Hearing the melodious rendition of the Aarti sure brings ‘Boundless Bliss’. It has always been one of the favorite part of my prayers!

Thanks for sharing it with us!

In fact, I prefer reading the original text i.e. in gurmukhi. It’s just like Vedas… I’m reading original in Sanskrit because translations are often a sort of interpretation and I like understanding what was actually said rather than reading interpretations.
Of course, I’d be grateful if you could guide me… and I can also get that from my parents (my mother used to read it every morning when she was a kid).

I hope that it is available somewhere in Punjabi.

My translation work is going quite well. I’m also one of the founding members of Euro India Economic and Business Group (East of France/ Strasbourg region) and these days I’m involved in working with an NGO in France. I’ll tell you about that later because right now, I’ve to rush and do a few things outside.

Please keep in touch and even if I don’t say this often I really enjoy reading the e-mails that you send.

My mother was from a Sindhi Sikh family and I grew up with the daily rendering of this Aarti (in the evenings) along with other ritualistic daily renderings like Japji Sahib, Anand Sahib, Sukhmani Sahib and many other verses like Guru Teg Bahadur’s: Guna Gobind Gayo NahiN, Janama Akyarth Kino …(on certain specific occasions or at the end of Akhand Path). We had Guru Granth Sahib at home, which was ritualistically opened and closed everyday with normal everyday Kirtans. All this came to the end with the passing away of my mother in 1957. As per tradition, one of the sons had to be designated a Sikh and this mantle came to me. In all my documents I was recorded as a Sikh. My first posting on being commissioned was in a Sikh Regiment. Before my arrival everyone was wondering what kind of a Sikh had been posted to them who did not have ‘Singh’ in his name. More surprises when they found I was a mona Sikh. To prove that I was really a Sikh, they asked me to recite Japji Sahib, which I did in my Sindhi accent. Everyone laughed till in the unit Gurdwara I recited verbatim Anand Sahib, Arti and many portions from Granth Sahib, which other Sikh officers did not know. The unit granthi used to sometime distort Sikh history, which I used to correct later by calling him alone. This became known to all Sikh officers. The final acceptance came when after two years I was nominated (on the recommendations of Subedar Major) as the officer to look after the affairs of unit Gurdwara. The first thing on assuming this responsibility was to stop reciting of kirtans on Hindi film tunes.

I have not received the video clip with your mail. Its only a winamp audio clip. Please do send me video clip … I would love to hear it every night before closing down my computer. Any such material on gurbani, I will be happy to receive it. And thank you very much for this mail.

Incidentally, the following part of the background is not correct:

Tagore died on 7 Aug 1941, much before India became Independent and no one had ever thought of Independence for India (it II World War time).

Many regards

Ram Gulrajani

No words to describe thanks.