INSIDE THE GURU'S GATE - Anpere

ery, unless she falls ill or for some reasons needs or wants to get back earlier to work
or household duties. 595 The period of confinement is commonly called chilla, which
literally means “the fortieth” or “period of forty days”, even if the modern life-style
allows women to shorten it to three, two, and sometimes only one week. In any case
the period of chilla, whether it comprises forty days or less, implies that woman
should not enter the cooking area of the house, not touch kitchen utensils or prepare
food for others, and is encouraged to remain at home before she has undergone purification
rites. She is to control social relations and the intake of food to protect both
herself and the child who are sensitive to diseases and malevolent influences.
As the woman is bodily weak and considered impure during the period of confinement,
relatives will feed her the first weeks, preferably with food that is believed
to have a “hot” effect (panjiri) on organs of the body, such as lentils, onions, garlic,
egg-plant, and eggs. “Hot” food is believed to restore the woman’s loss of blood during
labor and provide her more energy for breast-feeding. Within the household the
family will also keep separate utensils for the women in order to shield other family
members from pollutions. 596 A few Sikhs of Khatri and Baniya origin said they observed
chhati ‒ a ceremony which originally, as the name implies, was celebrated on
the sixth day after delivery. 597 On this day the mother and the child are bathed and
dressed in new clothes from the maternal grandmother’s house. The family invites
relatives to the house to see and celebrate the baby and serve the guests sweeten food.
During the forty-day period the mother will take several baths (ishnana), which
should occur on the more auspicious odd numbered dates. Depending upon her state
of health and family traditions, the first bath, which is always in hot water and includes
a hair wash, is carried out either on the 3 rd , 5 th , 7 th or the 13 th day after delivery.
Subsequently the woman will have three to four additional baths before the period of
seclusion is ended: the second bath commonly occurs on the 11 th or 13 th day and the
third on the 21 st . When chilla culminates on the fortieth day the mother should take
one more cleansing bath and undergo a ritualized purification which will conclude
the period of impurity and re-incorporate her into the social life. On that day the
family will invite the granthi to the house (and sometimes the group of five men representing
the panj pyare or any other Amritdhari Sikhs) to distribute kirpanvala amrit,
that is, the nectar water stirred with the dagger and over which the first five verses of
JapJi Sahib have been recited. The granthi prepares the amrit in the gurdwara before a
visit to the family house and keeps the sweetened water in a covered steel box to
595
In former days the extent of the seclusion and ritual observances after child birth were related
to local caste traditions and the sex of the child. In Rawalpindi, for instance, the mother was
tended to for a total period of forty days in cases where she had given birth to a son, but if the
child was a girl only for twenty-one days (Rose 1999(1919): 748). Among urban Sikhs in Varanasi
today most women seem to be given freedom to freely choose whether they want to fulfill a total
period of forty days or return back to work or household duties when they feel recovered.
596
Some families follow a custom of giving the mother a thin gruel (daliya) up to the 11 th day
after delivery and on the same day invite family and friends to receive gifts as a good omen.
597
See Rose 1999 (1919): 751, 770.
355
Published on www.anpere.net in May 2008