Guru Nanak Jayanti Wishes: 8 Messages for Family, Friends and Work (2026)

Dear all,

May this Gurpurab bring every one of you a calm and happy day, whether you are sitting at our table, at home in [city] or starting a shift on the other side of the world. I wish you peace in your homes and, for once, a few hours of proper rest.

Papa and I will be at the gurdwara early for Asa di Var, then home to string the lights along the balcony railing. Simran has promised to help this year, so we will see. I am making the kadah prashad, and Massi is bringing her chole and a tin of pinnis. If you cannot be here, cook something, post a photo in this chat and we will share the meal that way. Video call at seven, please.

Gurpurab diyan lakh lakh vadhaiyan (heartiest congratulations on Gurpurab) to all of you.

With love,
[Your name]

Subject: Guru Nanak Jayanti greetings and our opening hours on [date]

Dear [Name],

We are writing on the occasion of Guru Nanak Jayanti to send our good wishes to you and to everyone in your household or team who is marking the day. To those who celebrate, we wish a happy Gurpurab, and to all our clients, our thanks for the trust you have placed in us this year.

As the date of the festival moves each year with the lunar calendar, please note this year's arrangements: our office and showroom will close at 1 p.m. on [date] and reopen at 9 a.m. the following morning. Orders received by 11 a.m. that day will be dispatched as usual, and our answerphone will take any urgent messages.

Yours sincerely,

[Your name]
Customer Services, [Company name]

Happy Gurpurab to you and everyone under your roof. I hope the lamps burn long tonight, the table stays crowded and the day leaves you with a quiet, settled kind of peace. Happy Guru Nanak Jayanti!

Dear [Name],

Thank you for the plate of pinni you brought round last winter, still warm and wrapped in a tea towel I keep meaning to return. My two had finished them before the kettle boiled. Thank you as well for waving us over to the fence for a chat in our very first week here. You made a new street feel like home.

I hope your Gurpurab is a lovely one, with the house full of the people you love, a decent sleep before the early start and plenty of that cardamom tea you made me in the summer. I know the day honours Guru Nanak and matters a great deal to your family, so we are thinking of you all.

Your daughter told me that "Happy Gurpurab" is what people say to each other on the day, so: Happy Gurpurab from all of us at number [house number].

With warm wishes,
[Your name]

P.S. If you need extra chairs, a lift to the gurdwara or someone to feed the cat while you are out, just knock.

Subject: Happy Gurpurab, everyone

Hi all,

I've noticed something this month: when Marta's laptop died two days before the quarterly report, three of you split her spreadsheets without being asked, and someone keeps quietly refilling the biscuit tin every Monday. Nobody raised it in a meeting. It just happened.

Today is Guru Nanak Jayanti, also called Gurpurab, and many people link it with sharing food, serving others and treating everyone as equal, whoever they are. That sounds a lot like what I see at the next desk: covering a late shift, explaining the new booking system for the fourth time without a sigh. I'd love us to carry that into the busy weeks before [month].

So whether you're celebrating with family tonight or simply reading this over a cup of tea, happy Gurpurab from me. Thank you for looking out for each other.

Best wishes,
[Your name]

Dear [Name],

Do you remember the year Biji wrapped us both in one shawl for the prabhat pheri, and you kept treading on my heels all the way past Kuldip's sweet shop? I thought of that this morning when I woke in [city] to rain on the window and a silent street, and I wanted to write before you set off for the gurdwara.

This is what I can still hear: the dholak somewhere near the front, Chacha ji singing half a beat behind everyone else, the splash of water being sprinkled on the road ahead of the Palki Sahib, and the man with the megaphone who always forgot to switch it off between announcements.

This is what I can still see and taste: the gurdwara outlined in strings of yellow bulbs, with the one by the gate that flickered every single year, the diyas we lined up along the wall and kept relighting in the wind, the scalding chai in steel tumblers, and the dal at langar, which tasted better sitting cross-legged on the floor beside strangers than anything Mum ever made at home. Please do not tell her I said that.

Happy Gurpurab to you and to everyone squeezed into that house today. Have a second helping of kada prashad for me. Next year I am booking my flight in good time, and we will walk the whole route together again, heels and all.

With love,
[Your name]

Hi [Name],

It's 4.12 a.m. and I'm standing in my kitchen in odd socks, staring at the kettle as if it owes me money.

Thought of you straight away, obviously. You've been up for an hour already.

By now you've chopped more onions than most restaurants manage in a week, and your eyes are doing that thing again.

Somewhere in your house there's a pan of kheer big enough to bath a toddler in, and your mum is still convinced it won't stretch.

And at about half eleven, every cousin, uncle and auntie will ring the bell within the same four minutes, as if they synchronised watches in the car park.

Save me a seat near the samosas.

Happy Gurpurab, my friend. May the day be as full as your fridge and twice as peaceful.

[Your name]

Dear [Name],

Have you ever asked yourself why I still go and help in the langar kitchen every Gurpurab, when my knees grumble on the steps and your mother keeps telling me to sit down and let the young ones get on with it?

I have been thinking about it this week, and I want to tell you while I can still put it into words. When I first came to [town] in 1974, I knew nobody. On my first Guru Nanak Jayanti here, a man I had never met handed me a steel plate, sat me between a bus driver still in his uniform and a student who could not afford his dinner, and nobody asked any of us where we came from. That plate of dal and two rotis fed more than my stomach. It told me I belonged somewhere.

Since then I have peeled more onions than I can count, scrubbed huge pots beside people whose names I only learnt at the end of the day, and watched strangers become friends over a tray of kheer. None of it was grand. Most of it was tiring. Yet those are the hours I would keep if I could keep only a few.

I am not asking you to do things the way I did. Your life is different, with your job and your flat and your friends from every corner of the world. I only hope that somewhere, in your own way, you find a table where you pass the food along before you take any for yourself.

May your hands always find someone to help, and may your door never feel too heavy to open.

With all my love,
[Your name]