“I’m going to stay back and do homework,” I told him once after he asked me to ride bikes after school.
“Homework?” he asked. “We don’t have any homework.”
“Yeah, it’s just some stuff my mom gives me.”
What confused Walid even more was that I was happy to do it. Just as my mom had hoped, I’d come to genuinely enjoy learning. Take, for example, the yearly competition held in our school called Canada Quiz. It was an extracurricular competition testing our knowledge of Canada. The prize? The winner had to walk up to the front of the entire school at the monthly assembly and take on the winners from the other grades. It sounded like a child’s version of torture to Walid, but I thought it was awesome. I set a goal to be the winning competitor within the first year. When I found out I’d be quizzed at the assembly, I wasted no time going to the library to seek out books on prime ministers, provinces, and territories. I must have brought a dozen books home the first time.
I’ll never forget the look on Walid’s face when he saw the stacks and stacks of books on my bedside table.
“Let’s go for a bike ride,” he said.
“Actually,” I said, “I’m going to stay back and study for this Canada Quiz.”
“You’re actually going to study for that? You know it’s not marked?”
“I know, but I want to be good at it.”
He looked at me as though I’d just told him I wanted to grow two heads.
Walid and I shared a love for riding bikes, playing sports, and spending time outside, but in a lot of ways, we were so opposite that it’s a miracle we stayed lifelong friends. Walid might not have understood my love of reading all the time, but he never made me feel weird for it. When we were in grade school, there was a popular series about a young kid, nicknamed Encyclopedia Brown, who solved mysteries with his encyclopedic knowledge. The books had kitschy titles like Encyclopedia Brown and the Case of the Soccer Scheme. When he heard about the series, Walid started referring to me as Encyclopedia Jagmeet. He was the coolest kid in class, though, so if he thought it was cool that I liked learning, it meant everyone else thought so, too. I don’t know if Walid even did it consciously, but come to think of it, he really did support me. I could imagine that in another circle of friends or without a best friend like Walid, my curiosity, passion to learn, and love of reading would have earned me the title of being a nerd. It was a big deal that Walid had my back. It’s something I’m grateful for and will never forget.
The biggest difference between us, though, was in what we ate. Walid was a scarily picky eater—someone whose idea of adventurous food was dipping fries in BBQ sauce instead of ketchup—so he wouldn’t come near my mom’s chicken curries and rajma chawal (red kidney beans with rice). On the other hand, I ate everything and was always up for a food adventure. This pleased Walid’s mom to no end because she truly loved to feed people. Grape-leaf rolls, za’atar, fatayer, and labneh were instrumental to our growth spurts. (When I say we grew up together, I really mean it.)
Walid was also always trying to live ahead of the curve. Once, I went over and said, “Let’s go play.”
“Hey, man,” he said very seriously. “Let’s not say that.”
“Say what?”
“ ‘Let’s play.’ Kids say that. We gotta say, ‘Let’s do stuff’ instead.”
I thought about this for a moment. “Umm, okay. Walid, do you want to go . . . do stuff?”
Even in third grade, Walid wanted to sound older. Even though the stuff we were doing was play, he was always like, “Nah—what’s the next move?”
Once, we were riding our bikes on a beautiful warm summer day, pavement speeding by and wind in our faces. I turned to Walid and said, “It doesn’t get better than this, does it?”
“Imagine when we’re driving cars, though,” he said.
I humoured him with a smile, but in my head, I was thinking, Cars? Who cares about cars? This is the life!
Later, when we were old enough to drive, we would hit up all-ages parties in Windsor and Detroit. We were meeting new people, dancing, and discovering places for the first time. Despite how much fun we were having, every now and then Walid would still say, “Oh, man, I can’t wait until we can go to real clubs.”
“Sure,” I said. “But let’s just enjoy what we have right now.”
Looking back, I guess I really focused on appreciating moments of joy because they took me away from the stress and worries of daily life.
Only once did we let our differences get between us. When we were in fifth grade, for whatever reason, we got angry at each other and stopped talking, as kids sometimes do. Our spat went on for a few weeks, to the point that my dad took notice. He saw Walid outside one day and started up a chat.
“What’s going on?” he asked Walid.
“Nothing,” Walid mumbled.
My dad paused, then turned on his psychiatric interviewing skills.
“How do you get along with Tarek?” he asked, naming one of our mutual friends.
“Pretty good.”
“And how do you get along with Aboudie?” he asked, mentioning another guy in our group.
“Good.”
“And Jagmeet?”
Walid froze.
“Not so much, hey?” my dad said. He paused, gave Walid a few seconds to think, and continued. “You guys have a special thing. You’re in the same school, the same age, same interests. And you’re next-door neighbours. You’re both very lucky to have a friend that you can talk to any time you want. Not all boys do.”
That was it. My dad left Walid to reflect a bit. The next day, Walid came over to hang out, and we put the whole thing behind us.
When Walid told me this story many years later, it didn’t surprise me. My dad loves helping people—that was what he did—and he loved his family dearly. He always wanted what was best for us. He was always incredibly generous with his time. He wanted us to experience everything the world had to offer. If it was in his power, he would make it happen. He always meant well—I knew that—even at times when it didn’t seem like it.
It had been less than ten years since my father had immigrated with a medical degree he was told wasn’t legitimate. In his residency, even though he was well regarded as a medical professional, he always felt like he had to prove himself knowledgeable because he was a foreigner. Money had been tight while we were in St. John’s, but now that he was making a decent paycheque as the chief of psychiatry at Windsor Regional Hospital, no one could make him feel like he didn’t belong.
Truth be told, nobody had to. No matter how hard my dad worked or studied, no matter what degree or designation he achieved, he couldn’t shake the feeling of not fully belonging. I think part of the reason was his fear, drilled into him by my grandmother, of financial precariousness. My dad has always been driven. He learned to ski and swim in his forties. He came to a new country and didn’t just get by but thrived. Maybe it was a by-product of his intense ambition, but as a result, my dad seemed like he was never satisfied. Whatever the case, his rebellious spirit meant that he was simply unwilling to accept things the way they were simply because people said so.
One way my dad pushed back against this feeling of not belonging was in the way he dressed. Many mornings, as I had breakfast before school, I’d often see him strut out the door donning an overcoat and English brogues that he had polished the night before. My dad couldn’t control the colour of his skin or his country of birth, but he could control what his wardrobe said to the world, so he made sure his clothing never gave anyone a reason to think he didn’t belong.
My dad signalled to me and my siblings that, as people of colour, we couldn’t afford not to look good. He wanted to make sure we never felt the way he did: like we didn’t belong. He thought one of the ways to achieve that was to expose us to as many different activities and hobbies as possible. At my dad’s insistence, I learned how to mount a horse in equestrian lessons, carved the snow in ski classes, practised my golf backsw
ing, and perfected my tennis volley. I even ended up taking some classes in squash and archery.
I found horseback riding to be sort of cool, and I transitioned from skiing to snowboarding, which I loved. But most of my dad’s directed activities weren’t my idea of sports. They were too technique-based for my liking. I preferred sports that let me release my energy, where I could out-hustle an opponent with speed and effort, like soccer or martial arts. To that end, golf absolutely infuriated me. It seemed the harder I swung, the more aggressive and less relaxed I was, and the worse my score.
My dad wanted us to be comfortable in any setting we could find ourselves in. So, partly as a treat and partly as continued preparation for life, each month, my dad would take us out to The Other Place, one of Windsor’s finest dining establishments. Complete with valet parking, white tablecloths, and a touch of stuffiness, The Other Place delivered. It was an etiquette lesson and a family evening all in one.
The food at The Other Place was genuinely delicious, but my brother and sister and I preferred more casual dining. We all loved Swiss Chalet, Red Lobster, or pepperoni pizza from a local joint, eaten on the living room floor. Sikhi calls into question the taking of life strictly for pleasure, and it promotes a lifestyle of stewardship and a responsible use of resources. As a result many Sikhs are vegetarian. This would change later on, but growing up, we ate meat pretty regularly.
My parents invested a lot of time and energy in making sure we had every opportunity possible. At school, Gurratan, Manjot, and I became known as “Dr. Dhaliwal’s kids,” a title that brought a lot of high expectations from coaches and teachers. My mom made sure that summers included science camps, museum trips, swimming lessons, and sports. She continued to encourage our education and made sure we kept studying over the summer months. Manjot and Gurratan had also fallen in love with reading, a passion our mom encouraged with regular trips to the library. If I ever gave even the slightest hint of interest in a subject, she would start encouraging me, pointing out books about the topic, or bringing up bits of trivia to continue to spark my interest. And if ever I fell behind in a subject—translation, if I ever got less than a 90 per cent on a test—my mother would raise the issue with my dad, who would find me a tutor on the subject in no time.
My mom and dad had different approaches to supporting their kids. My dad would make sure we had access to any and every opportunity, and he was interested in how we carried ourselves. He wanted us to be confident. His philosophy could be summed up by his favourite phrase: “If my kids want blood, I’ll give them the marrow.” My mom tried to focus less on how the world saw us and more on how we saw ourselves. She would often say, “Happiness comes from the inside.”
My mom often tried to pass along her wisdom through stories. One my favourites of hers was a story of Guru Nanak, the founder of Sikhi. In the story, Guru Nanak joined a group of people gathered in a river. They were busily cupping their hands with water and throwing it toward the sun. Guru Nanak did the same, only he threw the water in the opposite direction. The group laughed at Guru Nanak and said he was doing it wrong. Guru Nanak explained he was watering his fields.
“Your fields are hundreds of kilometres away,” they said. “That’s impossible.”
“Where are you throwing the water?” he asked.
“We’re sending water to our ancestors.”
“How far away are the ancestors?” he asked them.
“Our ancestors are in the next world.”
“If you can send water into the next world, then my fields aren’t too far away,” he said.
I enjoyed the spirit of rebelliousness and the willingness to challenge the status quo that these stories conveyed. Maybe in a small way, they inspired me to try to do the same. My mom also introduced me to something a lot of Sikh kids learn, seva Seva, or “selfless service,” is a fundamental part of Sikhi. A spiritual journey is incomplete if it doesn’t also focus on what we give back to society and the world around us. At its core, seva is a lesson in love. The idea of serving others puts unconditional love into practice.
Mom started me young on seva. Every Sunday at Windsor’s humble Gurdwara—a small, slipshod, cinder-block building on the outskirts of town—I’d work in the free community kitchen that all Gurdwaras must have, handing out napkins to the eighty or so attendees before food was served. Gurdwaras are supposed to be open 24/7, with four doors welcoming all people from the north, south, east, and west, without a specifically designated spiritual day. But Windsor’s Sikh population was too small to sustain an around-the-clock Gurdwara, so we got together mainly on Sundays.
“You are serving people you do not know with the same love you would serve your family,” my mom explained to me as I handed out napkins and she filled people’s plates with food. “As a Sikh, you have a personal spiritual journey. And that journey includes ensuring justice for all. It doesn’t matter if that person is a Sikh, Christian, Muslim, Hindu, or atheist—the goal is to see everyone around us as one. To feel love for a stranger equal in strength to the love you have for your brother and sister.”
My mom had a great fascination with other religions and languages, and would often remark on how beautiful the world was because we all looked different.
“Everyone has their own uniqueness,” she said. “There is a place for everybody in the world.”
Just as she did with our summer lessons in science and math, my mom left me room to explore Sikhi for myself. She encouraged me and my siblings to walk the path, but she allowed us space to discover a lot of it on our own.
Inspired by the stories my mom told, I began reading books on Sikh spirituality, and each discovery reinforced why I enjoyed it so much. I read about the Ninth Guru, who sacrificed his life for freedom of thought, defending a religion he didn’t actually agree with. The story clearly showed the Sikh principle of pluralism, or respecting people no matter what they believed in. It made sense to me and was even a bit of a relief, as I thought about the fact that Walid and his family were Muslim, and how it had never seemed wrong that they believed something different from me.
Through my mom’s teachings, the spiritual poetry I read, and seva, I gradually understood that the spiritual goal in Sikhi was to love unconditionally. But that’s not something that happens overnight. It takes work to realize that we’re all connected, to feel our connection to everything around us, to realize we are all one, and to love unconditionally. Just like working out in the gym builds the strength to eventually deadlift four hundred pounds, meditating, reading spiritual poetry, and seva all help to develop unconditional love.
“How can I be more connected to the world?” I asked my mom one night.
“You could try meditating,” she suggested. “Meditation helps us connect with the infinite energy inside us.”
She sat down on the floor beside my bed and patted a space on the rug beside her for me to sit.
“We’re going to repeat the gur mantr,” she said. Gur means “enlightened” and mantr is a word that one reflects on. In Sikhi, the gur mantr is Waheguru. It is contemplated and repeated out loud as a way to realize and experience the oneness of the universal energy.
I repeated the word “Waheguru” out loud. “Wahe” means “wonderful” and “guru” means “light in darkness” or “enlightener.”
“Good, now say it with me,” my mom said.
She began repeating the gur mantr rhythmically, in a singsong manner. I copied her, trying my best to focus. I thought about the connection between this gur mantr and the one energy that I had learned connects, binds, surrounds, and constitutes everything—the energy that is everything and everywhere, the reason we are all one. Then, after a while, I stopped thinking and simply got lost in the repetition. I felt something new. It’s hard to describe a sense of contentment and peace, but that’s what it was. I felt grounded and motivated. I was hooked. I wanted to walk down the path of love and to connect with the world. I also wanted to live up to the meaning of my name.
&nbs
p; But I would learn that being a “friend to the world” would be a lot harder than I expected.
Chapter Four
SAY IT TO MY FACE
Is he brown because he doesn’t shower?” one boy said at recess.
“Dirty,” whispered another.
At first, I wasn’t sure if I was mishearing them, but then the taunts turned to my hair. I felt a shadow looming above me.
“I seriously can’t tell if it’s a boy or a girl.”
“Should I?”
“Dare you to.”
I kept my head focused straight ahead, trying to ignore the stares and the taunting, which I was now certain were directed at me. Suddenly I felt my topknot being pulled and then a hard shove knocking me to the ground almost simultaneously. I hit the grass hard and felt a sharp strain in my neck. I bit back the yelp, a mixture of pain and surprise, in the back of my throat. I snapped back to my feet and whipped around to confront my assailants. They were pointing and laughing at my patka, my small head wrap, half pulled off my head. My knees were covered in grass stains. I launched toward them with my hands up yelling, “Let’s go!”
The bell rang to end recess and, with it, my hopes of settling the score, as teachers quickly began corralling students back to class.
When I had gone from Jimmy to Jagmeet, I had also gone from a regular bowl cut to wrapping my long hair in a patka. I thought I was making a personal decision about who I was, not inviting a new world of bullying. I was insulated from the bullying when I first started school at Oakwood. Recess was split up: kindergarten to third grade were on one side of the yard, and grades four through six on the other. As a third-grade student, I had been the biggest kid on our side of the playground, and I got along with pretty much everyone in my class. I also had Walid as my friend, so bullying wasn’t an issue at school. Outside of school, I did notice that I was being stared at a lot, but things weren’t that bad. However, as soon as I hit fourth grade, the bullying became relentless. It wasn’t just at school but wherever I went. I was stared at, mocked, made fun of, and often assaulted just for the way I looked.
Love & Courage Page 5