“Beta, I’m so sorry. I never want to hurt you or our family; that’s the last thing I want to do,” he said each time.
“I know, Dad, but when you drink, that’s what happens. You scare us. You scare me.”
His eyes would fill with remorse, and I’d feel as though I was getting through to him.
“Then I won’t drink anymore,” he’d promise. “I hate drinking, if that’s what it does to you and our family.”
“Do you promise? Do you promise, Dad, that you won’t drink?”
“Yes, I promise. I promise that I’m never going to drink again,” he’d declare with an intense solemnity.
Each time he said it, I would believe him with the same hope as if I was hearing the promise for the first time. And each time he made that vow, he broke it, sometimes the very next day. But no matter how many times he said the words, I always believed that this would be the time he kept his promise.
Sometimes he was still a little drunk when we had those chats. Overcome with guilt, he would try to make it up to us by being suddenly and unbearably kind—hugging us, slurring that he had the best children and the greatest family he could ask for.
I’m ashamed to admit that I became meaner to my dad the older and bigger I got. I rarely yelled at him unless he actually became physical—gesturing aggressively, yelling, or throwing things. “Go away—you’re drunk!” I yelled one evening, pushing him and his horrible breath away. A pathetic frown washed over his ruddy face. His eyes welled up as he pouted helplessly. I immediately felt awful.
My siblings and I relied on each other to get through. I saw myself as their protector. Many times, things became scary as my dad was yelling or moaning, or we heard our parents arguing and screaming and things being slammed, dropped, or broken. In those moments, I brought my brother and sister together and we weathered the storm by reading spiritual poetry or meditating together. We were afraid and traumatized, but we found fleeting glimpses of peace in those moments together, and it helped us understand the idea that we are all connected, that we are all one.
While the turmoil brought my siblings and me closer, it severed us from our peers. Windsor’s Panjabi community was small to begin with. Our extended family was smaller still. Our community seemed to be shrinking around us.
We had some family in the Toronto area who we visited now and then. Over the years, my mom’s eldest brother or brother-in-law stepped in a few times to try to get my dad to stop drinking. I don’t know how much my mom shared with them, but they knew how bad it was from what she described to them. When I was younger, we would visit family in the Greater Toronto Area at least twice a year, and one of my cousins would visit us regularly in Windsor. But as we got older, his parents didn’t let him visit anymore.
“Why don’t you ever send him here?” I remember my mom asking my aunt on the phone. “He wants to see Jagmeet.” My mom went quiet as my aunt tried to make an excuse, and from then on, I rode the Greyhound to Newmarket any time we wanted to visit. I understood my aunt’s concerns. I wouldn’t have wanted my kids exposed to my dad’s crippling alcoholism either. It was scary.
Our dad’s reputation followed us to Gurdwara, too. On the one hand, they respected my dad—the only Sikh doctor in Windsor, a mover and shaker, a benefactor to the Gurdwara. On the other hand, he was an embarrassment to them—a cautionary tale about the perils of alcohol.
People outside the Sikh community noted the contrast between my father and me. One day, I was having dinner at Walid’s house, when one of his uncles asked about my Sikhi.
“Why don’t you cut your hair?” he asked.
“Because it’s part of my belief,” I said.
“Why doesn’t your dad follow the same teachings?”
“Maybe he doesn’t have the same strength of belief. But that’s okay, that’s his decision.”
Walid’s uncle froze, then broke out into a good-natured laugh. My precocious answer surprised and delighted him.
Later that summer, I called Walid to see if he had plans. “Want to hang out?” I asked.
“Sure,” Walid said.
“I have some homework to do, but come over after lunch.”
There was a pause on the other end of the line. Finally, Walid said, “Yo, why don’t you come over to my place instead?”
It dawned on me—Walid’s parents didn’t want him coming over either. Even though Walid and I had never talked about my dad’s behaviour, there were just a few metres between our houses, so it seemed Walid’s parents knew that our idyllic house on an idyllic street was anything but that. Walid’s parents could be strict at the best of times—he always had a curfew and boundaries for how far he could ride his bike. Once, Walid and I spent an entire day building a raft to cross a creek near our neighbourhood. We didn’t get home until dark. It wasn’t unusual for me to leave the house during the day and come back at night. I don’t remember ever having a curfew or any restrictions on where I could ride my bike or how far I could go. When I got home that night, though, my mom was frantic.
“Where’s Walid?” she asked the moment I walked through the door.
“He’s heading home. Why?”
“His mother called the police. She was worried because he was gone all day.”
I wanted to laugh—we had spent the whole day no more than a five-minute walk from our house, and my mom wasn’t worried. But Walid’s had been so concerned that she’d called the police.
I didn’t take Walid’s reluctance to come over anymore personally. In some ways, I was relieved—I didn’t want friends coming to our house because I was worried about what state my dad would be in, and what he would say or do.
Manjot seemed to think the same way as me, as she’d often escape to her friends’ houses. I started bringing Gurratan along to Walid’s house more often, just to get him out of the negative environment. Gurratan was thrilled—he usually wanted to tag along with me wherever I went. He was content just hanging out with Walid and me, watching us play video games, and listening while we big kids talked about whatever thirteen-year-old boys talked about in 1991 (Paula Abdul, probably).
I never minded having Gurratan around—he was pretty low maintenance—and I never saw him as an annoying little brother. Quite the opposite. I liked having him around. If I said, “Would you go get that for me?” he went to get it, not out of fear, but out of brotherly love. Back home, Gurratan often wanted me to play toys with him. Gurratan had taken over my action figure collection and had added to it. We didn’t keep each toy carefully wrapped up and packaged, or on display never to be used. Instead, we acted out action scenes. Even though I was past the age of buying action figures myself, I actually enjoyed listening and adding to his elaborate stories and quests. Together, we created whole mythologies, an entire world built exclusively from our own imaginations.
While we enjoyed the stories we created, there was always a minor point of contention. “I want to be this guy,” he said once, clutching one of his favourite figures: a two-headed ogre with bulging muscles. Each of the ogre’s two faces had menacing eyes and an angry scowl.
“Sure,” I said, taking a muscular warrior from the pile. “I’ll be the white ninja.”
“My guy’s the good guy.”
“He’s clearly not,” I said. “He’s scary looking. He’s supposed to be the bad guy.”
“No, he’s the good guy.”
“Look at his fangs, Gurratan. Good guys don’t have fangs.”
“Good guy,” he insisted.
Gurratan was a cute kid, chatty and confident, but sometimes, I worried about him. If Walid and I tried to hand him a Nintendo controller to have a turn, he would be too afraid to play.
“No,” he protested. “I don’t want to die.”
“It’s okay,” I said. “We have a bunch of lives saved up.”
“It’s too scary.”
“We’ll just start over if you die,” Walid assured him. It was futile. Maybe my dad’s erratic behaviour and frequent outburs
ts were having an impact on Gurratan. Truth be told, it was probably affecting all of us. The only difference was that Manjot and I were old enough to have some memories of times before my dad’s sickness. But for my brother, this was all he knew.
I’d become good at compartmentalizing my troubles and suppressing negative thoughts. Too good. While I couldn’t control my mind from sometimes bringing up what Mr. Neilson had done to me, I was able to successfully prevent myself from spiralling down a hole of guilt and shame by constantly repeating “Don’t think about it, just don’t think about it” like a mantra whenever bad memories flashed back. My dad’s alcoholism and abuse, though, were far too present and fluid to simply think away, so I relied on my safe spaces.
Walid’s house was one such place. My go-to escape, though, was still my fantasy books. Libraries continued to hold a special place in my heart. They were safe spaces filled with stories that could transport me far away, and the librarians acted as gatekeepers to those portals.
On weekends, I’d wake up and start reading. Sometimes I would skip breakfast and then bike to the library, skip lunch, and only come back home in time for dinner, dizzy from living in an imagined place for ten straight hours. One series that consumed me was Robert Jordan’s Wheel of Time, a masterpiece with its sprawling worlds and detailed magic system. I latched on to its vision of the universe as a tapestry into which everyone is woven, from the past to the future and back again. It was an infinite cycle, like the universe, and also like the circle of the kara, the steel/iron bracelet I wore on my wrist.
As much as I enjoyed escaping to other worlds, though, I still wanted to explore the one around me. One of my favourite things about my new school was the number of field trips and outings to cultural institutions it offered. Museums, galleries, historical sites—our class regularly piled into the school bus and headed to one or another. I even had the opportunity of travelling to Paris, Normandy, and a few small towns for a week with my French class.
That trip was special to me. It was my first time travelling without my family. Before I left, my dad gave me a present: a journal in which I could keep a record of everything I saw and did. My dad was very thoughtful that way. Any time he thought there was something that would help us kids out, whether it was a tutor or an experience like skiing or a tool like a journal, he tried his best to make sure he provided us with it. I made sure to jot down every sight, smell, and sound I came across, many of them entirely new. I rode an underground subway for the first time. I ate my first crepe ever, and when I tasted the Nutella inside it, I was immediately hooked. I wrote down how cool I thought the French kids’ style was.
Monsieur Tremblay taught at our school in Detroit, but he was originally from Quebec. He was a bald, burly, rough, and rugged-looking man, but his appearance contrasted completely with his kindness and gentle warmth. Monsieur Tremblay took us to markets and stores, and let us roam around to practise our language skills. His chats about Quebec culture and history got me reading more about what the French in Canada had faced throughout history. The more I read, the more parallels I saw with what my parents had faced growing up speaking Panjabi, which was seen as a language inferior to the official languages of Hindi and English. My decision to learn French was an act of solidarity with the people of Quebec as much as it was me falling in love with the language. I credit Monsieur Tremblay with planting the seed for my love of the French language and understanding of Quebec culture.
That trip was the first time I had been away from my family for so long on my own. I had visited relatives in Toronto, but that wasn’t the same thing. Here I was away from everyone I knew in a country thousands of kilometres away. Coming back home was a special experience. It was really only when I saw my family again after so long that I realized how much I had missed them.
After a while, though, the bad days started to take their toll again. The mall was a shelter from the turmoil at home. Walid and I spent many weekends there, just a couple of mall rats walking around, hanging out, looking for friends, and, if we were so lucky, spotting a crush from school. Still, though, it was far from a safe space. Often, some jerk would call me “Paki” or make fun of my patka. “Do you have a brain injury?” they might yell. “What’s that weird thing on that kid’s head?” others would say in obnoxiously loud voices.
What hurt the most, though, was the pointing and laughing. It was such a common response, and every time it happened, I felt the same flush of shame. Laughter isn’t innocuous. Every time I heard it in a public place, I would start to doubt. Maybe I do look funny, I’d think. Maybe I deserve to be laughed at. I had a tough shell. I could steel myself against insults, but laughter slipped through the cracks in my armour and soaked me in shame.
I’ll never forget this one time when Walid and I were walking through the mall. Out of the corner of my eye, I saw a little kid laughing at me. It was just him laughing—it hurt more when it was a big crowd—and he was close to our age, so I didn’t give him much thought. But then I noticed he was with his parents. The boy gleefully pulled on their coat sleeves to bring their attention to me. You’d think they’d have stopped his teasing. You’d think they’d say something like, “Honey, that’s not nice—don’t make fun of how he looks.” Instead, they looked in my direction, pointed, and laughed even harder.
A hot flush of shame mixed with a cold, sinking feeling that I didn’t belong there. The fact that the parents were laughing along with their child was chilling. I always figured parents would correct their kids when they misbehaved, or at least provide some protection. But I now saw that I wasn’t always going to be safe just because parents were present. If even the parents, who were supposed to set the right example, thought it was okay to laugh at me, then maybe, I thought, there was no safe place.
Their laughter rattled me. But, like other things that had shaken me before, I pushed the feeling down and tried to ignore it.
“Want to check out if there are any new arcade games?” I asked Walid.
“Sure,” he said. We turned down the hallway leading to the less travelled part of the mall, away from the laughter and shame.
Experiences like that were still better than being at home. At home, I had to steel myself from the pain and humiliation caused by my dad. At home, I felt like I had to take care of my mom, brother, and sister. At home, I needed to show my mom and siblings that I had the strength to carry them, that they could rely on me.
When I reached the limits of my strength, though, I’d sneak off to a quiet corner where no one could see or hear me—my bedroom, the washroom, the basement storage closet, wherever I was least likely to be found. When I was sure I was alone, I’d cry. In those moments, it seemed like there was no end in sight to the difficulty. I felt alone because there was no one I could turn to. I was too embarrassed and ashamed to tell Walid or any other friends. I couldn’t speak to any relatives about it. My family was living it too, and I needed to be strong for them. So I bore it in silence, my crying muffled in dark rooms, hiding my sadness and fear as much as my shame.
One summer day in 1993, I came home and immediately noticed something strange was going on. My dad was unusually sober. Instead of being grumpy, angry, or belligerent, he seemed different. Calm? No, he was sad. My dad had always been emotional. He was the first to get teary-eyed during the sad scene of a movie. But this was something more than that.
“Jagmeet,” he said quietly. “Come sit down.”
“Are Gurratan and Manjot okay?” I asked.
“Your brother and sister are fine. It’s your dada-ji,” he said, referring to my paternal granddad. “He died of a heart attack yesterday.”
I sat there quietly, unsure what to say or feel. Though my grandfather had been an integral part of the first years of my life, I’d hardly seen him since. He’d visited once or twice in Newfoundland and even after that, but we hadn’t bonded in any lasting way. I was conflicted, thinking that I should have been sadder than I felt. But the only emotion coursing through me was g
uilt. Guilt for not feeling any sadness at all, and, I think, for not building a connection with my grandfather when he was alive.
After a few quiet moments, I asked, “Are you okay?”
“We have to get to Panjab,” he said. “Your poa-ji”—my paternal aunt—“is already on her way and they will start the funeral rites soon. I have to be there for my duties.”
In Sikh tradition, the body is just a shell housing the one energy, that energy that connects all humans and everything around us. When a Sikh person dies, the body is burned. As the eldest son, albeit from my grandfather’s second marriage, my father felt it was his responsibility to see to the final rites and take care of his mother and sister.
“Our flight is in two days, but we could only get three seats, so your mother and Gurratan will meet us there next week.”
The immediate excitement I felt about going to Panjab—reconnecting with my history and identity—was sapped dry by the realization that my sister and I would be alone with my dad. Was he even capable of looking after us? I wondered. After seven years of watching his heavy drinking, I’d almost forgotten there was a public version of him that wasn’t under the influence. A couple of times in early high school, while volunteering at the hospital, I’d witnessed him running the psychiatric unit with total control, knowledge, and proficiency. It was cool to see him like that, making confident decisions for a massive operation, but more than anything, it was simply surreal. I couldn’t reconcile the man I saw in those brief moments with the one I knew at home.
I couldn’t remember the last time I’d felt secure around my dad. Now we’d be alone with him in a foreign country? A place where visitors could be easily taken advantage of? Where police might harass us identifiable Sikhs? I was worried, but I didn’t know what to do.
I approached my mom later that night, when I was packing.
“Bebey-ji, when are you going to get there?”
“Like your father said, beta, I’ll arrive a week after you.”
Love & Courage Page 10