Daily Fix

The Men of My Tribe

T. SHER SINGH

A few days to go before I turn 22, I fly a thousand miles north from Toronto to Thunder Bay, a city of 107,000 souls on the northern tip of Lake Superior.

I am here to do my Master’s in English, my second one, though this one has a narrower focus … on the Literature of the Renaissance.

I have been in Canada two months. My parents and four siblings are in Toronto, also learning to adjust to a brave new world. In immigrating, we have left behind a nation in turmoil.

Racked by riots, protests and strikes, India’s street mobs had a slew of demands: Hindi as the only national language; English be abolished from the land; Cow protection; and the like. The courses in my two-year Master’s programme were done. But the exams kept on being postponed, month after month. Staying behind to sit for my exams and complete my degree no longer appeared to be a viable option.

Worse, there were millions of refugees pouring across the border -- into the very province in which we lived -- from East Pakistan. India was looking for excuses to start yet another war with its neighbour.

My early weeks in Thunder Bay are now punctuated with daily news reports of the war which eventually did break out … ultimately leading to the creation of Bangla Desh.

I am young and impressionable. Everybody I meet is a new experience; each will remain memorable for years to come, helping shape me in my formative years.

Amongst the most influential are a handful of Sikhs who live in this isolated community and instantly take me under their wing.

Imagine my surprise when I find out that the University’s English Department already has a Sardar: a young professor who is considered by the students returning from the previous year as their favourite. He’s the most sought after teacher in the course line-ups by under-grads.

I get an inkling of Lajinder Singh Lamba’s popularity by getting a first-hand taste of it. Long before he appears on the scene -- he’s away in India for a holiday and due to arrive a few weeks later -- I am mistaken for him. Because, apparently, I’m of the same height and build. To the untrained eye, all Sikhs look alike, don’t they? I discover later that his turban style, his features and complexion, even his voice, indeed make us dead ringers.

I savour the warm welcome I receive from total strangers from the very first hour that I step on campus. But then I’m heartbroken in a few days when I learn that it's merely because they think I am him! Until then, though, I bask in the free hugs and kisses I receive wherever I go.

A friendly bunch, these Canadians up in the North, I say to myself.

Nature has a way of balancing itself.

Two weeks into the school year, another late arrival appears on the scene. Another student in the Master’s programme, a middle-aged Sikh from Amritsar.

He’s spent a year in Toronto, at the end of which he has decided Canada isn’t his cup of tea. He’s a seasoned Professor of English from India on a sabbatical. He had wanted to test his prospects in the new world and had started his journey by immediately shedding his turban and beard upon landing in the country.

Finding that there were no University teaching jobs awaiting him for the picking, he decided to head back. But he can’t, he decides, as is. That is, sans turban and beard. So, he starts growing his hair again. But it takes its own sweet time.

His dilemma: he’s burned his bridges, and he doesn’t know whether he should stay on the burning deck or jump into the waters: he doesn’t want to let Canada know he normally wears a turban, and he doesn’t want to head home without one.

He gets a year’s extension to his leave from his job back home and decides to while away this waiting period getting a degree in Thunder Bay while nature takes its unhurried course.

So, he arrives in class one day, a hirsute apparition which, to put it kindly, is a cross between a golliwog and Yosemite Sam. The growth of his hair has progressed well but will not bend to reason … or style.

Both the hair on his head and on his chin have decided to sprout centrifugally. If only he’d come here in the 60s, it could have passed as an advanced Afro. Or he himself as a bearded Sai Baba.

To complicate matters, he won’t acknowledge my presence. That wouldn’t have normally been a problem, except there are only eight of us in the class. Including him and a turbaned me.

And the fact that his name is Baljit Singh doesn’t help either. [I’ve changed his first name to protect him.]

It takes him months to admit to the others that he is indeed a Sikh … like me and Lajinder.

As the weeks and months go by, his hair and beard grow longer. And so does his self-loathing. He gets grumpier by the day. His angry outbursts at John Donne and Will Shakespeare get more frequent. And irrational.

It is a relief when spring arrives: he hands in his thesis ahead of time, and flies into the sunset.

I hear, years later, from a mutual acquaintance in India that he’s back to his normal, turbaned self, teaching English … and ah, yes, he hates Canada with a passion. An uncivilized people, he declares.

*   *   *   *   *
Coincidentally, there’s another Lamba in town: Pritam Singh. An engineer with a senior job, he’s well known in the community and widely respected. Seeing my turban, people mention him wherever I go, long before I finally get to meet him and his lovely wife and two little children.

Both of them, husband and wife, are handsome and smart as hell. And generous hosts to boot. They often have the bachelor “orphans” in town over for supper

Not dissimilar is another family, the Deols, who live in Marathon about 180 miles away. Up in the remote and isolated north, that’s being in the neighbourhood. He and his wife, Ajit, are both school teachers. One, if I remember correctly, is principal of a school, and the other teaches in the only other school in town.

They too play host to us all every couple of months, and each time their four little daughters charm and entertain us with their range of talents. [One of the younger ones, Monika, later became internationally famous as a leading Canadian TV personality.]

The handsome Sardar cuts a striking figure, his hearty laugh preceding him always before he enters any space.

One day he overhears a conversation late at night during one of their sumptuous weekends in their home. A bunch of men have cornered me, bent upon getting me to join them in drinking with them. They can’t seem to understand how I can get on in life without joining the club.

“How can you possibly survive in this world?” one argues with genuine concern.

“You’ll be socially ostracized,” warns another.

“Wait and see, six months, not a day more, and you’ll be drinking like all of us,“ foretells another.

Deol … “Paul” is how he’s known amongst friends … takes me aside an hour later, alone, and tells me he had heard the exchange.

With a bottle of beer in his hand and an arm around my shoulder, he says: “It’s none of my business, you know, whether you drink or not. All I want to tell you, though, is this: remember, you’re different from them all. No matter what you do, you’ll be fine.”

*   *   *   *   *

There’s another Sikh engineer in town. He doesn’t wear a turban any more.

A young bachelor, he has a good job, is affluent, lives well, has a lovely house. He’s handsome, well-spoken, street-smart. And a ladies’ man.

He doesn’t like getting attached, probably because of his ease with women. And theirs with him.

He remains distant with me. Try as I might, I simply can’t get him to be friendly with me. We exchange a few words whenever we run into each other, but then he steers away from me. I shrug it off, and ascribe it to my age and obvious naivety.

Close to the end of my stay in Thunder Bay -- a year-and-a-half later -- I am getting ready to head back to Toronto. My apartment lease has run out, but I need to be around for a few more weeks to complete my university assignments. I pass word around that I need to rent a room for a few weeks.

My phone rings one morning. It’s him.

“Hey,” he says, “I have a huge house and I’m the only one here. Come and stay here.”

“You sure?” I ask him, puzzled by the unexpected overture.

“I called you, didn’t I?” he’s his usual gruff self with me.

“How much rent would you want?” I ask cautiously, knowing there has to be a catch.

“Nothing,” he says, “the house is half empty all the time. No skin off my nose. It‘s yours.”

So I move in the following weekend.

It is a pleasant stay. I get to know him better.

The best part is he introduces me to a whole new world … of Punjabi … through songs by names I have never heard of: Reshma and Noor Jehan. It  grabs me like nothing has until now.

My personal collection of cassettes and 8-tracks has not had a single Punjabi song until now. With his help, I immediately install a cassette player in my car. He copies me his entire collection. My love affair with the Punjabi language has begun.

One evening, close to my departure, we are alone, shooting the breeze. He has been drinking for a while and I can see he is getting inebriated. Nothing new. It is the same every evening: though usually a silent type, he gets even quieter as the night progresses.

On this night, though, he is a bit more garrulous.

“You know,” he begins, “I know I’m drunk. And I might as well say this while I am. I‘ve always wanted to tell you this, but I guess I couldn’t. Now that I’m drunk, I can.”

I wait patiently, expecting another tale of his exploits with the fairer sex. 

“I just want to tell you,” he says, “that I hate you … I’ve always hated you!” He tries to focus his eyes on me, and then continues: “You don’t mind my telling you this, do you?”

“No,” I say, shaking my head cautiously.

“I hate you because I don’t know what to make of you. I don’t know whether I hate you because I like what you do … or because I don’t like what you do … or because I don‘t like what you don‘t do …”

His voice peters off to a mumble.

“Sorry,” he continues, “you’re not angry, are you?”

Before I can say anything, he pulls himself off the sofa and stumbles away to his room. I hear him slam the door behind him.

He never mentions anything about that conversation again. I leave a couple of days later. We part as friends. And have remained, since.

*   *   *   *   *  
More than all the Sikhs I met and spent time with during those days in Thunder Bay, no one left a mark on me as indelible as the one who I did not get to meet.

Mehar Singh -- again, I’ve changed the first name -- was the one other Sardar living in the city.

I had heard of him from several sources. He had done his post-graduate work at the University and was now employed in town.

I saw him every now and then from a distance: waiting for a bus, walking across campus, shopping in the local Economart, etc.

A couple of times I ran into him, and wished him “Sat Sri Akal!” He looked me straight in the eye each time, glowered and then walked away, without a word or nod.

Finally, I mentioned these non-meetings to some people in a party, and they laughed.

“Oh,” they said, “that must be Mehar Singh you saw!“ 

Apparently, everyone knew of him, but no one really knew him. Everyone knew a little about him, an anecdote here, a story there. Bit by bit, I was able to put together a picture, though it didn’t amount to much.

Mehar Singh was a recluse. At least as far as other Indians were concerned. He wanted nothing whatsoever to do with Indians, any Indians … no exceptions.

He had apparently had some difficulties with a family member or friend long before he arrived in Thunder Bay, and had taken a vow to never have anything to do with any other Indian ever again. That’s it … the entire tribe.

For years, people had tried to invite him, had left him phone messages, sent him notes, stopped him on the street: but always, the same response … none!

Someone who had met someone who once knew him elsewhere had mentioned that he had turned bitter a long time ago, and this was his way of coping with it.

I was saddened by the story to no end. And kept on trying to reach out to him. Phoned him over and over again, but no one would pick up the phone. Even knocked on his door a couple of times; but no one answered.

I often think of him.

And remind myself never to get bitter over things that others do, or what we think others do. I learnt from Mehar Singh that we have a choice: we can pick up and carry around a stone on our shoulders every time we perceive a wrong, or we can walk around each one we come across and move on with life. Sure, I look back from time to time, and look ahead too, to make sure I don’t stub my toes on any of them again.

The journey would be boring as hell if the path was neat and clean and paved all the way.   

March 11, 2013

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