Shabash!, comes highly recommended. It is one of the very favourite books among the students in my Gurmat class.

Shabash! is the story of the Sikh boy and his family who live in a small town in B.C., and the things that happen when he decides that he wants to join an ice hockey team - Canada’s national sport - to be the first putka-wearing youngster on the team. The tale follows the developments in Rana’s household, where, first, his father is reluctant to allow Rana to join.

It shows the youngster’s fierce pride, how he insists on being called "Rana" and not "Ron" by the other players, how he works hard to earn his position on the team-goalie.

In Shabash! we also see the very natural reactions of his teammates to this outsider who - at first - seems so different from them, and with the coach’s gentle guiding hand, how they come to accept and respect Rana, win or lose, as a valued member of their team.

Then there is the ugly face of adult prejudice, the kind that exists in one form or another everywhere, the kind Rana’s father had wished his son would not have to come to grips with so soon. Shabash! provides some valuable object lessons in dealing with discrimination’s inhuman face.

Rana is not perfect. When a couple of hooligans attack the town’s Gurdwara, Rana is not above blaming all whites for the deed and taking his revenge on the team, but Rana too learns to see with new eyes, that all people are not alike and that people of any race can be indeed helpful and good.

Shabash! is a wonderful tale for youngsters finding their way, preserving their identity and self-respect in a foreign culture. It is a heart-warming tale of friendship, growing up and understanding. For youngsters in the diaspora, it may be just the thing.

The colonial period in Punjab, like the catastrophic Partition that marked its end, is a vast topic, difficult to appreciate in its entirety, multilayered and complex. In her new book What The Body Remembers, Shauna Singh Baldwin takes us on a journey starting at the primeval starting point, the Punjabi village, little changed over the millennia, and ventures with us on an enchanting and insightful trek not quite to the present.

We see that early world through the eyes of Roop, an aspiring young Sikh women in Pari Darveza, a tiny place located somewhere in the past, somewhere in the old, undivided Punjab. Her mother dies when she is still young, Her father, the lambardar, is a newly staunch Sikh caught in the winds of communal self-consciousness. He is somewhat enlightened, yet still considerably bound by tradition and the fear of public opinion, and especially protective of Roop, his youngest daughter. Roop chafes at home in virtual purdah until there is an offer of marriage to a wealthy zamindar - as his second wife!

From here, the story takes off. Roop learns to see the larger world through the eyes of her childless co-wife and her new husband, a civil servant high up in the Irrigation Department. Like Sita, she is tested. Her fear of rejection, of being sent back home, is always at the front of her mind. Meanwhile, with the world in ferment all around them, everything changes. Relationships change. Roop, her co-wife and husband - they all change.

Shauna Kaur, born in Montreal, Canada and living in Milwaukee, in the north central United States, is already the winner of numerous prestigious prizes in the US, Canada and India for her short stories. In this longer work she does a masterful job of picking up the subtle, hidden agendas that determine so much of the human condition. By turns, and with surprising good humour, and sometimes gut-wrenching irony, she has a go at what is generally considered best life alone and not open to discussion: the potentially destructive obsession with izzat; the self-centredness of much that passes for religion; the racist presumptions of the British in India; the "divide and rule" policies that made the bloody Partition virtually inevitable; and the utter ineffectiveness of the Sikh leadership in doing anything about it.

There are heroes and villains on every side, and that is what makes What The Body Remembers such a delightful, realistic and uplifting read. This one book does more than a great many lectures to enlighten and inspire a general interest in the Sikh view of life. For this alone, the very gifted Sardarni deserves a saropa. "Bole So Nihal….!"

The Bhakti movement in the Middle Ages and the rich literary crop it produced might be considered important parts of Indian history and sociology. The wave, with its direct contact between the devotee and divinity, overcame the myriad barriers of caste and community. There was a popular and egalitarian implication that appealed to the common man. The movement, like the Protestant Reformation in Europe, gave a fillip to the development of several vernacular languages.

The three poets whose selected works are translated in this anthology are Annamacharya, Purandaradasa and Kanakadasa. All three lived round about 1500, when the Vijayanagara empire was at its peak and the South saw a flourish of Indian culture. They were contemporaries or so of the great Northern saints, such as Kabir, Guru Nanak. Annamacharya wrote in Telegu, Purandaradasa, in Kannada.Their songs indicate rich musical composition and Purandaradasa, in fact, has been hailed as one of the fathers of Karnataka music. All three were Vaishnavas and Purandaradasa, if not the others, belonged to the Haridasa sect. Most of the songs are addressed to Vishnu or Narayana in his various incarnations, as Rama, Krishna and all the rest. Some poems stress the essential monotheism. At the same time, despite the famed Hindu tolerance, a few poems display certain intolerance. There are hints that Vishnu is superior to other gods and that even the great Ganesha is the servant. Kanakadasa speaks tongue in check about the Shaivite worship of the linga and warns the worshippers of three-eyed god not to belittle Vishnu. Purandaradasa considers the Madhava sect superior to others, even among Vaishnavas.

Annamacharya and Purandaradasa were Brahmins and, as such, considered traditionally fitted for a spiritual calling. The only obstacle in their paths consisted of the objections of their families, who wanted their songs to follow the path of a normal householder. In the case of Annamacharya, his mother made the knot doubly strong by marrying him to two wives at once. According to Jackson, this proved a blessing in disguise, since the saint poet had an opportunity of studying the details of feminine nature and cultivating the Gopi-type of Krishna worship. We do not know if the wives found the arrangement equally congenial. After all, even Radha was capable of jealousy.

Kanakadasa, on the other hand, belonged to the Kuruba tribe of hunters and herdsmen. His father had been an officer of Vijayanagar and he himself saw active service in the army. A man of such a background was not expected or welcomed into the charmed circle of saints and sadhus. Kanakadasa breached the barrier because of an irresistible call from God or, in modern terms, an intense psychological mystical crisis. But the divine mandate did not seem unquestionable to upper caste people, many of whom hostile to Kanakadasa. Even his own chosen guru initially rejected him, as Dronacharya had rejected Ekalavya, Kanakadasa, it is said, succeeded in removing such objections by displaying supernatural power. More likely, it was his character and talent that won the day. Kanakadasa, perhaps, is a typical product of the bhakti movement, like the weaver saint, Kabir or Ravidasa. The effect on poetry is also interesting. Kabir, in a famous song, uses images concerning the weaving and dyeing of cloth, in order to describe the fabric of human life. Kanakadasa, of the herdsman tribe, similarly, sees death as a wolf preying on the herd of mankind.

The poetry gathered in the anthology is evidently of a high order and this comes through even in the tricky medium of translation. Jackson declares in his Introduction that he has deliberately adopted a modern, racy, colloquial form of English in order to convey the sprit of the original. Such terms as "King Snoopy" (to describe a dog), "I. O. U.", "service industry", "Yo Boatman" are used. The result is quite successful. The various images of food, animals or jewels are used to express the joy and beauty of spiritual life, while adding on earthy, everyday, life flavour to the songs and poetry. Activities such as trading, money lending are brought in to connote allegories of spiritual activity, in a negative or positive sense. The hard necessities of life are not ignored. A song by Purandaradasa declares caustically that all mundane work, farming trade, fighting as a soldier is carried on "for the belly and for a scrap of cloth". Only worship of the divine is free, selfless. The reality of a caste, class and gender are also reflected in the poetry, mystical though it is. A widow, we are told, needs no jasmine scented oil, since her head is customarily shaven. On the other hand, a tribal girl rejects such oil, since her hair is naturally fragrant. In the some way, she preferred leaf robes to a sari and the earth to a soft bed. (A song by Annamacharya). Kanakadasa, not ashamed of his humble beginnings, wrote a song: "We are the Kuruba shepherd folk".

Some of the poems reveal the negative side of monastic life with surprising frankness. People who are confined within four walls, always together, sometimes tend to get on each other’s nerves. Moreover, despite the leveling tendencies inherent in the bhakti movement the hierarchy within a religious community sometimes reflected that of outside world. A poem by Purandaradasa portrays jealousy within an ashram, rivalry for the guru’s favour, contempt for the low caste Kanakadasa. We are reminded of Browning’s poem, Soliloquy in a Spanish Cloister. There re also a number of poems decrying a "holier than thou" attitude, a Tartuffe like religious hypocrisy.

The poems express the characteristic sentiment of love and longing for the divine, intense desire to merge with him occasional abhimana (there is no English word for this) when the boon is refused. There are references to the many lilas of Rama and Krishna. A poem in which Jashoda looks into the mouth of the child Krishna to see if he is eating mud and discovers the universe has dramatic climax. It resembles a Hindi Bhajan on related theme. Somewhat surprisingly, there are no references to Radha. The god’s amorous lila is directed towards Lakshmi, the divine concert and Rukmi, the chief queen of Krishna in the Mahabharata. Of course, they are all parts of the same mystical whole. The god also needs human devotion. We recall the Rabindra Sangeet, "without me, O Lord of three world, your love would have been in vain".

In the long, sensitive and scholarly Introduction, Jackson discusses the social and psychological implications of the bhakti movement, the need to love, serve, and give oneself without reserve. He makes a somewhat conventional East West comparison. Unity versus disjunction, emotional and spiritual exploration versus material progress and enlightenment type rationalism. But medieval Christianity, too, contained bhakti-like elements. Witness St. Francis, St. Theresa, etc. Why, then, did the Enlightenment triumph in the West, though now it seems to be beating a retreat?

The poems, naturally contain many references to Indian mythology, particularly the great epics. There are also terms like the "six enemies" i.e. the six cardinal vices, the "fourfold army", i.e. the traditional Indian Chaturanga army, with infantry, cavalry, elephants and chariots. A few explanatory, notes might have helped the foreign reader.

The author has presented a moving and thought provoking work. If life is merely a dream, in which the beggar turns prince, then falls back to his old state, as one of the poems state, it has at least been painted here with brilliant colours.

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This Album-size 108-page souvenir, is studded with breathtakingly beautiful pictures of the celebrated Golden Temple and the hallowed Five Takhts of Sikhs, even as it commemorates the historic occasion of the tercentenary of Khalsa Panth. Published in the context of the first All India Seminar, in March 1999, on the comprehensive theme: "The Creation of the Khalsa & Indian Culture", it represents a unique offering by the Madurai Kamaraja University, situated in the historic city of Madurai, in deep South.

Besides the customary Messages of goodwill and greetings, right from President of India to the Archbishop of Madrai, the Souvenir’s substantive section provides the serious reader with erudite and informative articles by many eminent authors. The anthology included classical essays by the legendary Prof. Puran Singh, Dr. Balbir Singh, Niharranjan Ray and Jagjit Singh, followed with other scholarly writings by contemporary scholars.

The Khalsa: Idea & Identity, by Dr. N. Muthu Mohan, and Sikhism & social Liberation by the celebrated Tamil poet, Ponneelam, as also Dr. S. Lourdunathan’s "Perspective of a Theology of Liberation in Sikhism", And "Ecosophia in The Sikh Tradition", represent a high watermark of evocative writings by non-Sikh scholars in the present day context.

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Iqbal Qaisar is a noted Punjabi writer and historiographer. His latest work: "Historical Sikh Shrines in Pakistan" is a praiseworthy attempt. It is the first book of its kind in which 175 historical Sikh Gurdwaras, Shrines, Samadhis, etc. have been researched and illustrated. It is in a sense a treasure house of Sikh heritage as well as a work of history. The book is printed on fine art paper in Gurmukhi, Shahmukhi script and English. The author has worked with missionary zeal to revive interest in Sikh Shrines in Pakistan to its historical, religious and cultural perspective. Prior to this work he has published certain remarkable books in Punjabi viz: Pattar Tanvan Tanvan, Raj Karega Khalsa, Ratan Hoiyan Vaddian, Suba Sarhad Ke Khan Vadere and Dhundla Chanan. Currently, he is busy writing a history of Lahore.

Iqbal Qaisar’s contribution could be judged from the fact that he mistrusts Sikhs’ ability to preserve the great heritage of their Gurus and devoted Sikhs before it is too late. There are many Shrines which came into limelight for the first time, according to Iqbal Qaisar, "this work is being published at a time when we have completed 50 years of our independence and the Sikh nation would be celebrating their 300th birthday in the year 1999. I present this work as a gift on behalf of my nation to the Sikh Khalsa on its 300th Birthday - I dedicate this book to the close ideological harmony that exists between Baba Farid and Sat Guru Nanak Devji.

It is worthwhile here to quote the lines of Jameel Ahmed Paul, Editor "Sver International, Lahore: "without paying heed to the hardness of weather, travelling hundred of miles, to discover the places which are fading from the surfaces of earth, take pictures, to collect information, and then match it with books, it all seems as if someone is walking barefoot on thrones. Honey bee collects one drop of honey after smelling thousands of flowers and, in my opinion, Iqbal Qaiser - and honey bee - are both alive as regards their work."

The album-book is fine treatise which preserves our heritage - and fulture of the Sikh faith - in its historical perspective. From the core of my heart, I welcome this beautiful book by a non-Sikh historian for all global libraries.

Prolific writer and occasional contributor to The Sikh Review, Sr. Joginder Singh has crossed a milestone in his literary journey by assembling and publishing a delightfully readable book of random thoughts and intimate experiences of the moral and spiritual realms. Embellished with the inspiring quotations, and several colour pictures, the title is equally a tribute to the Hemkunt Press - known for books on moral science, school texts, and Sikh history. The mellifluous prose (for which the author is already known to readers of this Journal) enhances the readability of a score and more of pithy short essays, that make even esoteric themes shimmirmgly vivid, even as we share the author’s experience and partake of the life’s mystery and magic in a typically Sikh idiom.

"Poetry to her is a reflection of the spiritual realms of Nature and a defined manifestation of God. The Blue Saga is a worthy tribute to the heroic spirit of the Khalsa which the Tenth Guru brought to a state of readiness… Kamal picks up ten of the most moving and dramatic episodes from the tempestuous and awesome story of Sikhism - of unparalleled sacrifices and martyrdom… She has resurrected those significant moments in a simple, direct but forceful way."

[Excepted from FOREWORD by
Dr. Darshan Singh Maini]