Free Meals at Sikh Day Festival on Madison Ave.
For a few hours over the weekend, a stretch of Madison Avenue in the Flatiron district became an unlikely cash-free zone, a vortex of munificence. And at its center was Kulvinder Singh, a beacon of generosity in his bright yellow turban, who was practically begging passers-by to take free food off his hands. “Take!” he implored in a dense Punjabi accent, extending plastic containers of freshly cut fruit. “Have another one!” He was one of scores of Sikhs giving away literally tons of food and drink as part of the annual Sikh Day Parade on Saturday: plates of freshly prepared Indian vegetable dishes, breads and desserts, along with bottled water, sodas and hot tea.
Last week was a tough one for New York City’s Sikh population: It began with a bloody brawl on April 24 among worshipers inside their temple, the Baba Makhan Shah Lubana Sikh Center, in Richmond Hill, Queens, and the news quickly spread around the world, in part through a video of the fight that made its way to the Internet. But the free food on Saturday was not some sort of public relations gimmick. Rather, it has always been a highlight of the parade, which has been held 24 times in New York City. Sikh leaders said the tradition is an expression of langar, the serving of free meals in Sikh temples, which is based on the principle that all people are equal.
“It’s the same food served to the same people in the same place,” explained Harpreet Singh Toor, a financial consultant and former president and director of the Sikh Cultural Society in Richmond Hill, the largest Sikh temple, or gurdwara, in New York. “Money is never a consideration.” On Saturday, the Sikhs came to feed the city, or a least a respectable portion of it, from 24th to 26th Street on Madison Avenue, at the end of the parade route. Organizers estimated that enough food was prepared to feed tens of thousands of people.