The thirty-minute flight from Srinagar to Jammu makes an utter mockery of my Hannibal-like ascent in the Sumo Jeep. The seat belt signs are extinguished and then illuminated again within minutes; we barely make it to 30,000 feet. We land without song and dance. I hail an auto rickshaw and cross town through traffic to the railway station, the same railway station I alighted at a few days before. I pass by the army of Sumos waiting to take luckless travellers on an eight-hour adventure. I pass the water supply where my yellow-robed, white-bearded, Adidas-clad holy man had prayed and shouted. I find myself with a couple of hours to kill before the train to Amritsar.
The first thing I notice is the warmth. The temperature is considerably higher than in Srinagar. Srinagar was cold in a way people generally do not associate with India. November sees temperature fluctuate between two or three Celsius and the low teens; it's never warm. At night, temperatures stray below freezing. In Jammu the sun is out and mid-twenties warmth allows my bones to gradually thaw out. I wander up the hill from the Sumos, up towards the station itself, up past the coaches and the urinating men.
No matter where I go in the world, there will be few more scintillating sights, few more vibrant, few more mesmeric than a platform in an Indian railway station. There is always something to watch, always something to do, regardless of the time of day. As I drink a lovely sweet five rupee cup of tea I see hordes of men eating delicious-looking food. Inevitably I feel hungry. It is lunchtime. But eating at a train station would be reckless, almost as reckless as eating rajmah chawal in Peeda.
I sit down at the station canteen, a surprisingly light and airy room with a handful of tables lost in the vast space. A motley crew of insolent men of varying ages mans the servery: no table service. I read the menu on a very retro seventies-style information board where each white plastic letter of each word of each dish is painstakingly pushed into the perforated plastic board. No doubt this is the task that has caused the men behind the counter to become so insolent. They needn't have bothered with the information board since the first three dishes I ask for are not available. No muttar paneer; no aloo muttar and no aubergine. I then inherit their collective insolence and ask what they do have. There is a single answer: aloo channa. Chick pea and potato curry. Sounds good.
Eighteen rupees later I am handed a steel tray with six chapattis, a bowl of potatoes and chick peas, and dollops of the ubiquitous mango and chilli pickles. This was the comfort food of my childhood. But this dish before me is not quite the one I am used to. Not by some way. When I say it is a bowl of potato and chick pea curry, let me be clear. There is a lovely watery brown gravy with soft white potatoes and perhaps half a dozen chick peas secreting themselves within the dish. Food is all about balance. There needs to be the right amount of each component to make a dish work. The mash to mince ratio in shepherd's pie; the pasta to sauce ratio in spaghetti bolognaise; the chick pea to potato ratio in aloo channa. Here there are simply not enough chick peas to justify their existence. It feels wrong, unbalanced. It reminds me of watching the fisherman in Bombay eating. So poor are they, they fill their plates with rice, a cheap and filling ingredient. Beside the rice they place the tiniest amount of flame-red prawn pickle. The bland rice and the fiery pickle combine to create a mouthful of flavour, but the pickle is not cheap, so they ration it tightly and have learnt to make the tiniest amount of pickle spread to the most amount of rice. I have often watched them eat and wondered how they would react to being given more pickle. Would they enjoy the meal more? Or are the proportions they have grown up with, the tiniest dollop of pickle upon the plateful of rice, exactly right for them? All I can tell you is that my handful of chickpeas are by no means the right proportion for me. I feel cheated. Cheated and still hungry.
I return to the platform for my second cup of hot sweet tea. This is the beauty of Indian railway tea. It's intense, like so much of India. There is nothing across this vast country that could ever be described as bland. Every experience, every sensory moment is intense, either in a good way or a bad way. From the beauty of the landscapes, to the sadness of the poverty, everything is heightened. Much like the tea. The tea at Indian railway stations comes in small cups. It is dark brown, very sweet and highly spiced. Any more than a small cup would be too much. But delicious though the tea is, it is still only tea, and there is a definite gap in my stomach, a gap that ought to have been filled by chick peas. I search the platform for sustenance and settle on the ubiquitous banana.
No sooner have I consumed the banana than the train arrives, the Muri Express; train number B102. I am in coach B looking for berth 20. I find myself thanking Rovi, again. He took it upon himself to personally sort out all my train bookings. Where would I be without him? Probably riding on the roof of the train ...
In Britain a four-hour train journey is about as long a journey as I would be comfortable to undertake: the National Express train from Kings Cross to Edinburgh is four and half hours, and a lovely trip it is too when not hampered by rail works or 'the wrong type of snow'. In India a four-hour train ride is a short journey. It is astonishing how quickly my mindset changes and I too view the four-hour journey from Jammu to Amritsar as a brief encounter. The train will head from Amritsar to Delhi and onward to Tata Nagar.
Tata Nagar is one of those places you hear about often and you see it printed lots but never actually go to. It is dropped into conversation and alluded to; someone always has a distant relative in Tata Nagar, or knows someone who has been to Tata Nagar. But no one has actually been there themselves; it's like Carnwadric. When I was boy Bishopbriggs was affectionately known as Spam Valley because all the 1960s Barratt Houses looked a bit like spam tins, lined up neatly in rows.
Bishopbriggs was just another place to grow up, if a little soulless. The only problem was that my school was on the Southside of town in Langside. A fee-paying Jesuit school: only the best for the children of immigrants. The two worlds of Bishopbriggs and Langside couldn't have been more different. The sandstone supremacy of the Southside contrasted sharply with the matter-of-fact modernity of Bishopbriggs. And not only was there such a sharp conceptual distance between the places, there was also a very clear geographical distance. It was two bus rides from school to home, a journey I occasionally had to make solo when my elder brother was off sick. An eight-year-old boy travelling twelve miles across a city on his own: it would never happen today.
In the mornings Mum drove us to school. It was on the way home that buses became part of our lives. The first bus I took from my school in Langside into town was the 45; the legendary 45. The bus took me all the way through town and as far as Colston. Colston was remarkable insofar as it was the point where the city ended and the suburbs started: it was where the fares increased on buses and taxis. The buses that took us into town came from Carnwadric, a suburb in south Glasgow. If I took the bus the other way, towards Langside, I took the 45 to Carnwadric. I lived in Glasgow up until the age of twenty-two. I still have very strong links with the city. My parents live there, my brother and his family live there, I work there and I still call it home. I have travelled the city, but have never in all these years ever been to Carnwadric or met anyone who comes from Carnwadric, or can conclusively prove that Carnwadric exists. Much like Tata Nagar.
The train from Jammu soon fills up. A family decamp in the berth next door, their luggage spilling around the corner. Their daughter, a sweet little girl sporting the Frenchest of bobs, fills her face with masala dosa, a lentil pancake filled with a delicious spiced potato mix. She uses the wide-topped Tupperware dish as a plate and scoops mouthfuls of the potato accompaniment with her already messy fingers. Full-mouthed, she talks incessantly, pausing only to refill herself. She can barely contain her excitement at the journey ahead. We have yet to set off and she has dispensed with her first course and is moving onto her next: samosa. Her legs swing involuntarily, inches above the carriage floor. She is happy. Food does that to you. As the train pulls away from Jammu the little girl tears into pudding.
I doze, I sleep, I sleep, I doze. The train rocks forward and back, backward and forward, in and out of progressively smaller stations, stopping, starting and stopping again. I have no idea how far we are from my destination but get the distinct feeling that we are late. We duly arrive at Amritsar, a massive station, sprawling in every direction.
I would like to be able to tell you how beautiful Amritsar is, how clean and well constructed is the spiritual home of the Sikhs. I would like to tell you that; but I can't. Amritsar, forgive me, is a shit hole. It's horrible. The Golden Temple (Darbar Sahib) is utterly beautiful, possibly the most peaceful Notice on the train from Jammu to Amritsar TRAVELLING ON ROOFTOP AND FOOTBOARD.
ARE PUNISHABLE WITH IMPRISONMENT FOR.
THREE MONTHS OR FINE UP TO 500 RUPEES.
OR BOTH.
IT CAN ALSO BE DANGEROUS TO HEALTH.
Ferozepure is about 120km from Amritsar. I would like to tell you that Ferozepure is a beautiful city, clean, well constructed, full of stylish architecture and cultural delights. But that would be an unequivocal lie. Ferozepure is also a shit hole. I have chosen to withhold this critical piece of information from you so far, reader, for fear that it may impact on my romantic journey home. But, as I near the place I call home in India, there's no dressing it up or putting a town-planning spin on it. There is a medieval quality to the place: tall buildings, narrow alleyways, the dirt and detritus of life everywhere. As I say, it is a shit hole. But I love this shit hole. It was where my father and grandfather were born. It has given me my most vibrant memories of childhood, those few snatched weeks during summer and Christmas holidays.
I feel I ought to qualify my rather damning description of Ferozepure. Ferozepure used to be a great city, almost princely. Hundreds of years ago the great River Sutlej ran through its heart, bringing with it all the prosperity and trade rivers bring. Moti Bazaar translates as 'Pearl Market' and twenty yards from our front door on the left, under the arch just past the sweet shop is Heera Mundi, 'Diamond Market'. Ferozepure was clearly the place to be in the fifteen and sixteen hundreds. In the times of the Raj Ferozepure was similarly of great prominence and significance, lying as it did in the heart of the river supply of the state. It had the largest canal headworks in the north of India. This proved invaluable in the irrigation of crops and the Punjab is still to this day the most agricultural of all Indian states, providing the majority of fruit, vegetables and wheat to the rest of the nation, not to mention hydro-electricity from its many powerful rivers.*Can you tell I'm proud?
It is into Ferozepure that I am now heading. Despite the numerous bus and coach services, my uncle has insisted on driving the two and a half hours to pick me up. But that's Billu for you; all six foot five inches of him. Barinder Singh Kohli, known to all and sundry as Billu, or in my case Billu Chachaji.
In the Punjabi family system, which is patriarchal, each relative on your father's side is given a distinct name to describe where they fit in the family hierarchy. The extended family system is driven by hierarchy and status; there's a certain feudal quality to it which is perhaps why the concept is struggling to survive in these more 'egalitarian' times. (It's worth noting that since women are deemed to have left their family to join their husband's family upon marriage, all your father's sisters are Pooas Pooas, regardless of age and status.) Chachas Chachas are the younger brothers of your father; are the younger brothers of your father; thaias thaias are older brothers of your father. Since my dad is the eldest I am are older brothers of your father. Since my dad is the eldest I am thaia thaia-poor but chacha chacha-rich. I have the farmer Billu in Ferozepure and the renegade Channi in Los Angeles, the ex-army officer who bought the American dream but forgot to keep the receipt. They are my chachas chachas and I, for my sins, am their and I, for my sins, am their pathija pathija. The chacha/pathija chacha/pathija axis is regarded as an historically close relationship in Punjabi culture. This may be explained by the fact that in olden times when families were much larger, perhaps ten or twelve siblings, children of the older brothers found themselves much closer in age to their parents' younger brothers. Whatever the social reasoning my Billu Chacha and I are very close. axis is regarded as an historically close relationship in Punjabi culture. This may be explained by the fact that in olden times when families were much larger, perhaps ten or twelve siblings, children of the older brothers found themselves much closer in age to their parents' younger brothers. Whatever the social reasoning my Billu Chacha and I are very close.
The Sikhs have long been regarded as a martial race, having been borne out of the need to protect the peace-loving, cow-worshipping, karma-accepting Hindu majority from the all-conquering, architecture-loving, Islam-promoting Moghul armies that spread through Persia into the north of India. In their wake they converted a plethora of new Muslims, often with the use of their quirkily curved swords. There is one crucial difference between Hindus and Muslims: you can become a Muslim in your own lifetime; one simple act of conversion, a belief and love of the Koran and a long moustache-less beard and you are well on your way to Islamic salvation. This is a benefit not enjoyed by the Hindus. They believe in the whole circle of life thing, dharma dharma. You are in a cycle of existence that cannot be broken, your behaviour in your last life affects your status in the next and so on. Therefore you cannot become a Hindu: hence the lack of evangelical Hindus with tambourines and guitars.
Billu is a fine example of a warrior Sikh. Not only is he almost six foot five, he is long-limbed, broad-shouldered and charismatically handsome. Add to that his lugubrious voice, his intensely brown eyes and his love of stirring rhetoric and you have a potential military leader on your hands; he's almost Shakespearian. He has lived his life entirely in Ferozepure, running our land and maintaining the family house. While his sisters married and left for Canada, Malaysia and the UK and his brothers got educated or joined the army, Billu was a constant in an ever-changing world. And while he may not be formally educated, there is little he doesn't know. His knowledge of world affairs, politics and life are self-taught, and consequently his opinions are refreshing in their candour.
A hug and a handshake and then we are off on our way. It's a two and a half hour drive across one of India's most famous highways. The GT Road is not simply a road, it is an institution, a symbol of the Punjab itself. Songs have been sung about it, stories told about it. The Grand Trunk Road stretches across the state delivering and receiving produce and people all through the day and night.
Billu asks me where I want to stop on the way for tea. As if I would know. He tells me about a favourite place of my parents, Hari ka Pathan. There's a little shack by the roadside that makes fresh fish pakoras; as you know, my mum loves fish pakoras. It seems no time at all since my mum-inspired Srinagar fishcooking adventure. We are halfway home and Billu suggests we stop there for a snack before heading home for dinner. My Billu Chacha can speak English but does so rarely. He prefers the precision, the poetry of his native tongue and talks to me in mellifluous Punjabi tones. The time passes quickly and we find ourselves in Hari ki Pathan. There is a clutch of shops, a few lights and lots of barking dogs.
The shack is nondescript, which, in my experience of Indian street food, augurs well for the quality of the fare. The recently painted hoarding informs us that the shop belongs to Nimmu and Sonu. I assume either Nimmu or Sonu is the white-turbaned man who welcomes us in. My chacha chacha asks what fish are available and Nimmu/Sonu takes us over to a large polystyrene box full of freshly caught fish on ice. There's a large fish I don't recognise and a couple of glistening silver catfish. My uncle looks at me; I look blankly back. Billu asks for the catfish. asks what fish are available and Nimmu/Sonu takes us over to a large polystyrene box full of freshly caught fish on ice. There's a large fish I don't recognise and a couple of glistening silver catfish. My uncle looks at me; I look blankly back. Billu asks for the catfish.
Nimmu/Sonu instructs one of the gang of young kids hanging around to grab the catfish. The kids burst into life. A boy of about twelve sets the light under the karahi karahi, heating the oil for the eventual frying. Another younger boy guts and heads the fish with no little expertise. A third boy opens our beers and another, a study in pre-teenage surliness, brings us glasses and napkins.
Inside the shack the walls are white and plain but are absolutely dominated by Pepsi branding which emblazons three of the four walls. In the great battle of the multinational colas in the late 1990s Coca-Cola lost; India is a Pepsi territory. The only wall clear of the drinks company's red, white and blue logo is given over to a shrine (another sort of marketing, I suppose). A couple of Hindu gods sit by an image of the Sikh gurus; I have a deep admiration for that sort of religious bet-hedging.
Nimmu/Sonu grabs a couple of large scary-looking knives; these are like regulation cleavers except on the top side of the blade, at the furthest most point, the steel twists up and back round, hook-like. Perhaps this is for ease of hanging, or perhaps it is to enable the swift and successful gouging of an adversary's eye in the final throes of bloody hand-to-hand combat ...
Nimmu/Sonu starts sharpening the knives against each other, making the knives seem even scarier and creating a scary sound. I catch his eye. I'm even more scared. He smiles. I'm not sure that I want to smile back. Deftly he fillets the fish and divides the fillets up into bite-size pieces. A dip in gram flour, salt and pepper followed by a few minutes in the hot oil. Served up on the ubiquitous steel plate with a half lemon slice and some chutney, a blend of mint, coriander and tamarind. It is absolutely divine. The fish has steamed beautifully within the thin batter and the spicy chutney compliments the succulent fish.
We sit and eat our second plate of deep-fried fish and drink our Thunderbolt Super Strong lager beer. It could be Friday night in Glasgow instead of Sunday night in Punjab. All we need is a fist fight and a glassing ....
The last hour or so back to Ferozepure is testing. Darkness hasn't so much fallen as crashed, and the empty road presents unexpected hazards; an odd, lone pedestrian, a drunken motorcyclist and an abandoned cart. Thankfully none of these offer any more than a passing difficulty and we are soon in Greater Ferozepure. I have been travelling for weeks and feel ready for the welcome of home. Home: that word again. I can feel the end of my journey almost upon me. Almost.
*The word Punjab itself means 'five rivers'.
11.
WHERE THE HEART IS.
My name is Hardeep Singh Kohli and I am the grandson of the late Harbans Singh Kohli. And I am home.
I am aware that when I refer to India as home it may seem a little contradictory, given my cast-iron British credentials and the well-documented love of my Scottishness. But within me somewhere still stirs the son of Punjabi soil. As we draw up to my grandfather's house at 22 Moti Bazaar I belong nowhere but in this moment, in this place.
I find it difficult to be objective about Ferozepure. I have never properly lived here, spending a few summers as a child, followed by a handful of trips as an adult, yet this place means so much to me. I get excited if, on those rarest of occasions, I meet someone who comes from Ferozepure. I feel we are kith and kin, instantly bonded. I feel the same way when in the big smoke of London I meet someone from Glasgow. I even smile when I overhear the accent on the tube in London. But my history with Glasgow is my my history with Glasgow. My history with Ferozepure stretches back for generations; it is a shared history. But when I talk about Ferozepure it still feels like home. history with Glasgow. My history with Ferozepure stretches back for generations; it is a shared history. But when I talk about Ferozepure it still feels like home.
My Billu Chacha Chacha loves Ferozepure. For him it is a paradise of sorts. Every street has a myriad of shops and kiosks; almost every third shop is food related, be it snacks and starters, loves Ferozepure. For him it is a paradise of sorts. Every street has a myriad of shops and kiosks; almost every third shop is food related, be it snacks and starters, dhaba dhaba-type cafes or, beloved of Indians, the sweet shops. Food is a very large part of the retail experience in Ferozepure and wherever you look someone is about to eat, is in the throes of eating or has just finished eating. It's certainly a vibrant city. And I suppose that's why Billu loves it.
Our farmlands, an hour or so away from the city, border Pakistan. During the conflict of the 1990s, when India and Pakistan were effectively at war over the Line of Control in Kashmir, the Indian government requisitioned our farmlands and filled the ground full of mines in the hope that it would prevent any Pakistani advance into India. In best keeping with the incompetence of Indian bureaucracy the plans that specified where the mines were placed were 'mislaid'. For years the land was untillable and unusable, remaining dormant while officialdom scratched around for the plans they couldn't locate. Admittedly compensation was offered, but nothing happens quickly in India, nothing except incompetence. For a year my uncle and his family had to survive without income. This he was able to do thanks to the trust and support of local businessmen who were only too happy to defer payment to a later date. Maybe that's why he loves this city.
'Don't you want to know why I'm here?' I ask Billu, his handsome face a picture of peace.
'No. You're here. You're home. That's enough for me.' He doesn't mean what he says in any romantic way. He is the most matter-of-fact man I know. When he says that I am home, that is exactly where I am.
'What do you need to do?' he asks.
'Buy some turbans,' I reply. 'And I need to cook.'
'Fine.'
When Billu says things are fine they invariably are just that. Fine.
As we walk the bazaar and alleys Billu tells me that everything he wants is no more than 500 yards from his front door. This is easily verifiable since he has taken me 300 yards around the corner, past Heera Mundi, to buy some turbans. I love coming to Ferozepure to buy turbans. I love wearing turbans in Ferozepure. It is one of the few instances in life when I am not the only man wandering about with eight yards of pink fabric wrapped skilfully around his head. In Britain the younger Sikh population, what there is of it, tries hard not to draw attention to itself. They wear small sleek black turbans that almost belie the very nature of the turban itself. There is no pride in their turban-wearing. And who can blame them? It wasn't easy growing up in Glasgow in the 1980s wearing a turban; and, for many, even contemporary Britain can be a little unforgiving of the turban. But here in the Sikh heartlands I am joined by tens, maybe hundreds of thousands of other turban-wearing Sikhs who embrace whole-heartedly and whole-headedly the panoply of possibility when it comes to turban colour.
There are four turban shops, each side by side. They have narrow fronts but stretch cavernously away from the dusty squalor of the road. They sell nothing but turbans, which for me is ideal. The shop I favour is no more than a metre and a half wide, more than half of which space is given over to the shelving and the counter which runs the entire length of the shop, perhaps five maybe even six metres in total. Behind the counter, floor to ceiling, are lengths of turban material. Every colour imaginable, and a few that have yet to be given names, grace the shelves behind the industrious workers. The narrow counter itself is six deep in a spectrum of fabrics, all of which have been unfurled and inspected, in the hope of a prospective purchase.
My style of turban is commonly known as the Jat style. There are myriad turban types and variations, but I like to think the Jat style is the precursor to all others, given that the Jats are the farming class, the very roots of the Sikh religion: it all started with us. The Jat style is characterised by its size. It is not a turban for the faint-hearted. Yard wide fabric is purchased to the desired length, a precise art that can make or break the turban size itself. In my case it is eight and half yards exactly. Not eight and a quarter and certainly not eighteen inches short of nine yards. Exactly eight and a half yards. The fabric is then 'doubled', which involves cutting it in half to give two lengths of four and a quarter yards each. Still with me? These are then sewn together along their length giving a final turban material of two yards in width and four and a quarter yards in length. It's a truly beautiful thing.
I have many, many turbans. I am often asked how many, a question to which I don't have a definitive answer; I normally reply that I have at least eight pink turbans. One can surmise the extent of the remainder of my collection based on that statistic alone. Today I am after another subtly different pink turban, as well as a dramatic black, an interesting blue, an autumnal cream and one other colour yet to be decided. I ask for a particular shade of turban and an old bespectacled man with two-day-old stubble, and body odour to match, climbs an unsafe-looking ladder (one that vies with him in the age stakes). He unfurls, flag-like, each roll of material. In the past I have found the choice a little overwhelming, and I have found myself leaving with turbans that would look great on the head of a Punjabi farm hand 50km south of Amritsar but work significantly less well on Sauchiehall Street on a wet Wednesday afternoon when you're looking for change to pay for parking.
My grandfather and my father bought their turbans from this shop, and to this day my chacha chacha has his turban needs satisfied by the selfsame vendor. There's something very comforting about being part of history, no matter how small or significant that history may be. But for me, this modest little turban shop, this palace of life, this kiosk of colour, is a direct and tangible link between my Sikh past and my Scottish future. My turban is very much part of who I am. Growing up in Glasgow in the eighties and nineties, to be a fat kid with glasses and a turban was to invite ridicule and abuse. I suffered the slings and arrows of that outrageous warfare as I sought to find a place for myself in society. I had all sorts of identity crises. At one point I wanted to convert to Catholicism. Absurd I know, to move from a groovy, young guilt-free religion like Sikhism into the teeth of an ancient, guilt-laden religion full of self fl agellation and self-doubt. has his turban needs satisfied by the selfsame vendor. There's something very comforting about being part of history, no matter how small or significant that history may be. But for me, this modest little turban shop, this palace of life, this kiosk of colour, is a direct and tangible link between my Sikh past and my Scottish future. My turban is very much part of who I am. Growing up in Glasgow in the eighties and nineties, to be a fat kid with glasses and a turban was to invite ridicule and abuse. I suffered the slings and arrows of that outrageous warfare as I sought to find a place for myself in society. I had all sorts of identity crises. At one point I wanted to convert to Catholicism. Absurd I know, to move from a groovy, young guilt-free religion like Sikhism into the teeth of an ancient, guilt-laden religion full of self fl agellation and self-doubt.
It was a struggle to work out who I was in Glasgow. A real struggle. I was so very desperate to be accepted as Glaswegian, as Scottish. I was fed up of being asked where I came from and the questioner not being happy with my response of 'Bishopbriggs'. I was a brown-skinned child: I couldn't possibly come from Glasgow. Justifying yourself gets tiring.
Moving to London helped, since no one seems to come from London and therefore everyone is an outsider. This must be annoying for those increasingly few native Londoners who feel so marginalised within their city of birth. I may have been born in London but it means nothing to me; I never really lived there as a child. Neither have I ever lived in Ferozepure, but it feels very different.
Back at 22 Moti Bazaar I survey the colour choices of my turbans. I wonder how many turbans have similarly been surveyed by my father and my grandfather. I wish my father were here. I have wished for him at various points on this quest. I would have loved to be with him in Kovalam as I looked out over the Arabian Sea. He would have enjoyed the sun setting over the beach at Mamallapuram. He would have marvelled at Bangalore. I could have done with his presence on the train from Bombay to Delhi. Delhi is always much more exciting with my dad around. And I have always wanted to go to the Kashmir Valley with him as an adult. But more than ever I wish he was in Ferozepure with me now, to see how this journey has changed me. I think he might be a little bit proud. He would never admit as much, but his eyes would give him away.
And I would like him to be here tonight when I cook my final meal. Of all the meals in my life I've looked forward to cooking and eating, I don't think I've ever looked forward to cooking and eating a meal more than this. To say I've waited a lifetime would seem appropriate. But perhaps it is more than one lifetime that I've waited. I think about the life of my father, I think about the life of my grandfather. Perhaps I've waited three lifetimes to eat this meal.
No one tells you how to feel about your ancestry. There's no manual, no almanac that guides you through the complexity of belonging. Who decides where I belong? My parents? Well, if you ask my mum, she would probably regret that her sons have grown up without enough Indian and Punjabi culture. The fact that I am her only son who speaks anything like fluent Punjabi I know disappoints her. My father is a little more circumspect in his opinion. I am sure he feels a tad disappointed that we have not adopted more of our Punjabi roots, but he is a citizen of the world and he seems to have embraced the fact that his kids have rooted so firmly in the land of their birth: Britain.
All these thoughts, and all the thoughts I have had on this quest are bouncing around inside my head. What could be more Punjabi than a Sikh man buying turbans in the Punjab? But this Sikh man has realised through his travels from south to north India that he is more British than he ever knew. If only the natives of Ferozepure could share the great irony of my situation: I grew up looking Indian in Glasgow, attempting to convince others that I was British, whilst working out who I really was; and here I am in my grandfather's town, with turbans purchased from my grandfather's turban maker, feeling very British on the inside and trying to come to terms with looking Indian on the outside, having worked out exactly what I am. From the initial, uncertain steps in Kovalam, through the tranquil self-realisation of Mamallapuram, the confusion of Mysore, the debacle of Bangalore, the clarity of Goa, the misadventure of Bombay, the triumph of Delhi and the conclusion of Srinagar. What a journey ...
It is evening in my grandfather's house. It would be an understatement to say that I am aware of a certain pressure as I prepare to cook goat curry, knowing that it is a tradition that has spanned decades in this house, in this family. In terms of my lineage, my father, my grandfather and I share a distinct trait: we all love to cook meat. My grandfather would only ever cook meat or chicken, and I have had to tutor myself in the ways of the vegetarian world, slightly against my better judgement. The residual notion that a meal without meat isn't really a meal will stay with me until the day I die, probably a premature death brought on by the consumption of too much meat.
It's quieter than usual in Ferozepure this evening. I stand in the tiny kitchen chopping onions and heating oil, waiting to taste my own goat curry. It seems right that having ventured to bring a little taste of Britain to all of India, I should finish with a flourish and enjoy a little bit of India in that place I call home. The aroma of Indian onions frying in Indian oil combined with Indian spices is the smell of India yet also the smell of growing up in Glasgow. For the first time in my life these are not two different places but the same unified space; and that space is within me. The only sound I can hear now is the sound of frying and the sound of my own heart beating within my chest. I can barely imagine my father standing in this kitchen, cooking the same dish, but I know he did; and I know that my grandfather did. Dinner is ready. All I have left to do is garnish with freshly chopped coriander and eat.
I have worked out where home is. Home is where I want it to be. Glasgow, London or within these four walls at 22 Moti Bazaar, Ferozepure. My journey has seen me travel a subcontinent as a stranger, exploring lives I didn't even know existed. Arzooman; Nagamuthu; Suresh; new people and new experiences. My attempt to bring with me the food of the land of my birth soon became secondary to the search for who I am and how I feel about myself. It is a quest that is just beginning rather than ending.
We sit in the courtyard, my uncle, my cousin and I. The stars twinkle above as we silently eat curried goat with chapattis. There are no words to explain how this feels; there are no words to convey the continuity of history that I have become part of. I only wish my father and my grandfather were here to join me; British me; Indian me; British Indian me; Indian British me. Just me. My name is Hardeep Singh Kohli and I have finally arrived home.