Editor’s Note:
Five years back—in November 2020, as the yearlong celebrations of Gurū Nanak’s 550th birth anniversary concluded—I self-cannibalized a few chapters from a book I was writing to found The Vital Anjan. My aim was to do my bit to “advance a GurSikh renaissance” through rediscovering the “fantastic sweep of the GurSikh imaginary.” To this end, I sought to write and publish the sort of existentially-alive prose and verse that reconciles intellectual rigor with spiritual earnestness—a mode of writing equally rare in the contemporary academy and community-driven publications.
It is tremendously heartening that five years later—in November 2025, as commemorations of the 350th anniversary of Gurū Tegh Bahadur’s martyrdom commence—The Vital Anjan should celebrate its fifth year of unbroken monthly publication. Because plans for a special print edition anthologizing the best of The Vital Anjan in its first five years are in the works (about which more in the New Year!), I shall reserve my broader reflections on the lessons gleaned from the journal’s triumphs and challenges.
Accordingly, it primarily remains for me to express my profound gratitude to the journal’s fifteen contributors to date and all of its readers—some of whom have written back with thoughtful responses from across the globe. As always, submissions are most welcome at editor@vitalanjan.com. Onwards!
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If Sārang is noon’s cloudless yellow, piercing
wondrous māyā’s dream, Jaijāvantī’s patient
blue is gently devastating.
O ultimate renunciate! Even your renunciation
you renounced, when called to don Gurūship’s
balanced pair of swords.
Beyond becoming’s vagaries, the glory of the
One you sing—in whose eternal refuge every
virtue finds its spring.
Mighty ninth of Nanak’s line, our purpose here
your time defines: the happiest life is learning
to die nobly.
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Nihal Singh