They were given a bed inside the Anandpur temple complex, in a hostel less than a mile from the hundreds of marble steps that led to the Gurdwara Takht Sri Keshgarh Sahib. The hostel was cold and the beds narrow and hard, and each morning Narinder woke with pink welts across her back. Her mother said she mustn’t complain, that they were very lucky to be so close to the Takht and that most volunteers had to find accommodation in the villages beyond the city’s five forts. Worse than the welts on her back was the heat. It was too hot to make a four-year-old climb all the way up to the Takht. Instead, each sunrise, Narinder was passed to an elderly woman, a pilgrim, who took her up in one of the rentable donkey carts that hung around the back of the gurdwara. Narinder would then wait in the shade at the top of the steps, watching her mother’s prayerful ascent. She watched how deeply her mother would bend to touch each step with the tips of her fingers, and how she’d touch those fingers to her forehead and mouth a silent Waheguru. Only then did she place her foot on the step and in this way move up. It was an amazing sight for the young Narinder waiting at the top: the giant white expanse of the steps triangulating away from her, and, alone in the centre of it, as true as bread, her mother in quiet standing prayer, her chunni pinned over her turban so it wouldn’t slip each time she bent down, her feet pressed together at the heels, as they should be. It took her nearly an hour in that crucifying heat to reach the shade at the top, yet to her daughter she didn’t seem made at all hot or bothered by the effort. Travelling to our guru is no great hardship, her mother would say, adding, winking, though it would be nice if he was a little more down to earth.
Narinder’s mother was called Bibi Jeet Kaur and she was in her late thirties when Narinder was born, seven years after her brother, Tejpal. It was a great blessing, relatives had said. God had listened. Everyone at Anandpur Sahib – and everyone back in England, for that matter – said Bibi Jeet Kaur was a model gursikh. She could read the gurmukhi script with fluency. When she wasn’t running the gurdwara canteen or serving langar to the congregation or in the darbar sahib performing the kirtan, she was helping youngsters understand the importance of sikhi. She’d never cut her hair but swept it all up beneath a black turban, and over that turban she wore a long, wide chunni double-wrapped across her chest. Most importantly, she was bringing up her children as gursikhs, and by the time Narinder and Tejpal were eight they knew all of the sukhmani sahib and would be called down to perform a portion of it when relatives visited from Birmingham, Leicester or, once, from Vancouver.
During her third summer at Anandpur Sahib, when Narinder was six, she stood in front of the holy book and received the cloth from which she was to cut her first turban. It was of coarse orange cotton and Narinder’s arms jerked down as the old granthi dropped the material into her hands. Bibi Jeet Kaur indicated for Narinder to touch the cloth to her forehead. The whole congregation then recited the ardaas, asking Guruji to bless this child who was going to give herself in service to Him and his alms.
At the hostel, her mother took the cloth and folded it into the suitcase. ‘We’ll get it cut in England.’
‘Can’t I wear it tomorrow?’
‘What’s the hurry? I promise He won’t mind if you wait a week.’
‘But I want to wear it tomorrow.’
In truth, she wanted to be like her mother, whom she’d never seen without her kesri. Bibi Jeet Kaur did get the cloth cut the next day and a week after that mother and daughter stepped into Heathrow’s arrivals lounge sporting matching orange turbans. Narinder’s father awaited them. Baba Tarsem Singh was a tall, strong, shoulders-back man with a long, foamy black-grey beard whose sideburns were combed up into his turban. He nodded courteously at his wife, who nodded just as courteously back, and then he gathered Narinder up into his arms.
‘My beautiful little sikhni!’
She loved her turban. Her mother taught her how to wash it and keep it starched up, how to stretch it so it retained its shape on her head for the whole day, how to tie it up, remembering to make a slim pocket at the nape of her neck so that the thick pin needed to tuck away loose hairs could be hidden away.
Narinder and Tejpal were homeschooled, and each morning, after prayers, from seven through to eleven, her father went through their lessons. Afterwards, Narinder touched her forehead to the ground, said, ‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh,’ and accompanied her mother to the gurdwara, to spend the afternoon doing seva.
She pushed up the sleeves of her tunic and helped the women sift through the vast trays of lentils and beans and rice. They seemed to find her funny. Why don’t you go outside and play? But Narinder said she’d rather help. That that was why her bibi and baba sent her here. Sometimes she performed the kirtan with her mother, and while Bibi Jeet Kaur played the harmonium, Narinder sat by her side, clapping the two tiny cymbals only when her mother gave the nod.
‘Chatur disaa keeno bal apnaa sir oopar kar dhaario. Kripaa kattaakh avalokan keeno daas kaa dookh bidaario. Har jan raakhae gur govind. Kanth laae avagun sabh maettae daeaal purakh bakhsand rehaao. Jo maageh thaakur apunae tae soee soee devai.’
‘In all four directions the Lord’s might is extended upon my head. His hand protects me. His merciful eye beholds me, his servant. My pains are dispelled. I am saved by my Lord. In his embrace, by his compassion, my sins are erased. Whatever I ask of my Lord, that and more I am blessed with.’
It was Narinder’s favourite hymn, this hymn of encouragement. Reaching the end, she’d open her young eyes and it was as if the world seemed brighter, greater.
*
One morning, at Anandpur Sahib, after Narinder had finished distributing the prasad, she asked her mother for a roti. She took the roti out to the yard behind the gurdwara and tore it into small pieces and cast these pieces around. The birds came at once. They’d got used to Narinder this last week, perhaps even come to expect her and her roti. One bird seemed to be limping and each time she – Narinder always assumed any animal in pain was female – got near a scrap of roti, another bird would snatch it away. Crouching, Narinder placed a few pieces of roti in front of the creature, but it seemed too weak to take them. It tried to flap its ragged wing. Its feathers were sparse, as if other birds had pecked at it, and it made a thin sound that Narinder took as a cry for help. Gently, she gathered the bird into her palms and held it to her chest and carried it inside to show her mother.
At the hostel, she made a little bed for it out of a box that had once contained rolls of masking tape. She lined the box with a warm tea towel and placed the bird inside it. Then she turned down the ceiling fan so it wouldn’t get cold. She shook beads of water from a cartoon cup into its beak, even waking up to do this through the night. And all day Narinder softened roti in the same cup of water and fed the bird a few morsels, which seemed all it wanted to take. It didn’t seem to be recovering. Its skin appeared to be turning yellow and its eyes were dulled.
‘Bibi?’ Narinder said.
‘Did you pray?’ Bibi Jeet Kaur asked.
Narinder nodded.
‘Then it’s in His hands now.’
The bird died on the fourth day and Narinder wouldn’t stop crying. It wasn’t the death so much, more the suffering that preceded it, that seemed so unfair.
Her mother promised her a bird table when they got back to England, and so one weekend in September Baba Tarsem Singh drove them to a garden centre thirty minutes away and Narinder chose a mahogany feeder topped with a small square house. She and her father started putting it up straight away. Bibi Jeet Kaur said she was going to lie down for a bit, that her back had been hurting all week. They finished erecting the bird table and Narinder said a waheguru and headed inside. She met her mother on the stairs.
‘Fetch your baba, beiti,’ Bibi Jeet Kaur said. She had a hand to her lower back. She looked to be in agony.
It was a blood clot, and in the drive to the hospital it travelled up her spine, causing a blockage which stopped oxygen to her brain. The funeral was very well att
ended. No one had ever seen a better one, people said. Baba Tarsem Singh stood up and pulled round the curtain and pressed the button which activated the belt and carried his wife into the furnace. Narinder was sitting with her dadiji near the back of the room. She was nine years old and it was the first time she’d had to wear a white turban.
There was hardly any furniture in the room and what little there was looked as if it had been set there for a long time. The single bed coming out from the chimney breast, the plain wood dressing table at its side and the straight chair tucked neatly underneath. There was no wardrobe – the bed contained two drawers for her clothes. The evening light was the colour of dark amber and came through the window in two wide beams. The beams ran in parallel, along the brown carpet, over the bed, and then along the floor again, stopping just short of Narinder standing in the doorway with her suitcase. She closed the door and went down the dark staircase and into the hall. Her father was in his room, rocking on his chair, praying quietly to himself. He was so engrossed he didn’t seem to hear Narinder set down her case and enter.
‘Baba?’
He opened his eyes, turned his head. He was sixty-five now, and a stroke two years ago had knocked the strength out of him. His beard was fully grey. ‘Ah, is it time?’
‘Tejpal’s outside. He’ll drive me.’
Baba Tarsem Singh stood and when she touched his feet he blessed her and held her for a long time. She could feel his old hands quivering against her back.
‘I wish you would come,’ she said.
‘I know you’ll do our name proud.’
Together they said, ‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh,’ and then Narinder took up her suitcase and went down the hall.
She was on her way to Sri Anandpur Sahib. It was the tenth anniversary of her mother’s death and time to go back.
She arrived at dawn, the sky a concentrated orange, and she stood at the marble steps and looked up to the temple. Bending deeply, she touched her fingertips to the first step and began the climb. When she got to the top she turned round and the sky had turned a broad blue and it felt as if her mother was all around her. Be with me, she said, and before she’d even said it she heard Him there at her side.
The granthi was in the darbar sahib, flicking holy water through the hall. Narinder waited until he’d finished, then said she was Bibi Jeet Kaur’s daughter and wanted to do a paat in her mother’s name, so her soul might be at peace.
The granthi said this was a most excellent idea. ‘So few do that these days, when it is more important than ever. I assume you’ll be making a healthy donation, too, hmm?’
‘Ji.’
‘That is excellent. I’ll ask the readers to get straight on it.’
‘I’d like to do the reading, please,’ Narinder said. ‘All of it.’
‘On your own?’
‘If you will allow it.’
For three days and three nights she read the guru granth sahib from beginning to end, pausing only to sip water from a steel glass a pilgrim kept topped up at her side. Word got round that Bibi Jeet Kaur’s daughter was in town, doing this, and many came to watch her read. They said she really was her mother’s daughter.
At the end of it, Narinder was exhausted and slept for much of the next day in her room at the hostel. Then she started to volunteer at the gurdwara, mostly in the langar hall, sometimes in the darbar sahib, once in the villages. Every day, she worked from dawn until the evening, when she’d have a simple meal of roti-dhal and water. Before bed she visited one of the smallest gurdwaras in the town, Sisganj Sahib. It was her favourite place. During the day it filled with devotees, because, as the gold plaque put it, this was where Guru Tegh Bahadur’s head was cremated, after he was decapitated by the Mughals for refusing to convert to Islam. In the evenings, however, the devotees dwindled to a weeping few, and Narinder could sit by the window and listen to the evening rehraas prayers while, outside, the river lapped onward.
One evening, a shadow appeared on the carpet. Narinder looked round. It was a woman, at the open window. She had an elongated, V-shaped face, with severe rings of black around close-set eyes. Her salwaar kameez was an old-fashioned, over-washed thing, most of its sequins missing, though the fancy way she wore her chunni made Narinder think she’d spent some time looking in the mirror before leaving the house. The woman brought her hands together and said sat sri akal.
‘Sat sri akal,’ Narinder replied, hands together too.
‘Are you the one from England?’
Narinder said she was.
‘I heard you read through the speakers. You do it very well.’
‘Thank you.’
‘How old are you?’
‘Nineteen, biji.’
‘Do you live in London?’
‘Ji.’
It seemed the woman was working up to ask something of Narinder. It wouldn’t be unusual. She remembered people all the time asking for her mother’s help. To send a message to a relative in England. To arrange a UK–India gurdwara tour. But now the granthi of the gurdwara appeared and told the woman to leave.
‘You have no right!’ the woman said. ‘I can speak to whoever I like.’
‘We don’t want troublemakers here.’ He took her by the elbow and forced her on her way.
‘Call yourselves God’s people!’ she said.
Narinder didn’t see the woman again for the rest of the trip and by the time she’d returned to England had forgotten about the encounter.
*
All year she longed for the summer, when she could return to Anandpur Sahib and to the bustle of India. The intervening months were dull, made long with winter. Breakfast was in silence – there was no TV – and then Tejpal would go up to his room while Narinder stayed down to read the granth with her father. They walked to the gurdwara for lunch and so that, later, Narinder could take her turn on the harmonium. The evenings were given to prayer and after dinner she washed the plates and asked if she might go to bed. Her father would smile at her from his armchair, looking up from his book, and wish her a good night. One evening that winter she remained in the doorway.
‘Baba, might I ask you something?’
‘Of course.’
‘There was a poster in the gurdwara. About teaching Panjabi to some of the children after school. Do you think I might ask about it?’
‘I don’t think so, beiti. Do you need money?’
‘No, Baba.’
‘And in one or two years you’ll be married – these are things you can discuss with your husband.’
‘As you say, Baba. Goodnight.’
‘Goodnight, daughter.’
In her room, she allowed herself to feel disappointed, though she knew he must be right. To make herself feel better, she put on one of her CDs. It was a shabad – hymns were all they had – but anything would have filled her mind with musical delight. As she sometimes did, she started floating around the room, slowly, describing little circles every few steps, and when Tejpal banged on her door telling her to keep it down, she simply ignored him until he went away.
*
In the summer, the gurdwara committee sent her out into the villages with some of the other Anandpur Sahib volunteers. She handed out clothes and kitchen utensils and blankets, and international offerings with labels that read: Kindly donated by Mr and Mrs Prashant Singh, Portland, Oregon, or To our fellow Sikh brothers and sisters from attendees of Sri Singh Sabha Gurdwara, Darlington, UK.
Narinder made a little niqab of her chunni and gripped it in the corner of her mouth. It might just keep the dust from her eyes. Then she shook the metal bolt on the gate and stepped back, holding the blankets out. A lock wrenched and squeaked and the gate pulled open, and a tall, dark woman with a large gold hoop in her nose stood gazing down on her.
‘Waheguru ji ka khalsa, waheguru ji ke fateh. Please take a blanket for the cold nights.’
The woman stretched her elegant neck towards the woolly stack, then her eyes shifted all at once
back up to the girl.
Narinder pressed the blankets forward once more. ‘Please. May God keep his hand on you and your family always.’
‘The valetheni’s come to do her annual pilgrimage. Her donations to the poor.’
Maybe it was the voice – snippy, too ready to retaliate – but like balls rolling into place Narinder realized that this was the same woman who’d come to the window. Last summer. The one who’d been forced away.
‘You needed help,’ Narinder said, without thinking.
The woman rested her hip against the gate. ‘You people don’t help. You pity. That’s what your gursikhi is. Go on, get away. We don’t need your blankets here. I’d rather freeze.’
The gate closed with a reverberating clang and Narinder stood there in the stony alley still holding her blankets. Something was wrong. She could sense it. This woman did need help. She knocked and, again, heard the shuffle and scrape of slippers crossing the courtyard. The woman was muttering even as she reopened the gate: ‘They don’t let you live, they don’t let you die . . . What is it now? I told you we don’t need your blankets. Give them to your God. He can use them to warm that cold heart a little.’
‘Please, massiji. If you tell me what the problem is maybe I can help.’
The woman stayed silent, staring.
‘Please. Our gurus said we have to help one another.’
Inside, the weedy little courtyard was covered in trapezoid shadows cast by the trough, at which an old emaciated buffalo nosed mildly. Here and there were peaky slops of dark-green buffalo shit, and these Narinder worked hard to avoid as she tried to keep up. She was shown to a sticky leather settee in a dark, airless room.
‘The electricity,’ the woman said, both index fingers pointing to the sky. ‘It is gone.’
Narinder placed the blankets on her tidy lap and her hands on top of the blankets. Her silver kara dug uncomfortably into her wrist. The woman crouched on the stone floor, knees flaring out indecently.
‘You want to help?’
The Year of the Runaways Page 26