Point of Continuum

‘... by the time the British Nationality Act 1948 reached the statute book, South Asian migrants, as British subjects, had already been in the Sheffield area for thirty years...1948 was not a distinct historical turning point in British migration history. Rather, it may have been a point on a continuum that began during the First World War...’ David Holland, 'The Social Networks of South Asian Migrants in the Sheffield Area During the Early Twentieth Century’, Past and Present.

Dear Bachan, February 2024. Sheffield.

I felt you arrive between the night and a thin sleep. Arriving for the dig. I couldn’t
hear your name yet. Even so, you are my point of continuum. I’ll start where I stand
In my city of ghosts. And I’ll dig. Dig up a legend that weights me with firsts:

My dad, Mr Kular: First Sikh man to settle in Sheffield in 1959?

I’m from a long line of diggers too, from 9000 miles and lifetimes away like you. Punjabi farmers ~ women and men who dug the earth with big-palmed hands and plough, turning soil / turning stories, scything wheat / rolling atta with haldi-stained fingers. Women singing boli / dancing gidha. And here I am in Sheffield, turning archived pages with my fingertips, digging with the golden point of my fountain pen. To disprove a legend. That we weren’t the firsts and we won’t be the lasts.

I dig. I find a name, your name – Bachan Kaur – on the 1939 register.
You’re married. You’re 25 years old. You do ‘unpaid domestic duties’:

mop floor / make love / dictate letters home
clean hearth / make haste / make dreams
set fire / make spam sabji / dream of home
hand-wash clothes / make roti / make sleep
wring & dry by fireside / light incense / cry quietly
iron turbans / read prayers / make sleeplessness
make beds / dastar bandi / make protection
grind spices / make yoghurt / make friends
wash sheets / sew clothes / make belonging

You’re an ancestral thread running across continents and times. 85 years later I’m
being pulled towards you. Pulling you towards me. Your name means: 1) Word 2)
Precious 3) Instruction. Bachan Kaur. A precious word. A hidden instruction in the
archives?

I’ll call you the word princess, Bachan. Did you know that you’ll never end? I once
saw a photo of a ‘no.3 Jat Sikh woman of the Punjab spinning cotton’. My mother
told me she used to spin too before she arrived here alone in 1959, twenty years
after your name appeared in a register. I wonder what type of Indian woman you
were according to the (un)classifications of the British Empire?

Dear Dalbinder,

I can feel you pulling me from the page.
I was the type of woman who spun threads of magic ~ wove them with refusal and star
knowledge ~ in to cotton cloth. See that blossom-pink chunni your mother wears around
her head? The one that makes her kohl-eyes big and wondering. Like her, I wrapped one
around my black hair too. My veil of strength, resilience and home ~ I left the scent of
amla and faraway wherever I went from Jalandhar to London Road to elsewhere. See that
dastar your father wears, fresh-fresh arrived in 1954, his sister blessed this cloth with
prayers for his unknown destiny waiting.

Dalbinder, I’m that rare type of ‘non-elite’ woman who made it here before any of you.
They called me illiterate even though I hold all the wedding songs, recipes for a headache
and muscle spasm and stomach pain and make dhals and sabji’s and sweet meats from my
memory. I know all the steps to gidha ~ clapping and dancing myself breathless ~
responding to the call. I know when to plant corn, how to make buffalo milk flow at dawn,
how to make butter and paneer and yoghurt. I’m that rare type of woman educated by folk
and lore: an archive of otherwise. They can destroy the books. They can’t destroy what was
passed into my blood.

Dalbinder, Sheffield was this word my lips couldn't quite make, a place where those who
ruled us lived, a place that could lose us amidst it’s thick smoke. A word that a man in our
village had gone to work in. Made pesa like we’d never seen. A week by steam-train from
Jalandhar to Bombay. Six weeks by boat to Southampton. Sheffield. Sheffield. Sheffield.
Will I ever see home again?

Dalbinder, look ~ I’m a woman who refused to conform to type. Let me be your precious
word now. Your precious instructions. Hold me in your heart like your Sheffield Nanaji,
bheti. I felt you all too, a glimmer in the Sheffield nightsky, burning through smog like
stars waiting to arrive. I span a thread across the continents to make a throughline to you.

Sowaran, Rishpal, Dalbinder, your names burning in my heart.
Did you know how I used to invoke your names too? Wishing you were here.