Abstract This booklet is divided into six chapters, named after the five rivers of Punjab (Chenab, Raavi, Satluj, Beas and Jhelum) and the river that they all converge to form: Punjnand. The writings in the chapters are a combination of conversation extracts between me and the Punjabi residents of Southall and academics who have worked with (and/ or are part of) Punjabi diasporas; description of Southall’s material and human geography; my reflections and analysis; and poems written either by me or other Saraiki and Punjabi poets. The maps in the booklet trace the rivers and tributaries of Punjab’s rivers, the accompanying words are either names of the surrounding villages/cities or of the water bodies themselves.
Through these fragments I have attempted to begin to approach my question: How do migrant communities from the ‘post-colonial’ world negotiate their presence/identities/architectural and religious practices in a city which once stood as the center of the British colonial Empire?
How should we exist, here?
In understanding that this question does not have a singular or a straightforward answer, this piece tries to weave together fragments of histories, contemporary lives and future aspirations of Southall’s Punjabi population.
Punjnand
Panjnand [panj-five; nand-river] The waters from all five rivers of Punjab converge and form a single stream, the Panjnand, near Uch Sharif. People who are familiar with the city of Uch, on the Southern edge of Punjab, know better than to disrespect it by saying its name without adding Sharif after. They do not need to be explained that the suffix Sharif belongs to all beings holy: The last Prophet’s daughter Ali’s decedents The Qur’an And Uch. Uch Sharif. Sharif [Noble-born, innocent]
Before the barrage reined the Punjnand, its waters flowed free and wild, changing course with the rains, swelling and shirking with the seasons and the moon. The soil on its banks grew stories, saints and songs, ripe, abundant and tangled with each other. Every year, Uch Sharif hosts a mela (not-quite-a-fair) that lasts seven days, a celebration of darshan (not-simply-witnessing). The Mela is the ecstasy of seeing your beloved spatialized, it is the out worldly joy of the mureeds who arrive in Uch Sharif restless to visit the Shrines of Bibi Jawindi and Jalaluddin Surkh-Posh, who roam the alleyways of the city dressed in bright reds, blues and yellows. The mureeds sing praise of their Murshid all night, nights after nights, they play the one stringed iktara, attesting to the truth they see clear as the cloudless sky they sleep under, intoxicated. Surkh-Posh [One who wears red]
Qalandri writes;
Many princesses, queens and nawabzadis from centuries past transform themselves as fairies and come see the mela.
The Mela confuses the colonizer, it unsettles his understanding of divinity and things holy. He interrupts the mureeds’ song to ask vulgar questions, insisting on answers that do not exist. The colonizer is a craftsman and a poor one, he replicates his designs everywhere he goes, he weaves identities with his narrow tongue and narrower heart for he deems wrong what he cannot comprehend, labels abject what he is refused translation for. He gets frustrated when he is denied legibility and angrily writes over shrines and saints, gods and bodies, rivers and soil.
“On the borderlands where these great faiths meet … the various observances and beliefs which distinguish the followers of the several faiths are so strangely blended and intermingled that it is often impossible … to decide in what category the people shall be classed.” (Darling cited in Jain, 2020)
And so, the colonizer grew agitated,
He made citizens of the mureeds and the Murshid was given a religion.
“Because it was a reflection of their own society, because in Europe, religion was the basis of identity-based division, the colonizer thought that that was the basis of division everywhere they went, and they thought that religion must be fundamental to everyone’s identity and because of that view point they ended up creating identities along that marker because of the power they held” (Jain, 2021)
Now, here, in a small corner of the biggest room of the colonizer’s house, the mela transforms itself. The overwhelming mureedi pain-joy of witnessing the beloved still lives, however tacitly, in deliberate typos, between cryptic Punjabi song lyrics, on the bottom row of the shelf of a 24/7 cash and carry and shining through gurdwara parth projectors.
Every year, the Punjnand flows with all its strength to lighten the ink lines of the colonizer and the mela begins. The citizens forget the boundaries that bind them and the names of the god(s) they rote learned, to become mureeds again and dance to the songs of their Murshid.
Chenab
Across the Chenab, I see my beloved’s adobe, Come, my clay pot, come with me, The night is deep, the river wild, Come, come with me.
My clay is raw, unbaked, Bound to dissolve in the waves, The unsound reach an unsound end, Everyone knows this, Don’t trust the unsound to help you to the shore, Stubborn girl, The night is deep, the river wild, Stubborn girl.
Apna Pind Takeaway Joint, Southall She wiped her hands with her apron and sat down, “No drawings today?” She teased me “None”, I smiled. “Sure, we can talk about Beeji today, but she’d never been to Southall you know, she’d never been outside of India” “And Pakistan.”, I add. “It wasn’t Pakistan then, na” She winked at me
“My beeji was thirteen when she and her family had to leave Lahore, days after the Partition, and move to Amritsar. She taught us all the tappey we sing at weddings and when children are born, she used to tell us the love stories of Soni Mahewal and Heer Ranjha. We grew up listening to her talk about her childhood in Lahore, but even as children we knew never to ask about her journey to Amritsar. I think all the elders in the family knew, they just refused to repeat it, but it wasn’t strange or anything, almost every family in Punjab has these untold stories from that time.” “And those stories came with us to Southall?”, I asked “Maybe, I guess.” She said absent-mindedly as she stood up to attend to a customer.
Outside, I saw that some of the shops still had the Indian or Pakistanis flags up on their windows, from Independence Day on the fourteenth and fifteenth of August. Inside, the shopkeepers spoke the same language, had the same artists’ songs playing behind the counters and sold the same spices and daals. Don’t get me wrong, this is not argument against differance or an attempt to conflate divergences but a lament at manufactured identities, created and maintained through colonial violence.
I call Waris Shah today, to speak from his grave And turn a new leaf of the book of love A daughter of Punjab cried once and you wrote your endless wailings Today, a million of them cry and ask you, Waris Shah Wake up, O writer of the grieving, see your Punjab Today, the fields are lined with corpses and blood flows down the Chenab
We’re told nationalism towards the postcolonial nation is a form of resistance against assimilation into the imperial, racist nationalism of the colonizer but really, it’s all part of the game. We were given these nation-states as a non-refundable parting gift that we had to pay for ourselves, with one too many unspeakable stories.
Yet we hold on to them, in our new ‘homes’ leased to us by old foes, stick them to our windows and commemorate their anniversaries with special offers on chai, samosas and free chutney.
Raavi
It has been ages Since they burst through their bounds and danced With their hands raised to the sky Head spinning, they haven’t danced Didn’t flutter their wings and fly Didn’t scream their names and dance Answer me, who slaughtered River Raavi
Hik mudd guzri jatt baran de Phan khol k apna nache nai Asman taen inhan hathan witch Te sir tol k apna nache nai Katch mar k apni ude nai Te na bol k apna nache nai Koi bol rakho kehen koh khaadi O neeli naal apne manj Raavi di
The golden dome on Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha on Nanak Road, Southall is visible from a mile away, on the rare sunny days in London, it is difficult to look at it straight without squinting your eyes. When you get closer, its stone exterior looks imposing, grand and impenetrable. You couldn’t steal a peek inside if you tried.
Looking at it I remembered the Janam Asthan Gurdwara in Nanak Sahib, Punjab, that I visited with my family as a child. The white marble of its expansive courtyard, boiling under the July sun burned the soles of my feet until someone grabbed my arm to pull me onto a strip of soaking wet cool carpet which stretched all the way to the entrance of the main building. The darbaar itself was surrounded by a sarowar, its glistening water was filled with fish, half clothed men and children, all taking turns to press their palm against Nanak Sahib’s handprint that he left on a rock in the pool, centuries ago.
Sarowar Any water body that is naturally present or built near or inside the boundry of a gurdwara, where the visitors cleanse themselves by performing ablutions. Some gurdwaras strictly keep the sarowar for drinking water and no one is allowed to bathe in them. In both cases, the holy water always houses fish.
“Idhar kisi gurdware vitch sarowar kyun nai haingey?” Why are there no sarowars in any of the gurdwaras here? “Putt, building rules hondey ne na, tussi ni awien bana sakde pool building de vich, hazaar pange ne” Child, there are different building rules here, you can’t just build a pool inside a building, you have to cross a thousand hurdles. “Per aye pool tan ne haiga, aye te sarowar hai” But it’s not a pool, it’s a sarowar. “Aina nu ni ki pata, ki pool, ki sarowar, sabi eko honde ne” What do they know [about the difference between] sarowars and pools.
Sutluj
Like in Punjab the same water is called different things as the geography around it shifts, the roads in Southall also change names every few steps. Outside the Overground station South Street begins, pass the slope, a little further down in front of Sapna cash and carry, the same road becomes Green Street.
On Green Street open the Manor House Grounds, inside there is a neglected pond, it grows green algae and the occasional lotus. Back outside the grounds is a war memorial that reads, “For the Local Heros Who Gave Their Lives in the Great War 1914 – 1918 1932 – 1945” Some of the plastic poppy wreaths at its foot have small cards with names of the Local Heros. I scan for a Maan, a Chopra, a Singh, a Jatt, a Kaur, maybe a Muhammad.
Nothing.
“... to understand what is meant by the martial races of India is to understand from the inside the real story of India. We do not speak of the martial races of Britain as distinct from the non-martial, nor of Germany, nor of France. But in India we speak of the martial races as a thing apart and because the mass of the people have neither martial aptitude nor physical courage ... the courage that we should talk of colloquially as ‘guts’. Lieutenant-General Sir George MacMunn, The Martial Races of India (1933)” (MacMunn cited in Rand and Wagner, 2012)
The shades of evenings like many before The pavements are heading for settelements The lake turns back from office, thrown out of work The lake is drinking its thirst Some city has set off on the road to the village Throwing off all wages, someone is leaving The shades of evenings like many before Leaving behind another’s land
“Tou yeh inke apne desh walun k liye hai na” Because it is for their own soldiers “Per aap log bhi tou desh wasi hain, aur hum logon ne inki jangen bhi lari thien” But you’re also their desh-wasi now, and we fought their war for them too “Haan ji, magar bana bhi dete hamare baap dadey k liye tou kya farq hai” Yes, but what difference would it make even if they built one for our forefathers?
He was right in his question, “what difference would it make?” Maybe the question of recognition has nothing to do with reparations, Maybe acknowledging damage does not not begin and end with building, taking down or even appropriating monuments or memorials. Maybe. But these questions are for later, for now, nobody is offering any recognitions or acknowledgements (let alone reparations) to begin with.
Beas
Friend, here is my veil, in its knots are dry fruits, Some winds bring earring love, others harnesses, Learn to tell the truth from the lies, The real and fake are all mixed.
Friend, here is my veil, in its knots are scents, You’re not oblivious, you know all too well, Of the dips and cliffs.
Friend, here is my veil, in its knots are rings, The Jujube tree doesn’t just have bear thorns, Its branches get heavy with fruit too.
What people do not understand maybe is that the kind of things, people, behaviors you see here, in the diaspora or even inside our gurdwaras, are a product of decades of molding our ways of livings to the circumstances here. Trying to negotiate our customs in this vastly different society, in this cold weather. Some of us, especially brown Punjabi women, we learn to live double, triple lives, so stark in their contrast that any confrontation of the two sends out sparks conversation excerpts between me and Kaur (2021)
“You may wonder when we turned into daughters you couldn’t recognize. But we have been carrying the pain and work of creating multiple worlds we live in, without your knowledge. We worked hard to lie. So hard that sometimes those lies became truths and we couldn’t distinguish between the lines of reality and the world of lies we were creating around us. Covering tattoos, and hiding partners, masking love, this was our burden. But when our worlds collided and for a moment we could not bear to lie any more, we were asked to erase this world and continue with the mask of lies we had built for you to believe.” Excerpt from an open letter Kaur and a number of other desi women wrote to their families. (Kaur, 2021)
We’re in a constant state of fidgeting.
We’re made to learn quickly that savior who claims to fight our family ‘for us’ has in fact no interest in our interests. That our bodies remain sites/sights of conflict for the two sides to contest. That we’re staying being made to sit on fire pyres and being ‘saved’ from them into lifetimes of agony. That the only family we have is each other.
Note: a) This draft does not contain the chapter “Jhelum” as the river begins at Kashmir and is a site of active tension between India and Pakistan and warrants more careful consideration before I share it. b) The maps in the booklet will be printed on vellum sheets and will lay onto the dispersed words on the page, experiment: https://southallmapping.cargo.site/ artist-book
Works cited: Jain, Vanshaj Ravi. “Broken Boundaries: Border and Identity Formation in Post-Colonial Punjab.” Asian Journal of International Law 10.2 (2020) Kazmi, Sara. “Radical Re-tellings of Hir: Gender and the Politics of Voice in Postcolonial Punjabi Poetry.” South Asia Multidisciplinary Academic Journal (2019). Mucina, Mandeep. “Witnessing, grieving, and remembering: Letters of resistance, love, and reclamation from daughters of izzat.” International Journal of Child, Youth and Family Studies 12.1. 2021 Shani, Giorgio. “Spectres of partition: religious nationalism in post-colonial South Asia.” Asian Nationalisms Reconsidered. Routledge, 2015 Rand, Gavin, and Kim A. Wagner. “Recruiting the ‘martial races’: identities and military service in colonial India.” Patterns of Prejudice 46.3-4. 2012
Poems: Qalandri, Makhmoor. Mela, 2020. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=po8yhjyfoX8 Noori, Paar Channa de, 2016. Coke Studio. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TrPvQvbp3Cg Pritam, Amrita, 1948, Ajj Akhan Waris Shah Nu. Asif. Senghi Meda Bochan Hewi, 2019. Retrieved from: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PjnjMv569HA