Moving beyond religion

Manpriya Singh

What could be more inclusive than a festival dedicated to celebrating the Sikh community, culture and heritage being brought together by people from the region, from the Diaspora rather than religion?

With the idea to celebrate art, the intention to give a platform to the underrepresented, Sikhlens, the annual Sikh Arts and Film Festival, California, rolls opens its Chandigarh chapter. “It’s the first edition, so this time we were just testing waters, the entry has been free and the response encouraging,” says Ojaswwee Sharma, India head, Sikhlens, while explaining why the inaugural edition has been a one day affair. “There are more than 250 people seated inside for the screening of the documentaries and short film sessions,” he says pointing to the auditorium at the theatre wherein as many as 17 Sikh-centric short films and documentaries have been scheduled, including the opening film Benediction to the concluding Chaurassi (1984).

A guided tour

Right at the entrance, picturesque photographs from the countryside of Punjab play the usher to the venue. Vinod Chauhan, the award-winning photographer and artist behind all the visuals, is happy to share the piece of history that goes behind each of the gurdwaras of Punjab, his own back story that led to his journey lasting four months and 10,000 plus kilometers, the one that took him to 70 villages and 80 gurdwaras.

“It was during the 550th celebrations of Guru Nanak Dev Ji’s Parkash Utsav that I somehow felt something was amiss. Fairs, festivals, every art form, devotees coming together but somebody was yet to visually capture the journey of Guru Nanak Dev Ji,” he shares. The more than hundred photographs displayed at the exhibition, titled Charan Chhoh, take you from the aerial views to the inside views of historical gurdwaras from Sultanpur Lodhi to Amritsar to Fatehgarh Sahib, to Mukstar, to Kapurthala. The Golden Temple remains more clicked, than perhaps all of the historical gurdwaras of Punjab put together, thereby overshadowing the comparatively under-captured villages and gurdwaras of Punjab.

The kite guy

It was in 2002 that Devinder Pal Singh Sehgal read in a newspaper about somebody from Amritsar holding the record for world’s smallest kite. Next year, he himself made it to Limca Book of Records for making a kite measuring 1.65 mm x 1.50mm. “It can actually pass through a pin,” he says before pulling out the needle to actually demonstrate the kite. With an academic background in forensic sciences and a doctorate in chemistry, he ensured that working with a microscope and paying attention to the micro details came easy. “I am a ballistic expert and we are trained to look for firing pin marks at fired cartridges.” But the love for kite flying, he wishes, everybody developed among the youth today.

Meet Almond Singh

While we may have been let in on the process of what led to the smallest kite in the world, Aman Singh Gulati, the Guinness Book of World Record holder for making paintings and portraits on almonds, doesn’t divulge much behind his creative process. “Then I’d be telling you how it’s made,” smiles the 19-year-old while introducing the visitors to his two series on Guru Nanal Dev Ji and the other on Guru Gobind Singh ji and Chaar Sahibzaade. “I searched on Google and literally painting in every medium existed. I wanted to do something unique,” he adds, having been nicknamed as Almond Singh ever since the five years ago he started.

Meanwhile, session two of the film is on. A gurbani calligraphy artist Hardeep Singh is narrating stories of his great grandfather’s elder brother being martyred at the Jallianwala Bagh massacre. “He was a great artist. His pencil sketches were so fine that no one can attempt them even today,” he says, also a part of the short film, Scars, which is on the 100 years of the massacre. Some stories and platforms need to be spread.