we were allowed to get off the plane. (Security was essentially nonexistent then; the hijacking or bombing of planes to make political points came much later.) Landing in Karachi reminded me that the city had once been an important and integral part of an undivided India. I recalled stories of the conferences Karachi had hosted during the freedom movement. Nanaji’s favourite had been the conference of the Indian youth society Naujwan Baharat Sabha on March 27, 1931, timed to coincide with the opening of the Indian National Congress the next day. The hanging of Bhagat Singh and his associates, on March 23, 1931, had galvanized the country. There were fissures in Congress, with Subhas Bose, a prominent Congress leader who became the party’s president in 1938, arguing for more aggressive action than Gandhi was willing to take. On both days, Nanaji was in charge of security around the perimeter of the conference and for Subhas Bose personally. Inside the Karachi airport, I looked into Pakistani faces for signs of longing — for what could have been rather than what was now. To be fair, many Indians had gone about their lives, oblivious to the larger questions of fate and history. Why should the Pakistanis be any different? We were one people by history, blood, culture and our place on earth, though we were taught the hate that stands now between us.
Back on the plane, the welcome instruction of the two professors continued. The Indian man even touched on the issue of how one viewed women in British culture. He himself had been an immigrant, and he told me in no uncertain terms that just because British women dressed differently and spoke with men freely, it did not mean they were promiscuous. He also advised me that spitting and littering in public places were regarded as horrible behaviours.
As we flew into Paris what came instantly to mind was the oft-repeated myth that Nehru’s clothes had regularly been sent to Paris for washing and dry cleaning. There was no question his family was rich, but in the twenties and thirties, the frequency of air traffic would have made that impossible. As the inhabitants of a former colony, though, many Indians had an exaggerated sense of Paris and London’s splendour. Perhaps that was why the Indian professor made a point of reminding me that the ancient civilizations of India had gone through periods of splendour still evident in the classical literature and the monuments of the various eras. He did not want me to drown in the vicissitudes of history and disown my Indianness.
I did not buy anything on my stops at Karachi or Paris lest I exhaust my three pounds before I got to London; if Biraji did not show up to get me, I might need those three pounds and more. The gora , though, bought a small box of chocolates at the Paris airport and offered some to me and the Indian professor. The chocolate had a very different taste from anything I had ever eaten.
It was now the last leg of our trip. We flew over clouds that looked pure white in the sun. At first I mistook them for snowy mountains. The plane pierced the clouds as we descended to land at Heathrow. We fastened our seatbelts.
12
AS WE DISEMBARKED in London, the gora professor planted himself in front of me, and the Indian behind. A customs and immigration officer stood at the only open wicket. The professor was cleared in an instant, and he moved aside to make room for me. The customs officer was polite to a fault, looking first at my passport and my acceptance letter from the college in London, then at me, a five-foot-seven, 120-pound turbaned Indian. “For what purpose have you come to the U.K.?” he asked. To date, my answer rings in my ears: “For higher studies.” The gora professor and I then waited for the Indian professor to clear. We had to wait for our baggage for a few more minutes, the professors bemoaning the time it was taking. I listened with the ears of my own experience; the slow turning of the wheels of government in India, in matters small or large, bred in people an unhealthy degree of patience.
While we waited, I noticed two neatly uniformed janitors in neckties mopping the floor in a corner of the large baggage area. What in the world? Men doing the jobs of the “lowest of the low,” the most untouchable of the untouchables, in ties and uniforms? I now understood the criticism that Mahatma’s effort to rebrand Dalits as harijans — “God’s children” — was a good beginning, but too feeble. The sight of these janitors had another life-altering effect on me. The Western suit, I realized, was just a form of dress, no better or worse than any other, including traditional Indian clothing. It wasn’t meant to be worn by “sahibs” only. Even the janitors could wear it. They were people too, dignified, as was their labour. It taught me the dignity of labour and the irrelevance in life of how one dressed, as long as one’s clothes were neat.
I was feeling the fatigue of my long trip and the newness of everything. I was worried, too, about Biraji not being there to meet me. But as we exited the baggage area, there he was in the huge crowd, smiling in response to my wave. Once the professors saw that I was safe, we shook hands and they said goodbye.
Biraji had arrived in England nearly a decade earlier, in 1956, successfully entering the U.K. on his second attempt. The first time around, he was stranded in Pakistan and had to return home. But within six months he had secured a passport to go to Indonesia, and from there he found his way to Britain.
My cousin had maintained his beard and turban; details I was surprised by, since I knew him to be a very secular man and regular reader of Nawan Zamana, the Punjabi-language daily of the Communist Party of India. He told me that although he had had difficulty finding jobs in factories and foundries because his turban and beard were considered a “safety hazard,” he refused to give in to racial and religious discrimination and cut his hair. He had settled into a job in a brick kiln a few miles from the northern city of Bedford; he would work there, in fact, until his retirement.
Despite Biraji’s secular outlook, I learned, in England he had become more involved in matters of faith. In 1965, there was still no gurdwara in Bedford, despite a sizeable Sikh population. The community had begun to gather and pray every Sunday in one of the large rooms in Biraji’s home. Later, from that beginning, a gurdwara was indeed established in Bedford, with Biraji as its first president. In preparation for the centenary of Guru Nanak’s birth in 1469, to be held at the Royal Albert Hall in London in 1969, the more than thirty-five gurdwaras of the U.K. set up a committee of which Biraji was elected chair.
Leaving India on December 31, 1964, and arriving in England in the early evening of the same day has always made it easy for me to remember the date. As Biraji and I walked to the nearest entrance of the London Underground, he told me he’d been worried about me being denied entry into the U.K. A planeload of Indians trying to enter the country as students had been sent back earlier that day.
Unsurprisingly, Biraji’s English consisted of a few words supplemented by gestures. He had not been to school in India, and he’d had no opportunity to go to school in England, either. In the tube station, he asked me to get directions to King’s Cross. I tried my luck with a couple of people, but the rudimentary English that had enabled me to converse with the professors and the immigration officer failed here. Finally we succeeded, and we boarded the train. I surveyed the flood of white faces around me. My eyes were slow to register the differences, so they all looked the same.
At King’s Cross, we boarded a bus for Bedford, and soon we were on the freeway. It was dark by now, and snowing. The headlights of the coach illuminated the falling flakes, and the snow was already piled up on both sides of the freeway. I had never seen snow, and Biraji explained it to me using the only Punjabi word there is for snow or ice: burf . (There is also a word for hail: ahan .) The coach picked up and dropped off passengers along the way, and when it came to a stop in front of a barber shop, Biraji and I got off. It was still snowing, and standing there under the lamppost, I felt as if we were in a scene from a movie. Fortunately for my numb feet, Biraji’s house was less than fifty yards away.
Two of Biraji’s friends, who were also his tenants, were waiting up for us. So was Meeto Bhenji, my cousin, who had come to England a month earlier to be married. The coal in the fireplace in the front room was red hot. I was famished
