To celebrate special occasions in life (a wedding, the birth of a child, etc.) or to honor and pray for someone who has left their physical body, a main practice of the Sikh community is to continuously read the entire Siri Guru Granth Sahib.  For someone who has died, it is recommended to complete the reading within 17 days of their death.

If you do not have a Siri Guru Granth Sahib in your home, or do not live near a Gurdwara where you can participate in an Akhand Path or a Sahej Path, one option is to participate in a virtual Akhand Path hosted online by Hacienda de Guru Ram Das or at Keshghar Sahib in Anandpur Sahib, India.

However, if you have a larger community with many friends and family who want to participate for a special occasion, or when a person passes away, and you do not have a Siri Guru Granth Sahib available, you may also choose to do a virtual Sahej Path via WhatsApp.

Here are the steps for doing a virtual Sahej Path via WhatsApp:

1. Set up a WhatsApp Sahej Path group and invite community members to join
2. Share a PDF of the Siri Guru Granth Sahib with the group
3. Provide the group with instructions for reading:
   1. Cover their heads and remove their shoes
   2. Read continuously during their reading time
   3. The first person to begin announces on the group when they decide to start reading and when they finish reading, they list the page number and passage where they ended.
   4. The next person who is ready to begin reading announces that they are starting to read, and when they finish, they then also list the page number and passage where they ended.
   5. The process continues accordingly until the whole Siri Guru Granth Sahib has been read in its entirety.

When the reading of the full Siri Guru Granth Sahib has been completed, it usually concludes with a “Bhog” ceremony in a Gurdwara.  However, if the community does not have a gurdwara, the people organizing the Sahej Path can simply choose to have an in-person gathering to celebrate together.

This should minimally include

• Chanting the Mul Mantra or a Shabad and
• Reciting an Ardas in which the special occasion or the departed person is remembered (and if it is for someone who has passed away, Akal is chanted 3 times).
• Taking a Hukam in honor of the special occasion or the person who has passed away.