Five Rivers and Seven Seas by kanzaleghari

Five Rivers and Seven Seas

‫�� در�� ت �ر‬

kanza leghari

DO NOT DISTRIBUTE WITHOUT THE AUTHOR’S CONSENT

Prefix Often, it is easy to talk about or to be in difficult situations if you imagine you are in a Hindi film. I have sectioned this booklet into ten sequences, titled as the turning points in the plot of a Bollywood film, however, there isn’t a linear narrative or temporality that the text traces, it shifts between days, instances, voices and interactions, leaving it the reader to create meaning as I try to sit with the question: Why do I find myself here?

dilwale dulhaniya le jayengay, 1995

I First Meeting

Paddington Station, Platform 12 “This is the TFL rail service to... London Heathrow.” There's a running joke in the Southall Punjabi Community: ihaan goreyan da koi bharoosa nai aaiga, kedi vi kadd sagde ne, aass liye assi Heathrow de inne kol vasey aa. “Can’t trust the English, they can kick us out whenever, good that we settled so close to Heathrow, easy exit.”

Didar Singh Randhawa, the former president of the Indian Worker’s Association, recalls the initial waves of Punjabi migrations into London, commenting on the community’s decision to lay roots in the periphery the city, primarily due to cheaper rent and proximity to factories that typically employed immigrants because of their willingness to work in harsh conditions and for lower wages. Jokingly mentioning the closeness to Heathrow as another factor.

Larsson analyzes the implications of vigilance campaigns in the past two decades, particularly on transport networks, suggesting these ‘softer’ forms of surveillances are components of the network of fear and paranoia indicative of modern western societies. He also adds that typically the object/person of fear is described (by studies’ participants) as deviant from ‘normal’, edging along racial stereotypes.

“If you see anything that doesn’t look right, speak to a member of staff or text British Transport Police at 61016.” See it. Say it. Sorted How does one know if something isn’t ‘right’? Do I look ‘right’? I am just going to smile under my mask, try not to carry this big a backpack next time and hope no one decides to sort me.

“The next station Ealing Broadway, doors will open on the right-hand side, change for the Central and District Lines.” Some people get off, some get in, the human geography of the rail begins to lean brown. A woman in her 40s (50s?) also came in and started walking towards my seat. Aunty, over the nose too, over the nose too, please, there are so many empty seats, why are you coming so close, please, no, over the nose too, please.

AUNTY beta, ye train Southall jaye gi? Jee.

AUNTY Ok, pehla din hai aaj mera na, bad impression if you late Jee.

The inner and outer city divide in London (and cities across the world) between industrial and corporate workers is linked with migrant communities that often inhabit the outskirts of the city. Millington, 2012.

Tharoor notes that railways in colonial era India primarily (and for decades in the ﬁrst half of the Raj, only) operated to transport raw materials extracted from agricultural land to port cities. He also tells that the annoucment of the Radcliff line across United Punjab ignited riots on both sides of the new border resulting in unprecedented mass killings on the Amritsar-Lahore Express Rail.

Railways have become a common trope in Romantic Hindi Films, often shown as depicting the ‘release’ of the female protagonist towards her love interest. Faiz Ahmed Faiz’s apologizes to his beloved, telling her that the anti-authoritarian cause is his ﬁrt love in his poem Mujhse Pehli si Muhabbat

“This is West Ealing, doors will open on the right-hand side.”

As I sit alone in the rail going towards Southall, I don’t smell the wheat or touch the cotton ripped from the soil back home, nor do I see the bodies of those hoping to arrive at Lahore/Amritsar on Independence Day.

Instead, under the gaze(s) of people on board, I become Simrin or Geet or Naina, without Raj or Aditya or Bunny to hold my hand and help me through the journey.

yeh jawani hai dewani, 2013

Aur bhi ghum hain zamane mein muhabbat k siwa Love isn’t the only pain in the world, love.

“This is Southall” “This station does not have step-free access.”

II Song

In all of London, I feel most visible in Southall, you would think it would be the opposite, that it would be easier for me to just blend with the crowd, but that’s not how it works. Let me explain. In that peripheral corner of the metropolis, I’m not the Other, I can climb out of the mirror and take up three dimensions. Like in 3D more surfaces come on display, I inﬂate; then it just feels uncomfortable in the way home feels uncomfortable.

My red veil betrayed me for the wind. My beloved stole a glance, oh.

mujhse shadi karo gi 2004

That is, bodies like mine are not deﬁned as deviant from the standard, oppositional to the norm, the Said-an Other to the Self. The mirror here evoking the Lacanian mirror stage, of Self-identiﬁcation from what is with-out.

‫�‬ ‫�ل � ّ‬ ‫د��‬

‫‪15‬‬

Dangal, 2016

III Tension

HER But from what I know, Southall is largely an Indian Punjabi diaspora, and you’re Pakistani. ME Yes, that’s part of what I’m trying to address, how the British empire crafted modern Indian and Pakistani national identities. .

HER You’re gonna have to spoon feed that to your British audience, I would recommend using a map

Across the Sub-continent, people eat with their hands, it creates an intimate connection with what you consume. Cutlery like spoons, forks and knives are a distinct colonial heritage still fairly uncommon, particularly in rural areas.

The exit to Southall Overground Station is on top of a slope. When you walk down, your pace quickens, and the area reveals itself as you descend. If you keep going straight through the Western Union money transfer store, the visa consultant ofﬁce, the saree and halal chicken shops, you’ll eventually see Dominion Library on your right, turn left from there and then on your second left you’ll see Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha.

First time I walked into the Gurdwara Sri Guru Singh Sabha, I felt like an imposter. I would be exposed. Maybe that Pakistani guy at the Bartlett was right and our features are different from Indians; from all the Irani blood and the halal meat. Bullshit, Kanza! Inside the gurdwara, my bare feet on cold marble, eyes ﬁxed on the projector screen, I couldn’t read a word of the daily parth (prayer) rolling down. Though I fully understood the simultaneous Punjabi recitation on the loudspeaker. How twisted. I’ve been used to reciting, repeating, painstaking joining the tajdeed to the zabar and just reading without understanding a word of the Qur'an and now this.

So, you always exist in-between. Read/ don’t speak. Speak/ can’t read.

The British conducted the ﬁrst census in South Asia in 1865, creating and documenting people within the region into categories based on religion, linages, facial features and castes. The process overlooked major overlaps and complexities. The census forms remain largely the same in Pakistan, India and Bangladesh. Kertzer, 2002.

Pre-Partition, there were proponents of a uniﬁed Hindustani script for the Hindi/Urdu language in both the Indian Congress Party and the Muslim League Party. However, with the increase in political power of the hyper-Hindu nationalist Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh, Urdu (and the Persian/Arabic script it was written in) came to be conﬂated with a Muslim identity. This led up to Hindi (Devanagari script) becoming known as the language of the Hindus and Urdu (Persian/Arabic script) that of Muslims, although the spoken language is essentially the same except minor vocabulary shifts. Khan, 2006.

Existing in the liminal space of language-purgatory. Yoshimoto, 2008.

On my way out, I accepted the free langer food in a white plastic bag, in it there w

ere two rotis, channa masala, white rice and no spoons.

IV Love

With your back to Dominion Library, if you head down King Street, after a couple blocks, you’ll see the Sri Raam Mandir on your right. From a distance, its doors look as if they are made of wood, like the old ones in Sindh or Dehli. If you get closer though, it’s easy to tell that they are metal, painted and ornated to look like wood, not quite the real deal.

. The mandir has two white conical dooms, on each of which there’s a small red triangular flag, if you stand close enough on a day with little traffic, you can hear them flutter in the wind. Outside, on the western wall of the Sri Raam Mandir, someone has etched a big odd-looking heart shape and in it there's an “S+E” Inside, the largest muratis are of Raam and Sita.

. हम कथा सुनाते राम सकल गु� राम की, हम कथा सुनाते राम सकल गु� राम की, यह रामायण है , पूण� कथा श्री राम की

िसआ का भ�े सवमवर है , सब की �ि� म� नाम राम का, सबसे ऊपर है , िसआ का भ�े सवमवर है सीता जय माल राम उर मेली

िनवराज रहे माहराज भी, सीता के बन प्रस्थान पे सीए को लखन बेठा के रथ म�, चोरर ऐ काँ टों के पथ म�

Not a translation: Raam loved Sita, and he drew a line around her she wasn’t supposed to cross, but she did, Raam waged war for her, killed the ten-headed Ravan for her, rescued her, Raam put her chastity on trial by making her walk through fire, Raam’s distrust moved her to ask her mother, Mother Earth, to take her back in her womb,

. Lakshman Rekha Lakhman drew a circle around the hut Sita was staying in while him and Raam went to hunt. Raam told Sita she would stay safe if she stayed within the rekha.

. Agni Pariksha After freeing Sita from Ravan’s captivity, Raam questioned Sita’s (sexual) purity, upon which she got infuriated and asked Lakhsman to light up a pyre. She walked through it and came out unscathed, hence passing the agni pariksha, the ﬁre trail.

Om Shanti Om, 2007 Om Shanti Om, 2007

Kaur recalls seeing the Ramayana on television as a child and feeling a sense of rage over Sita’s agnipareksha. She also discusses how Sita’s body and the violence it was subjected to (by both her husband and her abductor) came to stand as a metaphor for female transgression and its consequences in South Asia. Spivak and Uma Narayan also talk extensively about the rendering of the brown female body into a site/sight for, both, the brown man to display his anxieties and the colonizer to realize his savior discourse and fantasies. Kaur also talks about the ways second generation South Asian immigrant women mediate the between placating the masculinities of their male family members while crafting a hybrid identity in the Western world.

. S + E transgressed a lakshman rekha, by transcribing their love for the world to see, while simultaneously drawing around themselves the second lakhsman rekha of the oddly shaped heart.

Dulhan hum le jayengay, 2000

V Song

kal chaudhvīñ kī raat thī shab bhar rahā charchā tirā kuchh ne kahā ye chāñd hai kuchh ne kahā chehrā tirā ham bhī vahīñ maujūd the ham se bhī sab pūchhā kiye ham hañs diye ham chup rahe manzūr thā parda tirā

Yesterday was a full moon, everyone talked about you, Some said it’s the moon, some said it's you. I, too, was there, they asked me too, I smiled, I stayed quiet, for I had agreed to keep your purdah. -Ibn E Insha

On the right side of the Indian Workers’ Association’s Office, there’s a small takeaway joint called “Kulcha Express, The Real Taste of Amritsar”, sometimes they sell one samosa for 40p but three for £1, free chutney. A month ago, after a good day of recording oral histories and gathering footage at the Gurdwara, I felt like a bad field researcher at Kulcha Express.

I had just walked in, tired, to buy a samosa, my camera resting on my shoulder, still mounted on the monopod, when I noticed there was a teenage couple in the store, holding hands with the gentlest grip. As soon as the girl saw me, she let go of the boy’s hand. I looked away. When I looked again, I couldn’t see either of their faces, the boy had turned his back to me, and the girl stood behind him. I looked away.

I understood the paranoia, the fear of being seen with your boyfriend in public (was I projecting?), but I don’t look old enough to be an aunty who would tell on them. The lens cap! I realized the camera’s lens cap was still in my pocket and although the camera was turned off, it was pointing at them from my shoulder. I took out the cap and put it on the lens. When I glanced again, they were standing like they were when I walked in and holding hands, I took my 3 for £1 samosas and left.

- Don’t insist o

n leaving tonight

Moonsoon Wedding, 2000

VI Conflict

8:34 PM

Walked out of the gurdwara and he was still there. Maybe he’s just waiting for someone, just keep walking. Cross the road, don’t turn around. Go into the off-license shop, buy something, anything, lose him. But he’s standing outside. Make a run for it, up the slope, into the station, down the stairs and enter the train.

Later that night when my flat mate asked me what he looked like, I lied, “Some random white guy.” It wasn’t a random white guy; he was very much brown. I don’t know why I lied, maybe I felt embarrassed. Like I was part of what he was. Because the train out of Southall deflated us back onto one another so if I pointed to him, I would be pointing to myself.

Stay close

to me for a while

Two grains in Paki Hummus.

Spivak talks about the dual tensions that the brown woman experiences in wanting to speak of the violence on her from her brown male counterpart and not wanting to have another negative characteristic ascribed to herself (as conflated onto her entire race) by the colonizer.

VII Separation

jo ham pe guzrī so guzrī magar shab-e-hijrāñ hamāre ashk tirī āqibat sañvār chale We endured what we had to but, O night of separation, Our tears cleared your ending. -Faiz Ahmed Faiz I see a lot similarities between the way a desi woman recalls her parent’s house (her house before marriage) and the way people in the Southall South Asian diaspora talk about ‘back home’. Of course, sometimes, for some women, the two are the same thing.

She works in the cash and carry shop opposite the Gurdwara Guru Nanak Darbaar. The shop’s sign board is an electronic one, it shows trippy colorful transitions very three seconds, under that the shop spills out onto the sidewalk, discolored mangoes, wastebins, pomegranates, plastic plants and plungers. I met her because I saw the Western Union sign next to the electronic one and remembered I had to send someone money back home, so I went in.

Raazi, 2018

A translation:

HER Yes, there’s no lower limit, you can even send £10, but there’s a fee. ME Acha, good good. I handed her my passport for identification HER Pakistan? You've come here for studies? ME yes, you too?

Instantly regretted the question. Maybe she’s born here, a lot of people speak good Urdu/Hindi despite being born here. Gosh, Kanza! HER No, my husband’s family lived here, so I came. Allah Shukar, thank God. ME Do you go back often? HER Not really, the tickets are very expensive, anyway, your husband’s house is your house after marriage, you know?

ME I know. HER You’re all set, £20 to ***** ******? ME Yes, thanks.

Kaur in her book “Transgressing the Boundaries of Izzat” talks about the intersections of marriage and migration in the South Asian female experience. When the two overlap, often it means a loss of the physical sense of home in the extreme change of geography, coupled with learning a new family dynamic, in a new role. The trauma of bidaai/ruksati is not exclusive to South Asian women, immigrant South Asian experience it too. Though they change the language of their loss, speaking of the homeland as the ‘motherland’, assuming the role of the brave son, out in the West, they too cry the same tears.

VIII Longing

� � � ,� ‫� اے‬ � ‫� ا�ر �رى‬ � ‫�ش‬ � ‫ ��ر ��ر �رى‬,� � � � � � � ,� �‫ � ا‬,�� ‫ر‬ � ‫� ا� �ر �رى‬ �� Not a translation You didn’t come, the night of waiting didn’t pass, The dawn keeps searching, passing here over and over. The flowers dried in half-bloom, we met them only half-way, They're strange, the colors of spring this time around.

Can one belong to a person/city/life/home while longing for another person/city/life/home?

You don’t have to say, I understand.

Vivvah, 2006

IX (Re)Union

Ao gay jab tum ao saajna aangna, phool khelengay. Barse ga sawan jhoom jhoom kay, do dil aise milengay When you’ll come, my love, flowers will bloom in my courtyard, And rain will fall drunk, such will be union of two hearts. On Baisakhi, all turns green; every branch grows a flower, every crop yields fruit, all five rivers in Punjab swell, the skies clear, kites fly, lovers mate and all healed wounds freshen. Baisakhi marks the beginning of the Sikh New Year, which starts on the first day of spring, this year it was on the 14th of April.

Southall comes the closest to looking like Punjab on Baisakhi, because you can literally smell the sweet aata ghee halwa at every corner, because you see people dressed in new shalwar suits, because the parking outside the Gurdwaras is bumper to bumper. But also, because it's easy to tell who is celebrating and who would rather not.

For a moment, I sang along with the Nagar Kirtin procession, I knew the words, but I don’t remember where I learned them. I felt like my six-year-old self again, wrapping my mother’s dupatta around my waist like a saree, filling my hair parting with a red lipstick, running to show my family that I looked like Aishwariya in Devdas. They weren’t amused, I had crossed too many lines; used my mother’s Namaz veil as a Hindu woman’s dress, stained my head to look like a married Indian woman, no worse, a Bollywood actress. I was taught we were not like them; it doesn’t mean anything that she speaks your language, that she looks like women around you, you are nothing like her and never will be and thank God for that.

So, I sang along with the Nagar Kirtin, Jorey Paye Kaisari, neeley dastaar ae Hathan de vich shoobdey, khande do tarey.

Despite overlaps and shared histories, the colonial gift of distinctly modern national identities (Pakistani/Indian/Bangladeshi) (Hindu/Muslim/Sikh), demarcated along religious and ethnic lines still play out, in the colonizer’s house, thousands of miles away from the ‘homeland’.

Now, I'm crossing lines deliberately, slowly, to see if the two banks of River Sutlej have really grown further apart than the width of the Seven Seas.

- listen, it’s the first time I’ve le

ft the house with a stranger.

X Credits

Farah, Sumbul. "Aqeeda, Adab and Aitraaz: Modalities of ‘being’Barelwi." Contributions to Indian sociology 46.3 (2012): 259-281. Fish, Laura. "Woman in the mirror: Reflections." Synthesis: an Anglophone Journal of Comparative Literary Studies 7 (2015): 92-105. Kertzer, David, and Dominique Arel. "Census and identity." The Politics of Race, Ethnicity, and Language in National Censuses (2002). Khan, Abdul Jamil. Urdu/Hindi: An Artificial Divide: African Heritage, Mesopotamian Roots, Indian Culture & Britiah Colonialism. Algora Publishing, 2006. Larsson, Sebastian. "A First Line of Defence? Vigilant surveillance, participatory policing and the reporting of ‘suspicious’ activity." Surveillance & Society 15.1 (2017): 94-107.

Mucina, Mandeep Kaur. Transgressing boundaries of Izzat: Voices of second-generation Punjabi women surviving and transgressing" honour'related violence in Canada. University of Toronto (Canada), 2015. Millington, Gareth. "The outer-inner city: urbanization, migration and ‘race’in London and New York." Urban Research & Practice 5.1 (2012): 6-25. Tharoor, Shashi. Inglorious empire: What the British did to India. Penguin UK, 2018. Qureshi, Kaveri. Marital breakdown among British Asians: Conjugality, legal pluralism and new kinship. Springer, 2016. Spivak, Gayatri Chakravorty. "Can the subaltern speak?" Die Philosophin 14.27 (2003): 42-58.

Werbner, Pnina. "Theorising complex diasporas: purity and hybridity in the South Asian public sphere in Britain." Journal of ethnic and migration studies 30.5 (2004): 895-911. Yoshimoto, Mika. Second language learning and identity: Cracking metaphors in ideological and poetic discourse in the third space. Diss. University of Ottawa (Canada), 2008.