Love & Courage

by Jagmeet Singh

  It started to feel like I didn’t have many safe spaces. My own class was fine. Teachers were always kind and treated me well. I tried not to let things get to me. But to be honest, I was scared and hated the feeling of always being on edge. I started looking for escapes.

  One of my favourite places was the library. Libraries weren’t only my place of learning about the things that interested me, they were also an escape. I felt safe at the library, and I associated them with finding amazing stories that would take me to different places. I loved being transported to the worlds created by the words on the page.

  The best library in town was Windsor Public Library’s central branch. Going there was a treat. The library was huge—as a kid, I felt like it had every book I could ever imagine. That was where I headed when I was doing a research project or needed something hard to find. Whenever my friends and I had questions we couldn’t solve, I’d say, “I’m going to get a book on that.” That was the cue to ask my mom if we could take a drive there.

  Most of the time, though, I would head to our local branch, Budimir Library. I regularly biked to it, a mid-century, concrete building next to a small plaza with a Mac’s convenience store and a Little Caesars Pizza. I would lock up my bike outside, pull open the big wooden doors, and go burrow myself in the bookshelves inside, preferably the ones with the sci-fi and fantasy novels, my favourites. I was there so often that I was basically on a first-name basis with the librarians, all of whom were so friendly and helpful—in fact, one of them was also a fan of fantasy and science fiction and made amazing recommendations. I enjoyed Anne McCaffrey’s Dragonriders of Pern series, which while probably technically science fiction blurred the lines a bit with its focus on dragons, as well as the Shannara series by Terry Brooks. I was also hooked on the Dragonlance series. I also enjoyed some classics like Gary Paulsen’s Dogsong and Hatchet.

  Each series opened up a new world, and I fell into each one, just like in The NeverEnding Story. As I turned the pages, the pink carpet and warm sunlight in the library slowly drifted into the background until I forgot they were there. The sometimes bizarre and unique nature of the fantastical worlds made them all the easier to get lost in. And I needed that safe place, away from the bullying.

  Kids made fun of me for my name, calling me “Jughead” or saying I was a jug of rotten meat. Even the teachers who were well-intentioned would end up butchering the pronunciation.

  “It’s Jagmeet, like ‘Jug-meet,’ ” I repeated, over and over, to little effect.

  Every recess after that brought with it new insults.

  “Hey, diaper head!”

  “What’s that stupid thing on your head?”

  “Take that towel off.”

  The more I heard the taunts, the less I tolerated them. Though I felt afraid and wasn’t completely sure of myself, I held my head tall, shoulders back, and was ready to fight back.

  “What’s up? You got something to say, say it to my face!” I said, shoving them and getting pushed back. Within seconds, we’d be swinging fists until a teacher broke up the fight and made us stand against the wall for the rest of recess.

  I tried to keep my anger and frustration from showing. Whenever I got detention or was told to stand looking at “the wall” during class because I’d misbehaved, I’d stare at the wall, bored and a bit embarrassed. But I was never tempted to stop tying up my hair or go by Jimmy again. Changing my identity wasn’t an option.

  If anything, the teasing actually made me even more committed to standing out. To me, my patka, just like the turban I would eventually wear, represented that, as Sikhs, we stood for equality and social justice. In fact, the very act of wearing a turban in the Sikh tradition was an act of rebellion. Historically, turbans were worn by those of a noble class, and it was prohibited for lower classes to wear them. Sikhs defied that prohibition in an act of revolution, declaring all humans to be noble, no matter where they were born or what their gender was.

  Besides, I knew that removing my patka wouldn’t appease the bullies anyway. Kids didn’t limit their bullying to my turban or name—they also attacked me for the colour of my skin. One of the most common slurs I heard—“Paki”—was a catch-all insult for brown people, whether they were from Pakistan, India, or Lebanon. Walid was exempt from it because of his fairer skin and hazel eyes, but his cousin Aboudie, who was a few shades darker, was called a Paki, just like me.

  Until then, I was only vaguely aware that some of us were viewed differently. I had friends who were Italian, Lebanese, and Pakistani, as well as friends who didn’t know the first thing about their ethnic origins.

  My other friends didn’t get bullied as much as me, but when it happened, they responded with wit. They disarmed bullies with insults. I wasn’t funny and wasn’t very good with words, so things escalated fast with me.

  My mom knew about my fights (moms always seem to know what’s going on, even when you don’t want them to know). She wanted me to focus on my studies, use my energy more productively. But she never discouraged me from standing up to bullies. She was never willing to tolerate racism, and she didn’t want her kids to have to put up with it either.

  I don’t remember which of the boys said it to me first. There were three or four of them. A couple of years older and a few inches taller than me. Sneering as they pushed me against the rusted chain-link fence that separated our school from the conservation area. They punched and kicked me. They held me back, got in my face, and mocked me in a cartoonish South Asian accent.

  “Do you have curry for breakfast?”

  “He sure smells like it.”

  “Get out of here,” said one, before punching me in the chest.

  “You don’t belong here,” said another.

  “Terrorist!”

  I had been called a lot of names. Though I was used to them, they still hurt. I had been physically attacked and had to defend myself. But there was something jarring about being called a terrorist. At age nine or ten I didn’t fully understand the word. It was so serious compared to the usual insults flung my way, like “Paki” or “towel head.” Obviously, I knew being a terrorist was a bad thing and had to do with violence, but I can’t say for certain where kids in the eighties living in Windsor would have come up with that word. Maybe it had something to do with Canada’s worst terrorist attack, the Air India bombing. Maybe that’s why this unsettling term became the new insult to be hurled at me. I had no idea then that later, specifically after 9/11, this insult would be directed at me often. I didn’t know that I would have to dig deep to craft my own response to the accusation, a response that would turn fear into courage and terror into love.

  The Air India bombing killed hundreds of Canadians, which included Muslims, Hindus, and Sikhs. The horrific event occurred when I was six years old, but it continued to be in the news for the next couple of decades. The families of the hundreds of victims were reeling from the loss. And Canada itself was still reeling from this act of terrorism.

  All of these details were lost on me as a child of nine or ten. But what was all too clear to me was that the media was painting Sikhs as terrorists and extremists. I knew people who believed in an independent land as an answer to systemic oppression and persecution in India. I also knew those who believed in working within the current framework for justice. But every Sikh I knew—universally and without exception—believed the Air India bombing was a horrible and cowardly attack on innocent lives. Everyone agreed: it was terrorism, plain and simple.

  Despite Sikhs being thrust into the national spotlight, very few Canadians knew their story and why so many had fled India. There was some coverage of the June 1984 massacre at the Golden Temple; however, fewer people knew about what happened in November 1984.

  Following the assassination of Indian prime minister Indira Gandhi, Indian elected government officials (including Member of Parliament Sajjan Kumar, who was recently convicted for his role in the genocide) used municipal public transit to convey busloads of goons to
communities with high concentrations of Sikhs. These goons were armed with weapons and kerosene, and directed to attack and loot Sikh businesses, Sikh-owned homes, and Gurdwaras. Sikh men were dragged by their hair and arms into the streets, where they were burned alive. Children were bludgeoned with iron rods and women gang-raped.

  From October 31 to November 4, 1984, the police and military stood by as the carnage continued. All told, the November 1984 Sikh genocide claimed the lives of thousands, while even more were displaced from their homes.

  The situation for Sikhs in India continued to deteriorate after that. Back in Canada, my parents didn’t know how to express the pain they were feeling. They closed up, perhaps wanting to shield us kids from the trauma they were experiencing. What made matters worse was the lack of information. Indian media censorship made knowing the truth difficult. Speaking to our relatives in Panjab felt unsafe, as my parents feared there could be reprisals.

  Thankfully, there was still a safe place for us to express some of the difficult emotions: the Gurdwara. There, the pain was literally on display. One Sunday, I went to Gurdwara as usual. I noticed a new display case with pictures in it. Some of them depicted the ravaged structure of the Harmandir Sahib, the Golden Temple, in Panjab. None of the structures had survived unscathed—neither the Gurdwara itself with its beautiful gold-leaf dome surrounded by once-calm waters; nor the four towers at the corners of the complex; nor the Akal Takht Sahib, the “Seat of the Infinite” (one of the historic places of decision-making for Sikhs).

  Seeing these beautiful buildings destroyed was a shock, but nothing compared to the shock I felt at seeing the other pictures that accompanied them. Most were photos of young men looking into the camera like you would for a school photo. One picture permanently embedded in my mind showed a man with a scar resembling an iron pressed into his stomach. I took it in, feeling horrified and concerned.

  An uncle entered the Gurdwara and saw me.

  “Are you okay?” he asked gently.

  “I’m okay, but these photos. They’re so painful,” I said.

  “These pictures have been smuggled out of India so that the world can see what is happening,” he said. “They’re people who have been tortured or killed by the government.”

  I looked at the faces in the pictures again. Any one of those young men and boys could have been me.

  The uncle waited patiently while I tried to process what I was seeing. Finally, he said, “These are cries for help. People in the West don’t know what is going on. We have to find a way to make people care.”

  Thousands of young Sikh men were still missing. There were still active attempts to limit the flow of news coming out of Panjab, so taking photos of the violence, this uncle explained, was a risk, albeit one that was necessary if the truth was to be told.

  I learned more about this hard historical truth thanks to the efforts of one of my role models growing up, Jaswant Singh Khalra, who was able to prove what people had widely known and communicated informally for years. His story was remarkable. He was a banker by profession who’d heard, as many others had, that Sikh men were being taken off the streets by government forces. It hadn’t touched Jaswant Singh personally until the day one of his good friends was taken. Jaswant Singh then made it his mission to find his friend and uncover what was happening.

  He eventually exposed that the police and paramilitary were conducting extrajudicial killings of the Sikh men in their custody and then cremating the bodies. For the first time, the Sikh community had proof of the injustices being carried out against them. For this, he received a threat to his life from the Indian police.

  Many community members offered to help Jaswant Singh stay in Canada while he was in the country presenting his findings. But he declined, saying he had more work to do to expose the extrajudicial killing of Sikhs. He returned to Panjab. Soon after his arrival, he disappeared. Years later, a police whistleblower revealed that he had been tortured and killed while in custody.

  The horrible impact of that time had always been clear to me, but the exact details were not. Thanks to Jaswant Singh’s sacrifice, we were one step closer to the truth being heard. But there was still a long journey ahead. I could see the frustration in the Sikh community—to have suffered so much, yet still the pain and trauma were not acknowledged.

  Everyone who experiences pain and trauma wants healing and reconciliation. The first step to healing is receiving acknowledgement of the harm done. With no outlet for the pain and no acknowledgement of the trauma, those harmed often internalize the suffering and endure it in silence.

  I was just a child, Jagmeet Singh, friend to the world. But I was learning that sometimes the world ignores people who need help, even when it’s everyone’s responsibility to stand up for those who aren’t being heard.

  Chapter Five

  KICKS AND PUNCHES

  It didn’t take long to realize that I could embolden bullies or discourage them. It all depended on how I carried myself. If I walked across the schoolyard with my head down and hands in my pockets, a shy third grader trying to get home unscathed, it only made me a bigger target. That changed when I straightened my back, lifted my head, kept my fists in front of me. It didn’t stop guys from picking on me, but I wouldn’t take crap from anyone, even if I didn’t stand a chance at winning the fight.

  “Look, guys, it’s Little Nipplehead,” a kid once called me during recess.

  Walid and I were playing one-on-one basketball. I swivelled around in the direction of the voice—a seventh grader on the other side of the court playing with his friends.

  I threw my basketball to the side. It bounced in the grass as I marched his way. “What’s up?” I yelled as I slapped the ball out of his hand and shoved him. “Let’s go!”

  I cocked back my fist. He flinched. I could tell that he and his friends weren’t expecting me to fight back. They figured this nine-year-old would just walk away from harassment. They looked down at me: barely four and a half feet tall, skinny as a beanpole, mean mugging under my black head wrap.

  “What the hell is with this kid?” the boy said to his friends. They shook their heads and picked up their ball from the grass.

  I didn’t hear another word from them. I was less and less afraid of physical confrontation, but my size got to me. I was average height and weight, and kids in my class, who knew me, didn’t give me problems anymore. The people I was defending myself against were usually older than me—I was literally punching above my weight.

  “When will I be bigger?” I’d often ask my mom.

  “Don’t worry, you will grow.”

  “When will I be stronger?”

  “You’ll be stronger.”

  There was more to it than that. More than I had the heart to say out loud, though I think my mom knew. Because deep down inside, it wasn’t just bullies I wanted protection from anymore.

  Manjot and I sat at the dining table doing homework and watching my dad through the kitchen doorway. He was aggravated, tugging a drawer out of the brown kitchen cabinets.

  “Why is this so messy?” my dad barked. The drawer’s contents jangled when he yanked it free, and he lost his balance. He caught himself on the oven, barely keeping the drawer from falling.

  My mom entered the dining room, Gurratan following closely behind, and he climbed onto the chair beside me. She stepped into the kitchen and calmly took the drawer from his hands.

  “What are you looking for?” she asked my dad, as she riffled through it.

  “I can’t find anything in this filthy house,” he shouted. He lurched toward the console, batting a pile of opened mail and flyers against the rose-patterned wallpaper. The papers cascaded onto the tiles. “What are we collecting all this for? And this—” He grabbed a stack of magazines with his two hands, lifted it above his head, and dropped it on the floor, where the magazines landed with a thud. My mom put the drawer on the counter and got on her knees to restack the paper. While my dad sifted through the drawer, my mom rose
to her feet with the magazines and tiptoed toward the trash bin under the sink. He was in her way.

  “Excuse me,” she whispered, careful not to disturb him, but it was useless. There was no placating my dad when he was in one of his moods. He grabbed the drawer and dumped its contents on the tile. He kicked the scattered kitchen utensils around as he looked for something. My mom backed away to the corner, holding the magazines close to her chest.

  All you could hear was the clinking and clanking of cooking utensils. I grabbed Gurratan’s and Manjot’s hands under the table. “Don’t look,” I said, turning my head to my notebooks on the table. In the corner of my eye, I saw my dad bend down and take what he was looking for.

  “Clean it up,” he said and stomped away.

  Alcohol made my dad volatile and unpredictable. Some people get tipsy and become more agreeable when they drink. Others turn inward, quiet and reflective. But not my dad. He was a predictably belligerent drunk. My dad didn’t have a mellow zone; even when he was sober, which was increasingly rare by 1988, he had gripes about whatever didn’t meet his expectations at the moment. The living room wasn’t tidy enough. His briefcase wasn’t where he left it. The car was parked poorly. The fridge was empty.

  But I still loved him—loved him with the most complex type of love that exists. The love you have for someone who has hurt you emotionally, who makes you feel afraid and angry, who fills you with spite and dark thoughts. But still, someone who you love regardless because you are a part of them and they a part of you.

  There are no excuses for the anger my dad directed at us—my mom especially—but even as a child, I felt sorry for him. By the end of most nights, he’d be incoherent, slurring and staggering; obviously, this wasn’t someone anybody would wish to become. It would take me many years to understand the root of his sickness, and even now, I’m not 100 per cent sure I understand it fully.