Writing to Remember

The gifts in the stories we try to forget

I started writing about my family because I was starting to forget them. I was starting to forget my mother tongue, Punjabi. I was starting to forget my mum’s delicious cooking. I had stopped listening to my dad’s Bollywood records because it hurt too much to play them. It had become easier to try to forget my family. But along with them had gone so much of what made me who I am and the Punjabi culture I was once so rooted in, as a child in Southall.

I started writing to remember, I wanted to keep alive the stories my dad had told me of Punjab, of his childhood, our village, partition, Sikhism and life as a young boy arriving in England. Of my grandfather, a soldier in the British Indian army who had been a prisoner of war and his courageous decision to bring his sons to England after his release. Of my childhood memories of running through the monsoon storms with my cousins, one moment playing in the heat then suddenly hit with enormous, warm, raindrops bursting on our skin.

I wrote to remember and much like now it was emotional work. Remembering, what my body had worked so hard to forget for my own survival. But it felt necessary that I did, because this is also who I am. I am not only the part of myself that I lost them for.

At first I documented the stories my dad had passed down to me. He is a skilled storyteller because this is how we passed our stories on, by verbally sharing them. Our caste are not entitled to an education and Dalit people back then were kept largely illiterate. Even today there is a problem with literacy levels amongst Dalits in India.

This is why I started writing, to remember my history and where I come from, while living in London, in a country that erased my history from my schooling. I am blessed with an archive in the memories I have from my own childhood and the stories my dad told me about who we are and where we are from.

I joined a writing group that an old school friend reached out to me about on Facebook. She is also a musician and songwriter. I had been performing with my band and solo, writing songs and poetry throughout my 20s, but hadn’t for a few years. Not since that last conversation with my dad. This Facebook message felt timely because my new writing was forming into short stories and I felt a group of writers, and women writers at that, was what I needed.

My voice felt out of reach and had done since I’d lost them, or rather chosen to leave to live more honestly, which they said meant I had to lose them. The same year I lost my family, my band broke up just as we were embarking on a festival tour. Now I was working in a job I hated but at least the bills were being paid and my then wife was happy about that.

I started writing because I needed to hear my voice again, it felt lost, drowned out by the u-turn my life had done in the space of a year. But even when I did have my family and I did have my band, I’m not sure I was using my true voice in any case. I still felt like there was no room for it in the world. The man who was our producer insisted on writing the songs for which I was merely his voice. My then wife and her family occupied my new life and I felt I had no people of my own. Writing became the only place I could hear myself.

As a kid I’d write letters to my friends and pass them to them in the hallway, which was how I shared what was happening in my life. Our phone was heavily policed by my dad. My parents disapproved of me having friends so I had become accustomed to writing as a way to share my life. Writing felt like this again when I joined the writing group, like I was sharing secrets and stories that I shouldn’t be sharing. And writing in many ways is this for me.

When I arrived at Richmond Library on Saturday morning, 90 mins by train from my flat in Dalston, I was nervous and excited. I went to a small room near the back where there was a round table and six chairs. Caroline, my Facebook friend from school was already there and greeted me with a huge smile and hug. I hadn’t seen her for years. Everyone else lived locally and the group was, to my delight, made up of much older ladies who were published authors themselves. There was something about listening to their stories and being in the presence of these elders that felt grounding and comforting.

I was extremely nervous when I read out my first poem. It was about the pain I was feeling and had suppressed in my body until then. My voice was shaking, as were my hands holding my notebook as I read. But the support from the ladies enveloped me in a blanket of maternal warmth, which I needed more than I realised at the time.

Jean, a Trinidadian lady was someone I formed an immediate bond with and came to be a mentor for me, editing my work and providing me with endless encouragement. They all became something of a family for me, this group.

We published an anthology containing two of my poems which I shared, shaking a little less, at an event we put on for the launch.

Here’s the poem I shared.

Nothing

You've banished me from your reign of terror
And left me missing the pain
I don't grieve what we had
But how it could have been

I feel as fresh as the bruises
That never seem to go away
In every reflection I see your face
In the things that I say

I'm anchored to you still
There are no words I can will
To make myself heard
Above the noises in my head

There's been a lump in my throat
Since that last day
But I won't give in to it
No you won't have your way

I'm the lucky one you see
For I have loved somebody
And I have let her in
The way you can't and you won't

As much as we're the same
Which is why you're ashamed
There's a part of me that's nothing
That's really nothing, like you

There is much self-discovery and release that came from this period of writing which led me to access other forms of expression in my life. I produced an album using samples from my dad’s Bollywood records. And I started a supper club and recipe site, sharing the recipes my mum had learned from her mum and passed down to me. I found ways to fill the gaps that were missing and keep my history alive. I’d started to embrace what it might mean to create from a place of the abundance of my life, without erasing my past.

My life often feels episodic and compartmentalised, likely because this is how I learned to manage my life growing up. I’ve spent much of my adulthood trying to piece it together. Writing is one of the best ways I’ve found to help me with this and I’ll always be grateful to the lovely ladies from the writing group.

There are many, many reasons that I write and I share verbally through storytelling in my live shows and talks. Remembering is one important reason, especially as I grow and age and have come to feel these stories are as much mine as they are from generations past in my family. Releasing is another because once they leave my body they become all of ours and this I find frees me. Another reason is the connection I find with those I’m sharing with. This is one of the reasons I started this newsletter. Thank you for sharing this space with me and please share this with anyone you think should be telling their stories too.