The Boy with the Topknot by Sathnam Sanghera

Author:Sathnam Sanghera [Sanghera, Sathnam]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9780670923090
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Published: 2012-09-06T16:00:00+00:00

‘Right.’

‘They just sat there and stood up at the end.’

‘Together?’

‘Yes … And the thing is…’ I could see from her reflection in the TV screen that she had the end of her shawl to her mouth ‘… the thing is that at the end the ceremony … your father didn’t get up.’

‘What do you mean?’

‘Your father didn’t get up. From the altar. He just sat there.’

‘He just sat there?’

‘Your uncle, your phupre Malkit, had to lift him up.’

Jesus. The equivalent at a white wedding would be the best man having to prompt the groom into saying ‘I do’.

More omissions followed. There was no banquet, just some chapattis in the temple after the ceremony – the kind you get if you drop into any gurdwara on any Sunday morning. There were no bidai songs to mark my mother’s departure to her new home. And after the besuited men had returned from sinking a few celebratory pints in the Lewisham Arms, none of the bride’s brothers appeared to push the couple’s car away in the direction of Grays as a sign of their love and support.

Mum said it was a relief to arrive in Essex. Although there were hardly any Asians in the town, unlike in Wolverhampton, the terraced house that was to be her home was less cramped than Newport Street – four adults and three children sharing the same space; she was grateful not to be living with the mother-in-law – like all Punjabi women, she’d been instructed to expect her husband’s mother to be cruel – and my Bero bua, who poured mustard oil at the pillars of the door to welcome the newlyweds, and who had no family nearby, seemed pleased to have them.

On arriving, Mum was sat down in the living room and Bero began the process of relieving her of the wedding paraphernalia. First the large red veil that had been concealing her from view was removed, revealing a parting painted vermilion. Next to come off were her bangles, which had tinkled whenever she moved. She’d been stripped down to her heavy red and gold embroidered tunic by the time my father, who had all day been no more than a presence to her right, occasionally a violet shadow at her feet, strode into the room.

I tried again to imagine the scene: my mother looking as she does in her earliest picture, used in her first passport – a sparrow-thin, pale girl of sixteen or seventeen with a red bindi between her eyebrows, an embroidered chuni framing a long face with soft eyes, a heavy gold pendant hanging off a gold chain around her neck, a smaller pendant hanging off a delicate chain running down her parting, red and white ivory bangles encircling hands patterned with henna – and my father looking as he does in his early passport picture, the large brow, those sad eyes, the immaculate quiff. I asked Mum whether that was the first time she got a proper look at Dad.

‘I don’t know.

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