The word Gurdwara literally translates to “gateway to enlightenment.” But the thousands of people seeking enlightenment that day were trapped. Bullets and heavy artillery ripped through the crowds of innocent men, women, and children who were gathered there, while munitions devastated historic structures and tanks crushed the stone and marble floor. There was no reason for the full military assault. There was also no opportunity for attendees who were in no way the subject of India’s concern to flee.
After the attack, the Indian government ordered a media blackout in Panjab. Human rights organizations and media were unable to provide any details on what had happened beyond the fact that the Golden Temple, along with approximately seventy other Gurdwaras in Panjab, were attacked. The exact loss of life was unknown and would long remain so. At the time, the Indian government claimed it was in the hundreds, but other independent estimates, given the number of people attending, placed the number in the thousands. To Sikhs, this was as heinous as if the Canadian government ordered the armed forces to attack a Roman Catholic cathedral during Easter Sunday mass.
Disturbed, terrified, and outraged at what had happened, Sikhs took to the streets of Los Angeles, Toronto, London—everywhere Sikhs had emigrated. Even St. John’s. My parents and about twenty Sikhs gathered around the front steps of the Newfoundland and Labrador Confederation Building, picket signs in one hand, infants in the other. Those of us old enough to walk were sent to play in a nearby park while our parents chanted “Equal rights for Sikhs!”
It was a tiny but emotional protest that few would have noticed had a local news van not pulled up to cover it. The group asked my father to speak on behalf of them.
“How do you feel?” the reporter asked my dad.
“I feel terrible,” he responded. “We’re being killed, Sikhs are being killed. The Indian government ordered the military to attack a place of prayer. We still don’t know how many people were killed. All I know is that it could have been me and my family if we were still living in Panjab.”
My dad wasn’t the only one who felt that way. Every Sikh, if they can, visits the Sri Harmandir Sahib, so the massacre cast a shadow over all of us. It would not be the last of the Indian state’s brutality against Sikhs, either, though it was the last time my dad spoke openly about it for a long time.
My parents did their best to protect me and my siblings from their trauma, but even as a young boy, I could sense that, beneath their silence, they were deeply hurt and sad. There’d been genocidal campaigns of violence against the Sikhs in Delhi and throughout Panjab, including the Sri Harmandir Sahib and Alkal Takht Shahib complex. My parents would look at me and my siblings with profound relief and gratitude. We were safe. We were alive. In the years after the massacre at the Golden Temple, any time a news report about the incident resurfaced, they would hug us tight and say, “We’re so happy that Canada is our home.” Even as a young boy, I could sense that they didn’t mean that lightly. They were thankful just to be alive and that we were all safe in a country that respected human rights and the dignity of life. Each day, my parents took another step forward, showing me that, in the face of trauma, there was only one response: chardi kala.
The Golden Temple Massacre was a front-page story, and led news segments. The footage flashed before my five-year-old eyes, although my comprehension was far from clear. While shots echoed non-stop like fireworks, soldiers stomped the ground with disturbing calmness. I saw flames spilling through the arched doorways and smoke billowing from every opening. Some walls were pocked with bullet holes. Others, completely toppled. Children not much older than me marched out with their arms over their heads, flinching from the sounds of explosions.
To say the massacre of the Sri Harmandir Sahib left an impression on me as a child is an understatement. It would be more accurate to describe it as a scar I carried with me, a reminder of the suffering and the horrible impact of hatred and violence.
Chapter Three
IMMIGRANT AMBITION
After my dad’s residency in St. John’s came to an end, we were on the move. With the help of our family friends, we packed a U-Haul trailer and drove four hours north along a scenic road to Grand Falls, a small mill town in Newfoundland. Grand Falls was the province’s fifth-largest community and provided critical services for tens of thousands of people in central Newfoundland. My dad had been hired as head of the psychiatric ward. He felt immediately empowered by such an important job, which had him supervising social workers and psychologists. But it was also a temporary position, so we knew we wouldn’t be there forever.
We didn’t let that stop us from making new friends, though. The hospital put us up in a staff residence on a street with three or four other physicians and their families, all of whom were South Asian and who were also recent graduates from Memorial. Our families regularly gathered together, the parents bonding around dishes inspired by recipes from across the South Asian subcontinent while we kids watched Phil Collins and Madonna music videos in the basement. Other times, we’d venture out together to experience novel things like Bonfire Night. When we moved away from Newfoundland and Labrador a few years later, I was surprised and disappointed to learn that the province’s tradition of massive bonfires, singing, and dancing in November hadn’t made it to the rest of the country.
The kids on the block all played together in a ragtag group of mixed ages. They were happy to include Manjot and me. We rode our bikes, played tag, and got into all sorts of adventures. Gurratan was only about two years old at the time, so we played with him at home.
There were also two girls who I was always trying to hang out with. Fine, I had a crush on them, especially the taller one of the two. She would often ask me to run down to the nearby corner store to get some candy.
“Jimmy, can you buy us some candy with this?” she’d ask, handing me a $1 bill. (At 1 cent a piece, one dollar got you a lot of candy in 1985.)
I’d race down to the store and back. I’d return with a twisted-up sandwich bag bulging with candy, my heart pounding as I handed it over to my crush.
“Thanks, Jimmy,” she said with a playful smile. “I guess I owe you a kiss. I’ll give it to you sometime.”
That was fine with me. And believe it or not, sometimes, when I least expected it, she would actually give me a little peck on the cheek when I got back from a candy run. And those moments were sweeter than all the candy in the world.
A few months later, toward the end of my dad’s contract in Grand Falls, he sat us down at the kitchen table.
“I have a new job at a hospital in Windsor,” my dad said, trying to put it in terms that my siblings and I would understand. “I’m going to be making more money.”
“It will be good for all of us,” my mom added. “It’s a much bigger city.”
“What about my friends?” I asked.
“You’ll make lots of new friends,” my mom said with a smile. “And we’ll have what’s most important—each other.”
Groan.
I was a little sad when I heard that I’d be leaving my new friends so soon. But each night at dinner, we’d talk about what our new life would look like in Windsor, and I got more and more excited about what was in store.
Just before we left, my father’s colleagues threw us a going-away party. My crush was there, and I knew it was probably the last time I would ever see her. I had a plan, but it took me all night to work up the courage to approach her. Finally, I found a moment when it was just the two of us alone in the kitchen. Here goes nothing, I thought.
“You know, you still owe me a lot of kisses,” I said, trying to play it cool.
“You’re right, Jimmy,” she said, smiling. She looked around to make sure we were alone. “Come here.”
My stomach was doing flips. “Okay—”
Before I could finish my sentence, she leaned in and gave me my first real kiss. It was still more like a peck, but it made my head spin nonetheless. My crush turned and walked back into the party, but I stoo
d still for a moment. I didn’t know what life would be like in Windsor, where we would live, or who my new friends would be. All I knew was that, thanks to the move, I’d got a kiss on the lips.
When we landed at the Windsor airport in 1986, the first thing that went through my mind was, Wow, this is pretty fancy. The cities I was used to seeing were much smaller by comparison, so the bustling terminal made me feel like we’d landed in an entirely different world.
Our home that first night was decidedly more modest: a motel close to the airport. Still, even that had an air of excitement to me and my siblings—in my seven-year-old mind, it wasn’t every day you got to live in a motel. We stayed there for almost a month until my parents bought a modest bungalow, which meant I had to change schools again. I had been in second grade for only a month when I transferred to Sandwich West Public School to finish off the year.
My parents were actively on the lookout for another home, though, something that my dad really liked. And before long, they found it. As my dad tells the story, there was a newly developed suburb of South Windsor he particularly liked. He would drive through the neighbourhood regularly, and one day, he saw a FOR SALE sign in front of a two-storey home. He immediately called the real estate agent and put a down payment on the house. During summer break a few weeks later, we moved into our dream house.
I try to put myself in my dad’s shoes in that moment. He had come to a brand-new country where none of his education and work experience had been recognized. He’d fought to secure a place for himself and his family. Finally, after all of his hard work, he had found a house for his family, one where we could now start to make a home.
Our dad took us to see the home for the first time just before he closed the deal, and I couldn’t believe what I saw: a white brick house with red shingles on a huge corner lot. It was stately, with arched lintels and French panes on opposite wings. There were beautiful trees on the front lawn, which I immediately knew would be great for climbing. The inside was even more impressive in my eyes. A chandelier floated halfway to the floor from twenty-foot-high ceilings. Manjot, Gurratan, and I each had our own bedroom on the second level, which encircled a dark wood staircase draped in a royal blue carpet. There was a formal living room and a more casual family room on the first floor. The backyard was huge and wide—perfect for my dad’s future plans, which included a swimming pool surrounded by a large wooden patio.
The end of second grade and the beginning of third grade meant some big changes for us as a family: a new house, a new school for Manjot and me. But it also meant a lot of changes for me personally. It was at the end of second grade that I made two big life decisions. I decided to change my name and stop cutting my hair.
Hair—or, more specifically, keeping it or not—was a special point of contention between my parents. My mom never cut my hair, but my dad didn’t feel bound by that belief. When he brought me back from living with my grandparents in Panjab, my unshorn hair was tied up in a little bun on top of my head. Before we went to the airport, he took me to a barber to cut it off. Whenever my hair was cut, my mom would leave the room so we wouldn’t see how upset she was. To her, hair was part of nature, and nature was a part of the universe, so our hair wasn’t ours to alter.
But my dad was concerned with how I was perceived. He understood what it was like to feel like you didn’t belong—because of your accent, the colour of your skin, or the country from which you obtained your degree. He didn’t want to give people a reason to leave me out. He wanted me to know what it felt like to belong.
But I liked my hair. There wasn’t anything particularly spiritual to my attitude—I just liked having my hair long. My mom subtly suggested that part of the Sikh tradition was not only keeping one’s hair long but tying it up in a topknot.
“Do you want to start keeping your hair long and tying it up?” she asked me one day.
“Sure!” I said. Not long after, I started tying up my hair and wearing a patka, a smaller head covering worn by Sikh children. Though my mom encouraged me, it was a choice I was happy to make. Once it was clear it was what I wanted to do, true to form, my dad supported me without question.
There was something else on my mind, though. “I don’t want to be Jimmy anymore,” I told my parents. “I want to be called Jagmeet.”
That surprised them. I had gone by Jimmy for my entire life until this point. I didn’t mind the name—in fact, there was a WWF wrestler named Jimmy Superfly Snuka, and I thought it was cool that I had the same name as a wrestler. Still, I had always felt that Jimmy was more of a nickname than a proper name.
“Why do you want to change what you’re called?” my mom asked.
“I just don’t feel like a Jimmy anymore,” I said. “I feel like Jagmeet.”
Even at eight years old, I liked the idea of defying expectations, and I had always loved the fact that Jagmeet means “friend to the world.”
When we arrived in Windsor, the automotive sector was still steady. The major employers in the city were the big three car companies: GM, Ford, and Chrysler. The working-class city had a strong union movement, and many people had access to good-paying jobs. Italian and Lebanese minorities had a major impact on the city—in our first year there, I was treated to the best pizza I’d ever tasted. The first time I ate pizza outside of Windsor, I remember being disappointed. Maybe I’m just picky and used to the pizza at home, I thought. But no: I learned Windsor pizzerias regularly won international competitions. It really was the best.
Our neighbourhood, Villa Borghese, would have been considered nice in any city. It was on the edge of town, a road intersecting with cul-de-sacs lined with custom-built homes. Most of the homes were a nod to the city’s Italian heritage, but the people living there—teachers, doctors, successful business owners—had different backgrounds. I wouldn’t call it diverse, necessarily, but there was some diversity. We got to know a South Asian family nearby who quickly became like family. The Alam family had two brothers and two sisters. One brother was about the same age as Gurratan; the older brother, Sohail, was a little older than me. One sister was a little older and the other a little younger than Manjot. Sohail introduced me to computers, adventure games like King’s Quest, Space Quest, the Ultima series, and bulletin board systems—a fledgling version of the internet limited to message exchanges and file sharing.
Like most kids who have to move, I never thought I’d find friends like the ones I had. But it wasn’t long before I was making new ones. There was Andrew, an Italian kid I played sports with, and Adam, who not only collected comics like me, but was a really talented artist who drew incredible comic book–inspired pictures. But there was one kid who stood out.
The first time I saw Walid Mansour was outside my family room window. I didn’t know his name at the time—he was just the kid riding his bike up and down the street, busting jumps off the curb and popping wheelies. At the risk of now giving him a huge ego, I can say something about him just oozed casual confidence.
A little later, on my first day of school at Oakwood Elementary, my third-grade teacher introduced me to the class.
“Class, we have a new student,” the teacher said. “His name is Jagmeet.”
“Hi, Jagmeet,” the class said as one.
I was about to quietly make my way to my seat, but the teacher hit me with a major curveball.
“Walid, can you show Jagmeet around and help him settle in?”
I looked around to see who the teacher was talking to, more than a little embarrassed that my teacher was essentially forcing someone to be my friend. Then I saw who it was: the kid I saw riding his bike in front of my house. What were the odds? Walid sat in the back row, a Lebanese kid with a strong jaw and a cool haircut.
“Sure, miss,” he replied.
We ended up hanging out the whole day and at each recess. Walid was popular and seemed to be friends with everyone. Before I knew it, the last bell of the day rang and it was time to head home.
“Which way are
you going?” he asked.
“Toward the church,” I said as I pointed south across the schoolyard.
“Same here,” he said. “Let’s walk together.”
When we got to the next intersection, I asked, “Which way are you turning?”
“This way,” Walid said, pointing left.
“Me too.”
We kept walking, talking about whatever seven-year-olds in the mideighties talked about (normally cartoons like Voltron or Thundercats, but with Walid it was probably something cooler like Saved by the Bell).
“I’m turning here,” I said at the next street.
“No way—so am I!”
We turned onto Santo Drive and walked together to the cul-de-sac at the end of the road. “I live here,” he said, standing at the edge of a long driveway to a red and white two-storey house.
I looked at him in amazement. “Are you serious?” I pointed to my house, right beside his. “That’s me—we’re neighbours.”
Walid and I quickly became best friends, and from then on, we were a duo, hanging out pretty much every day. His younger sister became best friends with Manjot. Even his older sister would hang out with us sometimes to play basketball or foursquare. We often walked to and from school together. It was only a short couple of blocks to Oakwood Elementary. Our school backed onto a conservation area and a duck pond, so feeding the ducks and walking through the forest (or the bush, as we called it in Windsor) were part of our every day.
In our free time, we would spend hours just riding our bikes. We would cruise around town, exploring different neighbourhoods or biking through the forest trails. That is, after I finished the readings or times tables or whatever my mom challenged me to study that day. My extra tutoring confused Walid.
Love & Courage Page 4