Cultural connect

At a time when getting social means starting up your computer and hooking on to the Internet, it comes as little surprise then that online communities are coming together to celebrate festive occasions and moments.

Gurpurab celebrations go online courtesy social networking sites

At a time when getting social means starting up your computer and hooking on to the Internet, it comes as little surprise then that online communities are coming together to celebrate festive occasions and moments. You could be sitting in Mohali, your cousin could be somewhere in Canada and a maternal aunt in the UK but all of you can be together. Bridging distances and bringing in a cultural bonding are social networking sites, with Orkut being the front-runner when it comes to the Sikh community celebrating Gurpurab online this year.

“Just type in the words Guru Nanak and apart from institutions with the same name, you’ll find an exhaustive list of communities spreading the Guru’s word,” informs Google India’s product manager Rahul Kulkarni, who sees a spurt in the number of “posts” this time around. “Usually scraps, or messages as we call them in the online world increase around festive occasions. What’s heartening is to see more youngsters getting involved,” adds Kulkarni. So you have communities like ‘Guru Nanak Dev Jee’, ‘300 Saal Guru De Naal’, ‘Dhan Guru Nanak Dev Ji – Spread the word’ spearheaded by youngsters that get together to greet and meet in the virtual world.

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Among them is 24-year-old Nidhi Mehra, who has been actively online for a while now. “I have cousins in Canada and the UK and we have always joined in celebrations together through Orkut. More than social networking, it’s also about being there for each other,” tells Mehra, a Punjabi who celebrates all religious festivals spanning across communities. “I have been posting wishes for Gurpurab already and one of my cousins wanted me find out a particular shlok from the Guru Granth Sahib and I just posted him a reply,” Mehra says.

Greetings apart, there’s also another extremely popular activity doing the rounds – this one’s called chanting. Log in to ‘300 Saal Guru De Naal’ and you’ll find a steady stream of members, anywhere between the ages of 18 and 30, logging on and posting ‘Satnam Waheguru’ umpteen times, yes, like a chant. Among them is an engineer from Uttar Pradesh, a teacher from USA to a dentist from South Africa! And just like we would meet locally in a Nagar Kirtan, they are getting together virtually. “It’s like we are one big group. And while most parents think we are just chatting on the Internet, it’s more than that,” 18-year-old Gurjot Kaur makes her point. A part of online forums that discuss the Guru’s teaching, Kaur is among the millions of users out there who are exploring not just their social but spiritual side as well. “If you look at the scraps going around, you’ll see that youngsters are full of questions, many of which are spiritual in nature,” pitches in Kulkarni.

Elsewhere on Facebook, members are already changing their “status lines” to “Wishing you a Happy Gurpurab”. “It best reflects your current state of mind and also of what’s happening around you,” says blogger and voracious Internet user Jaskirat Gill, who has changed hers to ‘Jaskirat is looking forward to Gurpurab’. So are we.