the following of the Sikh Maryada is really fabulous.
Thanks for sharing all.
Keep this Up and keep going.
Waheguru Ji Ka Khalsa Shri Waheguru Ji Ki Fateh!!!!
great story, I think for many reading from the Guru is a treasured part of the 3ho experience.