Love & Courage

by Jagmeet Singh

  My nana-ji was remarkably fit for a man in his eighties. Each day, he’d take me on a long, scenic walk around Ghudani, his rural, calming village surrounded by high rivers and tributaries. Unlike his wife, my nani-ji Gurbachen—a serious woman with little time for folk music, cultural superstitions, and other “frivolous” things—nana-ji Sarup was a lighthearted man who delighted in sweets and adventures. Though I didn’t understand every word of the stories he told, I loved hearing about all the places he’d travelled by bike. In his prime, he’d biked from Ghudani to Lahore, a distance of two hundred kilometres on rough and muddy roads, for no other reason than to visit old friends.

  One morning, while we played seep, a card game similar to casino, I asked him about his amrit—the ceremony when a Sikh is initiated and becomes a Khalsa. A Khalsa is one who is sovereign, or free. A Khalsa should be free from any ideas that oppress or discriminate. Khalsas reject superstition, dogma, and any forms of oppression, and they celebrate the equality of all. The initiation ceremony is available to anyone, regardless of gender or age, provided a person is old enough to make the conscious decision to participate. My nana-ji, however, had only recently got around to it.

  “What’s amrit like?” I asked.

  “It’s very important in the life of a Sikh,” he said. “It’s an emotional experience. It shows you’re committed to a path of justice and fairness for all. You commit to training to understand that we are all connected, that we are all one.” He smiled playfully.

  “I’m thinking about taking amrit,” I said.

  He was obviously happy that I wanted to make the decision.

  “Why do you want to do it now?” he asked.

  I reflected on the question. I had already begun wearing four of the five articles of faith, known as the five Ks, and I was practising Sikhi regularly. I had kesh (my uncut hair), an acceptance of my natural form and reminder of my connection to nature. I wore a kanga (comb)—on a practical level, it helped me to keep my kesh neat, but it was also a reminder that cleanliness wasn’t about just appearance and health, but about remaining internally committed to principles of justice and fairness. My kara (steel/iron bracelet) reminded me of the infinite nature of life and energy—no beginning, no end. And my kachera underwear was a reminder of modesty. Taking amrit would mean adding a kirpan, a traditional sword. The word kirpan comes from kirpa (grace) and an (honour). The kirpan represents the oath of Khalsa to defend the rights of all people.

  I thought about the idea of the Khalsa. The Khalsa was the culmination of Sikhi. It was a commitment to continue to walk down the path of love and to work for the betterment of all. The word “Khalsa,” besides meaning one is sovereign, means being free from ideas or beliefs that enslave, but more than that, it means being committed to working for freedom and justice for all. Becoming Khalsa meant making a lifelong commitment to doing what I could to defend the rights of all and work for fairness and justice. Seeing that my nana-ji had just done it reminded me that it was never too late or too early to act.

  I finally answered my grandfather. “I truly believe that we are all connected and that we are all one. That we have to take care of each other. I want to make a commitment to doing my part to make the world a little better.”

  “We can make it happen,” he said. “Where would you like to do it?”

  Any Gurdwara in Panjab was a possibility. I could have done the ceremony back in Windsor. But I had my heart set on Anandpur—the city where the Khalsa was inaugurated. Anandpur was where Guru Gobind Singh—the tenth and final Guru of the faith—initiated the first group of Sikhs.

  A couple of days later, my grandfather took me there on a bus. We arrived after a few hours of travel, but as soon as I stepped off the bus, I realized that while I had four of my five Ks with me, I hadn’t picked up a kirpan.

  “Nana-ji, I didn’t bring it with me!” I said.

  “No problem, we’ll find one here.” He took me to a bustling market teeming with colourful trinkets, textiles, and burlap sacks overflowing with bright red peppers. Several stalls sold exclusively traditional weapons—polished swords, pole arms, and katars (armour-piercing daggers). Nana-ji helped me pick a simple kirpan, with a wood and steel sheath and unadorned steel blade. I solemnly strapped the fabric holster diagonally across my kurta pajama, a plain white cotton fabric that’s the daily wear for a lot of people in Panjab.

  We arrived at the bleach-white Gurdwara and registered my name for the initiation. We sat cross-legged in an open area under domed ceilings until I was finally invited into an exclusive area reserved for existing and soon-to-be Khalsa members. Guards holding spears stood outside a tall, ornate wooden door, which they pushed open with their free hands to allow me to enter.

  “I’ll wait for you here,” said my nana-ji.

  Inside, a range of men and women, teenagers, and elderly folks waited for amrit. The ceremony is carried out by five Khalsa, who are referred to collectively as the panj pyare, or the five lovers. They can be from any gender or age, but they are usually people who are well respected and can act as mentors or guides.

  Together, we read aloud the five banis, the spiritual poems I recited every morning, while one of the panj pyare stirred a bowl of sugar water with a double-edged sword. The blade scraped the bowl rhythmically while we finished our last words.

  Another panj pyare explained the Khalsa code of conduct in Panjabi. I understood only half of it, but I grasped the essence: the path of Sikh spirituality is connected to love. To realize we are all connected takes love. To fight against injustice requires a deep act of love. Everything in Sikh spirituality is based on this idea of love combined with the belief in the oneness of all things.

  Finally, we took turns drinking from the water and eating handfuls of karah prashad, pudding.

  I left feeling entirely different. I didn’t necessarily feel reborn, but I felt grounded and committed to a path. I rejoined my nana-ji, my body tingling with a sense of excitement and achievement, but also a sense of responsibility.

  When we returned to Canada, I tried to bring that same positive energy with me. But after we got back, I went through a downturn. There were things weighing on me that, had I had the vocabulary for it at the time, I would have called the early signs of a depression.

  Several weeks went by, and I didn’t reach out to Walid once. I didn’t call, walk over, or even say hi. Manjot tried to gently nudge me.

  “I was hanging out next door with Walid’s sister,” she said to me one evening. “Walid says hi.”

  “Tell him I say hi, too,” I mumbled.

  A few more days went by, and Manjot came up to me again.

  “You’re not hanging out with Walid—is everything all right?” she asked.

  I didn’t have a reason, or at least, not one I could put into words. Everything I was feeling was only made worse by the embarrassment I felt at not being able to reach out to my best friend. When Manjot confronted me about it a third time, I finally broke down and admitted that I felt weird because we hadn’t spoken in so long.

  “Just reach out to him,” she said. “He’s your best friend, he’s not going to mind.”

  I knew she was right, but I couldn’t muster the courage. But the next day, I was sitting on the porch when Walid walked up to me.

  “Hey,” he said quietly.

  “Hi,” I replied.

  We started chatting, and the next thing I knew, we picked up right where we’d left off. Manjot never said anything, but I’m sure she had something to do with our reunion, and I said a quiet thank you for her help.

  My dad had also been reconnecting since our return. Whether it was because of regrowing his hair, returning to Panjab, or having Jugnu in his life, my dad continued to try to embrace his roots when we got back to Canada. He also seemed to want to set some new roots of his own. One evening during dinner, he made a surprising announcement.

  “We’re moving to a farm,” my dad said.

  I dropped my fork. Manjot looked at m
e nervously. “Like, with cows and stuff?” she asked.

  “No,” he said. “Just forty acres or so and some crops.”

  “Crops?” I asked. “That kind of sounds cool.”

  “But . . . my friends,” Manjot said.

  “We won’t move far,” he said. “Just outside the city. A ten-minute drive, at most. Just wait until you see the spot—it’s beautiful.”

  We looked at my mom for a reaction. Was Dad serious?

  “It will be a nice farm,” she said, the flatness of her voice at odds with her words. “Why don’t we go see it tomorrow?”

  I tried to imagine what had given my dad this idea of moving to a farm. My dad and I had watched the movie Far and Away together. In the movie, the main character hears repeatedly from his father that “A man is nothing without land.” My dad didn’t watch many movies, and that line stuck with him, I think. He’d also learned that we had been effectively cut out of his father’s will, and so he wouldn’t inherit any of his ancestral lands.

  Whatever the reason, the next day we went as a family to Gurdwara and, after the program, drove to the southern tip of Windsor along a gravel road called Disputed Road. The street earned its name because it was the subject of a long-standing dispute over property boundaries between Windsor and the town of LaSalle. It was in limbo, and for us teenagers, it felt like that was exactly where we’d landed. We tried to keep an open mind about it, but there wasn’t much to get excited about: a long, flat plot of land blanketed in snow, with nothing more than a rustic red barn. There was, maybe, one house in sight, a few hundred metres down the road.

  “Are you sure about this, Dad?” I asked, standing at the side of the road and stamping my feet to keep warm.

  “We are going to build the biggest house you’ve ever seen,” he said. He pointed straight ahead. “You know what’s back there?”

  “Nothing?” Manjot said.

  “Bean fields,” he said. “And farther back, there’s a creek you can play in.” Manjot and I traded skeptical glances. I was almost sixteen now, and she was thirteen, so this wasn’t exactly a sell to us. Gurratan, however, perked up at the idea of having his own little ravine to explore with Jugnu.

  “Great,” Manjot said. “What about our pool?”

  “We’ll build another one.”

  I had to admit, the more my dad described our future home, the more romantic it seemed. I could imagine planting some saplings so that I could take long walks through the countryside the same way I had with my nana-ji on his farm in Panjab. I mentioned as much to my dad and, in his typical fashion, he went overboard with the idea, this time for the better. He said he’d contact the ministry to get us connected with a reforestation project so that we could plant an entire forest.

  “This might actually be kind of cool,” I said.

  “No fair,” Manjot cried, glaring at me. “Jagmeet’s getting his driver’s licence next year, but I’ll be stuck here in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Jagmeet will drive you wherever you need,” said my mom, without so much as looking at me for approval.

  “How big of a house are we talking?” I asked my parents.

  “Big as you want,” my dad said. “I want you and your sister to help design it.”

  “Awesome,” I said, finally sold on the idea.

  My dad stayed true to his word and let us kids have a say in the planning. Manjot and I each got to design a bathroom and our rooms. Inspired by my love of the woods, my room had forest-green marble counters, stained wood cabinets, and beige tiles. Manjot’s was a funky black-and-white room—right down to the toilet seat in her ensuite bathroom—with black-and-white-checked tiles. I wasn’t sure if her monochrome modern design was really her preference or passive rebellion for having to leave behind her friends and our walk-friendly neighbourhood.

  My dad worked with a custom builder on the floor plan. The front door would open to an airy vestibule and handcrafted, curving wood staircase. The living room, dining room, and kitchen were in one open wing of the house, under a high, sloping ceiling, with a sliding door to a spacious back porch. My dad spared no costs, building a dream home on flexible steel-joist floors so it would never shift or sink with time. My mom, as always, was unnerved by these luxuries, but she made sure to plan a meditation room upstairs, looking out toward the street.

  The further along the project got, the more I was convinced it was a good idea. But nobody was more excited about it than Jugnu. My dad had bought me a car when I got my licence, so I often took Jugnu to the construction site so that he could run free—he was clearly enjoying all of the extra space.

  It had become a habit of mine to take Jugnu on long walks like that, late at night or through the forest by our home. As we walked, I’d scratch behind his ears and quietly tell him what I was going through and how it was making me feel. He’d sit or jog beside me, cocking his head occasionally. He was the perfect listener. No matter how anxious or sad I was feeling, I knew that I could count on Jugnu simply to listen and be there for me. When I looked into his intelligent brown eyes, there wouldn’t be any judgment or fear—only love. He was my lifeline in some of my darkest moments.

  One day, late in the construction process, I brought Jugnu to the site for one of our usual walks. As he sniffed around the front lawn, I headed up the freshly dried concrete stairs under the front archway and opened the towering wooden door. A worker standing atop a tall stepladder was installing the base of a chandelier. I gave a wave and carefully walked around him over the blue Italian tile mosaic. My hand traced the fine details of the solid oak door frames as I moved from room to room, opening and closing the doors, impressed by their weight. Even the bathroom cabinets were solid oak.

  I went up to the washroom on the second floor that I’d designed. I pulled the knobs of the drawers, satisfied with the smoothness of the ball bearings. I opened the cabinet beneath the sink—and immediately slammed it shut. I stepped back, then opened the cabinet again slowly. My old nemesis—the Russian Prince—scowled back at me from an empty bottle tucked behind the plumbing.

  Chapter Nine

  DISPUTED ROAD

  When my dad relapsed, the first thing I noticed was his beard. He started by trimming it shorter and shorter until he finally just shaved it off. When he shaved his beard, he stopped tying a turban as well.

  But I didn’t need the beard or turban to tell he had relapsed. Since I had to continually assess my dad’s sobriety, I developed an incredible sensitivity to the slightest signs of him drinking. I could tell he was drinking by minor changes in the way he stood, whether his eyes were glassy or alert, whether he avoided everyone and went straight to his bedroom or spent time hanging out on the main floor.

  He started drinking heavily again. First, it was just the weekends. Then it became some evenings.

  He stopped going to Gurdwara, too. “Dad, did you drink?” I asked once after we got back from services.

  “No, no, I didn’t,” he said. “I’m fine.”

  I stared at him suspiciously, noting his flushed cheeks and heavy eyelids.

  “Smell my breath,” he said. I leaned toward him, inhaling the abundance of cologne on his neck. He opened his lips, but barely, as though he was about to whistle, and blew out what he thought was a scentless whiff. I could smell the alcohol immediately.

  “Dad, you promised never to drink again!” I said solemnly. I looked my dad in the eye. He looked away. Our interactions were often the same at this time. I would point out how his drinking was something that was hurtful to me and to our entire family. He would be ashamed and promise not to drink again. Though I was heartbroken, I would confront him and try to get him to promise again. I never gave up, and I never stopped believing that he would honour his promise to me despite all the evidence to the contrary.

  My dad was a fairly high-functioning alcoholic. Even though he was getting drunk regularly on weekends and some evenings, he was still always able to make it to his office Monday to Friday and work unaffecte
d.

  Despite how much my father earned, even when he was healthy and working regularly, my mom was always worried about money. Maybe “worried” isn’t the right word; she was very cautious. She was careful not to spend too much because she was always afraid we would not have enough money. Maybe it was her farmer upbringing. Times were often tough for her growing up, so the idea of not wasting money and being careful about expenditures became a part of who she was. My dad tried to reassure her that things were okay and that we were doing fine. No matter how convincing my father’s arguments were, my mom couldn’t shake the fear of financial insecurity. Looking back, maybe it was her intuition foreshadowing what was to come.

  She became increasingly worried about my dad’s decision to buy the farm and build the farmhouse.

  “We don’t need to move into that house, we’re fine where we are,” she said. “Why don’t we just sell the new house we built?”

  She tried, but she couldn’t change his mind. In April 1996, renters took possession of our house on Santo Drive and we moved into the farmhouse on Disputed Road. Things immediately went from bad to worse.

  My dad’s drinking ramped up after the move. Soon, he was getting so intoxicated that he’d moan all night, an ominous and creepy noise that coursed through the halls and under our doors, no matter how hard we all pretended not to hear it.

  Living on a farm can cut two ways: it can be beautiful and relaxing, or it can be terrifying. For twelve-year-old Gurratan, especially, it felt like we’d moved into the haunted hotel from The Shining. Where I looked out my bedroom window and saw a tranquil environment and an escape from what was happening under our roof, Gurratan looked out and saw a sea of unknowns. From the perspective of my anxious little brother, we’d moved to the middle of nowhere, with no one for miles that he could run to, should he ever need it.

  My sister hated it, too. As predicted, our new home messed with Manjot’s social life. She used to walk everywhere in Windsor to meet with friends. But from Disputed Road, if she couldn’t get a ride from me or my mom, it would take her thirty minutes just to reach town on foot, and that included walking along a gravel road covered in snow and ice for almost half the year.