The Sikh Bulletin

The Sikh Bulletin cyq-vYswK 539 March-April 2007
affiliation of its recipients. Our guide's chorus was, "Man,
woman, color, caste, community," meaning you will be fed
here regardless of how you fit into any of those
classifications. This spirit of inclusion and equality is
reinforced by the kitchen's adherence to vegetarianism, not
because Sikhs are vegetarian, but because others who visit
may be, and by serving no meat, they exclude nobody. The
Langar receives funding from wealthier members of the
community and through small donations at the temple. Every
day they serve chapati and lentil dal, supplemented with
vegetables when donations come in from local farmers. On
our visit there were ruby-colored carrots -- the short, knobby
type we see only at a farmer's market and never at a grocery -
- and huge bunches of leafy dark greens, clearly fresh from
the ground.
The preparations take place in an open air building with stone
floors which has been arranged with several preparation
stations. In one area, men and women sit together around a
huge rectangular platform covered in dough. They roll balls,
flatten them into circles, and pile them up to pass over to the
griddle built into the floor, where only men sit around with
long flippers, turning the white slabs of dough over and over
until they acquire dark brown speckles, at which point they
flick them off the heat and onto a cloth. A little boy stacks
them up, plops them into a woven basket, and carries them to
a metal pot around four or five feet in diameter and nearly
taller than him. Everything is magnified ten-fold. One
member of our group called the place "psychadelic."
To stir the vegetables in the wok they use a shovel -- the kind
you'd used to dig a hole or shovel snow; the ladle for the
lentil pot probably has a one-quart capacity; and the wash
basins look more like bathing tubs at an ancient bathhouse
than dish sinks, with high cement walls around a long,
shallow pool. A row of volunteers sits on the ground near the
washing area cleaning off metal plates by hand and passing
them to the basins for rinsing. Stacked plates pile up along
one side, ready for the next seating of eaters. We were invited
to join the next round for lunch, so we took seats on the
ground on a long row of mats as people filtered in and filled
in around us. There were probably 500-600 people present,
all assembled within less than five minutes. Down the rows
came several volunteers with stacks of clean plates. Next
came men with metal pails of dal, ladling a helping onto each
plate.
Finally a parade of baskets piled with chapati traveled past
open hands. Everybody waited patiently for the plates to fill,
and then seemingly by unspoken consensus, people made a
quick gesture of blessing and began to eat. The plates were
not overflowing and the food was not colorful, but it was
delicious, hot, salty, spicy and fresh; and the parade of dal
and chapati continued until everyone had had their fill. More
volunteers collected used plates from satiated diners and in a
short time, the crowd began to disperse. There was no
lingering over this meal; another round would soon be under
way.
We returned along the rear of the temple, where people
lined up for the last bite of the visit: a warm, cookie doughlike
substance made of flour, butter and sugar which is
handed out in little lumps on banana leaf dishes, and eaten
as a blessing. After receiving the sweet, people headed
down to huge pool where they splashed hands and face and
took a drink of what is considered holy water. The pool is
filled with carp, which someone told us keeps the water
clean (needless to say, the Westerners in our group didn't
partake in this final phase).
The Gurwara Bangla Sahib langara has been feeding Delhi
residents since 1935. Day in and day out a factory of human
hands churns out what one member of our group observed
as a day's peace of mind for hungry members of the
community. "If you get your day's meal," he said, "you can
relax. You can survive." It's not a matter of survival for
everyone who eats there -- in fact, most people with whom
we shared lunch looked happy and healthy, and had
probably come as members of the spiritual community. But
it's there for anyone who needs it, and in a city of 13 million
(and rapidly growing), an open, organized, clean, reliable,
and free food source couldn't be more valuable. It's a great
testament to the stability of a well-organized grassroots
effort. While countless hours pass in board rooms and over
policy debates to establish government-subsidized and NGO
programs for feeding the hungry, a crew of volunteers at
Gurwara Bangla Sahib feeds thousands upon thousands of
their neighbors with no intervention, no fuss, and no strings
attached.
Comments posted by the readers:
This is a traditional version of Food Not Bombs; this model
is practiced by anarchists around the world. Posted by:
Robin Ronne on March 1, 2007.
Langar (Punjabi: lMgr) is the term used in the Sikh religion for the
free, vegetarian-only food served in a Gurdwara and eaten by
everyone sitting as equals. The Sikh Langar or free kitchen was
started by the first Sikh Guru, Guru Nanak. It is designed to uphold
the principle of equality between all people of the world regardless
of religion, caste, color, creed, age, gender or social status. In
addition to the ideals of equality, the tradition of Langar expresses
the ethics of sharing, community, inclusiveness and oneness of all
humankind. "..the Light of one Universal God is in all hearts."
Click the following for more info:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Langar. Posted by: JangPartap Singh
on March 1, 2007.
There was a wonderful piece on these kitchens on the BBC
radio 4 food programme a few months back. They were
visiting a Sikh community in England but it was being
explained that everyone was welcome and everyone was
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