Skip to main content

Posts

Habhae saak koorraavae ddithae: The Slow Snap of a Family Branch

By March 2020, the pandemic had pushed us into close quarters, all of us adjusting to the chaos of a full house. Our son had moved back home. He wasn’t asking for anything - just a place to sleep while he worked hard to build his future. He was paying his share of bills, including his portion of the family plan and his auto insurance. That was the month his car insurance was up for renewal. He had always been on our family plan—it was cheaper, predictable, and made sense for his income. But for months, his father had been insisting that he separate his insurance from ours. He said it was “time,” though his urgency seemed to come from something deeper than finances. Our son tried to do what his father asked. He got quotes. He researched options. He tried to be responsible. When he showed the numbers to me, the truth was obvious: a separate policy was far too expensive for someone earning what he was. I made a simple, practical decision. I told him to stay on the family plan ...
Post a Comment
Read more
Recent posts

Habhae saak koorraavae ddithae: The Slow Unraveling Before the Shattering Point

In the summer of 2016, when our son graduated from university and our younger daughter finished high school, my father-in-law came from India to stay with us. What began as a happy time quickly shifted. When our son quietly told us he no longer wished to keep his unshorn beard,he wanted to trim. I approached it with compassion. His father, however, reacted with confusion and frustration, asking, “Then why keep the hair at all?” Though he asked our son to wait until his grandfather returned to India, the deeper message was clear - he was more concerned about appearances than our son’s spiritual journey. Instead of guiding him with love, he withdrew, leaving me to support our son alone. During those months, I cared for my father-in-law daily, making his meals and ensuring he took his medication. When he once preferred cold milk, I gave it to him - something the children also drank. My husband saw this and publicly accused me of trying to harm his father. Even after realizing he had mis...
Post a Comment
Read more

Habhae saak koorraavae ddithae: Financial Strain Exposes Deeper Cracks

In early 2020, before the pandemic changed everything, our problems had already begun quietly tightening around us. Our Parent PLUS loans had reached their peak after our youngest started her final semester at NYU that January. Two-thirds of my take home pay was going straight toward loan payments. Every month felt like walking a tightrope. And then, somehow, our son’s compassion became twisted into a reason for conflict. One evening, I sat down with our son and explained the truth. Our finances were stretched so thin that even basic expenses felt uncertain. He listened quietly, thinking. Then, with a kindness far beyond his years, he offered something I never expected. “Mamma, I can help. I’ll stop paying my student loans and cover the Parent PLUS payments until you don’t need me anymore.” He was already paying his own loans, yet he still stepped forward, willing to support the family. It was one of those rare moments when a child’s character reveals itself with clarity and grace...
Post a Comment
Read more

Habhae saak koorraavae ddithae: The Distance Between “US”

April 2020 His way of coping was so different from me. While the house filled with tension and uncertainty, he slipped into his own world. He left home to serve food at the Gurdwara Sahib with the United Sikhs team; noble, meaningful work, but work he chose to do alone. He attended AKJ Zoom programs by himself, even though sangat had always been something we shared. What hurt me wasn’t the seva or his spirituality. I admired his willingness to show up for the community during a time of crisis. What hurt was the solitude he wrapped around them. The choice to go without me. To not even ask if I wanted to join. I needed sangat too but I was left outside the circle. To assume I wouldn’t be interested, or that I didn’t need the same spiritual grounding in a moment when everything around us felt unstable. I needed the stability of community, especially while carrying the emotional load of a household under stress. Our marriage began to feel like two people walking in circles, each orb...
Post a Comment
Read more

Habhae saak koorraavae ddithae: How a Pandemic Pulled Us Apart

March 2020 Content warning: family conflict, emotional stress, pandemic trauma In March 2020, when the world shut down because of COVID-19, our house went from quiet to crowded almost overnight. For the first time in years, all of our children were back under the same roof. What should have felt comforting instead felt suffocating. One daughter was already home, our son returned abruptly after offices closed, and our youngest came home from New York City, carrying the trauma of three and a half years of life in a city under siege. She quarantined herself, withdrawn and fragile, and even simple acts of closeness, like a hug, were impossible. The very real fear and stress of the pandemic created an invisible wall between us. With five adults in one house, we divided the rooms like territories, each person carving out their own space to work, sleep, and cope. Physically together, but emotionally distant, our interactions became fragmented. Doors that used to be open stayed shut, a...
Post a Comment
Read more

Violence Against Women: What does Guru Ji say?

November 25th is the international Day for the elimination of violence against women. This day was recognized by the General Assembly of United Nations in 1999 with a view too raising public awareness of violations of the rights of the women, why was this step deemed necessary? In many cultures women are viewed and treated as inferior or as second class citizens. Prejudices against them are deep rooted. Gender based violence is an on going problem even in the so-called developed world. According to former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan ““Violence against women is global in reach, and takes place in all societies and cultures,” he said in a statement marking the International Day for the Elimination of Violence against Women. “It affects women no matter what their race, ethnicity, social origin, birth or other status may be.” It is a shameful fact of life that is invisible in the society. Council of Europe estimates that 1 in 4 European women suffer from domestic violence. According to...
Post a Comment
Read more

Southern Calif. Solidarity with Farmers Rally

Email from a friend: All of you are really busy and it is COVID-19 times as well. Many of you in California have been receiving the Pfizer vaccine that just arrived here last week as you are on the front lines of taking care of those in hospitals. Second semester just ended and I have been following the Protests by Farmers who have been camping in the cold on Delhi's Borders. The songs, the poetry, the stories that are unfolding including the unpacking of the Disputed Laws that have stirred this uprising have absorbed me. We are far away, yet due to technology we are connected in ways never possible before-not even during the 1980’s. I have been reading up on the research articles, listening to news reports from various channels and opposing views, you tube interviews of farmers from Haryana, Rajasthan, Maharashtra and even Gujarat (today), viewpoints from Bengal and trying to get to the facts. I must say that I have enjoyed listening to a newly created song on the protest in H...
Post a Comment
Read more