News & Update

Flying Sikh’ Milkha Singh to unfurl the IndianFlag at Michigan this Independence Day at the function organized by the Indian community on 15th August, where they will honour the legendary sprinter.

Singh will embark upon a month-long visit to the United States and Canada beginning this August the 2nd to participate in the functions.

“For long, the Indian community in the US and Canada wanted me to come. I will be traveling to Michigan, New York, California (in U.S.) and Toronto (Canada). On August 15, a function has been organised by the Indian community at Michigan, where I will unfurl the tricolour,” said Mikha Singh.

Even though it’s difficult for him to undertake long travels given his old age, “yet I could not hold back as our people living abroad wanted me to come and join the celebrations as part of the Independence Day, besides wanting me to be part of some other events.”

~ Source: India Times (With inputs from The Times of India)

Expedia named engineering leader Aman Singh as the new president of its flagship Expedia brand and related businesses, taking over a job that Expedia Inc.

Singh is a five-year Expedia veteran who has made his mark as senior vice president of worldwide engineering, establishing a data-driven, “test and learn” culture in the company’s global tech team, which has grown to 2,000 people across 10 offices. He has also been a key player in Expedia’s acquisition spree, overseeing the integration of companies such as Wotif and Travelocity.

He will become the president of what’s known internally as the Brand Expedia Group, which includes Expedia.com, Travelocity, Wotif, and Expedia’s joint venture with AirAsia, in addition to supporting product development, technology and media for all groups across the company.

He will be dealing with a dynamic competitive landscape in the new role. Following the latest wave of industry consolidation, Expedia and Priceline Group have emerged as the major players in online travel, but larger tech companies including Amazon and Google are increasingly moving into the travel business themselves.

He is pointed to the strong brand and dedicated focus of Expedia as one of its biggest competitive advantages. “If we are insanely focused on this, and we do it well, then it’s tough for a horizontal technology player” to compete effectively against the company, he said.

He grew up in Delhi, India, and traveled frequently as a young child. Although he was trained as a software engineer, his undergraduate degree from Delhi University is in economics, and he has an MBA from Lancaster University. He lives in the Seattle region with his extended family, including his wife and two children and his parents, in addition to his brother’s family. He worked at Washington Mutual and JP Morgan Chase before joining Expedia in 2010.

A champion of the Expedia culture, he shows his pride by wearing yellow running shoes with blue stripes, along with an Expedia lapel pin.

He literally got the engineering team to dance — teaching them a routine to Lady Gaga’s “Edge of Glory” as a way of bringing them together and building camaraderie across their worldwide offices. The dance spread across the company, and even Khosrowshahi ended up joining in. Bhutani proudly showed off a video compilation during a recent interview at Expedia’s headquarters.

~ Source: Geekwire

Many many years ago our Gurus lit the lamp
And the Prakasham was born carrying power of the soul
This light of truth on the lands of five rivers
It orbited and orbited around the sun
Along with the earth that carried it as sindhur
This earthly Prakasham is so powerful
Of human’s universal message of one God
Four hundred orbits gone in no time
The great Prakasham has even out-glowed the Sun
As it orbits all around the sun, even sun bows in enhanced reverence
And salutes the earth, for all that it carries
The Greatest Prakasham of Guru Granth Sahib

~ A.P.J. Abdul Kalam

The army surgeon declared him dead on arrival after being blown by a mortar bomb and sent his wrecked body to a makeshift mortuary. But 25-year-old Major Singh was not ready to die.

A mortar bomb had landed close to him on a Himalayan battlefield, during the 1999 Kargil War on the India-Pakistan border. A mass of bleeding tissue, broken bones and intestines ripped out and his fellow soldiers carried him to the field hospital.

The story of how he wins over death sounds incredible when you see him today, full of vitality

“When I learnt I lost my leg, I told myself that this would be yet another challenge in my life. I just couldn’t get used to the sympathetic glances I used to get from people. After a while, I was desperate to change that,” Singh said.

Now known as the ‘Indian Blade Runner’, he has been running marathons for 16 years.

It was at the mortuary on the mountains that another doctor from the army hospital spotted life in him. The chances of survival for anybody caught within eight yards of a mortar bomb are close to nil. He was embedded with sharapnel all over and his stomach was split wide open. The doctors had no choice but to remove some of his intestines. His leg had to be amputated too. But Major Singh refused to die.

Wafer thin, bedridden and disabled, the Major drew upon the survival instincts and courage that had spurred him to dive to the ground when the bomb landed about a yard and a half from him. Quick thinking had saved his life, but he would now have to learn to live anew.

“This was the start of my second life,” he told YourStory on the sidelines of the India Inclusion Summit in Bangalore. So what if life would never be the same again? It never is anyway. He decided not to think of his battered body as a disability. He looked upon it as a challenge, instead.

He stayed in hospital for almost a year. Hardly anyone believed he would ever walk again. But he thought, “Why just walk? I want to run.”

Major DP Singh’s transformation into the Indian Blade Runner didn’t happen overnight. He was never a runner before the amputation. But, “I wanted to run to inspire myself to go beyond my injuries,” .

Running with his prosthetic leg wasn’t just hard, it was excruciatingly painful. “I refused to crawl. Every time I fell, I took it as a test of perseverance. That way, it is easier to try again,” he recollected.

His first prosthetic limb was better suited for sprints than long distance running. Nevertheless, however agonizing it was, the Major was already running marathons when prosthetics specialists at Hanger Clinic in Oklahoma City chanced upon a video clip of him. They invited him over to fit him with a better prosthetic that allowed him the greater flexibility needed for long distance running.

His goal is to run a full marathon. “When I was injured, I recieved blood from countless people of different castes, creeds and states. With the blood of India running in my veins, I feel I can do everything”, he concludes.

Today, at 39, the Indian Blade Runner has run close to 20 marathons. When he runs, he doesn’t hide his artificial leg. Onlookers often drop their jaws and stare. That doesn’t bother him.

He is also a motivational speaker, inspiring amputees across India. He manages a support group called The Challenging Ones.

“I started this support group to inspire others in a similar predicament. Sports can help build confidence and help overcome the disability,” he said. “People like me are generally called physically challenged. But I believe we are ‘challengers’. The trauma of losing a part of your body is huge. Your family and friends cannot imagine life after amputation. The initial stage where the person realises that s/he has lost a limb is the most difficult. Peer support is crucial.”

His aim is to help amputees find life again. “Make the Challengers break all shackles of dependency and overcome fears of lack of mobility to live as they did earlier. There is no limit,” he says.

~ Source: yourstory

It’s time we tell you how the ’12 baje gaye’ phrase got associated with the Sikhs.

If legend is to be believed, the story dates back to the 18th Century when India was invaded by Nader Shah, the Shah of Persia. Nader Shah’s army reached Delhi in March 1739 and a massacre followed.

Countless Hindus and Muslims were killed and the women were held captives. When his armies were crossing through Punjab, the Sikhs devised a plan to attack them and free the women. But since Nader Shah’s army was huge as compared to them, they decided to visit his camps only at night and free as many women as they could as stealthily as possible.

They even helped those rescued women return home safely because they knew how important a woman’s dignity was. But over time, the Hindus started referring to this kind gesture in the form of the 12 o’clock joke without even realizing that had it not been for those Sikhs, their women wouldn’t have survived.

They went out of their way to help their brothers.

Source: mensxp.com

Next Time you come across a Sardar Joke, make sure you SHARE this with them!

By taking the traditional concept of the “Langar”, or shared meal, out of the Gurdwaras and onto the street, these Sikhs have successfully managed to extend the idea of service globally, spreading its glory worldwide!

This April, two Sikh organisations in New Delhi and Amritsar sent food relief to victims in post-earthquake Nepal. Apart from contributing 25,000 food packets a day each, they sent out teams of cooks and volunteers to set up community kitchens. These served hot meals to over 10,000 people a day.

Meanwhile, in the UK, the homeless are turning to Sikh community kitchens for hot meals as demand for food banks rises.

Meals are offered free, and everything from the buying of the food, to the preparation of the meals, is based on donations.

Spirit of service

The importance of selfless service or “seva” has been emphasised in the lives and teachings of the Sikh gurus. According to Guru Nanak, the founder of the Sikh religion, sharing one’s time and wealth with those in need is the best possible action. The idea of “langar” as a community kitchen was developed by Guru Nanak in his settlement at Kartarpur, now in Pakistan.

Devotees would farm the land before preparing food and sharing the meal. Langar – which refers to the community kitchen as well as the food served – was developed as a practical manifestation of the teachings where devotees were encouraged to work hard and share the fruits of their labour.

Sharing a langar – which includes cooking, serving, eating and cleaning up – emphasised the idea of equality beyond any categorisations of caste, gender, social status, ethnicity, or religion.

The introduction of “langar” into the Oxford English Dictionary in 2008 highlighted that this key tenet of the Sikh tradition had entered mainstream vocabulary. Those who experience langar in gurdwaras for the first time are often amazed at the scale of what is essentially a volunteer effort.

Gurdwaras are playing an important role as food banks, with an estimated 5,000 meals served to non-Sikhs each week by Britain’s 250 gurdwaras. In addition, Sikhs in the diaspora are increasingly making efforts to take langar out of the gurdwara so that it fulfils its core objective of serving the whole community.

In Canada, the Seva Food Bank serves food to low-income families. In Los Angeles, the Khalsa Food Pantry and Khalsa Peace Corps provide meals to the destitute, while the Sikhcess project provides food and clothing to the homeless in a number of local communities across the US.

British Sikhs have established food relief organisations in cities across the UK. The Midland Langar Seva Society in Birmingham, the Kirpa Food Bank in Wolverhampton, Guru Nanak’s Free Kitchen based in Doncaster and Edinburgh, the Bedford Langar project, the Sikh Welfare and Awareness Team (SWAT) based in London and Nishkam Help based in Birmingham and Leeds are some examples.

In addition to contributing to the communities they live in, Sikh charities such as United Sikhs also contribute to humanitarian efforts in different parts of the world as needed. Khalsa Aid, a UK based Sikh charity, which has provided disaster relief in Albania, Turkey, Somalia and Pakistan, made the headlines in 2014 when British Sikhs helped the Thames Valley and Somerset flood victims by delivering sand bags, food and medical supplies to those affected.

Demonstrating values and beliefs

The vision behind much of this food relief lies in the spirit of selfless service. The offering of food to all as a central tenet of the Sikh tradition has meant that Sikhs are often the go-to community for food relief. Indeed, given their non-proselytising nature, Sikhs are able to use langar as a practical demonstration of the values promoted by the Sikh gurus rather than simply talking about their beliefs.

For these Sikhs in diaspora, rather than simply referring to members of a particular ethno-religious group, “community” refers to anyone they engage with at a local, national or even international level. This view extends the idea of langar to the whole world, and allows them to put into practice the ideal of “Sarbat Da Bhalla” or, “working for the betterment of all”.

~ Source: theconversation.com