Notebook of lost parts
Pulling a story together (or not).
Soundtrack for this post: Tu Jhoom by Abida Parveen & Naseeb-O-Lal
(thank you to Ishah Jawaid for sharing this tune with me)
That’s my Dad up there. Twenty three years old, fresh out of the Indian Army and newly arrived in Birmingham in 1954, from the Punjab.
He’s been hanging around my heart a lot. For the last five months I’ve been working on a commission for an archival justice project called Dig Where You Stand, trying to find the presence of working class Sikhs in Sheffield pre-1940. Trying to disprove the myth that my Dad was the first Sikh man to settle in Sheffield. The thing with digging is that you never know what you’ll find. The nothings, the gaps, the silences, the erasures, the unanswered questions, the imaginings. How to fill in the lost parts?
Mostly, the Sikh women are lost to these archives. Mostly. I found one Sikh woman pre-1940*. One line in the 1939 register. She’s a different lost part. Part of the same story (?). Part of my story(?). Now found. Now part of my notebook of lost parts. A story to be unfolded in time.
Digging disturbs. The dig becomes internal. Unsettles soul-soil. I dig into archives looking for her – a name on a register – and I dig into my own past and my own roots and my own losings and unknowings and the parallels to what’s happening right now in the world. And it feels as if nothing’s changed that much. I feel like I’ve spent the last five months crying.
***
I find myself filling the lost parts of my Dad with questions. Filling the lost parts with longing and tears. When I asked my Dad why he left the Punjab he told me there was nothing left there for him there. Punjab had been and was still decimated by the 1947 Partition of India and the British Empire. He knew he didn’t want to stay in the army. And he knew that if he left the army** and stayed in the Punjab he would remain poor. This morning I wrote more questions in my notebook,
16/2/24 just thinking of that spirit/that energy of leaving Punjab, of what it took, of the goodbyes, leaving the runway and being in air when all you’ve ever know is ground. Was it scary?
My Dad was lucky. If you can call it luck. Lucky that he had a choice to shape his life and the opportunity to come to England whilst the doors were open to immigrant men and women for a brief moment. Lucky that he had a chance to escape both the proximity of horrific memory and trauma. Perhaps the memories and trauma became buried and made safe(r) by distance? Lucky that he had chance to escape his impoverished life chances if he remained. Lucky that he had the chance to make a life. And he did, he made a full and flourishing life here in England.
Yet his heart-home would always be Punjab. He returned often. He had the choice of leaving and he had the choice of return. In the world we inhabit right now, one of closed and ever-closing borders, all this feels remarkable. My Dad feels impossible and true.
***
Tomorrow will be 17th February 2024. Eight years since my Dad died. Eight years since his soul took to the air. Maybe on a last flight back home. Eight years since he gifted my left palm – my writing hand – his last breath. Eight years since I took that as a message to follow my teenage writing dreams. Eight years feels like three years feels like no time passed – because there is no time – since sitting there in that hospital room with you…
Every year this anniversary-day inhabits my body for a week before it’s due. It arrives with the haunt of a blue siren, little plastic circles stuck to an old mans chest heaving, wires & beeps, floppy plastic bag of fluid, x-rayed lungs full of clouds. a vigil, a seizuring body, curtains flung & a call for help, the hushed admonitions of wrong treatment given, the surprise of alive in the morning rounds.
It arrives with green bile, tiny spoonfuls of fish, chips and mushy peas & mmm that’s nice & bed being pushed from wards to room to wards to doors swung open to a vista of trees & then I know this is a good place to die. This is a good place to die if I can’t get you home.
It arrives with trying to keep you alive when everything i want is for them to let you go. Everyday i slow fracture and i don’t understand why they refuse to see what we all know. you can see them arriving one by one, in the corner, behind the door, crowding around to take you back. your hand quivers on to my head & you mumble into me prayers & blessings & wishes shocking my body 9000 miles away with you for a moment, into a past, until a man with mops & buckets crashes through the door & i am back here with you again.
It arrives with all night conversations with a wife who’s tears you cannot reach to comfort, a carousel of daughters, a son, nephews & ghosts, scunching phlegm into tissues & pushing my tiny palm against the landscape of yours, thanking phlebotomists for coon-taking (i miss that blood), & still they push tubes down your throat to suck the clouds away from you until my sister (thinks) she hears your tongue rolling against plastic saying i want to die. and i want you to die too but i don’t want to let you go. and they won’t let you go home because it is happening now.
This day arrives today. the come now calls. bathed for departing, soft navy joggers, white polo shirt with blue stripes, last handshake with the white nurse-man who always held your hand at home & reminded you were a man when you said you’d become a baby, my yellow waffle blanket infused with your smoke, the one you gave me after it swaddled you & your chants for minutes, hours, days after days, let it swaddle you now waheguru waheguru waheguru the last words for you to hear in this world played on repeat. and we are all around you now.
Mum holds your hand & the others at the end of the bed are watching like you are one of those Zee TV dramas & I am beside you squidging a tiny sponge to your lips & tongue like the white nurse-man told me too when he knelt in front of me folding into myself & told me, you can do this. You can help him go. I am not ready I say. I never have been.
&: who breezed my hair and pushed my head just then & you opened your eyes wonder-wide into somewhere that you knew? your breath speeding & cracking & i’ll keep your lips moist & I’ll wipe those droplets off your moustache & what was that little thud against my palm just now? and why has everything gone so quiet? ||
(rough-write, unedited. Dug out of the ‘Mumoir-in-long-progress’)
The thing with digging is that you’ll never know what you’ll find. Dig into my archive of unfinished words and find this lost part and share it anyway because it may never be finished enough to be published in a fancy book. I don’t even long for that dream anymore. When I write the word digging over and over all I keep thinking of and seeing is the people of Palestine digging through their bombed homes with their bare hands searching for their loved ones. Dig. Dig. Dig.
Digging is interrogating. Digging is response-ability-making. Digging is disrupting. Rough, messy, dirty, stirring, frustrating, disruptive, griefy. One thing leads to another. Digging is never finished. Digging is a rough draft in progress. Digging is ancestral practice. Digging means never forgetting. Digging is the art of finding lost parts.
For Dad. 1929-33’ish to February 17th 2016.
*Thank you to David Holland, Sheffield-based historian, for helping me with my dig.
** My Dad ran away from home at 16 years old with another friend from his village, and lied about being 18 years old so that he could be old enough to join the Indian Army. He spent 5 years there. I find it deeply uncomfortable that my Dad was a soldier. He never did active service. Not that that justifies anything. At that time, due to centuries of impoverishment caused by the British Empire, for the majority of poor and rural Punjabi Sikh men the options were farming or army.
Sharings:
* Saturday 17th February 2024 Global Day of Action for Palestine. This day MATTERS. London or local.
* Donate: Palestine Emergency Relief Fund (Sheffield-based effort with all funds going directly to Gaza): donate here. Or find your local grassroots funds.
* Donate/share/amplify: SUDAN. Sudan is facing the *largest and worst* humanitarian crisis. Over 10 million people displaced. 25 million people in need of humanitarian aid, 3 million children at risk of starvation. I follow @tartola0123 & @theslowfactory amongst others to keep upto date and how to donate. Remembering Yemen, Congo and all the other areas of conflict.
* Reflective writing session with Foluke Taylor & Dr Gail Lewis, Thu 29 Feb 2024 7:00 PM - 9:00 PM GMT (online): My body is an argument I did not start. Proceeds go to Medical Aid for Palestine and esims for Gaza.
* Black Nature in Residence: call out for zine contributions, “We want your words, images, audio, films, collage, photos all and any of your creations which explore your connection with nature as long as it’s your own work.” Deadline is 15th March.
* Peak District Residencing: a little blog post by me exploring going off-path (already!) as I begin my creative-in-residencing for Peak District National Park, as part of the Black Nature in Residence project, led by identity on tyne.
I always find so much depth to your shares Dal as well as being thought provoking. Thank you.
Thank you, so lovely to read your writing xo