Tag: Southeast Asia

Categories
Notes from Japan

In Praise of Parasols

A classic way to keep cool

By Suzanne Kamata

Painting by Georges Seurat(1859-1891). From the Public Domain.

Parasols? Seriously? Such were my thoughts when I first arrived in Japan one summer over twenty years ago. How quaint, I thought. How old fashioned! If a lady was worried about preserving her lily-white complexion, why not just slather on sunscreen and wear a hat?

In South Carolina, where I’d just come from, the only time I ever saw women wielding parasols was when I visited antebellum mansions. There, tour guides flounced around plantations in hoopskirts, twirling parasols as part of their period costumes. In real life, no one used them.

Back then, many of my friends spent hours laying out in the sun, in pursuit of the perfect tan. In the United States, people found my skin to be too pale, but in Japan women wore long white gloves and smeared their faces with whitening cream. And they carried parasols to ward off the sun.

Parasols have actually been in use in the Middle East and Asia for a very long time. They are depicted in ancient art in India, Egypt, Mesopotamia, and Greece, and are mentioned in a divination book from the Chinese Song Dynasty printed in 1270. Although alternative uses have been discovered for the parasol – for example, in 1902, ladies were advised by The Daily Mirror to use their parasols to fend off ruffians — the basic design is much the same as that of first century China.

A postcard from the turn of the 20th century. From the Public Domain

The only parasol I’d ever owned was a bright red one made of paper, bought from a souvenir shop in Southeast Asia, which I displayed in a corner as an ethnic accent to my home décor. I never thought of using it outside.

Parasols were fussy and cumbersome, I thought. How could you do anything with your hands if you were holding one? They were a nuisance, and yet when I went to a baseball game with my mother-in-law in mid-summer, and the hot sun beat down upon us, I was grateful to share the shade of her black umbrella.

Ever conscious of my carbon footprint, I walk to the neighbourhood store with my eco-bags. One sweltering day last summer, I started to reach for my hat on my way out the door, but grabbed an umbrella instead. It really was cooler underneath! And carrying a parasol helps cut down on the new freckles. Today I browsed online for a new parasol. A number of new vendors have popped up in the West offering a variety of designs – Battenburg Lace for outdoor weddings, solid team colours for stadium sports, and more. Could it be that the parasol is about to come into fashion again in my native country? Here in Japan, it has never gone out of style. 

From the Public Domain

Suzanne Kamata was born and raised in Grand Haven, Michigan. She now lives in Japan with her husband and two children. Her short stories, essays, articles and book reviews have appeared in over 100 publications. Her work has been nominated for the Pushcart Prize five times, and received a Special Mention in 2006. She is also a two-time winner of the All Nippon Airways/Wingspan Fiction Contest, winner of the Paris Book Festival, and winner of a SCBWI Magazine Merit Award.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

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Categories
Interview Review

A Backpacker’s Diary by Jessica Mudditt

A brief overview of Once Around the Sun : From Cambodia to Tibet (Hembury Books) by Jessica Mudditt and a conversation with the author

Jessica Mudditt

Jessica Mudditt’s Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is not just a backpacker’s diary but also her need to relate to humanity, to find friendships and even love, as she does with Kris, a photographer named after Krishna, the Hindu god, because his parents while visiting India fell in love with the divinity!

The Burmese translation of Our Home in Myanmar was published recently.

Hurtling through Cambodia, Vietnam, China, Tibet, young Mudditt concludes her narrative just at the brink of exploring Nepal, India and Pakistan in her next book… leaving the reader looking forward to her next adventure. For this memoir is an adventure that explores humanity at different levels. Before this, Mudditt had authored Our Home in Myanmar – Four years in Yangon, a narrative that led up to the Myanmar attack on Rohingyas and takeover by the military junta. Once Around the Sun: From Cambodia to Tibet is the first part of a prequel to her earlier book, Our Home in Myanmar, both published by her own publishing firm, Hembury Books.

What makes her narrative unique is her candid descriptions of life on a daily basis — that could include drunken revelry or bouts of diarrhoea — while weaving in bits of history and her very humane responses. Her trip to Angkor Wat yields observations which brings into perspective the disparities that exist in our world:

“I was gazing out at an empire that was once the most powerful and sophisticated in the world. In 1400, when London had a middling population of 50,000, the kingdom of Angkor had more than a million inhabitants and a territory that stretched from Vietnam to Brunei. It had flourished for six hundred years, from the ninth to the fifteenth centuries.

“But somehow Cambodia had become one of the world’s poorest countries, and surely the most traumatised too, following a recent war and genocide. I knew that when we came back down to the ground, there would be a collection of ragtag street kids and downtrodden beggars desperately hoping for our spare change. It was difficult to reconcile the grandeur of Cambodia’s past with its heart-breaking present in the twenty-first century. How did a country’s fortunes change so dramatically? Could the situation ever be turned around?”

How indeed?

Then, she writes of Vientaine in Vietnam:

“I was struck by the fact that sex work seemed to be the consequence for countless young women living in poverty. It made me angry, but mostly sad.”

In these countries broken into fragments by intrusions from superpowers in the last century, judged by the standards of the “developed countries” and declared “underdeveloped”, an iron rice bowl becomes more important to survive than adventure, discovering other parts of the world or backpacking to self-discovery. Travel really is the privilege of that part of the world which draws sustenance from those who cannot afford to travel.

Jessica showcases mindsets from that part of the Western world and from the mini-expat world in Hong Kong, which continue alienated from the local cultures that they profess to have set out to explore or help develop. One of the things that never ceases to surprise is that while the ‘developed’ continue to judge the ‘third world’, these countries destroyed by imposed boundaries, foreign values, continue to justify themselves to those who oppress them and also judge themselves by the standards of the oppressors.

Some of these ‘developing’ countries continue to pander to needs of tourism and tourists for the wealth they bring in, as Jessica shows in her narrative. She brings out the sharp differences between the locals from Asia and the budgeted backpackers, who look for cheap alternatives to experience more of the cultures they don’t understand by indulging in explorations that can involve intoxicants and sex, their confidence backed by the assurance that they can return to an abled world.

Backpackers from affluent countries always have their families to fall back on — opulent, abled and reliable. Mudditt with her candid narrative explores that aspect too as she talks of her mother’s response to her being sick and budgeting herself. Her mother urges her to cut short her trip. But she continues, despite the ‘adversities’, with an open mind. That she has a home where she can return if she is in any kind of trouble begs a question — what kind of ‘civilisation’ do we as humans have that she from an abled background has a safe retreat where there are those for whom the reality of their existence is pegged to what she is urged to leave behind for her own well-being? And why — as part of the same species — do we accept this divide that creates ravines and borders too deep to fathom?

Mudditt with her narrative does create a bridge between those who have plenty and those who still look for and need an iron rice bowl. She mingles with people from all walks and writes about her experiences. Hers is a narrative about all of us –- common humanity. Her style is free flowing and easy to read — quite journalistic for she spent ten years working as one in London, Bangladesh and Myanmar, before returning to her home in Australia in 2016. Her articles have been published by Forbes, BBC, GQ and Marie Claire, among others. This conversation takes us to the stories around and beyond her book.

What led you to embark on your backpacking adventure? Was it just wanderlust or were you running away from something?

It was primarily from wanderlust, but I also didn’t know what I was going to do with the rest of my life. After six years at university, I was still yet to have any particular calling. However, I was also glad I didn’t know. It meant that I was free to go and explore the world, because I wasn’t putting my career on hold. I had no career.

I also had a broken heart when I set off for Cambodia – but the trip was planned before that relationship had even begun. But again, part of me was glad that my boyfriend had called it quits, because my plan was to be away for a very long time (and it ended being a decade away).

What made you think of putting down your adventures in writing? As you say, this is a prequel to your first book.

It was the pandemic that made me realise that backpacking was really special. There was a period in 2020 when it looked like travel may never be so unrestricted again, so it motivated me to document my year of complete freedom. It was also before social media was even a thing. When I was lost, I was really lost, and I had to use my problem-solving skills.

Prior to the pandemic, I sort of thought that backpacking itself was too fun to write about. I hadn’t actually lived in any of the countries I visited – I was just passing through. But that is also a valid experience, and one that many people can fondly relate to. There were also some really confronting and difficult moments.

You have written of people you met. How have they responded to your candid portrayals? Or did you change their names and descriptions to convey the essence but kept your characters incognito?

While I was writing the book, I got back in touch with the people I travelled with – I can thank Facebook for still being in touch with most people mentioned. They helped me to remember past anecdotes and I got some of the back story of their own trips. I have only used first names to protect their privacy, although there are some photos in the book too. Thankfully the world is so big that the odds are small that anyone would recognise, say, an Irish guy from Adam in Vietnam in 2006! Clem from Shanghai has just sent me a photo of her with my book, and Romi from Vietnam actually came to my book launch, which was awesome.

What was your favourite episode in this book — as a backpacker and as a writer? Tell us about it.

I think it was crossing into China and meeting ‘the man.’ I felt so alive with every step I took into China after crossing over on foot from Vietnam. To be chaperoned in the way I was – without being able to communicate a single word – was unusual. His kindness left me speechless, so the anecdote has a nice story arc.

In your travels through China, you faced a language handicap and yet found people kind and helpful. Can you tell us a bit about it?

I foolishly underestimated the language barrier. It was profound. In Southeast Asia, there was always at least a sprinkling of English, and I sort of just assumed that I’d be fine. I entered China from Vietnam, so my first port of call was Nanning, where there is not even really an expat population. I couldn’t do the most basic things, from finding the toilet or an internet cafe or something to eat! I used sign language and memorised the Chinese character for ‘female’ to make sure I went into the right toilet! In a restaurant, I just pointed at whatever someone else was eating in the hope that they would bring me a bowl of whatever it was. There were times when I was seriously lost and lonely, but I ended up staying in China for two months and saw the comedic side. I was bumbling around like Mr Bean (who is hugely popular in China).

I met a lot of people who were really kind to me, and I was just so grateful to them. I didn’t have Wi-Fi on my phone back then, so getting lost in a massive city in China was a bit scary. I met a student called Mei-Xing who ‘adopted’ me for a few days in Guilin. We had a really nice time together and it was so great to hang out with a local.

What is/are the biggest takeaway/s you had from your backpacking in this part of the world? Tell us about it.

I think it’s something quite simple: the world can be a very beautiful place, and a very polluted place. Tourism can do a great deal of damage when there are too many people clambering over one area. There is also an incredible level of disparity in a material sense on our planet. Some humans are travelling into space on rockets. Others are pulling rickshaws, as though they are draught horses. It is profoundly inequitable.

Having travelled to large tracts of Asia, what would you think would be the biggest challenge to creating a more equitable world, a more accepting world? Do you think an exposure to culture and history could resolve some of the issues?

I think that democracy is key. It slows us down and forces us to act in the interest of the majority, not the top-level cronies. That is definitely also something I witnessed in Myanmar. When a few people hold all the power, the population is deprived of things that ought to be a human right.

I think that travel definitely alters your perspective and broadens your mind, and it is something I’d recommend to anyone. Realising that the way that things are done in your home country is not the only way of doing things is a valuable thing to learn.

Mostly, you met people off the street. In which country did you find the warmest reception? Why and how?

In Pakistan. The hospitality and friendliness was unparalleled. I think it was in part due to not having many tourists there. Nothing felt transactional. I met some fascinating people in Pakistan who would have a profound impact on my own life. I am still in touch with several people I met there.

At a point you wondered if the poverty you saw could be reversed back to affluence in the context of the Angkor kingdom. Do you have any suggestions on actually restoring the lost glory?

I believe that it is beginning to be restored. Pundits have called this the “Asian Century.” I am convinced that the United States and the UK are in decline, and this process will only speed up. India, to me, holds the most promise as the next superpower, because it is a democracy (albeit flawed – like all of them), English- speaking, enormous, beautiful, fascinating and its soft power is unmatched. China is facing headwinds. I blame that on making people sad by removing their agency.

How long were you backpacking in this part of the world? Was it longer than you had intended? What made you extend your stay and why?

My trip was exactly 365 days long. I planned it that way from the beginning. I wanted to travel for no less than a year (more than a year and I might stay feeling guilty for being so indulgent!). That is also why the book is called Once Around the Sun – my time backpacking was the equivalent of one rotation of the Earth. I set off on 1 June 2006 – the first day of winter in Australia – and I arrived on 1 June 2007 in London, on the first day of the British summer. I love the sunshine.

After having travelled around the large tracts of Asia and in more parts of the world, could you call the whole world your home or is it still Australia? Is your sense of wellbeing defined by political boundaries or by something else?

Home for me is Sydney. I absolutely love it. I get to feel as though I am still travelling, because my home city is Melbourne. I go down a new road every other day and I love that feeling. The harbour is beautiful, and the sun is shining most days. It’s very multicultural too.

My kids are three and five, so I haven’t travelled overseas for years. My plan is to travel with them as much as possible when they are a bit older. I hope they love it as much as me. I cannot wait to return to Asia one day. I am also desperate to visit New York City.

What are your future plans for both your books and your publishing venture?

The second part of Once Around the Sun will come out in 2025. It’s called Kathmandu to the Khyber Pass, and it covers the seven months I spent Nepal, India and Pakistan.

My goal is to complete my fourth memoir by 2027. It will be called My Home in Bangladesh (it will be the prequel to Our Home in Myanmar!).

My fifth book will be about how to write a book. I am a book coach and in a few years I will have identified the most common challenges people face when writing a book, and finding their voice.

In the next twelve months, there will be at least 12 books coming out with Hembury Books, which is my hybrid publishing company. I love being a book coach and publisher and I hope to help as many people as possible to become authors.

Please visit the website and set up a discovery call with me if you plan on writing a nonfiction book, or have gotten stuck midway: https://hemburybooks.com.au/.

Photographs from Once Round the Sun, provided by Jessica Mudditt

(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)

Click here to read an excerpt from Once Around the Sun

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon Internation

 

Categories
Conversation

‘Home has been a Process of Lifelong Search’

In Conversation with Kirpal Singh

Dr Kirpal Singh

 “Singapore is intimately linked with home and, yet for me, home has always been a process of lifelong search. Partly because of the early months of my birth. The record says I was born in March 1949, but the time was not certain as I do not have a birth certificate. My father forgot to register my birth,” reminisces Dr Kirpal Singh, an internationally recognised scholar. Born in the Straits Settlement of Singapore, before the island emerged as an independent entity, he has lived through much of history. He tells a story of multi-racial, multi-cultural growth that the island afforded him.  

His father, he tells us, was “well known throughout Malaya — Jeswant Singh nicknamed as ‘Just One’ — a boxer who would knock people down with his left hook. In 1954, he left boxing when he killed someone during a match.” His mother, a Jewish Scot who he cannot recollect, he tells us, “ might have been David Marshall’s sister according to my stepsister but no one else has said that.”  Marshall[1] was the first Chief Minister of Singapore from 1955 to 1956 and then Singapore’s Ambassador to France, Portugal, Spain, and Switzerland 1978 to 1993. He is the founder of the Worker’s Party. His parents had emigrated from Baghdad to Singapore in 1908 according to current resources.

How did Singh’s parents come to be in Singapore? Were they immigrants or colonials?

He responds with what he knows: “My grandfather and grandmother came to Singapore on board a ship in 1900. They left Jullunder, Punjab, in 1899. By the time they reached Singapore, it was the end of 1900. They left to seek their fortune. They were from the farming community. My grandfather was only sixteen and my grandmother was about twelve. They were in transit in Penang for six months. They came to Singapore in 1901. Actually, it was all Malaya — Singapore was part of the Straits Settlement. They came to Singapore by train. Trains were just starting out. It was around August 1901.

Trains in Malaya

“My uncle was conceived during this journey. They halted in Singapore for only two or three weeks. My grandfather’s cousin was in Perak[2], in Malaya. So, he wanted to be with his cousin. His cousin had cattle. Most of the Sikhs were cattle farmers. They settled in Pahang[3], an area which eventually became a nuclear dump[4] for Australia. It is closed to public now. There was a stone that proclaimed the land was a nuclear dump when I went with my son a few years ago.

“My father moved to Singapore as his prospects were better here as a boxer. This is where he met my mother. I was born here. He actually met mum because my mother’s two brothers had invited her to come from Glasgow. My mother is Scottish, from an industrial background. Her brothers came to the Far East to make money.  She finished her school leaving exams and came to visit her brothers during her vacation. She would go with her bothers to watch boxing, where she saw my father, the champ. She was only fifteen or sixteen. The next thing the brothers knew was she was pregnant with me.”

Jeswant Singh was popular with colonials. Kirpal Singh tells us: “Some Europeans saw him box and offered him a job then in the Base Ordinance Depot. This was the British Military camps in the Far East. There were three bases in Singapore: the naval base, Kranji and one in the South. He worked there for thirty years and retired after that. In 1972[5], after the final British withdrawal from Singapore, dad’s formal employment status ended. After that he just did odd jobs, ending up as a security guard, looking after the factories in Jurong, earning about two to three hundred dollars a month.”

Kirpal Singh spent his childhood with his grandmother and uncle. Before he started schooling, his father left him with his grandmother and divorced his mother in favour of a new bride. Dr Singh tells us the story of how he returned to Singapore: “I was basically in Perak with my grandmother. My uncle, who was the first Sikh to become a Christian in Southeast Asia, left home because his father gave him a beating for changing his religion. My uncle was an Anglican. His conversion saved him from the Great Depression as the clergy was very well looked after. From 1929 to 1933, the church looked after him because he was the priest in Seramban. My father was still young. My uncle was born in 1911 and my dad in 1923. My grandmother bore eighteen children. Five of the infants passed away before they were one month old. But thirteen survived. She passed away at 95… I knew when I left for my doctorate programme in Adelaide that that was the last time I would see her. I had a hunch and was crying on the plane. Six weeks later, I got a letter with the news of her death.”

He adds: “Dad was in not in a position to look after me. The responsibility fell on his brother William. His full name was William Massa Singh s/o Deva Singh. He had studied at the Ipoh Chinese school, topped the school, eventually worked as an insurance agent. He was very good in English. The principal of his school, a New Zealander, arranged for my uncle to move to Singapore. Then my father moved there too. Singapore was the metropolis even then. It was the centre of English education. Penang was the other one. In 1956, I was sent to Singapore from Perak on a train — a one-and-a-half-day journey to my uncle.”

His grandmother joined them within a few months as his uncle was, he says, “more interested in aiding Lee Kuan Yew get rid of the colonials. Lee Kuan Yew was a self-made man. He met Goh Keng Swee[6] and Rajaratnam[7] as students in England. They became buddies and wanted to move out of colonial rule and be independent.”

Then, how did a young child survive? Dr Singh tells us: “I used to earn my pocket money from age five six by watering gardens. I have had very interesting experiences. When I was in primary two, I used to give tuition to primary one students. With enough gumption, you can survive in this world.”

Kampongs in Singapore’s past

“I grew up with my uncle’s wards, who were brought home to be educated. There was even one who was a Chinese-Japanese mix. So, I grew up being familiar cross-cultural marriages and in a multicultural home. I grew up in the kampong with a Chinese boy and we became friends from the age of seven-and-a-half when we were in primary two. His name is Tan Jwee Song — I call him Jwee, ‘my good saint’.  He told me after O-levels he would support me to study further and took to teaching. At that time, you could become a teacher after completing your O level. I joined Raffles late during my time in high school because it was too expensive for me. I taught in night classes started by Lee Kuan Yew and studied. I owed Jwee $80,000 dollars and I wanted to pay his widow back — but she would not accept it. When I graduated in 1973 with an honours’ degree, I was $44 thousand in debt. Then, I was given a scholarship.”

And slowly, Kirpal Singh came to his own. When television came into being, he tells us: “I was often on TV in 1970s — days of early television — debates and interviews as a guest.” Kirpal Singh grew into an intellectual of repute as he worked and studied with the support of the many races and many people who, often like him, were migrants to Singapore.

As time moves forward, these stories — that are almost as natural as the sand, the wind and the sea — ask to be caught in words and stored for posterity, stories from life that show how narrow borders drawn by human constructs cannot come in the way of those with ‘gumption’.

(Written by Mitali Chakravarty based on a face to face conversation with Kirpal Singh. Published with permission of Kirpal Singh)

[1] https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/david-marshall/story

[2] Now in Malaysia

[3] Now in Malaysia

[4] https://buletinonlines.net/v7/index.php/lynas-radioactive-waste-to-be-dumped-in-pahang-tax-free-while-australia-gets-a18-million-in-taxes-2/

[5] The British armed forces were scheduled to withdraw from Singapore by 1971. https://eresources.nlb.gov.sg/infopedia/articles/SIP_1001_2009-02-10.html#:~:text=On%2018%20July%201967%2C%20Britain,Singapore%27s%20defence%20and%20economic%20security.

[6] Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore, 1973-1980, one of the founding members of the ruling PAP (People’s Action Party) https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/goh-keng-swee/story

[7] Deputy Prime Minister of Singapore from 1980 to 1985, one of the founding members of the ruling PAP https://www.roots.gov.sg/stories-landing/stories/sinnathamby-rajaratnam/story

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL. 

Click here to access the Borderless anthology, Monalisa No Longer Smiles

Click here to access Monalisa No Longer Smiles on Kindle Amazon Internation

 

Categories
Stories

Jonathan’s Missing Wife

By Paul Mirabile

Courtesy: Creative Commons

The alarm-clock rang at seven as usual. Jonathan, puffy-eyed, yawned and slammed down the catch violently. He then rolled over towards Heather, his wife, who always needed a firm nudge to get her up in the morning. Alarms had absolutely no effect on her eardrums. Roll he did but the left side of the bed was empty! Odd, Jonathan, a light sleeper, had not heard the creaking of the bed. Besides, he had always been the first to rise in the mornings.

He threw off the blankets, blurry-eyed, and shuffled to the loo. Throwing a bathrobe over his pyjamas, Jonathan glided barefoot into the kitchen. No one! Into the sitting-room. Empty! He opened the door to their son’s now unslept in room and took a peep. Nothing! He shrank back when he saw the large map of Southeast Asia scotched to the wall over his son’s desk, and two books laid out open: André Malraux’s La Voie Royale[1] and Somerset Maugham’s The Gentleman in the Parlour: A record of a journey from Rangoon to Haiphong. He closed the door quietly with a religious deference.

A bit ruffled by this unaccustomed morning void in the house, Jonathan quickly washed, dressed, drank a cup of coffee and decided to investigate the strange absence of his wife. First he telephoned her bridge-club mates, Molly, Susan and Julie. Not one had seen or heard from her since their last get-together last week. Nonplussed, Jonathan dialled Heather’s sister’s number, Hazel at Luton. She had no great love for him but …

Hazel answered the phone, yawning, vague and aloof. No, she hadn’t spoken to Heather since Tuesday. It was Friday. “Maybe she’s out buying a mink stole,” she scoffed with unaffectionate irony. And she slammed the receiver down. Jonathan winced, poising his phone over its hook. He let it drop with a dull thud …

He fell back into a wicker chair chaffed by Hazel’s customary curtness. From the large bay window of his Town Council flat he gazed musingly out at the dwarfed pine trees that separated the pavement from his tiny front garden. The autumn leaves, sad, spiralled up and down against the grey sky, tumbling about the yellowing grass. He rocked back and forth meditatively. Wherever could she be? This was not like her, he repeated over and over again. He suddenly thought of the detective’s report…No, it had nothing to do with that. He was sure of it.

Jonathan shot out of the wicker chair and stepped out the front door. He would make a few rounds of Stevenage before doing anything too hastily. He got into his brand new 1975 Ford Cortina and roared off to their favourite pub, The Duck or Grouse. Why she should ever go there at this time of the morning seemed absurd. But one never knows … Heather worked there in her younger days as a barmaid, perhaps she popped in for a chat before shopping.

The inside of the pub was cloaked by the darkness of early morning emptiness. The owner, Lawrence, a squinty-eyed bloke, was busy juggling bottles of liquor and whistling some ridiculous television series tune. His huge, round, pink, hairless face lit up in surprise at the sight of Jonathan. The pub-owner stopped juggling, staring at him out of his squinty, shabby eyes.

“A bit early for a pint, mate!” he boomed in that portentous fatuous voice of his. “Where’s your better half ?” And he gave Jonathan a conspicuous wink. Jonathan, in no mood for Lawrence’s boring humour, came to the point :

“Heather has gone off, or I think she’s gone off.”

“With who ?” came the other’s equivocal repartee.

“Don’t mess about, Lawrence. Just tell me whether she’s been in or not.” Lawrence rubbed his hairless chin thoughtfully and shook his head. He turned towards the kitchen in the rear and cried out, “Have you seen Heather about, love?” A faint voice between splashes and the clanging of kitchenware answered in the negative. The pub-owner shrugged his burly shoulders. Jonathan pursed his lips, turned his back to him and strode dejectedly to the door. As he reached the low door Lawrence shouted out huskily: “Cheerio old boy ; give my regards to the misses … when you find her … Mind the head, duck or grouse!” Jonathan bit his lip, disregarded the caustic remarks and stalked into the streets.

Back in the car he weighed up the situation, fuming over Lawrence’s uncalled for insinuations. Heather was over sixty ! He frowned. The cheeky sod believed the whole thing to be a joke. Gone off with who?

Perhaps she’s at the pictures. No, at this time of day? What’s on? Oh, that stupid action film. She’d never go in for that.

His eyes lit up — the grocer’s, yes, of course, she went out to the grocer’s shop just across from the Cromwell Hotel. Jonathan headed towards the Cromwell in downtown Stevenage Old Town without a second thought.

The dumpy, red-cheeked Mrs Whitby was all smiles when she caught sight of Jonathan stumbling into her empty shop, although the redness of his face and his bloodshot eyes startled her — that is, piqued her curiosity. 

“All right, Jonathan ? You’re not looking very jaunty this morning,” she began in her hoarse, cocky voice.

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” he lied. “But listen, has my wife been in this morning?”

“Can’t say that I’ve seen her. Why? Has the misses been playing hide and seek with her mate?” She gave him a sly wink. Jonathan stiffened. He never liked Mrs Whitby and this feeling was manifestly reciprocal. Nor did Heather for that matter. She thought her vulgar. Alas, this was the closest grocery shop to their flat.

“You must take this seriously, Mrs Whitby,” responded Jonathan sharply. “She’s nowhere to be found, and I don’t know what to do.”

“Go to the bobbies,” she suggested tersely. “It’s their job to find missing people, right ? Be quick about it though, she might have been abducted by some romantic stranger stirring about Stevenage.” Mrs Whitby chortled, rolling her crossed eyes in a grotesque manner. Jonathan pulled a dour face.

“Oh don’t talk nonsense. There are no romantic strangers stalking about Stevenage, and if there were, they would never have chatted up a sixty-five year old woman.”

“Well, well, well. How do you know that a woman at sixty-five couldn’t seduce a man?” Mrs Whitby riposted dryly as if she herself, in her sixties, had ensnared a few ‘romantic strangers’. “You should know, sir, that old birds do catch the worm.” Jonathan was shocked by the vulgarity of the metaphor. Then she added lightly, “Go to the police station or call Scotland Yard. You know, Scotland Yard always finds missing people. Mind you, most times they’re dead, but they find a few alive.”

Jonathan stared at the ungainly woman in disbelief; the words stabbed at his chest with poignant thrusts. She noticed Jonathan’s ghastly mien and wanted to retract her statement but it was too late. She quickly said, “But sometimes they find them alive, they do. Don’t worry about Heather; she can take care of herself good and proper.”

He left the grocery shop as if in a drunken stupor, staggering into the cold, wind-swept streets. Melancholic leaves twirled about, descending in crispy clusters to the pavement. Above they dangled precariously from naked boughs, then down they plummeted from the high arching tree-tops, floating like fairy lights, bouncing to the pavement and street listlessly, their silken colours obscured by the mud. Jonathan followed intensely their errant adventure; the spiralling leaves drew him ever closer to their Fate. Suddenly, he drew back from the scene lest he become emotionally devoured by it. The morning events grew more and more estranged to him, like a bad dream or a doctor notifying you that your cancer was incurable. Plucking up courage he took a deep breath, dashed for his car and raced off to the police station in Stevenage New Town.

Jonathan stopped the car abruptly. There, tottering along the pavement was his neighbour Andy. He had no overcoat and sported a stained starched white shirt. His long, wavy hair had visibly not been combed. Andy was certainly drunk! Jonathan pulled up beside him and called out, “Andy! Do you have a minute?”

Andy, indeed drunk, stopped short in his footfalls. When he realised it was Jonathan, he danced over to the Ford flapping his arms like a bird. Andy was in a delightful mood.

“Blimey, Jonathan old fellow, fancy meeting you here.” Andy skipped back and forth, jovially tapping Jonathan’s car window with his tobacco-stained fingers.

“Stop dancing for heaven’s sake,” an exasperated Jonathan yelled out. “Have you seen Heather about ?”

Andy froze in his side-stepping and posed as if to have his photo taken. He turned his beetle-like eyes on his neighbour, “Have I seen Heather ? Well … “ He put a finger to his temple. “Yes, I might have dreamt of her last night or the night before … lambent eyes sparking like wine, teeth, milky white.”

“Stop mucking about and just tell me whether you’ve seen her or not,” the wife-seeker lashed out, beside himself. Andy had always been the ingratiating neighbour, ‘stepping in’ uninvited for tea at four, or more often, for a few shots of Jonathan’s expensive Armagnac at seven!

“I can’t say that I have, Johnny.”

“Stop calling me Johnny! Are you sure? You look absolutely sloshed.”

“Yes I’ve had a few, but I am able to peer through the fumes of Glenfiddich[2] and grasp the dire urgency of the situation. Now let me see,” and he rolled his eyes about in their orbits. “Sorry mate, I haven’t seen your wife since ‘mi own troubles and strife’[3] buggered off with the manager of the Cromwell.”

“What are you insinuating ?” Jonathan eyed him coldly.

“Nothing old boy ; no need to make a row over a flown bird. You know what they say, when the cage is left open birds will fly out.”

“Drunken fool !” Jonathan rolled up the window and sped off to the police station. It soon dawned on him that he had no time to lose. All these ridiculous enquiries led him nowhere. No one took either him or the affair with any seriousness. But was it all that serious? What would the police do? Would they snicker at him, cast amusing glances at one another as he narrated his morning’s ordeals? Would they twitch their moustaches whilst rubbing their clean-shaven chins? Before he had any answers to these questions, he had parked across from the local police station.

Unexpectedly there were no twitching of moustaches or amused glances for the simple reason that behind the desk, congested with sheaves of documents and notes, sat one very clean-shaven police officer, his corrugated, oval face beaming with absolute boredom. As Jonathan staggered forward, the police officer peered at him out of steel, blue eyes. The frosty peering of those eyes examined him from head to toe. Jonathan suddenly felt very self-conscious, like when one forgets to put on underwear on an outing, or trying on shoes at the shop with holes in your socks. In a state of exhausted excitement, he reported everything he had experienced since the alarm-clock woke him up at seven sharp. He even had a photo of Heather in his wallet. The officer obediently jotted down every word in a very professional manner. This show of professionalism put Jonathan somewhat at ease, although he did feel his energy flagging, his verbosity aimless.

The officer held the photo in front of him, studying it carefully. After a few minutes, he turned his attention to Jonathan whom he studied for a minute or two. Those steel, blue eyes bore into his. Jonathan felt terribly awkward.

“I shall have Scotland Yard check all English citizens having left the country on flights to Southeast Asia,” the officer finally stated, beating his brows. These words were spoken as if they brooked no questioning. Jonathan, however, was in no mood to be brow-beaten by a young police officer whose cryptic words left him more in a muddle than when he arrived. This being said, he did express a tinge of anxiety as if the officer were keeping him in the dark by withholding a piece of information that concerned him personally.

“Why Southeast Asia ?” he stuttered.

“Why not Shangri-La for that matter?” The other, amused by Jonathan’s caustic humour, leaned over the desk with an enigmatic smile.

“Are you not Jonathan Richards, father of the teacher who went missing in Thailand some six or seven months ago ?” Jonathan, abashed, fell back.

“Yes I am. But I fail …”

“To see the motive of your wife’s disappearance in connection with your son’s? In that case, allow me, sir, to put you in the picture. Instead of contacting us or Sotland Yard, you went about hiring a private detective whose reputation, as far as our files show is a far cry from Sherlock Holmes’.” He chortled at his own comparison.

Jonathan remained stoic, unamused by such a preposterous assumption. Was this officer making fun of him ?

“My son’s disappearance has nothing to do with my wife’s!” he managed to retort tartly.

“Does it not?” came the other’s terse rejoinder. Jonathan unzipped his vest and unbuttoned his collar. The air had become sultry, laden with danger, unexpectedness.

“I shall not be misled or abused,” he objected without conviction.

“Misled ? Abused ? Dear sir, here you are whimpering about your missing wife after having whimpered about your missing son. What have you done for both ? You sent an incompetent fool to Thailand for an extravagant fee, when in fact, if I am not mistaken, your wife urged you to go contact the police or Scotland Yard.”

Jonathan, aghast, went pale, jarred by the officer’s personal details. He was at the edge of despair, but at the same time was beginning to understand …

“How dare you pry into my family affairs ? Did my wife come to you in secret ? Are you in league with her … hand and glove ?”

“Secret ? Hand and glove ?” he chuckled. “I should think not Mr Richards. It seems that all this is a secret only to you!”

At that blow Jonathan took hold of the officer’s untidy desk. He immediately straightened up, “Am I then responsible for both their disappearances?”

“Now, now, let us not get all rattled over an incident that has been in our files for months. Yes, your wife, Heather, I believe, informed us of your son’s misfortune after Sherlock Holmes had given her his trashy report. You know that the police keep abreast of these foreign matters.”

“That means you urged her to leave then…?” Jonathan shouted, his peevish, bloodshot eyes blurry from anger and insult.

“Not exactly.” The officer replied coolly, twiddling a pen about his thumb. “The police do not urge, as you put it; we merely suggested that since the detective in question happened to be a crank, or charlatan if you wish, other means of locating your son would have to be adopted.”

“Such as?” Jonathan’s voice rose a pitch.

“Such as you yourself going to fetch him, old chap! And since you haven’t made a move for over six months, well, it appears that the misses has taken it upon herself to do what you should have done.”

The accusation addressed so pointedly at him drove him to a frenzy.

“Are you accusing me of parental misguidance ? How dare you …” he shouted, flushing red in the face.

“Let us not get nasty now, Mr Richards. Would you prefer that I send you packing with trite remarks or stencilled phrases like ‘oh, not to worry, it can happen to the best of us. Keep a stiff upper lip’?”

“Rubbish! Anyway, how can you be so sure about all this? Has she left you a note?”

“Police intuition, my good man. Intuition,” snorted the officer all smiles, his cold blue eyes gleaming with rakish roguery.

“Intuition ! What nonsense !” Jonathan exploded.

The officer resumed in a mollifying tone, “Just go home and wait for a letter or a phone call. We, too, shall do our own investigation. No need to put yourself out.” The aloof nonchalance of the police officer’s reaction and comportment infuriated Jonathan even more. He turned on his heels and scuttled out of the station as if having been tutored by some old nanny.

The late morning sun lay hidden behind layers of thick, grey clouds. He felt a sudden chill. A sudden urge to scream at passers-by that eyed him with either indifference or overt suspicion. A scream that would bring back his Heather … his son !

“We can go find him together, Heather … please …,” he lamented to himself. A few drops of rain fell on his feverish forehead. He let the drops drip down into his parched mouth. He needed a drink. The whole sky was engulfing him in a white cloak of despondency. The chills grew longer, succeeded quicker.

“No, impossible ! She couldn’t have gone on her own. She knows nothing of travelling nor of taking care of herself. I’ll call Heathrow to confirm it.”

That officer’s smirk burned his insides. “How dare he tell me more about my wife than …” Jonathan’s train of thought came to an abrupt halt, “A conspiracy! Yes, everyone is ganging up on me; that blasted sister of hers, Andy, Mrs Whitby, Lawrence … even the Stevenage police ! The whole lot of them are in on it. How dare that officer address me as an old chap ! Heather planned this behind my back in connivance with a pack of deceiving scourges …”

In a savage rage he kicked at the water-logged leaves that clung to the pavement. He struck at them violently whilst the pitter-patter of rain fell heavier and heavier. Several leaves rebuffed his vicious assaults, clinging all the more securely to the now drenched pavement. He flew into a tantrum beating the rebellious leaves, “I’ll show you!” he cried aloud, wrenching them out of their refractory state, tearing them to pieces with his boot.

Several women passing by stopped to observe this unusual spectacle. Jonathan, suddenly conscious of their regard, ceased his petulant outburst. There he stood, cutting a gloomy, lonesome figure in the now pouring rain. He felt like a helpless child. He moved swiftly to his car, flung open the door and sped off home, thoroughly disgusted with the police, his neighbours, Stevenage … with Humanity as a whole …

Once at home, wet as a rat, he immediately threw himself down on the sofa in the sitting-room. He wanted to cry but could not. He thought of Heathrow. As he reached for the receiver, his bloodshot eyes fell on a folded piece of paper stuck between the blue china bought in Amsterdam, the artificial wax orchids and two family picture frames on the mantelshelf of the hearth. Why had he not seen that this morning? He stood and looked at it carefully. Heather’s handwriting had scribbled his name on the fold of the paper. With a trembling hand he unfolded it. A sudden sadness overwhelmed him…

Dearest Jonathan,

Off to Southeast Asia to find our Francis. I’m sure you understand my decision given the fact that for six months you have made no move yourself. I had no other choice love, believe me. You’ll be on your own for some time, but you’ll get on just fine without me. I’m sorry I said nothing of this to you, but woman’s intuition told me what you would have been very cross with me if I had. Now that I am gone pray for my safe return with our dear Francis securely at my side.

Love, your Heather.

P.S. I shan’t tell Francis that his poor Patty died. It would break his heart. I’ll let you handle that on our arrival.   

Resignedly Jonathan let the note drop to the carpeted floor. He returned to the sofa and lay back exhausted, brooding over his wife’s leaving … her lack of affection … of honesty towards him. “A conspiracy!” he whimpered, planned by the police and Heather. “And strike me dead if Hazel wasn’t involved in the whole thing ! That brazen hussy probably put her up to it …”

His face dropped into his hands and he began to cry softly. He dried his tears and fixed his attention on the picture of sixteen-year-old Francis on the mantel shelf with his dog Patty, at that time just a puppy. The reality of the situation creeped into the empty house. His whole existence seemed suddenly forfeited. What had prompted his conduct? He had only himself to blame for the whole mess. It was true, they were right. He had done little for his only child. Hiring a detective had been his idea, a way of compensating for his apathy, indifference … even his obtuse disregard of the whole affair as if Francis had been a victim of his own puerile doings, and would just have to find a way out of the mishap himself. Alas, at that time he had no means of weighing the consequences of his indolence in his wife’s eyes. She surely despised him! Jonathan, jaded by these unwelcoming but candid thoughts, stretched out on the sofa and dozed off into a troubled sleep.

A very troubled sleep during which he dreamt that his death had awakened him to life. Little did Jonathan Richards know his wife would never return …

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[1]          The Royal Road

[2]        A Sottish malt whiskey

[3]        ‘my wife’ in Cockney rhyme

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Paul Mirabile is a retired professor of philology now living in France. He has published mostly academic works centred on philology, history, pedagogy and religion. He has also published stories of his travels throughout Asia, where he spent thirty years.

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Interview Review

In Conversation with Ujjal Dosanjh

Ujjal Dosanjh

Ujjal Dosanjh left his village in Punjab in quest of a better life. He had a bare smattering of English, very less money and some family overseas when he left his home at Dosanjh Kalan at the age of seventeen. That was in 1964. He spent the first three years in Britain and then, moved to Canada to become a prominent lawyer, activist and political figure.

When he started in the 1960s, to earn a livelihood in England, he shunted trains in the British Railways. He left for Canada in hope of a better future. He had to work initially in sawmills and factories to support himself. Eventually, he could get an education and satisfy his ambitions in British Columbia, which became his home. Coming from a family which contributed to the freedom struggle of India, it was but natural that he would turn towards a public life. His uprightness, courage, tolerance, openness and commitment had roots in his background, where his parents despite different political ideologies, lived together in harmony. His family, despite their diverse beliefs, stood by him as he tried to live by his values.

Dosanjh voiced out against separatist forces that continue to demand an autonomous country for Sikhs to this day. In 1985, he was beaten almost to death by such Khalistani separatists as he boldly opposed the movement that had earlier led to the assassination of the Indian Prime Minister, Indira Gandhi (1917-1984) and to the bombing of an aircraft where all 329 people aboard died. However, undaunted by such attacks, he continues to talk unity, welfare for the underprivileged and upholds Mahatma Gandhi as his ideal. He went into Canadian politics with unfractured belief in the Mahatma. Dosanjh was the Health Minister of Canada and earlier the Premier of British Columbia. He has been honoured by both the Indian and Canadian governments. In 2003, he received the highest award for diaspora living outside India, Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, and, in 2009, he was a recipient of the Top 25 Canadian Immigrant Award.

Now, sixty years from the time he left his country of birth, he shares his narratives with the world with his updated autobiography — the first edition had been published in 2016 — and also with fiction. As an immigrant with his life spread over different geographies, he tells us in his non-fiction, Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada: “Canada has been my abode, providing me with physical comforts and the arena for being an active citizen. India has been my spiritual refuge and my sanctuary.” He writes of what he had hoped could be a better future for humankind based on the gleanings from his own experiences and contributions to the world: “If humanity isn’t going to drown in the chaos of its own creation, the leading nations of the world will have to create a new world order, which may involve fewer international boundaries.”

In this interview, he shares his journey and expands further his vision of a world with diminishing borders.

You travelled from a village in Punjab, through UK and ended up in the Canadian cabinet to make changes that impacted humanity in your various public roles as a politician. Would you have been able to make an impact in a similar public role if you had never left India? Was the journey you went through necessary to help you become who you are?

It’s almost next to impossible to imagine what actually would have happened to my life in India had I stayed there. The most complicating element would be the standards that I would apply in such reimagining, the standards I most certainly wouldn’t have known or applied to my Indian life’s journey. I do think though and I have said it often in conversations with friends that had I stayed in India I would have either turned into a saint or devil; nothing in between for one who in 1964, the year I left, already hated the beginnings of the corruption that has now almost completely enslaved the country’s polity and ensnared the society.

Even though what has guided me throughout my life were the lessons I learnt from my freedom fighter maternal grandfather, my activist father and Mahatma Gandhi’s life, I believe the ethics and mores of public life, first in Britain and then in Canada helped shape and sculpt who I became and how I conducted myself. Had I not been to Britain and not lived most of my life in Canada, it’s impossible even to imagine the ‘me’ that would now be walking upon our planet earth.

While within five years of landing in Canada, you were studying in University of British Columbia and driving an Austin, some other immigrants fifteen years down the line continued in abject poverty. What does it take to rise out of endemic poverty? Do you see that happening in the world around us today?

The way you phrased the question conceals the fact that before I resumed full time college in January 1970s and went on to complete my BA and then LL.B. in 1976, I had spent full six years of my life in UK and Canada working jobs including shunting trains with British Rail, making crayons in a factory, being a lab assistant in a secondary school and pulling lumber on the green chain in a saw mill in Canada while often attending night school.

And I must add that my extended family and my spouse were largely responsible for paying my way through my B.A. and LL.B.

While even then it wasn’t easy, I do recognise the union wage then available to students in summer employment enabled them to save enough for the school year; with most summer jobs that’s not the case now. The students now more often than not have to depend on loans or help from the parents.

A significant section of the immigrant diaspora has done reasonably well while for many it’s becoming harder and harder to just make ends meet. 

And by the way the Austin, you refer to, was the used Austin 1100, Austin Mini’s sister, I had bought for the then princely sum of six hundred dollars; it took mere six dollars to fill its tank.

That’s truly interesting. At the beginning of your biography, you stated ‘politics is a noble calling’. Later you have written, “I had realized I needed to make a clean break from the pettiness of politics.” Which of these is true? And why the dichotomy — pettiness as opposed to nobleness? And what made you change your perspective?

No, I have not changed my view of politics. It is a noble calling but only if you do it for the right reasons. More and more I found that a significant number of people seeking public office did so for glory that they perceived the elected public office bestowed upon them. Shorn of any lofty ideals and the pursuit of public good politics often degenerates into petty squabbles rather than the giant battles of great and contrasting ideas.

The pettiness is the result of small minds pursuing the mirage of glory in phony battles that barely move the needle on the bar of public good. I often refer to the absence of great leaders in the political landscape of India and the world; Canada has not escaped the current curse of the dearth of great minds in the political arena. Hence my exasperation at the situation I found myself in.

The world over, politics seems to have become the refuge of intellectual dwarfs—no offence intended to our shorter brothers and sisters. The small minds tend not to see too far into the future; they are oblivious to the need to constantly challenge the world to be what it could be.

After a lifetime of activism and close to eighteen years of elected office it was only natural for me to tire of the myopia and pettiness in what otherwise remains a noble endeavour.   

You met Indira Gandhi — the second woman to lead a country in a prime ministerial role — and had this to say of her “Indira Gandhi loved India immensely. One can be an imperfect leader and yet a patriot”. Do you think she was an effective leader for India?

My wife and I spent an hour speaking with Indira Gandhi on the afternoon of January 13, 1984. We spent the first few minutes comparing notes about our grandparents and parents as freedom fighters and activists before discussing the issues related to the agitation in Punjab, its growing militancy and increasing violence in and outside the Golden Temple. From what she said it was clear she was extremely troubled about the dangerous situation of the militants holed up in the Temple and the toll it was taking on the peace, politics and the economy of the state. I sensed a certain helplessness in this otherwise quite brave woman when describing the unsuccessful efforts she and her office had made to reach a peaceful settlement of the issues raised by the Sikh agitation. Because I had met both the militant Bhindranwale and the peace loving leader of the agitation, Longowal, and understood the tension between the two men and their followers, I knew she was grappling with a political minefield. All of this and much more that we discussed left me in no doubt about her love for the country and all its people.

But I do believe she allowed the situation at the Golden Temple to linger too long and deteriorate before trying to bring it under control; thus, it and the Operation Bluestar, her ultimate response to the armed militants holed up in the Temple, remains one of her great misjudgements—perhaps as grave as the declaration of the National Emergency in 1975.

Imperfection being part of the human condition, one isn’t surprised that Indira Gandhi who saw all Indians as equally Indian, too, was imperfect; a strong but imperfect leader.   

“Sikri was the capital for the new world of unity that Akbar had wanted to create. Ashoka took a similarly bold leap toward peace after a bloody war. Two millennia after Ashoka and four centuries after Akbar, Mahatma Gandhi shared with India a similar vision and a path out of colonialism. India killed him.” Please explain why you feel India killed Gandhi.

One can’t and mustn’t blame an entire country for the actions of one or two persons and yet what I said of Gandhi’s assassination, at least figuratively if not literally, can be said with ample justification; not one but several attempts were made to end Gandhi the mortal. If many Indian hearts and minds—and there were many in his lifetime, perhaps not as many as there are in Modi’s India—wanted Gandhi  and his philosophy of nonviolence and love for all dead, then I must say, even without resorting to the writers’ licence, India stands accused and guilty of his January 30th, 1948 assassination; India killed Gandhi.

Even before the advent of Modi on the national scene India’s politicians had substantially diminished and damaged Gandhi’s legacy of Truth, Love and Non-violence. Considering the so few prominent voices in the public domain criticising the Modi regime’s single-minded undermining of Gandhi’s legacy, almost to the point of extinction, it can be said that if it already hasn’t done so, India is close to annihilating Gandhi’s Truth, Love and Non-violence.      

“To India’s shame, the rich and ruling classes of today mimic the sahibs of yore. Some of them still head to the hills with their servants, the Indian equivalent of the slaves of the United States.” As Gandhi is seen as one of the architects of modern India, what would have Gandhi’s stand been on this?

When Gandhi lived in England and South Africa, he was part of the diaspora of his time and learnt new things as such. Today with social and digital media one hopes even living in India he would have been aware of the yearning of humanity for equality and economic and social justice. The way most rich and powerful treat the poor and the weak in India is absolutely antithetical to what an egalitarian India would demand of them.

I’m aware of how Gandhi didn’t support the abolition of caste and of his position or lack thereof on the question of equality for the blacks of South Africa at the time. But different times throw up leaders with different and perhaps better approaches to the fundamental issues. Were he alive today, he would have argued for the abolition of caste, equality for all and he wouldn’t have accepted or ignored how India treats its workers, poor and the powerless.   

You have told us “India leads the world in the curse of child slavery and labour. Millions of India’s children are trapped in bonded labour, sex trafficking and domestic ‘help’ servitude.” Most people plead poverty and survival when they talk of children working. Do you see a way out? Is there a solution?

Yes, like all problems, this, too, has a solution:

Legislate, legislate and legislate.

Enforce, enforce and enforce the legislation.

I know some laws do exist but we need legislation with more teeth. The laws regarding minimum wage, hours of work, overtime and holiday pay and health regulations must be strengthened and more vigorously enforced, in particular, in the so-called domestic help sector. Better wages and working conditions rigorously enforced would attract adult workers who would be able to send their children to proper schools rather than thrust them in to slavery in exploitative homes, factories and workplaces.

Not much will improve on this front though unless Indians end the endemic corruption in law enforcement. You see corruption confronts and stares us in almost all, if not all, issues Indian; it is the elephant almost in each and every room.  

“Violence can never be a tool for change in a modern, democratic nation.” You tried to use Gandhian principles through your life — even in Canada. Do you think non-violence can be a way of life given the current world scenario with wars and dissensions? How do you view Gandhi sanctioning the participation of soldiers in the first and second world wars? Can wars ever be erased or made non-violent?

First let’s deal with Gandhi’s sanction of the soldiers in the two world wars. Whether or not he had sanctioned their participation, the soldiers would have gone to war; most of them fought for wages, not for the love of war or the country except those for whom the Second World War was a war against fascism and hence justified.

I don’t believe Gandhi ever stated that in fighting a violent enemy or a perceived enemy one was not allowed to use violence. All I ever remember him saying was that you throw your unarmed body wrapped in soul force in front of the enemy but if you are too chicken to do so or can’t do so for some other reason but fight an aggressor you must, violence is better than doing nothing.

As for countries fighting each other I don’t believe he ever said that, in an uncertain world where the military of another country could invade at any moment, a country must forego a military of its own.

As for nonviolence being a way of life, it can and must be for a country in its internal life. On the borders however one always has to deal with what one is presented with; you can’t ask Ukraine to not fight; in the face of a suddenly expansionist China or a belligerent Pakistan, Gandhi wouldn’t have urged the Buddha’s meditational pose for India; he didn’t do so in late 1947 when Pakistani fighters invaded Kashmir.

As for wars being non-violent, they can never be if the likes of Russia continue to invade others.  

You opposed the Khalistani separatists and stood for a united India. What is your stand on Khalistan, given the recent flare up? Did you do anything this time to allay the situation in Canada?

I have always been opposed to countries being carved out on ethnic, linguistic or religious basis; I am a firm believer in multilingual, multi-ethnic, multi-religious and multi-racial populations living together in peace within the boundaries of peaceful countries; for that to happen, secularism remains a sine qua non[1]. That is why I so passionately continue to support a secular and inclusive India.

As for me doing something in the face of what is happening in Canada today vis a vis the Khalistanis, I didn’t say anything because I don’t believe it would have added to the debate; everyone already knows what I think and believe.

What does concern me though is the weak-kneed response and reaction of the public leaders of Canada; they have not unconditionally condemned the glorification of terrorists, known murderers or those who on the streets of Canada glorify and revere the killers of Air India passengers or of Mrs. Indira Gandhi. For me, someone who immigrated to Canada in 1968 when the elder Trudeau became the Prime Minister of the country, the near silence of our politicians on Khalistani violence and its glorification has been a low point; the older Trudeau knew how to deal with the terrorists; he didn’t and wouldn’t have pussy footed around terrorism or its glorification.     

When your autobiography was published the first time in 2016, your column in Indian Express was cancelled. As many of us grew up in India of the past, we believed in secularism and democracy with freedom of expression. How has it changed over a period of time?

After I left India and particularly when I was introduced to the Hyde Park, I reflected on India and it seemed to be one of the freest places in the world; any intersection of a city road or a corner of the village served as a mini Hyde Park; from the millions of speeches made in such Hyde Parks all over India, millions of ideas tumbled forth from the lips of ordinary but engaged Indians.

Of course, I do realise that in the lives of the poor and the powerless, the freedom hadn’t shone as bright. The imprisoning of the Naxalites without charges and Indira Gandhi’s Emergency were the first real jolts of un-democracy and unfreedom I felt India as a whole had suffered. From there it went downhill; that sporadic communal riots continued; that Godhra was done to the Muslims as was done the post Indira assassination violence to the Sikhs; lynchings of Muslims and Dalits continue today.

India’s response to the first major unfreedom, Indira’s Emergency censorship, was encapsulated in the blank front pages of the censored Indian Express, that symbol of the Journalism of Courage. That symbol may still burn today but it is smouldering and clearly less bright enveloped as it and others are in the atmosphere of fear of the likes of ED[2] and CBI[3]; almost none amongst the traditional media homes shines much or at all; the digital media has thrown up some brave examples like The Wire. But the overall scene is dismal. India needs many revolutions; one of them is the reawakening of some semblance of fortitude in India’s Godi[4] media outlets.

Over repeated trips to India, you observed that people did not want to talk of major issues like availability of potable water but wanted to discuss issues like the eroding culture among the diaspora. Why do you think this has happened? Is there a way to change this mindset?

Human mind is an amazing thing; it seeks engagement but when the immediate is painful to observe and feel, it finds solace in contemplating the scenes afar; for sheer survival in its troubled and troubling milieu it develops numbness; such numbness shields it from the immediate while thinking about the distant problems, imagined or real, offer it a sense of engagement. Such is what I thought happened to many in Punjab.

Another troubling thing was that much beyond the essential human pride a sense of chauvinism and superiority, at least among its rich and powerful, has plagued Punjab for a long time which has blinded it to the need for change and progress—one didn’t need to improve what one believed to be perfect and hence superior. 

Punjab has significantly slipped in the Human Development Index. That this humbling fact is now quite widely acknowledged in intellectual and political circles gives me some hope that things may improve.      

“There are massive water shortages across the country. There’s a crisis in health care…Under the weight of crippling debts and droughts, small and marginal farmers are killing themselves. There aren’t enough jobs being created for the millions of youth joining the job market every year. The human-rights record of the Indian State in Kashmir, the Northeast and other parts in the grip of insurgency is horrific and shameful. Dalits and Muslims are lynched with impunity by Hindutva-inspired mobs for skinning dead cows, or being in the vicinity of meat that may or may not be beef.” Do you see a way out? What can India do to step out of the condition you have described so accurately?

I have argued for some time that what India needs is a new freedom struggle, a Values’ Revolution, to rid itself of corruption—rishwat[5], unethicality, religious and cultural fanaticism that impinges on many Indians’ right to life, dignity and liberty. In arguing this I am aided by Gandhi’s dictum—that I have always alluded to in my own writings—that he was engaged in not creating a new India but a new Indian; my reading of what he said has led me to conclude he meant a caring, humane, compassionate, egalitarian and an ethical Indian. To create an India with 1.4 billion ethical and progressive Indians requires a mammoth revolutionary change in our values; hence a Values’ Revolution.

At the moment I see the country’s civil society under constant attack by the forces of social division whereas in fact social solidarity and cohesion are sorely needed. A Values’ Revolution will require giant leaders; I see none on the scene today but I’m not disheartened because once begun the Revolution itself may, as do all revolutions, throw up the necessary giants.

You are an immigrant who has lived out of India for almost half a century. Do you think as part of the diaspora living outside India, we could all act together to heal a region broken by its own inability to live up to the vision created by those who wrote the constitution of the country? What would be your vision of India?

The diaspora coming together to even slightly nudge India forward is an emotionally compelling and noble thought; many of us constantly dream of doing something for the country we have left behind. Some of us do so while others revel in its imaginings only.

A major stumbling block to the diasporic unity on this question has been the ideological divisions amongst the Indians abroad which usually mirror India’s domestic political fault lines and unfortunately those difference have been only rendered sharper by the way elements of the diaspora have recently been employed in aid of India’s domestic political machinations. The old diasporic divisions now seem and feel more rabid; it is as if the political battles of India now rage equally actively in the diaspora itself. 

I always dream of India as a caring, compassionate, egalitarian and ethical India. One that values all its citizens equally and brims with social and economic justice.  

That is such a wonderful thought with which many of us agree wholeheartedly. You have written: “If humanity isn’t going to drown in the chaos of its own creation, the leading nations of the world will have to create a new world order, which may involve fewer international boundaries.” What is the world order you suggest?

For starter no order can be imposed by the so-called leading nations, no matter how powerful. It may take a significant amount of nudging and cajoling by them to change anything.

 When I wrote my autobiography, I was imagining the world moving, at least to begin with, in the direction of regional groupings like the European Union. We saw that as the number of member states of the United Nations trended upwards, Europe witnessed the opposite where many countries dared to create the EU practically erasing borders; granted Britain rebelled – but even within its borders a referendum held today would most likely approve it re-joining the EU.

As a possible beginning for the rest of the world, our best hope lies in grand imaginings such as a South Asian Common Market at once reducing the expense of standing militaries staring angrily at each other across the borders; Southeast Asia, Africa, South America could follow; North American Free Trade Agreement already exists creating at least an economic union.

If to begin with the countries regionally moved toward the free flow of human beings along with the necessary and more convenient local trading, one could foresee the international will and desire developing toward a world populated by fewer borders and more freedom. Hopefully that would move humanity toward more international egalitarianism, prosperity and fewer wars.

Hopefully, the vision materialises. Thank you very much for giving us your time and wonderful books that make us think and emote.

Click here to access an excerpt from Journey After Midnight – A Punjabi Life: From India to Canada

[1] An essential condition, Latin phrase

[2] Enforcement Directorate

[3] Central Bureau of Investigation

[4] Lap, Hindi word

[5] Bribery, Hindi word

(The online interview has been conducted by emails by Mitali Chakravarty)

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Categories
Musings

Taking an unexpected turn

By Nitya Pandey

In the world of short-lived relationships, I used to believe that taking chances with strangers was a folly.

While trying to learn Korean, something that I did during the pandemic while locked up in my hometown, I chanced upon a post on a language learning community. A woman, not much older than me, from Incheon in South Korea, was looking for a language partner, who could help her with English. In return, she was happy to help out the partner with Korean. She was fairly comfortable with English, just that she needed somebody to have conversations with to build fluency.

In one of my rare bouts of extraversion, I told her that I would love to be her partner, the only caveat being that I was just starting out with Korean and would therefore need a lot of help. She agreed.

My efforts with learning a third language (English and Hindi being the first two) had turned out to be major disasters in the past, with multiple failed attempts at mastering French and Italian. I thought that my journey with Korean too, would not be very different. Writing it off as a fleeting distraction, I was sure that I would turn to other things once the world opened up. But…

With the days of handwritten letters and pen pals being a thing of the past, I never thought that this exchange would be anything more than a dusty memory, locked away in my mind’s attic after a few months.

Avid planners that both of us were, we started by laying down a pretty elaborate map to conquer the languages ‘foreign’ to us, painstakingly chalking out the routes we’d take, the pit stops we’d make and the milestones we’d cross together. We were both equally excited to embark on this journey, with all the prep work done successfully– books bought, stationary stocked and motivational quotes ready on the walls to fire us up. We took the first steps cautiously, like accidental travelers thrown together by the circumstances. We had no choice but to lean heavily on each other. With mutual support fueling our desire to keep moving, we gradually broke into short walks and came to enjoy them. We were soon walking about in abandon, with our conversations peppered with Korean and English phrases, slang and more.

A few months in, we started sharing glimpses into our lives: the spaces we lived in, the people we loved, the films we adored, the music that inspired us, the food we loved and the places we wanted to travel to. She had studied in Moscow, been all over Europe and Southeast Asia, being a textile trader and now lived in South Korea. I, on the other hand, had lived all my life in India with a few years spent in Colombo. She preferred films to books and cats to dogs, unlike me.  I loved collecting old books and postcards, a pursuit she couldn’t fathom in this day and age.

I often wonder about the point when we made the transition from unfamiliarity to friendship to sisterhood. I started calling her Unnie (Korean for a woman/sister older than you) and we started speaking in Banmal (casual Korean) instead of formal Korean. She would try out my mother’s recipes that I shared while I would listen to Korean music and watch films she recommended. She agreed to give reading fiction a shot and ended up crying over characters who fell on hard times. I used to help her make posters for a pet shelter that she volunteered for while she helped me build study material for English lessons that I would take for an NGO. I shared snippets of the refreshing monsoons and chai while she sent me pictures of the remarkable cherry blossoms, the snow piling up and steaming bowls of ramen.

We were soon sharing our hopes and dreams across the countless miles that separated us, across cultures that had moulded us into two very different people. We had grown to find a ‘home’ in each other; long conversations in Konglish (a mix of Korean and English) about joys and sorrows of moving jobs, leaving our families behind, losing a pet and thinking about the kind of future we wanted for ourselves. Calming my frantic soul, Unnie had opened a new world of living and of simply ‘being’. Learning to be my own woman, I could have never imagined that a stranger, I hadn’t met and who lived countries apart, would become a cherished part of my life.

A year down, I still wonder about the stroke of fate that got two kindred spirits together, trying to navigate their way though the confused age of late 20s and 30s. Wrapped in the wind, feeling aflutter, I am learning to take chances, bet on people and drench myself in the ‘kaleidoscope of experiences’ that life brings.

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Nitya Pandey is an Organisational Learning Advisor with a degree in History. An avid Austen fan, she loves all sorts of fiction and prefers staying in to read over weekends. She likes to journal her experiences as a way of capturing some of her cherished memories and has a fascination with all things ‘old’– forts, art, books, music and cinema.

PLEASE NOTE: ARTICLES CAN ONLY BE REPRODUCED IN OTHER SITES WITH DUE ACKNOWLEDGEMENT TO BORDERLESS JOURNAL