I know comments like those hurt my dad. They flew in the face of all the long hours of study and sacrifice it had taken him to get this far. He badly wanted to work in the field he had dedicated the majority of his academic life to. Failure was not an option. What might have started off as his mother’s worry over financial security had blossomed into a love for healing and curing. It was prophetic, given his name, Jagtaran—one who uplifts the world. His work as a physician would be his contribution to lifting people up.
He finally got his break when he got the results of his most recent exam. He opened the letter hopeful about the results but with guarded optimism, having failed to reach the passing percentage so many times before. This time, though, he felt he had poured that much more of himself into his studies, and he was confident he would pass. He unfolded the letter and read the results. He had passed, with a solid score. His heart beamed with the satisfaction and pride of achieving a hard-won victory. My dad was back on track, and he could finally earn his place in the Canadian medical practice.
My mom continued to work at the bank, but she had lots of time to herself. She wished she was spending it with her little baby, but instead, she was knitting clothes for me.
“How big do you think he is now?” she’d ask my dad at dinner, showing him the hat she had knitted that day. “Do you think this will still fit when he comes back?”
“Let’s just focus on getting him back,” my dad would say.
My dad thought the next step in his medical career would be easy, but it proved to be its own challenge. He had earned the degree, passed the equivalence exam, and gained local experience—he felt it should be easy to get accepted for a residency program. He applied to a number of schools in a variety of different specialities, completed his residency interviews, and awaited the results. The first responses that he received were all rejections. They were polite and nicely worded, but rejections all the same. As the rejections piled up, he started to feel a little panicked, but he reassured himself that he had applied to a lot of programs. Finally, in November 1980, my father received an acceptance letter from the medical school of Memorial University of Newfoundland, St. John’s. It felt like he’d won the lottery. He quickly accepted the residency, specializing in psychiatry, and cancelled his remaining applications.
A few weeks later, my parents made the trek to St. John’s. My mom and dad found a two-bedroom apartment and furnished it with a new mattress, a second-hand dining set, and a couch. Right after getting things settled in St. John’s, my dad boarded another flight, this time to Panjab to pick me up from my grandparents, while my mom stayed behind to unpack the few boxes and suitcases in our new home. I can just imagine my dad’s excitement and sense of accomplishment. He had made it, and now was going to pick up his son. He was well and truly on his path to a bright future in Canada.
We were all finally reunited in St. John’s a couple of days before my second birthday. I was hobbling around in the snow and speaking full sentences in Panjabi.
“Bhua,” I apparently said to my mom, using the word I would for my father’s sister, “aho soor morden chaliyeh.” Let’s chase the pigs out of the field. In Panjabi, there’s a different word for almost every relationship. Aunts who are your mom’s sisters are called masi, while aunts on your dad’s side are called bhua, and grandparents are called something specific, depending on whether they’re your mom’s or dad’s parents.
I’m sure it hurt a little when I called my mom “auntie” instead of “mom,” but she let it go. My mom was just happy to have me back and loved that I was speaking Panjabi. My father, though, was a little more worried. He was adamant that we should speak only in English at home.
“How is he supposed to go to school?” he said to my mom. “The teachers don’t speak Panjabi.” My mom eventually conceded, and English became the first language in our house. Later on, though, my parents would regret their decision. Growing up surrounded by English, it was inevitable that I’d quickly adapt and learn the new language. But forgetting Panjabi meant I lost a little bit of myself and my ability to connect to my roots. It also meant I lost an important connection to my parents. My parents speak English fluently, but you can connect with someone on a completely different level when you speak in the language in which they feel most comfortable expressing themselves. There aren’t any guidebooks on how to build a new life in a brand-new country in a language you’ve only ever studied in school. These were just the learning pains my family came to accept.
My first years in St. John’s were blissful. As chance would have it, other South Asian doctors-in-training had found their way to Newfoundland. My dad was studying with a few doctors from different parts of South Asia, even a couple from Panjab. My parents had grown up in villages and cities where people from different faiths were neighbours and close family friends, and they were delighted to find out that St. John’s was no different. My earliest memories were playing with the children of my father’s colleagues, kids who were Hindu, Sikh, and Christian, and Hindi-, Panjabi-, and Telegu-speaking. All of our families regularly gathered for social evenings and delicious food. At least once a week, I’d stuff myself with chicken curry, aloo gobi (potato and cauliflower stew), saag (stewed spinach), and other delicacies.
I made my first friend in Canada in that St. John’s apartment, too. Tim and I used to play with our toys in the stairwell until his parents or mine would call us home for dinner. While I was probably one of the only brown kids in the apartment, I remember playing with the other kids and never really noticing that I looked different. St. John’s gets heavy snowfall, so we made use of the winter wonderland. We built snow forts and dug tunnels. I’d spend all day playing outside with the other kids in the building until my mom called out, “Jimmy!”
Yes, that really was my name growing up. My full name is Jagmeet Singh Jimmy Dhaliwal. When I was born, my parents were still struggling with their identity in their adopted land and were even more confused about the identity of their child. So, in order to keep my options open, my parents gave me a Western name in addition to my Sikh one. And when my siblings came along, my parents did the same thing. I was two years old when my sister, Manjot, was born, and they gave her the name Mona. Then, on Mother’s Day in 1984, my brother, Gurratan—or Gary, as my parents called him—was born.
Each day, my world grew a little more. I started school not long after Gurratan was born, and I loved it. More important, though, I met my first crush. There was a girl named Sunali in my kindergarten class, and even though we were young, she carried herself with confidence. Of course, that meant that many of the other boys in the class bothered her non-stop—I think most of them had crushes on her and just didn’t know how to show it. One day, a couple of boys were being more aggressive than usual toward her, pulling her hair and teasing her. I saw that they were upsetting her, so I walked up to them, pushed them away, and yelled, “Stop!” The boys looked stunned and shuffled away. Sunali looked over at me and thanked me, and I think my heart stopped for a moment.
My parents seemed similarly happy. The residency program at the university started my dad on a basic stipend, which grew a little every year. For the first time in his adult life, “Dr. Dhaliwal” felt good about his situation. We were financially comfortable, my dad had a car and a place for his family to live, and my mother was able to spend time with her children and especially care for Gurratan, who was still an infant just learning to crawl.
Though we were comfortable, our little family was growing fast and our apartment was getting a little cramped. So my father applied for a student residence on the hospital grounds and, not long after, we moved into a new home. The extra space was nice, but what I was most excited about was that our new house was literally across the street from Bowring Park.
When you’re young, everything appears bigger than it actually is. But in the case of Bowring Park, my memory wasn’t skewed by my youthful age—it really is massive, more like a conservation area than a park. For kids lik
e me and my siblings, who’d only known cramped apartment buildings, this was like suddenly finding ourselves footsteps away from Neverland. Fitingly, there was a life-size statue of Peter Pan by the duck pond, an outdoor pool, as well as walking trails that wound through a forest of birch, maple, and spruce trees.
My dad loved having a family, and was always incredibly generous, but it was my mom who spent the most time raising us. She was basically a nutritionist, chef, driver, conflict resolution professional, and early childhood educator all in one. The last role, in particular, she embraced, as it allowed her to put her training as a teacher to work.
As soon as I could hold a pencil, my mom made me practise writing out the alphabet and the numbers one to one hundred. A common refrain from me and my siblings growing up was, “Why do I have to learn this? They’re not even teaching us this in school!” But our complaints always fell on deaf ears. My mom had a passion for learning, and she was determined to pass it on to her children.
By the time I was in first grade, I was able to read Robert Munsch books on my own. When she saw that, my mom figured it was time to resurrect my Panjabi.
She started by incorporating Panjabi phrases back into our conversations. I don’t remember the earliest phrases, but growing up there were a couple that stood out. One phrase in particular was one of her favourites, “Do akhar pardia kar?” (Why don’t you study?) (Or, more literally, “Why don’t you read two letters?”) It was a phrase that came up often—my mom said it every time she thought we were wasting our time not learning something useful, but mostly it felt like she used it as a proxy for “study for your exams.” It was her way to remind us to study so we would do well in school. I heard “Do akhar pardia kar?” throughout my educational life, from elementary school all the way to law school.
She even used it on me when I was a lawyer with my own practice. “Do akhar pardia kar?” my mom said one day while I was sitting on the couch watching a movie on TV.
I was caught off guard. I panicked for a second, thinking I had forgotten about an upcoming exam. I had been in school for so much of my life.
“Bebey-ji, I’m done with school, remember? No more exams, I don’t need to study anymore,” I replied with a smile and a light chuckle, relieved that there wasn’t an exam I had overlooked.
My mom looked at me thoughtfully.
“So?” she said. “Just because you’re done with school doesn’t mean you stop learning. You should always be learning. Learning never stops.”
She had me there. It’s tough to argue with that. Here I thought she had momentarily forgotten I wasn’t in school anymore. Instead she was still dropping wisdom on me.
Not long after reintroducing Panjabi into our day-to-day lives, my mom moved on to giving me actual Panjabi lessons. She started by introducing me to a little Gurmukhi, the alphabet and writing used in Panjabi but also in Sikh poetry. Beyond just language, she used Gurmukhi to help me better understand Sikhi. She began by introducing me to the Sri Guru Granth Sahib, the spiritual guide and teacher for Sikhs. Well, not the whole Guru Granth Sahib, which consists of 1,430 pages of love songs and poetry aimed at helping one walk down the path of love to experience oneness with the universal energy. She started me off with the basics. She taught me to read , Ik Oankar, the first word written in the Guru Granth Sahib. The symbol has two parts. The first is the number one, and the second is a character that means the infinite sound or energy of the universe. Read together, this has many meanings—“there is one infinite energy,” or as my mom taught me, “we are all one.” I didn’t know it at the time, but I would spend the rest of my life hearing this phrase and reflecting on what it meant.
My mother also taught me a couple of other words, and we would play a game. My mom would open up a page of a book containing excerpts from the Guru Granth Sahib and see if I could find the word, like literary hide-and-seek.
I loved the game, but improving my Panjabi was a slow process. My parents, who regretted not speaking Panjabi at home, had gradually transitioned back to speaking to us in a mix of Panjabi and English, but my siblings and I hadn’t caught up. We were stuck in a communication stalemate—my parents talking in Panjabi, we kids in English. Even with my mom’s patient teaching, I couldn’t help but mix it with English. It wasn’t a conscious decision. Hearing my parents speak it in public didn’t embarrass me, as it sometimes can for the children of immigrants. The words just didn’t feel natural anymore.
Still, I loved hearing the language around me, and the more my parents spoke it, the more it helped kindle a love for languages. Even knowing only rudimentary Panjabi, I had learned that certain phrases just couldn’t be translated. One Panjabi saying in particular really made the point. If you want to really encourage someone, to give them that extra boost to take on a challenge or push themselves beyond their limits, you would say, “Chakk de phatte.” It was amazing how motivating the phrase was whenever I heard it in Panjabi. When I learned the English translation—“pick up the wooden boards”—I almost laughed. Needless to say, it doesn’t quite have the same beauty or motivation in translation.
That love of language would follow me throughout my schooling. Years later, just before I entered high school, one of my teachers told me that I could move into an advanced French class the next year, but only if I took extra credits over the summer. She also recommended listening to French music and watching French television and films. I jumped at the chance. I had been captivated by Quebec history and saw a lot of similarities between the minority-language struggles of Québécois and what my parents experienced growing up as minority-language speakers in South Asia. I enjoyed speaking French and found it a beautiful language. I thought my parents might find it odd that I was so into learning French.
“You should absolutely do it,” my dad said. “We’ll even get you a tutor.”
“Seriously?” I replied.
“It is a language you need in Canada,” my mom said matter-of-factly, her eyes lighting up at the prospect of me doing something productive over the summer.
“The more languages you learn, the better,” my dad added.
I guess their support wasn’t really a surprise. My dad wanted us kids to have every opportunity and would sacrifice anything for his kids, and my mom was passionate about learning.
The next day, my dad gave me money so I could buy Patrick Bruel and Roch Voisine cassettes at the local mall, and over the coming months, my parents encouraged me whenever I turned the channel to Radio-Canada or rented a French movie from the library.
Later, my dad admitted he had an ulterior motive in supporting my French lessons. He thought that learning French might encourage me to learn Panjabi. I’m not sure how he drew that connection. There are some key similarities between the languages—they share the use of feminine and masculine prepositions and nouns. But it didn’t work the way my dad intended. It wasn’t until I was in university and became friends with more Panjabi people my age that I started speaking the language regularly, listening intently to my friends’ words and trying to respond.
I wish I had learned Panjabi as a kid and that I had taken my mom’s Panjabi lessons more seriously. I truly believe you can never fully connect with someone unless you speak the language they grew up speaking, the language they dream in. If you love someone’s language, truly love it, then you’ll find a door to their culture, identity, and what makes them who they are. Recently, in 2014, when I was hanging out with my parents and cracking jokes in Panjabi with them, what I’d been missing as a kid hit home. Not speaking my parents’ language had left a gulf between them and me. When I finally spoke our mother tongue with my parents, I felt a new bond form between us.
I mentioned this regret in passing to someone. I can’t even recall his name, but I wish I could because I want to credit him with what he taught me. He said that I shouldn’t regret the fact that I didn’t learn Panjabi growing up. I looked at him, confused, and asked, “Why not?”
“Your journey to learn Panja
bi now has instilled a deep appreciation for the language. Now you see the benefit and beauty of the language in a way far more profound than you would have before,” he said. “In a way, the lack of Panjabi in your childhood has helped create a love for the language in your adulthood.”
There was another Panjabi expression I heard a lot growing up: chardi kala.
It was one of the phrases my mom taught me. At first, I thought it meant “happy” or “content.”
I had just returned from a fun day hanging out with my friends when my mom asked me how I was doing.
“I’m in chardi kala,” I said to my mom. I had been to the park.
“Beta, that’s not chardi kala.”
“What is it, then?” I asked.
She paused for a moment, searching for the words. “It’s maintaining rising spirits when things aren’t going well,” she explained. “When the odds are against you, or you’re feeling a bit defeated, but you still believe you can take that next step forward. That is chardi kala.”
In 1984, when I was five years old, my parents tapped into the deeper meaning of this phrase.
It was that June that thousands upon thousands of Sikhs gathered to celebrate an annual commemoration at Sri Harmandir Sahib—the “Temple of the Infinite Divine,” also commonly known as the Golden Temple, in Amritsar, Panjab. The complex includes the Sri Harmandir Sahib and Akal Takht Sahib. Together they represent the global Sikh centre of spiritual and political sovereignty. The Indian government claimed there was a group of political dissidents residing in the Gurdwara, and they launched a full-scale military assault on June 5, 1984. This was a day of historical significance for Sikhs, a day when thousands and thousands of attendees would be visiting the Harmandir Sahib. Harmandir Sahib is widely considered the most important Gurdwara to Sikhs.
Love & Courage Page 3