by Bali Rai
Saturday 29th November
I WOKE UP on the Saturday morning with a hangover, wondering why there was so much noise being made all over the house. I looked at my alarm clock and saw that it was only just past eight in the morning. Outside my bedroom door I could hear kids running about, one or more of them banging on my door every five minutes or so. The only one I recognized by sound was Ranjit’s brat, Gurpal, who was screaming at the top of his voice, trying to sing some new bhangra tune, only he couldn’t remember all the words.
As I lay in bed, my head aching from drinking a whole bottle of Bacardi with Ady the night before, I wondered how things were going to turn out for my nephew. At nearly five years of age, he was already well behind most kids of his age in his grasp of English. Everyone in the house apart from me spoke to him only in Punjabi and encouraged him to do the same. No-one ever read books to him, not even Jas, his mum, who had actually had a good education, something that I had once confused with having an intellect. In her case they really weren’t the same thing. After all, it’s not like she had used her education to her advantage. She seemed happy to play the quiet little Punjabi wife, always in the kitchen or looking after the kids. And she never complained either. Most of the time she tried to justify it, spouting the same rubbish about Punjabi values as my old man or my brothers. No doubt she’d have a couple more kids soon. Gurpal was like a lost cause already, although I had a feeling that by the time he reached my age, things would have changed so much that he’d probably rebel too.
I got out of bed and drew back the curtains. Outside it was sunny and bright, although there was a heavy frost on the ground. I opened my window and got a blast of chilly air which made me reach for a T-shirt. I found my fags in my jacket pocket and lit one, blowing the smoke out of the window, letting the ash fall on to the flat roof of the kitchen extension. There were a few people in the garden but they couldn’t see me because they were too close to the kitchen door to see above the extension itself. Not that I really cared anymore. It was far too late in the game to worry about things like that. After I finished my fag, I pulled on my jeans and headed for the bathroom, hoping that it was free. From downstairs came the sound of women gossiping and a bhangra tape was playing in the living room. It was the start of another long day, I thought to myself as I shut the bathroom door, just before Gurpal managed to sneak in behind me.
By midday I was sitting in the front room drinking tea and wishing that I had my own television. The football was about to start and I wanted to watch it but the TV was in the living room and all the women had taken it over. I was desperate to see what was happening with Liverpool after another shit start to the season. For some strange reason, I was convinced that my own problems were mirrored by the problems faced by my football team. I know it sounds stupid but it was like I was waiting for Liverpool to have a wicked season because I was convinced that would see my own life pick up too. I was sitting on the old man’s green velvet sofa, thinking about what I’d do if I was the Liverpool manager when my old man walked in, all bleary-eyed from a night of hard drinking.
‘Manjit, beteh,’ he said with his croak, his morning voice, ‘Come, let’s have a drink to celebrate your good luck.’
I looked up at him and fought back the urge to shake my head at the state that he was in, not to mention the fact that he wanted another drink so early in the morning. Instead I smiled at him and said no, answering him in Punjabi. ‘Not yet, Daddy-ji. Later. I have to go into town to pick up my suit.’
‘Haven’t you bought it yet? I thought you got it when I gave you that money?’
‘No, I ordered it,’ I lied. I was actually going to buy a suit, but it would be a cheap one because I wanted to use as much of my cash windfall as I could for a deposit on my own flat.
‘When are you going?’
‘About an hour from now.’
‘Do you need some more money?’ asked my old man, swaying as if he had been caught in a strong wind, and belching. I wanted to say that I did but for some reason it came out as ‘no’. The old man just shook his head and smiled. ‘Now that you are one of us again, beteh, anything you want you can have. How much?’
‘No, no. Honest. I don’t need any more money.’
‘Don’t be an idiot, Manjit. Am I doing all of this for me? It’s all for you. It’s your life.’
Well, as soon as he said that, something inside me just snapped. I was seething. What did he mean that it was my life? None of this shit was my life. None of it was down to me. I had never asked him to arrange a wedding for me. I had never asked him to try and lumber me with some wife that I didn’t want so that he could repay some old mate of his for a past favour. Sack that. I worked hard at keeping calm on the outside but my face must have gone a little red. It must have done so because there was a volcano erupting inside me – blood like lava. The old man didn’t even notice, probably because he was still pissed from the night before, and he pulled out another roll of notes from his front pocket, more money than I had ever seen before. He counted out about a grand and put it on the table in front of me.
‘There, have that,’ he said, smiling and putting the rest back in his pocket.
‘No, it’s too much,’ I said.
‘Take it, Manjit. I won’t ask you again,’ he said. ‘Anything that you don’t use, you can put into your bank account. A married man needs to have money.’
I nodded and looked at the grand in front of me. Damn right I was gonna put it into my bank account, but not for my life as a married man. For my new life, as a free man. I said a thank you, but as I got up to take my mug into the kitchen, the old man grabbed me and gave me a hug that nearly knocked the wind out of me.
‘You see, Manjit,’ he said, his breath reeking of stale booze. ‘You are one of us. Ours. I know things have been wrong between us, I know. But haven’t I made you a real man? Haven’t I?’
I tried to break his hold but he was too strong and he just squeezed me for ages, tears in his eyes. I tried to look away from him but I couldn’t. There were tears in my eyes too. Not because I felt sad or guilty. Not because I thought that he was right, or forgave him for anything that he had ever done to me. The fists in the face. The kicks in the back. The bruises on my legs that he’d put there with the old hockey stick he kept in the closet under the stairs – bruises that I’d explain away as football injuries to everyone except Ady. My tears were a sign that I was never going to be the man that he had tried to beat me into being. Never. And I knew, after that point, that I was never coming back. Any link that I had with my father was gone for good.
After I had to sit through another saggan that evening, I walked down Evington Drive to St Philip’s church which sat at the end of Evington Road. My old man had hired the church hall for a party for all the men in my family – another Punjabi custom that meant that the women got to have the house to themselves to have their own party. The party at the hall was just an excuse for another piss-up, with loud bhangra music blasting out and panfuls of tandoori chicken and lamb curry being dished up. By the time I got there it was just past ten o’clock and most of the guests had already been there for a couple of hours. It was packed. I could see Harry and all his mates sitting next to where a bhangra DJ hired for the night had set up a table for his decks and stuff. Around the room I saw various uncles and cousins and second cousins, all throwing booze and meat down their throats like they’d never seen it before. My old man was staggering around the hall, shaking hands with people and topping up their glasses. He was hammered and I really didn’t feel like talking to him so I looked around for a place to sit and have a bottle of Pils, which was the only beer that my old man had bought. The rest of the booze was either Bacardi or Famous Grouse, typical for most Punjabi wedding piss-ups.
I went and sat on my own, near the back of the hall, just watching as everyone around me got drunker and drunker, ignoring me even though I suppose I was the guest of honour as the one who was meant to be getting married. Ranjit and a couple of
his mates finally noticed that I had turned up and came over with a plate of chicken and a bottle of Bacardi.
‘It’s wedding boy,’ laughed Ranjit as I looked up at him and his mates.
‘Awright?’
‘Man, why you so late? It’s your party.’
‘Don’t feel like it,’ I replied, taking a swig from my warm bottle of Pils. One of Ranjit’s mates, a six-foot-bloke called Surjit who was so fat that he probably hadn’t seen his own knob for about five years without the aid of a mirror, ruffled my hair and then laughed.
‘Don’t worry, you little shit. After tomorrow it’ll be your party every night, innit.’ They all started laughing at his stupid joke. Ranjit poured Bacardi into a glass on the table next to me and pushed it my way.
‘Here, drink a man’s drink, not that water you got there. You’re a Jat Punjabi – not a bloody Hindu.’
They broke into laughter again, like a pack of hyenas, giggling at their own ignorance. I blanked them and the glass of Bacardi, taking another swig of my beer.
‘And if you need some tips. About how to do it, innit. Just ask. We all experts, man,’ said Surjit, winking at me. I was really tempted to make a crack at him but decided to keep quiet.
‘Soon you’ll be out and about with us guys, innit. No more hanging about with that monkey and all them goreh,’ said another of Ranjit’s mates, a skinny, greasy-haired bloke called Dev in a pair of shiny grey trousers.
I glared at him for about ten seconds before I flipped. I mean there’s some things that you can keep quiet at and that, but what he’d just said made me want to kill him. I stood and faced up to him, even though he was about two inches taller than me.
‘You wanna say that again, Dev?’
Ranjit looked at me and then at his mate and smiled. I waited for Dev to say something but he just stood there, smirking.
‘Well? You wanna call my best mate a monkey again?’
‘Chill out, Manjit,’ said Ranjit, putting his hand on my shoulder.
I shrugged it off and stood my ground. ‘No. Tell your friend here to keep his racist gob shut or I’m going to fill it with my bottle.’
Ranjit stood and looked at me for a minute and then burst into laughter. One by one his mates followed suit, all except Dev who just looked away. Surjit came and put his arm around my shoulders and picked up the glass of Bacardi that Ranjit had poured for me. He drank it down in one go and then let out a grunt. I pushed him off and turned to face Ranjit, who was still smiling, like something really funny had just happened.
‘You know, Manjit, I always thought that you were a bit of a poof, innit. But today you showed us you got the fight in you, like a real Jat man.’
I shook my head at him and decided to go outside for some air. But before leaving I said something that I had wanted to say for ages.
‘I ain’t nothing like you and your mates, and I never will be, no matter what happens. And you can tell Dev that I’ll catch him out on the street one day. See how tough he feels then.’
Outside Ekbal was smoking a spliff with some other lads, all distant relations. I found them hiding around the side of the hall behind some tall bushes. ‘Nah, man,’ he said to me, ‘I can’t believe you are going through with this shit. I thought you didn’t want it?’
‘I don’t want to do it, man,’ I replied, ‘I just ain’t got a choice.’
‘Sack that, Manny, you don’t have to do nuttin’, man.’
‘I can’t just not do it,’ I lied, not wanting to let my cheat out of the bag. ‘What am I gonna do? I’d have to leave home and everything. My family would cut me off.’
‘Let ’em. I don’t care about shit like that. Man’s gotta do what he wants to, otherwise why bother at all. Ain’t no-one runnin’ my life for me.’
‘We’ll see, Ekky. Not that you’ll ever be in my position. Your family’s different.’
I handed back the spliff and walked back into the hall, Ekky’s words floating around in my head as I tried to avoid Ranjit, his mates and Harry’s little gang. I don’t know what time I eventually left for the short walk back to the house but somewhere along the way I had to stop and throw up, the combination of beer and nerves overcoming my attempts to keep control of my stomach. I think Harry and one of his mates were behind me as I was throwing up, only I can’t remember. All I can recall is thinking, This is it. This is IT! It was finally time to type my cheat onto the screen and let the game commence, with all the best weapons, for once, on my side.
CHAPTER THIRTY-THREE
Sunday 30th November
I GOT WOKEN up at half past five on the morning of my seventeenth birthday. My wedding day. After fighting my way into the bathroom and getting ready, I headed downstairs and made some coffee which I took into the living room where one of my uncles, Pritam, was sorting out a box of red carnations for all the men to wear in their lapels.
‘Good morning, mate,’ he said as I sat down on the sofa, next to some cousin or other.
‘Awright, Uncle-ji. How’s things?’
‘Things OK, mate, you know. Taxi business going well.’
‘Sorted.’
‘Bit like you, mate. We all thought you were gonna turn out a wrong one, you know, with all that pissing about you done. But you turn out OK. Good luck for the wedding, Manjit.’
We were due to leave for Derby around nine that morning, with the majority of the guests following in a specially hired coach or two, the janeth it’s called. Punjabi weddings are all about ancient traditions that have been handed down for a few centuries. One of those traditions says that the boy and his family must go to the place where the girl lives, in this case Derby, marry her and then bring her back to his family home. There are all these notions of honour and stuff and in a way I suppose it’s quite romantic, if you like that kind of thing – you know, the groom bringing his new bride back on his horse, or in my case in the back of a maroon Mercedes that Ranjit had borrowed from one of his friends for the wedding. A turban was tied to my head and a piece of cloth called a phullah attached to my shoulders; my sisters and cousin sisters held this as I made my way out to the car, having been given a piece of Indian sweetmeat as a blessing. The car looked really tacky. Gold and white ribbons were attached to the front of it and a huge gold coloured khanda – the symbol of Sikhism – was on the back shelf. Written across the rear windscreen were the words ‘Raj Karegah Khalsa’ (which meant ‘the Sikh brotherhood will reign’) and, embarrassingly, the words ‘Punjab Express’. The Sikh symbols were purely for show – not one member of my family was actually a Sikh in anything but name – but the ‘Punjab Express’ bit was the kind of thing Harry loved.
My mum and some of her cronies stood in the doorway and poured saffron oil onto the step just before I left. My old dear had tears in her eyes and kept on praising God. I wanted to say goodbye to her because I really was leaving but my sisters-in-law got in the way and lots of other people crowded around me, including Ranjit and my cousin Ekbal who just shook his head and laughed when he saw me in my turban.
‘Man, you look like Gunga Din in that,’ he said as I got into the back of the car next to him. Ranjit, who was driving, got in the front and then Harry waddled up, his suit looking like it was going to burst under the pressure of keeping all that fat in check, and climbed into the front passenger side.
‘Ready to lose your virginity then, you poof?’ he said smiling and exposing his yellow teeth.
I ignored him and closed my eyes, trying to clear my thoughts, my mind filled with last-minute nerves and doubts. I knew what I had to do, had it all planned, but even at this stage I was feeling unsure. And then I saw the picture of Jag’s kid, Mia, in my mind and I perked up, remembering everything that he had said to me about doing my own thing, and that I wasn’t being selfish. Harry made a few more cracks before Ekbal called him a fat bastard and then Ranjit told us to shut up as he pulled off.
We were just getting on to the motorway when I told Ranjit that I needed to go to the loo. He sighe
d, telling me that I should have gone back at the house, but I reminded him that it was my wedding day and he had to listen to me for a change. Harry started sniggering and said that I was shitting myself because I wasn’t a real man.
‘He’s just scared, innit, ’case his missus is too much woman for him.’
‘Your missus must be too much for you – and at least I don’t fire blanks,’ I said, making Ekbal and Ranjit laugh.
‘Better watch your mouth, you little shit. Don’t want a black eye on your wedding day, do you?’
‘Listen, fat boy, after all the bruises you lot have given me since I was a kid, I can take it. One of these days, Harry, I’m gonna get my own back. I got you and all your mates in check.’
‘What you think . . .?’
‘Shut it, both of you. I’m the eldest one here, innit. You got to listen to me,’ said Ranjit, pulling into Leicester Forest East services. ‘Here, go to the bog if you have to, but you better hurry. If we’re late, Daddy-ji will look bad in front of all the guests.’
He pulled into the car park and parked up. I got out and headed for the toilets, ducking into the first cubicle inside, wondering if anyone had noticed me in my Gunga Din outfit. Someone had written the words ‘WOO HAH’ on the door in red ink. In the next cubicle someone coughed – two short sounds, almost like a code.
We got to Derby about half ten and headed for the Sikh temple near the old Derby county football ground, the Baseball Ground. The area, which had a big black and Asian population, was a bit run-down but the temple was brand new and stood out amongst the dirty brown brick buildings because it was white with a gold dome top. Once Ranjit had parked up, behind the coach that had brought the rest of the janeth, my old man came up and asked why we had taken so long. Ranjit told him that we had stopped for me to go to the loo and that I had been in there for a good fifteen minutes which was only a slight exaggeration. My old man swore in Punjabi and then told us to come over to where everyone else was waiting. As I got out of the car, holding my phullah, Ekbal tried to straighten my jacket.