Story: The history of a Sikh presence in Sheffield. Dal’s encounter with Bachan - a named but unknown Sikh woman who, according to the 1939 census, lived on Sheldon Road, in Sheffield.
The recovery: “’Sense of Us” is an attempt to capture the haunting of Sikh women forgotten in the archive. It also challenges the function of a census and re-stories Bachan’s invisibility in the archival records as a subterfuge, a refusal of capture, a fugitive from empire.
The Sense of Us
For weeks I was calling you in, wondering who you were
then I found your name between names, in the 1939 register:
Bachan Kaur, Born September 1914, Female, 25 years old.
Unpaid Domestic duties. Married.
You lived on Sheldon Road.
I drive past your house every week, how come I never felt you there?
(Bachan, Bachan, Bachan, your name hypnotic to my bones)
I keep looking for you in the window of that house Bachan,
looking for you wallking down Sheldon Road Bachan
imagining stepping into the traces you left behind.
It’s as if Sheffield has a memory of you Bachan Kaur.
Your name, a ghost on the page, made of words and waiting.
Waiting to be read.
Re-membered.
Made unfactual and mysterious again.
I look for you in incoming and outgoing passenger lists from Bombay to UK to Bombay
Bachan,
in naturalisation registers.
I look for in birth certificates. In Death certificates.
I look for you in the census’s either side of 1939.
You are not there?
Or not here yet?
Or left already?
Census: from the latin censere “assess” a registration of citizens and property for the purposes of taxation.
assessed & registered & taxed.
this makes sense of us in empire hands, empire lands.
us: registered property.
There is no us, in this non-cens/us Bachan.
No sense of Bachan in the 1921 & 1951 census’s.
Instead I’m incensed.
By your name Bachan Bachan Bachan.
Bones set on fire by your name, Bachan Bachan Bachan.
In/censed/us.
This makes sense of us.
Did your name burn in the 1931 census? Bachan, Bachan, Bachan
Were you here in Sheffield, then? Bachan, Bachan, Bachan
Let me light a rose incense stick in your name Bachan,
like my father used to do every morning at dawn.
Let the fragranced smoke lift your name Bachan
free you from a line in a register Bachan,
fill the Sheffield sky with the memory of you Bachan,
let us all remember your name: Bachan Bachan Bachan.
The first spoken word poem 'Sense of Us' is an attempt to capture the haunting I've felt since I found Bachan Kaur, the invisibility of Sikh women in the archive, challenging the function of a census or register and re-storying her invisibility in the records and archives as subterfuge, a refusal of capture, a fugitive from empire. Like my late mother, Bachan was/is an embodied archive, otherwise knowledges held within her being. I wanted to uplift the joy of Punjabi rural culture that she would've left, despite the hardship under the brutality of the British Empire then. Perhaps she got to sing and dance here with Sikh women visitors or if she had the chance to visit other Sikh families in other towns. I infused the atmosphere of the poem with music**, finding a track that both invokes and leaves space for the unanswered, creates an echo of her name ~ a way to celebrate Bachan's remarkable presence in Sheffield. She was and still is here.
