He still folds the sky on his head. Clouds have slid down the once dancing valleys, nesting in his eyes.
He is wearing those nondescript black Punjabi sandals with coiled ends and no arch support. He abruptly stops the shuffle, blue turban lifts, and he looks up through cloudy cataracts.
āIām sorry, I am uneducated, I donāt know the year ā¦.ā
I mumble something about education having scant to do with schooling. He mumbles something about the bane of poverty.
āNineteen ninety-one or ninety-two,ā comes a crisp voice.
āYes, ninety-one or ninety-two,ā he says louder, not wanting attention paid to the voice. āMy son,ā more quietly. He is not to be involved in this conversation, tacitly.
Also unsaid is why I, a lawyer focused on violence against women, am sitting on this achingly cold winter evening with six men, in a village 100 miles from my parentsā home.
By 1992, my parents had done the unthinkable.
Leaping against the glorified American Dream, they wrapped up our tight Virginia apartment even tighter. They gifted kitchen essentials and tchotchkes to other grateful young immigrant families, sold the lesser obscure items in yard sales, packed all their books in shipping boxes collected by helpful neighbors. But whiffs of The Washington Post still rise from an even earlier packing.
My father, hair yet not grown out long on his head, and my mother with a smallāattemptedāponytail, and me cross-plump-legged on their dining table, wrapping some holiday gifts: all in newsprint. The black ink smudging our hands slightly made it a bigger art fest. Papaās mathematician eyes gleamed a little as he made the perfect corners, while Mama kept my blabber at bay. Perhaps these gifts went to Stacey and Marsha next door, or to Lutfiyah and her kids. These were not for the other Punjabi and Indian families: those gifts would be packed shinier or maybe even in gleaming bags from the Dollar Store.
The later packing of the many, many books in many, many boxes is less clear in memory, but the unpacking in Chandigarh, Punjab, months later, remains crystal.
The pieces of America that landed at the gray gate of my grandfatherās houseāwe never called it my Dadiji, my grandmotherās houseāwere most exciting. I showed off mercilessly to neighborhood kids. Mama warned me but I again risked being boycotted by my playmates.
I remember unpacking My Little Ponies, all six of themāa precious imperfect set of hand-me-downs. I also decided to display all my toys from McDonaldās Happy Meals. Hot Wheels and GI Joes from Manpreet were invited, till they caused another brouhaha and left in a huffāonly to be invited back again, to be bossed again. His speed, my sass. The cooler sibling was, then, smaller. If I could only sit on him, I could have the whole world of our plastic friends dancing to my tune.
Only one timeāthough it must have happened so many timesāI recall walking exactly between my father and his father, Dadaji. To the market, to buy a treat for the little Ć©migrĆ©s. I tried to match their strides, two-to-one, six foot one and five foot eleven on either side. The dusty path was lined with congress grassāthe stubborn white-capped weed became symbolic in years to comeāand on the left, as we walked to the Sector 16 market, boys played cricket.
They must have been talking about something, but my heart was too happy to worry about trying to listen. Perhaps this unique abandon of a childhood otherwise spent trying to hear, untangle, and remember adult conversation makes this walk unique. I kicked little stones as we walked by the high fences that caged the shuttlecocks in the badminton courts of the Rose Club, where my Dadiji went to play tambola and my Dadaji sometimes went to pity the old gossips. How could they all while away time, these men, Dadaji would wonder, hardly silently. The president of the Cactus and Succulent Society of India, he was my model for social entrepreneurship and leadership for many early years. Papa, his turban-covered hair now regrown long in political defiance, walked beside Dadaji with a common mission that day: the Amul cheese tin. The kids were to enjoy something they thought they had left behind: processed cheese. And Dadaji was going to show Papa and me where to get it.
These men running the occasional domestic chore together have never left that path. Walking it alone, with friends, or with a forced companion since it was too unsafe for a girl to walk half a mile alone, for FataFat candy, for a new school register, for pencils, for just a walk, for an irrational plan to be seen by the neighborhood crushāmy father and grandfather have always walked by my side, many times shaking their heads, their turbans starched, their noses long, their jaws set.
We were reunited with our roots. Despite some tense comments the moving in had brought, I knew my grandparents were thrilled to have more life in the house. They reminded us several times about the burglary that had taken place a few months agoāDadiji stressing how they were all alone when it happened, Dadaji stressing the cowards never made it downstairs to face his gun, which he would have drawn just as he had, like all Sikh Army retirees had, in 1984, when they anticipated the anti-Sikh pogroms spreading to Chandigarh.
Guddi, who at the time was helping my Dadiji, with a fractured arm, to bathe, clothe, and later sit in the sun and gossip, gasped and sighed with details about the burglary. She left just enough unknowns for the GI Joes to combat, aided by the pony with the rainbow mane, on a good day when Manpreet and I united to protect our new, forever home.
Just over two decades after my parentsā return migration and my own re-migration, I now sat across from the cloudy-eyed man and his comrades. My neck hair rose through my thick black shawl and I dug into the dry ground with my boots.
I stared into his eyes. Dark mustard dust rose.
āThen the policemen yelled ā¦ well ā¦ it was a curse word.ā
I stare intently so that he knows I am not going anywhere. Regardless of the inappropriateness of the curse, it was ours to share today. Three furrows kaleidoscope to five as he leans forward to speak. He blinks at every word. First harder, then faster.
āSister-fucker. Sister-fucker, you lie. They yelled this in front of everyone.ā
There. We were on. Where timeless love songs venerate the chaste silent speech of eyes, where chauvinism reads womenās directness as an invitation to what isnāt there, where good behavior dictates evasiveness between sexes, there, I time staring into menās eyes with the surgical precision women hone when refusing to give up on their worlds being co-opted.
He proceeds to tell me how he was abducted by the police, one final time. āI had just taken my morning wash under the tap and was going to tie my turban when they came. Yelling, āSister-fucker!ā Gave me five or six blows and pushed me out front, and began nabbing family members too.ā
The bookkeeper of his village gurdwara, Sikh prayer and peoplesā center, he had been taken several times before. āI had no other affiliation, I harbored no one. There was no case or anything. Just by virtue of being in gurdwara service, and being an amritdhari1 Sikh, their eyes had landed on my bruise-blue turban.ā
This third timeāor was it the fourth, he canāt rememberāhe recalls the wet clothes clinging to his body as he was pulled away. It was the first time that women in his family were also taken by the police.
While he was being tortured in custody, fellow villagers sought help. āOur village thought: What? Such bezti, such dishonor that our ladies have been picked up too?2 The entire village flowed.ā
In Malwa, the region demarcated southernmost by Punjabās defining rivers, cracked land blossoms in cotton, hearty millet, and where possible, golden wheat, while the local dialect lends fluid aspirations to human movement.
āThis time, instead of coming to grovel at the police station, villagers went to the big house. Told the Jaijees this and this has happened ā¦ that theyāll kill the whole family.ā
He nods toward the black turban. Inderjit Singh Jaijee sits quietly in the courtyard by a 22-foot iron gate opening into the expanse of his freshly painted redbrick house. Here, 24 years meet again.
āAnd there was a lot of back and forth with the local police. Jaijee saab and his brother, a retired respected DIG of Police, demanded the release of the kids and women. I was kept longer.ā
He adjusts the hem of his kurta for phantom wrinkles as the furrows on his forehead recoil, reemerge, redistribute in double time.
āAfter several atrocities, I was allowed to hobble home. I could move with assistance. But my heart ā¦ my heart had begun refusing to stand back up.ā His mustache rises for an embarrassed smile.
āThen, two days later, suddenly thirty-five or thirty-six cars surround the house. And the policemen come in. I said, Sorry, I just got released the other day. My boys were just released. What could we have done since then?ā
āāNo-no-no-no, you havenāt done anyyy-thing,ā says one policeman. āI didnāt say anything to you, did I?āā
āI shook my head before he could finish. I knew the routine. They had all the power.ā
āThe other policemen erupted:
āI didnāt either ā¦ā
āI didnāt say anything either ā¦ā
āI didnāt do anything,ā
āMe neither!āā
āSo the bookkeeper of the gurdwara dies to this refrain, I thought! I watched my body limpen to their cacophony. Then, my ears stopped throbbing for a split second and I spoke up, thinking of my children: Please just tell me what I have done. ā¦ Let me get a cot for you to sit. Just sit. Letās talk this out here, please!ā
āNext thing I knew? Suddenly all the policemen are running about. Are themselves lugging cots on their heads, from our house, the neighborsā verandah. ā¦ Not barking at the villagers. Just quietly arranging the cots. My end was going to be historic after all!ā
āThen the head inspector called for the village headmen and said an agreement must be signed. The children did. I did. Thumbprints on whatever papers, thut-thut-thut-thut.ā
āAnd then the head inspector asked, āSo who beat you?āā
āI said quickly, Oh some bloody dacoits did ā¦.ā
āāBastards!ā the inspector yelled.ā
āAs I opened one eye, I realized he was cursing at his own men! He bellowed, āDonāt you know what amrit is? You have no respect for the baptized Sikh?ā Kept hurling abuses, lots of sisters-mothers too ā¦ berating the junior officers. This was beyond anything I could fathom.ā
āāWhat can you say for yourselves?ā he shouted. āAre your black tongues stuck in your lying mouths now? I should hang you all upside down! I should do to you what you did to him.āā
āThen, just like that, honey dripped from his voice: āNow, brother, pleeeease go ahead with your life, from today, no one will ever touch you ā¦.āā
āThe police are picking me up so often that my family is going hungry, I said.ā
āāGo on,ā he said, ānow live your life.āā
His kurta deflates with the curl of his spine.
āAnd I have. But that is all thanks to this man.ā
He points all his fingers left, without lifting exhausted hands or eyes.
āOtherwise, our entire family would have been eliminated. But they never looked at our family again. And I started eating in peace again. The physical wounds heal, one goes on living. But not a single life in our home would be here today, without him. This is Jaijee saabās contribution. Write about this.ā
Another old man from the village, who was the headman at the time, nods.
āThe true-hearted villagers stood in solidarity, but it took intervention from this man to rescue people. This one was a mysterious case. But, Jaijeeās work has saved ten families just in our one village. Otherwise, these homes would be barren too. Almighty has returned color to our lives, we work, till, and eat in poverty but peace.ā
All eyes turn left.
āHere, we were able to intervene in time,ā says Jaijee. āThese villagers are hearty. Through everything we have seen here.ā
āOh, big brother, what has this house not seen?ā The headmanās pathos interrupts. āThrough the white rule, through the Partition, through this.ā
While India and Pakistan celebrate 1947 as their year of independence, Punjabi grandparents speak of it as the year of BatwaraaāPartitionāwhen everything was shredded in a span of weeks, forever. The plural voices of yogis, sufis, and gurus had fed the soul of the Punjabi for centuries. While even such nourishment is insufficient to overcome opportunistic criminality, it had supported peaceful coexistence during most of the British rule of Punjab. Then the departing colonials drew a lethal line to which the nationalist leaders, itching for power, acquiesced. Punjab was partitioned to birth India and Pakistan, through the holocaust in which a million Punjabis were murdered. The blood of the Partition flows through the story of Punjab ever since.
Punjab was made a laboratory of postcolonial Indiaās nation-building project: consolidation (with new borders, 1947); provision (Green Revolution agrarian experiments, 1950sā1960s); and discipline (militarily and socially through operations, 1980sā1990s). Sikhs, 2 percent of India, first constituted 33 percent of Punjab, and then after a redrawing of borders by New Delhi, 56 percent of Punjab, with Hindus, the majority religion in India, at a close second.3 Today Punjab is 58 percent Sikh and 38 percent Hindu.4 By 1984, a pivotal year in this story, Sikhsāa faith community founded 500 years ago and often visually identified by flowing hair, beards, turbansāfound themselves socially and politically alienated.
āEach time there was another killing, we landed up to investiga...