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‘Allegory – A tapestry of Nanak’s Travels’ launched

By Our Correspondent
November 21, 2021

Islamabad: Filled with devotion, passion and a deep desire to show to the world as to how Baba Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikh religion and spiritual leader of its followers, extensively travelled for 22 years over vast parts of Asia and the Middle East to spread the message of ‘oneness’, Amardeep Singh and his wife, Vininder Kaur, a Singapore-based couple embarked on a journey to retrace Guru Nanak’s footsteps.

The Sikh couple from Singapore released the 24-episode ‘Docuseries’ just ahead of 550th anniversary of Baba Guru Nanak which is being celebrated at Kartarpur Sahab in Pakistan by the Sikhs coming from all over the world, including India, for which Pakistan and India agreed to re-open the ‘Kirtarpur Sahab Corridor to facilitate Indian Sikh pilgrims.

The couple lead a team of experts they needed to accomplish the task and started the herculean venture in 2019 and eventually succeeded in creating a 24-episode ‘Docuseries’ that they formally launched the first episode last month (October 2021).

“This task, extending far beyond personal ambition, is aimed with a passion to preserve Guru Nanak’s teachings that perceives no borders or human divisions,” said Amardeep Singh in a statement he issued at the launch of ‘Docuseries’. .

Amerdeep Singh and Vininder Kaur in a statement they issued to the media said that over 550 years ago, Guru Nanak travelled across the distant lands of Pakistan, Afghanistan, Iran, Iraq, Saudi Arabia, Tibet, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka for over two decades on an altruistic pursuit to spread the message of the oneness of creation.

He said that aided with the analytical study of the oldest ‘Janamsakhis’ (biographies of Guru Nanak) and supported by the allegoric messages in Guru Nanak’s verses, the team spent over three years filming all the geographies and multi-faith sites, which were visited by Guru Nanak to present his life events in the form of a 24-episode ‘Docuseries’.

“To relate with people of diverse cultures and belief systems, Guru Nanak engaged in philosophical and social dialogue, and through the medium of words and music, as he gracefully imparted experiential and spiritual insights, fearlessly challenged the binary constructs of society, and relentlessly opposed gender, religious, racial and class inequalities,” said the statement released by Amardeep Singh.

He said that in the 21st century, geopolitical restrictions and cultural mandates impose immense challenges to trace Guru Nanak’s extensive travels as approximately 70 per cent of the places they travelled to fall in geographies where filming was difficult.

Undeterred by adversities, Amardeep Singh and Vininder Kaur, along with their team travelled from the deserts of Mecca in Saudi Arabia to Mount Kailash in Tibet. They explored remote regions of perilous Afghanistan, experienced the scorching heat in Iraq, scaled the arid Baluchi mountains in Pakistan, sailed across the waters of the Indian Ocean to disembark in Sri Lanka, blended with the Persian culture in Iran, crossed the delta region in Bangladesh and mapped all four directions in India.

As Amardeep and Vininder Kaur described their experience they said that every moment in tracing Guru Nanak’s footsteps was philosophically liberating. It encouraged them to challenge their own conditioning, unlearn, relearn and assimilate the beauty of unity in diversity.

“In a world that is so fragile and volatile, there has never been a better time to understand why Guru Nanak travelled for 22 years to share his experiential wisdom and propagate the oneness of humankind,” said Amardeep Singh.

He said that the ‘Weekly episodes’ of this ‘Docuseries’ in English language will be available on the website TheGuruNanak.com. In the next phase, this ‘Docuseries’ will be translated into Punjabi and Hindi.