Punjab

Valarie is a writer, filmmaker, and lecturer who has become a brave new voice on race and religion, hate and healing in post-Sept 11th America. A third-generation Sikh American, Valarie wrote and produced the critically acclaimed documentary film Divided We Fall (2008), which chronicles hate violence in the US after Sept 11, 2001. She earned bachelor's degrees in religion and international relations at Stanford University, master's in theological studies at Harvard Divinity School, and is now a student at Yale Law School.

Editor's note: This is a slightly edited version of an article on the author's blog. http://valariekaur.blogspot.com/2008/11/papa-jis-funeral.html

Papa Ji was my mother's father. His wisdom and love made me who I am - and inspired Divided We Fall.

In November 2008, in California, I stood before his casket adorned with flowers, where his face shone regal in a red turban, and gazed out at a hundred people who had gathered in the small chapel. I never write down what I will say before an audience, but I knew that I needed to draw courage from words on paper.  I clutched the pages and spoke through tears:

My Beautiful Papa Ji,

Dr. Anand - an unholy person born in 1932 in the holy town of Nankana Sahib, central Punjab. A lawyer father, a doctor mother. Peripatetic childhood - almost gypsy style. Many schools. Many friends, ranging from a cobbler's son (poorly shod as the proverb goes) to a judge's son. MB from Glancy (now Government) Medical College Amritsar, 1958. Comet 4 to Heathrow, 1960.
Widower. Two children and their families keep an eye on him. He lives alone in a small house with a small garden. Very fat pigeons, occasional sparrows, finches green and gold drop in to the garden, pick a seed or two and fly away.

In the time before the Punjab was partitioned, I lived in various towns and cities, and holidayed in a few.

When I was a toddler and up to my school-age, eating at home was mostly vegetarian plus two or three times a week, goat meat. On special occasions, we would eat chicken (kukkar in Punjabi, murga in Urdu/Hindustani)

Sometimes, I would be taken by a lady to her house in the afternoons, where I would play with her son who was a couple of years older. The family was Muslim. You might think, meat-eaters. It is not generally known that in those  pre-WW2 days manual workers seldom had enough money to buy meat, except on special occasions. Daal Roti lunch and evening. Hence it was that Daal was known as the poor man's meat.

Jatinder Sethi was born in Lyallpur, now Faisalabad, in pre-Independence India. He finished his M.A. (English) from Delhi University in 1956, and went off to London to study Advertising in 1958. He passed his Membership Exam of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (M.I.P.A) in1965, and joined Rallis India in Bombay. Later, for over 20 years, he worked for the advertising agency Ogilvy &\; Mather. Now retired, he helps his son in his ad agency in Delhi.

Some old grannies, with lot of time on their hands, keep themselves busy by knitting, for their great grand (even yet unborn) children mojas (socks) and dastanas (gloves) using different colour leftover wool balls.

Similarly, I am trying to knit a tale of my family, especially my mother and sister Toshi (Santosh) from the left over tit-bits of talks with my brothers and sister in later life. It may seem disjointed but it will, like the grannies' mojas, come out colourful. I hope so.

It is a story of the turbulent times of India's Partition and after - late 1940s and early 1950s.  But it is NOT the usual gory tale of partition like hundreds of others.

It was the time when young Indian girls, including Hindu girls, had to wear long salwar, shirt and Chunni on her head, with long hair gut with, preferably, paranda. Yet, girls were allowed to study in co-educational colleges like Government College, Lyallpur. The concept of boy-friends was taboo, even in liberal families like mine, where girls went to Government College for FA and BA - but no boyfriends