Sunday, June 18, 2006

Gurudwara in Austria

I am a cultural boy. Plus good singer. (At least I believe so, but
many people don't .. Ramjane is one of them, and Mangla feels he
can give tough competition to me in this!) And on the top of
everything, I am a stage boy , more of a performer than an
spectator. hehehe. Lots of self boasting. Now the actual point.
The other day when we went to the sole Indian shop here in
Klagenfurt (atleast till now I haven't found any other), I asked the
guy there if there was any Indian cultural organization there
because I wanted to spread Indian culture here. He told that there
was a Gurudwara.

This Sunday we set out to that place. We asked the driver of a bus for the number of the bus which could take us there. And I was literally touched by his reply. He said, "Bus no. 45 will take you to India" . That was not just humorous but nice of him as well. Though these Germans don't know even english much , but he knew a thing like temple means something Indian. He knew the word
temple but not gurudwara.

We finally reached there. That did not look like a gurudwara.
I mean it resembled like any other Austrianhouse in Klagenfurt.
But we could identify the place by the presence
of many sardars. Infact, there were very few sardars, most of them
had normal hair , but covered theier heads with some holy cloth.
They offered us coke when we just reached there. It was all modern
(or Austrian !!) version of Gurudwara. In place of some sweet water
that in offered in India, they gave us this! But the hospitalities
of those people was as warm as those of any other sikh, whether
Indian or in any part of the world. I was going there only second
time. I didn't know the rituals. So were my other friends, quite
unaware of the things . In fact one of them was from AP. Pavan Kumar.
He could not anyway understand any thing there. But people explained
us the things. We did not at all fell that we were meeting them for
the first time. Then was the time for langar, which we mainly went
there for!!!. We didn't cook good food. And Indian food here is not
just costly but rare also. Rare, because there is only one indian
restaurant here. That explains the expensive nature also. One samosa
costs some 5 euros!! So we were dying to have indian homemade food.
We really ate the food voraciously. After the food they even dropped
us at our place. Everything was unbelievable. They even offered
food for the dinner, and gave us a jug for that. We could not have
that experience even in India I guess. One funny thing was also
noticed. An old Austrian man and his wife also came there. Man
didn't know how to sit in Indian style for such occasion!! he was
sitting as if sitting for loo. The old woman was no less funny. She
put some 'chunni' around her, some sikh custom, and sat with sikh
ladies with her tiny purse. Finally we left with very warm feelings.

1 comment:

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