Chapter Three - Arriving in Glasgow

No two places could be more different that the plain of the Punjab and the western, industrialised city of Glasgow. The Punjab, the land of the five rivers, is a lush agricultural land, known as the breadbasket of India. This is wheat country and that heritage is what gives Punjabi cuisine its chapattis, parathas and naan breads. Southern and eastern India is much more rice-based. We Jat Sikhs are sons of the soil, a farming caste, and generally we own the land we farm. To come from this to the grime and smoke of Glasgow was more than a culture shock.

Tikka Look At Me Now

Charan Gill

I didn't know how life would turn out when I first arrived in Glasgow with my mother and three brothers back in October 1963. My father had come over a few years before us, got himself a job driving the buses, bought a small room and kitchen in the Cowcaddens area near the city centre, then sent for us. Well, I think he sent for us. It was not uncommon in those days for men to take on a second local wife, possibly setting up a new family here while keeping his ties back home. This was more common amongst the Muslim community as it seemed more acceptable in their religion and culture. When we arrived in Glasgow my dad brought home a gori, a white woman whom he introduced as his conductress. I was suspicious. Could this be the other wife? I thought. But I needn't have worried because that was the first and last time I saw her.

My first memory of Glasgow was stepping off the aeroplane and father waiting for us on the tarmac. How different he looked, and at first I didn't recognise him. The beard and long hair that he kept beautifully groomed and were his pride and joy back in India were all gone. He was now clean-shaven and his hair were short, brushed back and held in place with Brylcreem.

'To get a job on the buses, we had to make these sacrifices,' he told us. 'They would not employ me if I wore a turban and had a beard so I got my friends to shave it all off.'

I thought it was very sad and wondered why we had come to such a damp horrible place. My thoughts then went back to the Pubjab and how my grandfather had taken me to the barber a few weeks before we had boarded the plane to Glasgow. I had never had my hair cut in my life and I remember it being long, silky and flowing. My mother would always comment on how beautiful my hair was whenever she combed it. She would tie it up in a ball on the top of my head and put a white handkerchief on it, which was held in place with a rubber band. Getting my hair cut was a traumatic experience and I cried all the way home. Looking back now, I realise that it was just another requirement for me to fit in when I finally reached the land of flowing whisky.

Throughout history, Sikhs had given their lives rather than cut their hair. They had fought in many wars that were not of their making. During the two world wars, Sikhs had refused to remove their turbans and wear helmets and were praised for their bravery. Now, the people of this proud race were doing the unthinkable and visiting the barber, just to get a job on the buses.

'Don't worry, I'll grow it back at the first opportunity,' my father said. And years later he did - as soon as he retired from the buses.

Racism back then was something people seemed to accept as part of everyday life. People like my father put up with shocking prejudices, which would never be accepted today. My father and his friend had to shave their beards and remove their turbans just to get a job. Banks wouldn't lend them money because they were Asians. Insurance companies said no because they were Pakistanis. There were no subtleties and the racism and bias was blatant. There were no laws to protect them so they suffered the humiliation and just got on with it. It was acceptable to be treated like second-class citizens and just get on with the business of bringing up their families.

Things have moved on and we now have a situation where the Glasgow humour has rubbed off on to the most diehard Asians, who quite often find themselves laughing at stories which in the past they would have found offensive. Like the story of the wee Asian boy who was so desperate to be white like all his pals at school that he walked into the kitchen one day as his mother was making chapattis, dipped his hands into the flour and rubbed the flour all over his face. 'Look, Mummy,' he said excitedly, 'I'm a white boy!'

The mother wasn't too pleased. 'I'll "white boy" you!' she shouted and slapped him around his head. 'Now go and show your father what you have just done.'

So the wee fellow walked into the lounge where his dad was watching television and said, 'Look, Dad, I'm a white boy.'

His father looked up and was furious. 'I'll "white boy" you!' he shouted and kicked the wee boy around the room. 'Go upstairs and show your grandfather what you have just done.'

So the wee guy went up to grandfather's bedroom and said, 'Baba Ji! Baba Ji! Look, I'm a white boy!'

The grandfather went berserk. '"White boy"!' he shouted. 'I'll "white boy" you!' and he took the boy over his knee and spanked him till he was raw. 'Now go back to the kitchen and wash your face and don't ever do that again.'

When the wee boy walked into the kitchen his mother asked, 'What have you learnt today, my son?'

'What I've learnt, Mother, is that I've been a white boy for five minutes and I hate you Asians already.'

The liberal intelligentsia require me to have some angst about the clash of cultures that must resound in my brain. Somehow, having only one culture seems to be the preferred option. Why? It's like having only one TV channel to tune in to. And I remember the days when the BBC was all we had. Why not celebrate all the cultures that this marvellous world provides and invite them all to the party? If being a Sikh Scotsman is seen as a problem, then parochialism definitely rules.

Our first home was a tiny ground-floor tenement flat. It had a kitchen, with a sofa in it which could be converted into a bed at night. Unlike a lot of tenement properties, it had an inside toilet which we didn't have to share with the rest of the close and, because of this little luxury, my father was always reminding us of how lucky we were. My brothers and I never really liked the enclosed toilet as we found it very claustrophobic. When one is used to having thousands of acres of green lush farmland to use a toilet then a wee five-foot-square box is not exactly a luxury. The kitchen was not large but it did have a recess, which held a double bed. There was only the one bedroom, with a couple of beds with very little space in between them, and one wooden wardrobe which, along with the rest of the furniture, had been purchased from the 'Barras', the famous Glasgow street market to which most immigrants went for all their household needs. This one wardrobe and a couple of suitcases held the whole family's worldly possessions.

I had three brothers when we first landed in Glasgow but within a couple of years two more siblings arrived. First another boy, Sukhdev, and then a girl, Sukhwinder, joined us in our one room and kitchen.

'You are living in a palace compared to what I had when I first arrived,' my father would tell us.

He had to share a room with several other guys and as far as they were concerned, a home was just a shelter and a place to sleep in between doing long shifts and working as much overtime as their gaffer could throw at them. He regarded himself lucky too because he had a good job compared to a lot of the other guys who worked as navvies. These guys would not only share a bedroom but also share a bed. One of them would be on the nightshift while the other worked during the day. This allowed them not only to share their beds but also their pyjamas, their work clothes and their shoes.

Their whole focus was to work hard, spend as little as possible and try to send home as much money as they could. That was the purpose of their existence and the reason they were born. They had responsibilities and they would not let down their families and bring shame upon their parents. Whenever my grandfather received money from my father he would sit in the meadow and boast about how well his son was doing in Scotland while waving around the latest money order and making his friends completely envious. If anyone had gone abroad and not send money back to the family - and this happened now and then because the guy and gone off the rails and succumbed to the fruits of the Western world, which meant that he had started to drink or found himself a gori, a local Scottish girl - they would be the talk of the whole village. Their families would feel humiliated and would not be able to hold their heads up high amongst their peers.

Extract from Tikka Look At Me Now, p.12-16, printed with permission from Black & White Publishing, Edinburgh.