Sangrur, Punjab:
Setting aside religious code, two young Sikh men saved a group of drowning boys in Punjab on Sunday.
As a cellphone footage of the rescue was widely circulated, the local administration -- which has been accused of making inadequate arrangements for the ceremony -- said it would felicitate the young men.
The boys, who had come for the immersion of Ganesha idols at Sular Ghat, had got into the water.
But suddenly, as a gush of water came, four of the boys lost their footing and got washed away.
As a hue and cry started, Inderpal Singh -- who was sitting on embankment of the canal watching the immersion -- promptly took off his turban and tossed one end of it at the youths and pulled them in.
"I had no time to think and quickly removed by turban and threw at the drowning boys and pulled them in," Inderpal said.
On the other bank, Kanwaljit Singh followed suit. "My immediate reaction was to jump into the canal and try to save them. But I cannot swim. So I removed my turban and used it to save the boys," he said.
The boys were all praise for the bravehearts. "He first tried to pull us out with a wire lying on the embankment. But it broke, and he then used his turban," said one of them.
Under the tenets of Sikhism, one can remove the turban only at home, during a bath.
In May, a Sikh youth in New Zealand, Harman Singh, had used his turban to bind the wounds of a boy who had been hit by a car.
As the incident became widely reported and pictures of it flooded social media, well-wishers got together to gift furniture to the young student, who till then, lived in a spartan flat.