Saakhi-Sikh History & Gurmat, a mobile application aimed at spreading awareness about Sikh religion, is one of Gurpreet Singh’s dream project.
While growing up, Gurpreet Singh listened to Gurus’ stories from his father-mother, nana-nani and dada-dadi. And, those very tales steeped in morals formed much of his world view. A tradition full of values, yet mad rush of materialism is what bothered this Bahrain-based business manager.So, he took out time, planned, recorded short stories from the life history of 10 Sikh Gurus and converted them into an audio app, so as to connect with the younger generation.
Saakhi—Sikh History & Gurmat is a mobile application aimed at spreading awareness about Sikh religion and its tenets through audio stories on Sikh Gurus, Great Sikhs, Gurbani Paath; along with answers to the questions on Sikhism. “I feel it is an innovative way to get connected to Sikh roots and Khalsa traditions, which is the need of the hour especially for the younger generation — that is gradually getting detached from Gurmat,” says Gurpreet.
Some features of the app include:
1) Audio stories on the life history of ten Gurus. Ten icons are there, one for each Guru Sahib – Guru Nanak Dev ji, Guru Angad Dev ji, Guru Amar Das ji, Guru Ram Das ji, Guru Arjan Dev ji, Guru Har Gobind ji, Guru Har Rai ji, Guru Har Krishan ji, Guru Tegh Bahadur ji & Guru Gobind Singh ji.
2) ‘Great Sikhs’ icon narrates stories on the life history of important sikh personalities – martyrs and warriors.
3) ‘Gurbani Path’ has few selected baanis, more will be added.
4) ‘Sawaal Jawaab’ section aims to answer the questions that we always wanted to know on sikh way of life in the light of Gurbani.
“My team took six months to make the App a reality. The focus was to provide a ready-made option to youth to hear out Saakhis or stories that were told by parents to children at bed-time — a tradition that has gone out of fashion.” The mobile application is available for both ‘android’ and ‘iOS’ users. Saakhi is also available on website sikhsaakhi.com, so that anyone who does not have ‘android’ or ‘iOS’ devices can also listen to the stories.
TNS, with additional reporting by SMI.