Or you can read Suresh’s story below:
In 1949, my father, my Dad, he left a very remote part of the Punjab and it was in the foot of the Himalayas. And dad left with a small satchel of shoe polish ’cause he was from the untouchable caste, the caste of shoemakers, the outcast. He thought he could shine people’s shoes in London and that’s what he did first.
He was chosen by Baba Falah, who was part of the Ghadar party. The Ghadar party with revolutionaries who wanted the British out of India. And they stood everybody in the village. And then he said, look at that boy there. He’s built like an ox. He will not let you down. He won’t get caught up in maya, which is materialism. He will serve you and he will take this village out of poverty. So they had this sort of premonition.
Dad always said he followed Ganga, the Ganges, and it took him up to the Thames, and he got there with his satchel. And then he’s made his way up towards Spitalfields because there was a network of Sikhs around 1949 who were sleeping in the streets of Aldgate and Spitalfields. Dad made his way up to Campendown Street at the back of Aldgate. And he squatted there with his friend Garima.
Then he made himself further up north towards Spitalfields’s market. The fruit and produce fell on the floor and dad would pick it up and feed themselves. But then Garima and Dad bought this beautiful house in Princess Street off a Jewish fervour for a very small amount. You could buy the house by keys then. And everybody said, oh, Joginder Singh is being sent by the Ghadar party. And now he’s copped out. He’s bought this big, big house. But dad had over 50 people living in the house.
Vagabonds was asleep there. They served the poor to him. His Sikhi was very important, the teachings of Guru Nanak ji, and dad brought that with him. He would shine shoes at Liverpool Street, come back, we would bring people in, he would shave them in the yard and he would burn the hair and the, the hair would like sort of click, click, click. There were like sparklers going off the fleas and the hair.
My mom always used to make the hot dahl and roti for all the vagabonds on a Tuesday and a Thursday was my duty to take it to the streets of Spitalfields. And I loved it. And I had this beautiful lady called Lil, she was a very elderly woman, but she lived in a cardboard box under Tower Bridge. And my mother always, always said, mom always said, you never ever ask any question, you just do your sewa, that’s selfless service, and I would give Lil her roti and her dahl and she would smile at me. She’d go, you right Suresh and I’m going, I’m alright, Lil.
Dad sacrificed so much because when he first came, he had his turban and his Sikh beard. But they said that dad couldn’t get a job, the network, they said, we know how you can get a job. So they sent him all the way to Glasgow. He found this man that did this ritual. So he took my dad seven meter turban off and he shaved my father’s hair and he shaved my father’s beard and my father wept. But he said, now my Sikhi is within me.
My mother took me to the GP, Dr. Gottlieb in Petticoat Lane. He said, Suresh, you look very sad. He said to mum, just wait outside a minute. I want to talk to Suresh. And I cried. I said, doctor, I’ve got long hair and I feel like I’m going to get bullied ’cause I’ve got a big bop on my head. I cut his hair.
Mum took me back to our house, a beautiful yard at the back and dad recited him from the Guru Granth Sahib. Why Guru? Guru? He sat me in the yard and he cut my hair off and I could see he was weeping because I feel that it reminded him of when his hair was cut off. Mum sort of went around and she put it all in a a brown paper bag and she kept that bag in the house for a year or so. And one day she took me to Tower Bridge and she took the bag out of her handbag. It was my hair, and she chucked it over the parapet of Tower Bridge. And she said aage chaldiye, in Punjabi, that means let’s move on.
My father had this beautiful record player that he’d bought from the flea market in Brick Lane and used to sit in our kitchen and we used to play 78s. Dad had bought back from the Punjab, but then Whitechapel Library had a library and I started getting albums out. Originally first, like Deep Purple, Led Zeppelin, all the kind of like heavy metal stuff. But then the Sex Pistols started coming out and one day I was playing the Pistols and I said, mum, I want my nose pierced. So while my mum was making roti, chapati, there’s sort of an unleavened plate, she moved it from a gas from my e-one cooker and she got a needle and she heated it over the gas flame. And then she just pierced my nose.
My dad allowed me to be me. And because he allowed me to be me, I saw so much of the world of music of art.
Later on, I went on to study architecture because I was absorbed in all the time. My father couldn’t read and write. I ended up at Russell Group University studying architecture at the Bartlett and I love my father for it.
I wrote a book on Dad because it is a love story to Dad: Memoirs of a Cockney Sikh. And I love it. It’s blue deposited in the British library forever because it’s a story of an untouchable, a story of a person who came, who loved.
I’ve been walking the streets of East London all my life. If it wasn’t for my father, I wouldn’t be here. I wouldn’t have seen Spitalfields, I wouldn’t have seen Brick Lane, I wouldn’t be who I am.
