Rain couldn’t stop Sikhs and other community members from around Whatcom County and southern Canada from attending the Vaisakhi festival in Lynden on Saturday, April 27.
The festival, hosted at Guru Nanak Gursikh Gurdwara Sahib, was to celebrate one of the holiest days in the Sikh religion. Vaisakhi marks the formal establishment of the religion as well as the formation of the Khalsa, or the pure ones.
Vaisakhi can be traced back to 1699 when Guru Gobind Singh, the 10th guru, founded the Khalsa community with five volunteers who were declared Khalsa and dedicated their lives to Sikh principles.
Throughout the day, attendees prayed, honored their holy book, the Guru Granth Sahib, ate food and met with friends and family.
For Mansheel Chawla, the best part of the day was when children demonstrated the Sikh martial art known as Gatka. She pointed to children dressed in yellow robes with swords and shields.
“There’s hard work and everything the teachers teach the little kids, they’re doing it,” the 21-year-old from Bellingham said.
Chawla’s friend Theo O’Brien, who had never been to Vaisakhi, enjoyed the martial arts display. The 25-year-old said it was cool to see a different experience from how they had been raised going to church.
“I’m enjoying it far more than church,” they said.
As the kids practiced Gatka and the rain let up, a large float decorated in flowers and colorful shades of yellow, orange and blue — the main colors of Sikhism — was pulled on a tractor through the Guru Nanak Gursikh Gurdwara Sahib compound.
Hymns were aired from speakers as a priest fanned a feather over the Guru Granth Sahib to protect it from dust and dirt and to signify its holy significance.
Vaisakhi is similar to Christmas, Aman Kaur said, and it offers a chance for her to pass on Sikh history to her three children.
“I want my kids to know about their background, their roots and where they came from,” she said, noting the many obstacles Guru Gobind Singh faced.
With any religious holiday, food was also central to the celebration. Tents handed out free samosa piled with chickpea curry, fried fritters, a drink mixed with fresh sugar cane, mint and other Punjabi cuisine.
Inderjit Singh, 25, said the food offered at the festival isn’t always made at home every day, and that most people come for the food.
The Bellingham filmmaker has been coming to the Lynden celebration since he was in sixth grade. Aside from the food, he looks forward to reconnecting with friends.
“Just seeing people I haven’t seen in a long time,” he said. “Most of the time you don’t really get to see people since they’re busy in their everyday lives.”
Annie Todd is CDN’s criminal justice/enterprise reporter; reach her at annietodd@cascadiadaily.com; 360-922-3090 ext. 130.
