An Excerpt from My Father's Autobiography

Originally published in Punjabi Tribune on Aug 8, 2021.

Translated from Punjabi

Those Paths that I cannot Fathom
Narinder Singh Kapoor

(painting by Gurdish Pannu)

(from his autobiography, ਧੁੱਪਾਂ-ਛਾਵਾਂ, Sun-rays and Shadows)

It is tragic to be a refugee.  Those who are forced to leave their homes to settle at an unfamiliar, alien land face untold difficulties and hardships.  In this essay, the writer has shone a light on the plight of such refugees through his own lived experience.

 

The last battles of the second world war were being fought.  Rumors of India becoming free were widespread.  Communal tensions were bubbling up.  We were hearing about amazing new inventions from around the world which were accelerating the pace of life.  A lot was happening, pleasant as well as unpleasant.  The atmosphere was tense.  During this noise and chaos, I came into this world.  The only good thing about my birth was that four days later it was the festival of Diwali.  My birth had no earthly relation to Diwali, but my mother had joined the two in her heart.  In those times there was no record kept of a birth in a village.  I was two when amidst the celebration of India’s independence, Punjab had been ripped apart.  Stumbling along, we were lost in the caravans of refugees.  It was as if a bale of hay had become untied in a flooded, angry river.  People went wherever they could.  We became refugees and after being lost in many caravans and camps, we eventually ended up in Patiala.  Some from our extended family had reached Delhi, some were in Dehradun, a few others were in Ambala.  A lot had happened in a very short time.  We had lost our home and our village; my grandfather was no longer with us.  The day would break, and then night would fall, but hunger was our constant companion.

Parents possessed only a faint optimism in addition to the clothes covering their bodies.  In the caravan, the corner of someone’s metal trunk had hit my grandfather’s eye and he had lost his eyesight.  We had to abandon him while still on the way.  That episode had left my father a broken man.  During those times of severe crisis, my mother took on the reins.  We witnessed the reality of the world with our own eyes in the refugee camps.  Not only Patiala was an unfamiliar city, but its people too were alien to us.  In such a situation, Gurudwara Dukh Niwaran Sahib in Patiala turned out to be a big pillar of support for the refugees.  There were now two kinds of people in the city: those who had been living there for a long time, and then the refugees.  From someone’s looks, it was not difficult to recognize that he or she was a refugee.  What had transpired with us had also been, in reverse, the fate of Patiala’s Muslims.  Because of my mother’s valiant efforts, we had been able to secure a house vacated by a Muslim clerk.  While living in that house, my mother would get food for us after serving langar in the Gurudwara.  She would also resell vegetables she had bought from the market.  We were four siblings, but our mother was taking care of all five of us, because our father also needed her.  Due to her courage, we had food everyday, but we were always hungry.  We were ready to eat anything, anytime, anywhere.  Our mother had formed cordial and warm relations with the neighbors.  Gradually, as we settled in our house, we started cooking, and washing our clothes.

I was eight when there was to be a wedding at a trader’s house a few blocks from us.  It was their daughter getting married.  A few days before the wedding, the lady of that house enquired from my mother if some maid was available to wash the dishes during the event.  The times were such that a refugee family would do any work offered to it.  Those who could work, were always looking for work.  It was strange how the locals had become the masters and the refugees the servants.  In those times, chefs were arranged for the wedding feasts, but the serving was done by the menfolk of the family.  The groom’s family would arrive the morning before and would leave the next day after lunch.  My mother answered: “I will do the dishes.”  My mother was much prettier and more graceful than that lady, but unfortunately, she, the daughter of a banker, was now a refugee.  The lady, on hearing my mother’s offer, said: “No, you cannot do the dishes!  People will look at you and think you are the lady of the house while I am the servant.”  To solve her predicament, my mother suggested: “Do not worry.  I will stay hidden and do the work in secret.”

My mother worked there for four days.  She would take me with her.  When she cleaned the dishes, I felt uncomfortable.  I would try to ensure that nobody saw her doing that work.  During the two days when the wedding was to happen, the way the guests and other people looked at my mother made me feel uneasy.  I still remember the anguish of those two days.  During this time, I struggled to find a way to tell my mother never to undertake this kind of humiliation again.  When I remember those four days, I believe that is when I started to reflect on life.  On the wedding day, I broke down when I saw the huge pile of dishes that were to be cleaned.  I did not want anyone to see me in tears, and I went outside and away.  But when I was away, I felt that I had abandoned my mother in that difficult hour.  And I wiped away my tears, returned, and started helping her.  In the middle of the wedding festivities, I was distressed.

I am writing these words, but the decision to pen them down was not easy.  I was in two minds whether to describe these episodes or not.  This episode makes me ashamed of myself and is insulting to my mother’s memory.  But I still decided to write it if only to exhibit what trials the refugees had to go through.  You should feel blessed if you never had to be a refugee.

Finally, those four days of distress and anguish were over.  During our walk back home, I was struggling, hesitant and teary-eyed.  But I managed to say to my mother: “We will never go to someone’s house to do their dishes.”  The words “we will never” perhaps had an impact.  My mother turned towards me, looked at me for a long time, and uttered the words: “We won’t.”  With that utterance, at that very moment, while we were still in the middle of the street, my childhood came to an end.

My mother had brought back sweets from the wedding.  My brother and my sisters ate those sweets, but I could not bring myself to touch them.  I realized that my mother had accepted that work only because we were helpless, and that realization changed my life.  I was not my mother’s darling; she was my beloved.  From behind a door or from afar, I would steal glances at her.  She became to me the source of my determination.  Every incident has a negative and a positive aspect.  The negative aspect was that my mother had to go wash the dishes at somebody’s home.  The positive aspect was that from that day, I ensured that she never had to go wash the dishes at somebody’s home.

My shoulders were those of a child.  But from that day, I was prepared to bear any burden.  I had realized that I would have to face all kinds of situations, but I was more than ready.  From there started my long series of menial and low-paid jobs.  During the next fifteen years, I labored at twenty-five different places.  I did any work that I was offered.  And I was ready to do any work even if it wasn’t offered.  Every new work, every new effort, was a step on the ladder for me.  Each job made me face new kinds of people.  The experiences that I gained from these jobs, and my learnings along the way, revealed life to me and became the foundation and inspiration for my writings.

Not long after, my younger sister fell seriously ill.  My mother took her to a retired doctor.  The doctor handed us a bill of fifteen rupees.  My mother opened the knot in her dupatta and gave him all of her eight rupees and said: “In time, we will pay you the rest.”  I was accompanying my mother and my sister.  The doctor noticed me and remarked to her: “Have this boy come to my clinic every day to work.”  When my mother replied that I had to go to school, he said: “Have him come in the mornings to clean, and then again in the evenings for other errands.  Every month, I will deduct one rupee from the outstanding amount, and in addition give him one rupee as salary.”  I was in third grade at that time and my school fees were also one rupee a month.  That was the first job of my life.  I would go to the clinic in the morning, mop the floors, clean the furniture, sprinkle water street-side, and then run to my school.  And I would return in the evening, with my school bag still with me.  After my home, that doctor’s clinic was my priority.  The work at the clinic was to me a proper job, but on Sundays I was made to go to the doctor’s home to do the dishes, wash the dirty clothes and clean their home.  Without any extra pay. 

I would become hungry doing all that Sunday work.  When the doctor’s family had their breakfast, I hoped they would offer me something to eat as well.  But I was never offered.  Next to the doctor’s clinic was a local newspaper’s office where I learnt to operate the printing press.  After some months, when we had paid the doctor’s bill in full, I started working at the press.  There I was paid four rupees a month.  I worked in that press till tenth grade.  There was much to learn and to pick up in that place.

In those times, women used to cover their faces in the presence of men. My mother said that in the struggle to feed and stay alive, that tradition had disappeared.  My mother was brave and would go alone wherever she was needed.  In what was now Pakistan, girls used to study till fifth grade.  My mother had completed all the five grades.  At her school, she was once felicitated for her handwriting by an Englishwoman who was accompanying the school inspector.  In those times, a woman who had studied third grade was considered a prized match for marriage.  My father was a postman for the British officers.  My mother was aspirational and wanted to live a good life.  She had traveled to all the Sikh holy places in India.  She was modern in her outlook.  She enjoyed meeting new people and visiting new places.  It was due to her initiative, and due to the hard work of my brother and me, that our life was getting on track.  She would sew our clothes herself.  She was literate, understood the importance of education and did not allow a break in our schooling.  Compared to the odd job, school was fun for me. My mother used to say: “Do difficult tasks.  Only the difficult tasks are going to be valued.”

Our mother was fond of new gadgets and new techniques.  Once she was on her way to the hospital for getting her eyes checked.  On the way she noticed people queued in front of a shop.  She divined that something of value must be on offer.  She enquired and was told that cooking gas connections were being booked there.  She postponed her hospital visit and got a booking done.  When cooking gas started getting supplied to our city, our home got it on day one.  All the women neighbors came to our home to marvel.  When it came to making pickles or noodles, constructing quilts or mattresses, or shopping for clothes, she was the neighborhood captain.  Waking up early in the morning, getting bathed, and walking four kilometers daily to and back from the gurudwara, and being ready to assist in any way was part of her persona.  Our entire family has learned those things from her.  She understood the importance of a good breakfast.  At our home, nobody had the time nor the inclination to fall ill.  When her fellow refugees wailed, remembering their earlier homes in Pakistan, she would tell them: “Don’t look back.  Look ahead.”  She would often tell us: “First get rid of poverty.  Then make efforts to become wealthy.”  What she meant was that we should first solve the basic problems of our survival, and then after having secured the foundation, we should educate ourselves and make progress toward our goals.  She was the head of our household.  She knew how to navigate life.

I want to describe an instance of my mother’s progressive outlook.  Once I, along with other teachers and students, was away to Bombay-Goa for a trip that was to last twenty days.  During this time, a distant cousin of mine suddenly arrived at our home.  He was accompanied with his eloped fiancée, and they had come to get married with my help.  But I wasn’t there.  My mother, taking the mantle, arranged a priest and got them married.  And then offered them a place to stay.  I admired my mother’s self-confidence, her tenacity, her positive and progressive outlook.  She was a hero to me.  A hero’s example provides a bulwark and a sense of optimism to a society.  Punjab has many martyrs and Sikh Gurus as its heroes.  Krishna, because of Kurukshetra, is Haryana’s hero.  Himachal, for lack of a hero in its history, hasn’t been able to forge a strong identity.  A hero inspires us.

Whenever I feel despondent or defeated in life, I consider the trials of Guru Gobind Singh and then my own troubles seem trivial to me.  Throughout my life, those who I call my heroes have given me energy and enthusiasm: Socrates, Alexander, Mahatma Buddha, Guru Gobind Singh, Napoleon, Lincoln, … and my mother.