Sewa

All of you know her.  An elderly, tiny, shriveled Khalsa Kaur who seems always to be at every Sikh gathering, but rarely says anything to anyone.  She sits in a corner and keeps to herself, her face expressionless as she does her sewa.  

When I was growing up, there was such an elderly Khalsa Kaur in our sangat.  To me, a young girl, she seemed impossibly ancient, skin wrinkled like a raisin, her teeth often left at home, always dressed in drab colours, her tiny frail body  lost in a chunni that seemed to engulf and swallow her.  She rarely said anything to anyone, quiet, possibly shy and, of course, a widow.  A solitary woman who seemed to almost disappear, unnoticed, into her environment.

She sewed kachera.  Whenever I saw her she was stitching, tiny, even perfect stitches.  To me, being young, I thought she was doing a lot of unnecessary work.  Why not get her a sewing machine?   When I suggested this to Dad, he just gave me a knowing smile and said nothing.  

I decided that if no one else was going to help her, I would.  

So one day, I walked up to her - although I was a bit afraid of her - and said, "Khalsa ji, would you like to have a sewing machine to sew your kachera?"  She stopped her sewing,  looked up at me and did something I had no idea she knew how to do.  She smiled.  A huge, wide, happy smile.  Then she patted the floor beside her, inviting me to sit down beside her, which I did.

Again, she picked up her sewing and began stitching.  That close to her, I could hear her almost silent "Waheguru" with each stitch.  I never again suggested she get a sewing machine.

[Note:  those are pictures of me that I have aged using the magic of Photoshop.  Now I know what I'll look like should I live to be 100.]