Sidhu’s sanctified ways, a challenge, and his connect with Mata Vaishno Devi

When it comes to theatrical appeal in surcharged poll environs, former cricketer and Punjab Congress Chief Navjot Singh Sidhu wins hands down. In some close quarters in Amritsar (east), a constituency that he hopes to retain as a legislator, stories of Sidhu’s birth are being talked about soberly with curiosity, as much as his dramatic life.

Interestingly, Sidhu’s father Sardar Bhagwant Singh, a staunch Congress leader and a former state top law officer, out of sheer health concerns for his wife wanted her to abort the fetus in her womb. That did not happen and Sidhu, a Jat Sikh, lived to tell the story of his birth, and more engrossingly, his connection with the Hindu Goddess at the revered Mata Vaishno Devi shrine in Jammu.

Sidhu faces perhaps his toughest poll battle pitted against Akali leader Bikram Singh Majithia, the brother of former union minister Harsimran Kaur Badal. But within quick succession, Navjot Sidhu has exited the poll arena twice, the last on Wednesday, to pay obeisance at the Mata Vaishno Devi shrine.

With plenty of sanctified cotton threads spun and dyed in red and yellow color on his wrist, Sidhu says his father was a Sikh and mother a Hindu, which is why he professes his veneration for both the religions. Sidhu’s mother Nirmal Kaur wanted to have a baby boy, even as doctors advised her against conceiving because that would seriously endanger the life of both the mother and the baby. Sidhu says, Narula uncle, one of their family friends who was a staunch follower of Mata Vaishno Devi, returned after nine days of fasting from the hilltop shrine after Navratras. On return he informed Sidhu’s mother, his rakhi sister that she will be blessed with a child soon.

Two months later, she conceived, much to the worry of Sidhu’s father who then wanted to abort the child fearing for his wife’s life owing to complications expressed by doctors. Nevertheless, a cesarean helped Sidhu’s birth that coincided with the day his parents performed the greh-pravesh ceremony of their new house in Patiala.

“My mother wanted to express gratitude for the blessing and left for the shrine to pay obeisance. She had 17 stitches and climbed all the stairs leading to the shrine. She started bleeding profusely when my father reached to help her. She fortunately recovered after months in hospital. My connection with Mata Vaishno Devi shrine is innate,” Sidhu explained.

Congress leaders in poll-bound Punjab, be it outgoing CM Charanjit Singh Channi or Sidhu, remain conspicuous by their enigmatic ways in public life. Some like Sidhu proudly wear it on their sleeves.

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