The following is an excerpt from Ujjal Dosanjh’s new novel, The Past Is Never Dead, published by Speaking Tiger Books. The book explores the impact of casteism on family life within the Sikh community in mid-20th century England. Even as it exposes the obstinacy of caste, the novel pays tribute to the courage and tenacity of the human spirit.
‘Our ancestors would slaughter you people at the altar… Our orders were to kill you…remember that,’ said the voice, as if they’d done him a favour by letting him live.
That voice – the only voice that had spoken to, or rather at, him – had constantly hurled obscenities for what seemed like two days now. The vehicle in which they travelled sounded and felt like a small delivery van. It eventually dumped him on a gravel road – as the voice had instructed its companions.
The Past is Never Dead. Ujjal Dosanjh, Speaking Tiger Books, 2023.
After a few minutes of lying inert, counting to two hundred and not to a thousand as he had been told, he removed his blindfold and opened his eyes and realized he was several miles away from home. In the dark and cold winter night he walked through the fields, bushes and across short-cuts. His limbs were near frozen. He found the pay phone he had remembered seeing earlier once by the road he was on now and called a taxi which took him home to 2 St Leonard’s Ave, Bedford.
Once in his room, he wrapped himself in blankets, sat on his bed and looked out. Across the street, beyond the four-foot-tall brick wall, stood the deserted St John’s Railway Station and a red telephone booth near its entrance. He had used the telephone there scores of times. His ears remembered the clanking of the coins falling through the slot. The steadily falling snow appeared less than white,
discoloured. The station lampposts shone dim, much dimmer than usual. He prayed for a storm—a rainstorm, typhoon, earthquake, snowstorm, any storm. Anything! Something to wash everything away.
After a mysterious disappearance of over twenty-four hours, he had just returned home.
‘Everything all right, son? Can I come in?’ said Udho after knocking on his bedroom door, his voice muffled. Kalu heard the lump in Udho’s throat. He jumped out of bed and locked the door.
‘No, Bhapa. I’ll see you in the morning. I’ve already told you, everything’s all right,’ he said, clutching the doorknob tightly in his right hand. His head touched one of his turbans hanging by the hook on the door. His body trembled as he turned to look at the mirror on the dresser. He thrust his clenched fist into it. The mirror cracked, but no shards fell off.
‘Son, what was that noise? Everything all right?’
Kalu put his hands on his heart, afraid his father would hear its agitated pounding. He knew his father hadn’t believed a word he had said. The countless fragments of the fractured mirror reflected his naked body, dissected by the cracks. His hands moved from his heart to his head. The touch felt odd to his hands. He looked into the mirror again. It showed no hair on the face, the head and the rest of the body, except at the crotch and some by the armpits. His legs wobbled under him. His hands moved to feel his neck and its hairless small. He noticed the marks of the turban on his forehead. His facial skin that normally hid under his turban was lighter compared to the darker brown on the rest of his face. The black birth mark on the left side of his forehead stared at him; without the Sikh turban, the hair on his head and beard, the birth mark was visible, and his Chamarhood felt exposed. In the corner of his eye, he could see the solitary bulb hanging from the wire on the ceiling.
He thrust his fists into his eyes and turned away from the mirror. When he dropped his fists, his eyes opened to a portion of the wall above the headboard. Framed portraits of Ravidas and Ambedkar, deemed deities for the untouchables, looked down at him. In the dim light of the ceiling bulb, they looked anything but godlike. The garlands around their necks reeked of mortality; like nooses, they screamed death.
Kalu’s eyes turned to the small framed black-and-white photo of Udho on the bedside table. He seemed to jump out of the frame, dressed as Kalu remembered him in 1942.
Ujjal Dosanjh was born in the Jalandhar district of Punjab in 1946. He emigrated to the UK in 1964 and from there to Canada in 1968. He was Premier of British Columbia from 2000 to 2001 and a Liberal Party of Canada Member of Parliament from 2004 to 2011, including a period as Minister of Health and Minister Responsible for Multiculturalism, Human Rights and Immigration. In 2003 he was awarded the Pravasi Bharatiya Samman, the highest honour conferred by the Government of India on overseas Indians.