Vaisakhi

Yesterday I had the dubious pleasure of attending the annual Vaisakhi celebration in Vancouver, not that I had much of a choice in the matter. They had changed the location slighty from last year and this year the celebration and the parade which was the main event were held right on our street. When I looked out my door in the morning the businesses further down the street were already setting up booths and such for the day. Around lunch time my spouse looked outside to see a vendor setting up shop on our front lawn, she didn't even have the courtesy to ask, she just started setting up. We found out that our neighbor had just kicked her off their lawn for doing the same thing. Well that proved to be the start to a less than stellar day.

Over 200,000 people attended this years festival and the street and cross streets had all been closed off to most traffic due to the parade later in the afternoon. The streets and intersections were a crowded with so many people that it was almost impossible to move. My spouse had our six-year-old son's hand but still couldn't see him, and people were rudely pushing even children out of their way, so he was getting battered around quite a bit and was so crowded he could hardly breathe. Our eldest daughter ,who is twelve, while walking as fast as she could in the crowd was hit in the ankle by an elderly woman with her cane. Instead of apologizing the woman berated our daughter for not walking faster. My spouse, who already has back problems was hit hard in the back 3 times by people trying to push their way through the crowd. Our 9-year-old daughter and I went to go to the store to get a few things for making dinner and it took us half an hour to walk the block and a half. On the way home we decided to get some popcorn from one of the many booths set up by businesses giving out free drinks and various types of food. We were at the front of the crowd waiting for one of the booths attendants to hand us a popcorn, as they were distributing them randomly to people at the front of the crowd. Suddenly this man probably in his late thirties pushes to the front of the crowd and shoves my 9-year-old our of the way so he doesn't have to wait. By this time I had enough of the day and told him to fuck off and wait like everyone else.

It wasn't just the behavior in the crowds that was upsetting me. People were standing around and eating on our lawn, kids were trying to take flowers from our garden, there were people sitting on our fence and those who had fully fenced lawns had to barricade their gates to avoid the same. Once our lawn had green grass, but now there's only a bit here and there amongst the bare earth. It was like a swarm of locusts had swept through, only locusts don't leave their garbage all over the place.

Don't get me wrong, I don't dislike the festival itself or the Sikh holiday it represents. In fact last year we thoroughly enjoyed it, and like Chinese New Year it is a great medium for teaching our kids about other cultures and to respect other peoples beliefs. And the day itself represents courage, self sacrifice and equality which are wonderful messages to teach our children. Nor do I blame the Sikhs, as all races, genders and ages were equally rude. What I don't care for is the general lack of courtesy, manners and general human decency (Still on the fence about whether human decency is a myth or not). Celebrating a wonderful event like Vaisakhi is great, but don't ruin the celebration for others. Vaisakhi stands for living up to a higher standard and it would be nice if the celebrants remembered that.

If you'd like to know more about Vaisakhi then go here: http://www.sikhiwiki.org/index.php?title=Vaisakhi