Just take the A312..

Just take the A312..

Went down to London on Saturday (30/04/05) and it turned out to be a wicked day. It was pretty straight forward getting there until we came to the A312.. It seems that to get anywhere down there you need to take the A312 and so its simply a case of guessing which A312 to take (we had to take it to get to Hounslow, then again to go towards Hayes, and again when going towards Southall..). Went down to Akhand Jaap 8, it’s a really good idea and the turnout for it was pretty good. The slot between 12.15 and 1.00 was really good :-D in fact that’s what I went down for.

Met Himmat, Gurpreet Penj and Gurps down there and ended up having a really good time. Went and checked out the Sikh school in Hayes and to my surprise it turned out to be more than a shed! To be honest it’s well impressive.. We gate crashed someone’s Karmai thing and had Langar there.

Also went and checked out that massive Gurdwara at Havelock Rd. It’s an amazingly big building and has some good features such as underground parking and notices telling women to look after their ‘paras[an]’ but on the whole it seemed like an empty shell to me. It has the potential to be something amazing yet nothing hit me as I walked. Maharaaj’s presence makes up for the lack of atmosphere though.

One weird thing there though the mini ‘Akhand Paath cubicle’ things where there are people in little boxes on display doing Paath’s, it kind of takes away the point of having a Akhand Paath. In the past people said there’s no point in having an Akhand Paath it you’re not going to do it yourself but at least people got to hear the Paath being done. In those boxes its like there is a Paath being done yet no one can hear it or anything, kind of defies the point in my opinion..

As it was a hot day, my sister and I decided to get a drink from the Langar hall (which reminded me of a canteen) and we had ribena in plastic mugs that was extremely watered down (we may have pulled a few faces whilst drinking it). So as I walked towards where you leave the used utensils a lady walked up to us and said ‘don’t bother drinking your tea if you don’t like it, don’t know who made it anyway’ which was really funny as we weren’t even drinking tea, unless tea down there is meant to be purple!

While this was going on Gurps had gone to put his shoes on, and as we had not come out he came into the Langar hall looking for us and was complaining about how long we were taking, so we went off to put our shoes on, but I thought it would be funny to go back into the Langar hall and sit there until he came looking again. So Penj, my sister and I went back in and sat there waiting for him. A few minutes later in walked Gurps looking abit shocked and annoyed (sorry Gurps..) and as we saw him we all turned and waved, have to say it was one of the best moments of the day.

Went back to Martindale Gurdwara Sahib after that and chilled there for a while. We went into a room around the back at one point where a guy was playing his sitar and Gurps was playing the tabla with him, they were both was really good.. Then Penj gave us a few lines from a Shabad (Hae Gobi(n)dh Hae Gopaal) and played the theme tune from the Rugrats which was all brilliant..

After that we had Langar, said our goodbyes to everyone (dropped Gurps off at home and met his parents) and headed off back home to Wolves (aka SATYUG).