She is 85, and proves that you’re never too old to volunteer – STAR2

| The Star | Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia | 6 Sept 2016 | Asia Samachar |

Eighty-five years old Niranjan Kaur has been making her way to the Gurdwara Sahib Petaling Jaya to do volunteer work, called seva, for the past 32 years.

Even at this age, she is one of the regular sevadars, as the volunteers are called, at the gurdwara at least four days a week.

“My late husband was also a volunteer at the temple. He was a good handyman and handled maintenance work such as washing the filters of the air-conditioners, replacing lightbulbs and fixing leaky water pipes,” she tells The Star in an interview.

SEE ALSO: A Sikh Sermon at the Pentagon: “Seva: The Call of Our Times”

The country’s largest English newspaper ran a story on the gallant volunteer entitled ‘She is 85, and proves that you’re never too old to volunteer’.

Her late husband Gurcharan Singh, who retired from the police force as a superintendent, passed away in 2004.

This is the beginning of the article:

Niranjan Kaur was a child bride. At 13, she was married off in an arranged marriage. At that time, she had not even seen her then husband-to-be, P. Gurcharan Singh, six and a half years her senior.

He, too, did not set eyes on her until their wedding day. They were two helpless individuals thrown together in marriage and they were expected to lead a new life as a couple.

Niranjan is the ninth and only surviving child in a family of four boys and eight girls.

Her father was a bullock cart driver; her mother was a housewife.

Her husband was the fifth child in a family of 11 children: seven sons and four daughters. A surviving sister lives in Subang Jaya, Selangor.

Niranjan hails from Papan in Perak, while Gurcharan is from the neighbouring town, Pusing.

When Niranjan was young, she did not have the faintest idea how her future husband would look like. Her father, however, had seen him.

Hardly out of her teens, she was merely obeying her family members when they married her off. Even an important decision such as that once-in-a-lifetime marriage was not hers to make. In those days, children had no say. Their parents’ words were final.

In Niranjan’s case, her brother was the matchmaker. The groom-to-be was his friend’s brother.

Niranjan’s father died of kidney failure in 1941, two years before her wedding. Her mother, Ramkaur, became a widow at 42.

Gurcharan, too, had to obey his parents.

“My husband was a mechanical fitter then. One day, a family member rang him up and asked him to return home. He thought it was an emergency and rushed back – only to learn that he was to be engaged and married within the week.

Niranjan admitted being jittery on her wedding day. “Even my husband did not see my face until he lifted my veil at the temple. I was too scared to look at him.”

“I’m not sure whether my husband felt the same that day. But then again, any man would not want to admit he is scared,” she giggled in amusement. “But he was a nice man and I was happily married.”

To read the rest of the story, go here.

[ASIA SAMACHAR is an online newspaper for Sikhs in Southeast Asia and surrounding countries. We have a Facebook page, do give it a LIKE! Visit our website: www.asiasamachar.com]

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