“How do you know there’s an energy, Jagmeet?” he asked me one evening as we lounged on our beds. “How do you prove it?”
“I believe there’s a connection between us all,” I said.
“What’s your proof?”
“I don’t know if there’s a concrete thing I can point to,” I admitted. “I just think there’s something uniting us all. Even if you think about it scientifically, we’re all made up of matter, and all matter breaks down to neutrons, electrons, and protons.”
“You totally just made that up on the spot,” Mike said with a kind laugh. “But fair enough, when it comes down to it, we’re all made of the same thing.”
My science might not have persuaded Mike, but what I liked about our discussions was that, although we had very different opinions, he always took the time to genuinely listen to and consider my perspective.
“I haven’t even been here for a full month, and already you’ve got me rethinking my whole world view,” I joked to him after I came back from class.
I was helping Mike think in new ways, too. I was listening to a lot of Bob Marley at the time, which meant Mike was hearing it, too. He’d sometimes break out his guitar, singing and playing in our dorm room. He had a nice voice and could play guitar well. Mike surprised me during the Saugeen residence talent show by singing “Redemption Song.”
Basically, being at university was like I’d flipped a switch. While I had overcome difficulties, I still had a lot of insecurities. Wrestling had really helped me find myself again, find that inner confidence. But there was something about coming to a new city, a new school, that allowed me to shed whatever was left of my insecurities and immediately adopt a truer version of myself. I had the chance to be myself without the baggage of previous expectations and insecurities.
I quickly made friends and had different circles, many of which overlapped. My friends and I would get into all sorts of adventures together—partying at the campus club during “Soca x Bhangra” nights, joining intramural basketball, going on road trips to other universities, or checking out the local restaurant scene. My parents supported me with my tuition and living expenses, plus a monthly spending allowance that made my student life very comfortable.
I quickly got caught up in Saugeen’s prankster culture. It wasn’t long before I was embroiled in an all-out prank war with my residence friends. It started when one of them left a box of chicken wings and pizza crusts beside my head while I slept (I dreamt about food all night). I woke up surprised to see the boxes around me and laughed to myself. Eventually, some of my friends let slip who did the prank. The next day, another friend and I snuck into the culprit’s room and silently arranged ourselves around his bed.
“Ready?” I mouthed. “One, two, three.”
In one fell swoop, we flipped the culprit’s mattress over—with him sleeping on it—sandwiching him between his bed and the box spring. We raced out of the room, laughing our heads off, while our friend yelled at us from his tangle of sheets.
And so it went, tit-for-tat, each of our friends one-upping each other with increasingly complicated schemes, like rigging water buckets on top of rez doors to collapse on the person living there when they left for first class.
To me, university wasn’t just about having fun. And it wasn’t just a place where I was going to take courses and study to become a doctor, either. It was a place where I could shed whatever residual shyness, awkwardness, and insecurities I still carried with me.
One evening, I was sitting with a friend in our common room, talking about everything and nothing in particular. He and I were sharing stories of our childhood, when my friend turned serious.
He ended up sharing an account of sexual assault. I listened quietly while my friend spoke about his struggles.
“I understand,” I said when he was done.
“I don’t think you can,” he replied.
“Actually, I can,” I said. “Something similar happened to me.”
This was the first time I ever admitted to another human being that something had happened to me. It was seven years since I had been assaulted, and I could only talk about it in general terms. But even this minor step of admitting out loud that something had happened felt like a little weight lifted off my spirit. I still had a lot of healing to do. But this moment was another step down the path.
Years later I spoke about what happened to me in more detail to someone very special to me. This person told me that it wasn’t my fault. I had told myself that a couple of times when the thought of what happened resurfaced and I couldn’t push the memories down, but there’s something very different about saying that to yourself when you’re alone versus hearing someone else say it. Hearing those words unlocked a flood of emotions I had buried for over a decade. I had tried to convince myself the abuse wasn’t my fault, but I don’t think I fully believed it. When someone said it to me, I think I began to believe. I don’t have the words to express the gratitude I feel to this day for this kindness. People may have caused me pain, but people have healed me as well.
Over the course of my first year, I continued to build my confidence and form new relationships with the people around me. Growing up, I didn’t really have a lot of friends from the same spiritual background, nor did I have many Panjabi-speaking friends. At Western there were many Sikhs and Panjabi-speaking students. When I was a kid, my parents would listen to Panjabi music at the odd party, but at Western, I was surrounded by people who loved it. I even joined a bhangra dance team.
The first time I showed up to our dance group’s practice, one of the upper-year students walked up to me the moment I came through the doors.
“Hey, you’re new. I’m the best dancer on the team. Stick with me and I’ll teach you everything I know,” he said.
I wanted to laugh, but I kept it in. It turns out, he could walk the walk, and he took the time to teach me what he knew.
When I started going to clubs off campus it didn’t take long to notice that bouncers regularly patted down my brown-skinned friends and me. They hovered by our tables, while my other friends who weren’t visible minorities walked around unchallenged.
Sadly, I’d already become accustomed to that sort of heavy scrutiny by authority. A couple of years earlier, just after getting my driver’s licence, the police in Windsor pulled me over. I was driving my dad’s Mercedes with the windows rolled down on a summer day. When I saw the flashing lights in my rear-view mirror, I felt myself break out in a cold sweat. I immediately pulled over and turned down Nas’s “If I Ruled the World,” then stared straight ahead with my hands on the wheel. As the officer walked toward the driver’s side, my mind raced with possible infractions. Did I forget to signal? Was one of my rear lights out?
“Hello, sir,” I said, trying to keep my voice even.
“Can I see some ID?” he asked.
I reached into my back pocket and fumbled for my driver’s licence. As the cop took it from me, I asked, “Did I do anything wrong?”
He walked to his car without a word and returned a few minutes later. He handed my ID back through the window. “This is a routine stop,” he said. “You’re free to go.”
Afterward, I tried to put the incident out of my mind. I figured the officer suspected me of being a car thief. It probably wasn’t every day he saw a seventeen-year-old driving a luxury vehicle, I thought. But then the same thing happened a few months later while I was in my Explorer. And then it happened again. And again.
The supposedly random and so-called routine stops continued when I got to London. Each time, the cop would take my ID, run my licence number through their system, and send me off as though nothing had happened. They weren’t always polite, either; more than once, they told me to keep my mouth shut. “We’ll ask the questions, sir.”
I was driving a vehicle, so police officers could legally stop me under the Highway Traffic Act. That wasn’t exactly the same thing as “carding.” However, since I hadn’t committed any offence, in
effect, I was being “carded”—though the term was years away from entering my lexicon—being arbitrarily stopped because of the way I looked. My information could potentially be recorded in a database, even though I’d done nothing wrong.
One day, after another stop on my way back from class, I vented about it to my friends Steve and John.
“Isn’t it so annoying when you get pulled over for no reason?” I asked them as I flopped down beside them on a couch in the student centre.
They looked at each other with raised brows. “To be honest, that’s never happened to me,” said Steve.
“Yeah, me neither,” added John.
“You’ve never had cops check your ID in the street?” I asked.
“Like, without speeding or whatever?” Steve asked.
“It’s happened to me at those police checkpoints where they watch for people drinking,” John said. “But never just out of the blue.”
“Huh,” I said, leaving it at that.
Steve and John were both white. They hadn’t experienced what I had. Later that day, though, I told the same story to a couple of our racialized friends. They knew exactly what I was talking about—they’d been pulled over routinely, too.
“Bro, you’re being profiled,” they explained. “It happens to brown guys all the time.”
In those early years, I didn’t think much about my rights or the responsibility of the police to treat everyone with fairness. Instead, I internalized the experiences and considered how I could counter the negative stereotypes that were being held against me and my friends.
“We should start a club,” I said to some friends one evening as we sat around in our common room.
My friends nodded and murmured their agreement, but nobody seemed as enthusiastic about the idea. Then one of them, Gurpreet Kaur, jumped in.
“Let’s do it,” Gurpreet said. Together, we spent the next few months laying the groundwork for Western’s first Sikh Student Association.
I had an idea of events we could hold and how we could recruit members, but I needed help with the execution. Gurpreet brought the get-it-done mentality, so together we mobilized a couple dozen of us to volunteer at soup kitchens or to get together for meditation sessions. We staged a pop-up langar, a community kitchen like what you’d find in a Gurdwara, in the student centre. We even brought in guest speakers and held community events that introduced the broader community to Sikhi. We discussed the teachings, beliefs, and practices, breaking down myths and misconceptions, replacing them with knowledge and understanding.
Working for the association energized me in a new way that my classes or sports team hadn’t before. For so long, my identity had been the target of so much negativity. Suddenly, I had the opportunity to change the way people saw Sikhs. In addition to working to change the perspectives of people looking at Sikhs, it was an opportunity for rewarding internal debate, too. It was a chance to work through different perspectives and opinions held by our own community’s members as well.
During one exhaustive planning meeting, our members couldn’t agree on where we should hold an upcoming function. The group was split between a local bar and a room in the student centre. Some members thought the bar was a good attraction for hesitant attendees, but I and others thought it could just as well discourage them.
“Sikh teachings criticize the use of intoxicants, not on moral grounds as much as on the grounds that they act as an obstacle to the pursuit of truth,” I said. “As Sikhs we’re ‘students,’ we’re seekers of the truth, and I don’t think a bar promotes that mission statement. Besides, Gurdwaras were designed to be safe and inclusive spaces. Bars aren’t very inclusive for people who don’t drink, but a room on campus can be safe for everyone.”
“So what?” asked one of the guys on the other side. “Lots of Sikh events have bars, even weddings.”
“It’s just not in sync with our goals,” I said.
“But you eat meat. You’re judging alcohol because you don’t drink, but you’re just doing what’s convenient for you.”
“Eating meat is debatable,” I said. “It comes down to understanding the value of life and not needlessly taking it.”
“According to some, but not everyone. You just don’t think it’s critical because it doesn’t work for you.”
“That’s not true,” I said.
“I bet you couldn’t even be vegetarian.”
“Sure I could.”
He grinned smugly. I already knew what he’d say. “Okay, well,” he started, “I dare you to be vegetari—”
“I’m vegetarian—done,” I said.
He laughed. “Are you serious?”
I was. From that moment on, I never ate another bird or mammal, and later on, I cut fish and eggs out of my diet, too. I would love to say I acted on principle. Truth be told, though, I became a vegetarian because I wanted to win that argument.
After a couple of weeks, though, I quickly found being vegetarian very rewarding. I felt good, like I was lighter and had this really positive energy. Later on, the ethical treatment of animals, reducing my carbon footprint, and protecting the environment became my motivations for continuing this as a life choice.
Most of the fun I had at school happened on weekdays, because on Fridays, I jumped in the car and headed west on the 401 highway. I’d follow the signs for Windsor, and the first glimpse of the “Welcome to Windsor, the Rose City and the Automotive Capital of Canada” sign would fill me with warm (positive) nostalgia. But the feeling quickly morphed to concern when I turned onto Disputed Road and our farmhouse came into sight.
Things weren’t good. My dad was usually too drunk to leave his bedroom on the weekends, and would only see me when he came down to forage food from the kitchen. Sometimes he tried to engage with whoever was there, despite no one wanting to talk with him. He would dredge up issues that were well past discussion, or revert to his obsession with tidiness. “The house is a mess,” he grumbled.
“Go back to your room, Dad,” I told him.
“No, the house is a mess,” he would shout, and then swipe his arm across the living room coffee table, slamming books to the ground with a crash and sending papers flying everywhere. His sudden motion and anger would leave him unbalanced, and he would stagger as he tried to keep himself upright.
“Go to your room,” I said more firmly.
His Sunday hangovers were brutal. He had the presence of mind not to drink on those days, lest his random monitoring colour come up Monday morning. But the fight against his impulses turned him prickly and belligerent. We had the same conversation again and again—me lecturing him to get help to stop drinking; him downplaying his disease—until I got back on the highway. Every Sunday evening, I’d drive back to school wracked with a mix of relief and guilt. Relief because I’d have five days of peace. Guilt because I didn’t think I deserved to have any peace while the rest of my family suffered.
Still, my siblings and I looked forward to each weekend visit. Since our time together was so limited and precious, I regularly turned down offers to hang out with Walid and the guys in favour of going out to the movies to catch rom coms with Manjot (her choice, not mine—though I secretly enjoyed them) or just to stay home, chat, and catch up with Gurratan.
I also made sure to spend time with my mom each weekend. I was worried about her. Her sense of purpose had diminished over the years. All of us kids had outgrown her tutoring, although it was largely thanks to her efforts that we were all doing well in school. Still, we didn’t depend on her to get around anymore, now that Manjot could drive herself and Gurratan wherever he needed to go. My mom’s extended family and friends had drifted away somewhat because of my dad’s behaviour, so they didn’t come to visit very much if at all, and it was so long since Mom had worked—seventeen years—that the idea of having a job intimidated her. Her husband really was her whole world now—a small, uncertain world quaking with unnatural disasters.
One weekend just before the end of my second semes
ter, my mom asked me to join her outside on the deck. She routinely confided in me in private. This time, though, the raw tension in her voice told me something big and awful had occurred.
She tapped her slippers on the deck, trying to work up the strength to speak. Finally, she said, “The College of Physicians called your father’s colour this week.”
I let out an exasperated breath. She nodded, confirming my fears that Dad had failed his urine test.
My dad had skipped a urine test a few weeks before, telling the college he was too busy that morning; he got a written warning for it. But I didn’t know he was playing the odds with his tests.
“Every time his colour came up,” said my mom, “he’d go have a drink to celebrate. ‘Harmeet, they won’t call it again two days in a row.’ ” She shook her head, disappointed and downbeat.
“You can’t stop him,” I said. “Did he lose his licence?”
“No, thank God. But now he has to do a screening test every morning, and before he can practise again, he has to go to rehab again.” He had tried rehab before, and it hadn’t worked.
I looked up at their bedroom window; his beastly grunts were slightly audible. I pictured my dad tangled in the bedsheets and pillows, lifting himself only to reach the Russian Prince bottle almost certainly on the bedside table. “He really needs the help. Hopefully this time rehab will make the difference.”
My mom looked at me doubtfully.
Love & Courage Page 14