A young Sikh ties his turban in front of a mirror. (adapted photo from Turban King)

Gurmun Singh is a young Sikh high school student in California who just this week wore a full turban at school for the first time. He was nice enough to share his thoughts about his experience on this blog. Thank you and congratulations, Gurmun! 

I was born in New York, but now I live in California. I am 14 years old and I go to Sheldon High School as a freshman. I decided to wear a dastaar (turban) on Wednesday because I felt like I was sooner or later going to start wearing one to school, and this gave me a try out to how it would feel like. I was actually excited to wear one because it would show people a different side of how things really are.

When I tied it, I felt like this was how it was meant to be. I felt like I should really begin to wear a dastaar everywhere now and not just to some places. When I showed up to school, people were surprised. They were saying that it looked nice, and many were asking that why was I wearing a bigger one? Are you now “upgrading” turbans? Teachers were like wow, you are looking like a real Sikh with a turban on, and students were like WOW, how does it feel to wear it, how long is the cloth, aren’t you sweaty in it? Many weird questions came up and I responded to all of them with seriousness and some laughter. I would say to students that I feel great wearing a dastaar and that I loved every bit of it. During school, it felt great that I was able to just wear it around and have people look in curiosity and I loved every bit of it!

At the end of the day, I felt that everything went great and that I would wear it again next time. I plan to start wearing it later in the years of high school, but for now, I loved wearing it to school. When I put on the dastaar, to me, it felt like I was able to show the school what a turban really is and how a Sikh really looks like, because of the whole misunderstanding of Sikhs looking like terrorists because of their turbans. I felt like my dastaar educated people in a way! A dastaar is a token/crown given by the Gurus and being able to actually wear the crown just gives such a better feeling to a person. I also got many Punjabis at my school to wear dastaars too. It was just amazing!

By the end of the day, I felt that many people became educated about turbans and who Sikhs are. At the end of the day, I went to the Gurdwara and did Ardaas that Waheguru gives me the courage to wear a dastaar again and again to school and everywhere else without any hesitation.