Japji Sahib at a truck stop
3:50am at a truck stop outside Moose Jaw, minus four, the engine ticking as it cools. Head covered, phone propped on the dash, I recite Japji Sahib the way my Bapu ji did on the farm in Punjab: slowly, never racing the words.
Out here it's just me, the reefer units humming, and frost on the windshield like lace. People think the road is lonely. Not at amrit vela. Waheguru is in the quiet before the diesel starts.
Then an Ardas for everyone on the highway today, the ones I'll pass and never meet. Safe roads, sangat.
Ten-hour break outside Thunder Bay, rain on the roof of the cab. Before I sleep I do simran: just Waheguru, quietly, over and over, the beads of my mala moving under my thumb. Wahe on the in-breath, guru on the out.
People ask if I get lonely out here. Truthfully, when the Name is going, the cab feels as full as the gurdwara on Gurpurab. Then I sleep like a baby, and the alarm goes at 3:30 for Japji Sahib.
Safe roads to everyone driving through the night.
Ardas before a long haul to Winnipeg, ending the way it always ends: Nanak naam chardi kala, tere bhaane sarbat da bhala. In Your will, may all be well with everyone. Including the guy who cut me off at the on-ramp.
Nobody asks who you are at the sink
Home for four days, so I did a shift at the gurdwara washing steel plates after langar. Hundreds of them. You stand at the big sink with whoever turned up: a retired doctor, two university kids, a man who came in off the street for a meal and stayed to help.
Nobody asks who you are at the sink. Nobody asks what you believe. You scrub, you pass, you rinse, you stack. Somebody makes a bad joke and everyone laughs anyway. That's seva.
Three provinces of highway behind me, and this was the most rested I've felt all month.