Photo: courtesy - Nampreet Singh, Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada.
Poetry
Punjabi
A Poem by JASPREET SINGH
Just when they wrote its obituary in the old world,
Punjabi
came to Canada
It landed in fertile blue-berry fields
of the Fraser valley
It arrived with all its puns
in the aisles of superstores
In glass bottles, plastic usually filled with turmeric and cayenne
It landed attached to clothes, footwear and hand-luggage
And just to confuse the immigration guard it entered
mixed with peoples’ breath and blood.
No one knows if it was legal, but the voice of Nanak
and Bulleh Shah moved here
and it is staying
with all its alloy words and idioms
dictionaries, its own Romeos and Juliets, the Mirza Sahiba operas
It arrived singing a wedding song and said hello to birds and trees
Some known, some unknown
And bowed before the vast grammar and music
of Cree and Ojibwe and Inuktitut
It greeted the longish Canadian nights
and interminable
indigo dusks
And it tried to comfort and calm them all.
Un-embarrassed by its own cracks and destiny
Its controversies and unmentionables
Punjabi displayed many of its masterpieces in Saskatoon
Quebec and Winnipeg
rivering
towards Malton, then Brampton
“Chak deh phatteh
goooaaalll
Torrronto Maple Leaf dee Hockey Night!”
In Paldi it dusted many of its vowels
bandaged its wounds with newly aggregated
nouns and tones
In Surrey it relaxed on a malmal sheet
on a hand-woven jute cot
With bright bulbs of light
it danced in the community halls of Langley
Using and abusing its melancholic
beautiful adjectives
it unfolded some of its losses
by the Pacific waters
Rehras and Japji echoed in the corridors
of Canadian Parliament
Even the Shield of minerals agrees
the arrival of this language was truly geological.
While in the old world it is dying,
Punjabi blossoms in Canada
nuances English, Spanish and Mandarin
French, Nootka and Chipewyan
Patiently, it studies the land
its ghosts, air and water
Talks to the voices of the dead
Patiently, it turns branches
into roots and flowers
Renewing itself and others
Already the yellow cabs in cities
are fleets
of language laboratories
Already in winter
Punjabi falls on Canadian streets and sidewalks
as both snow and baraf
beckoning everyone to slip
slide on its intimate
yet enigmatic surfaces
Sweet tongue
make me fall,
make me rise,
make me play again. Name again.
Unlock ruins, riddles, even things
which did not leave
a trace. Teach me
a crisp 3000-year old song. Restore
deep wells within my heart. You are
where my mother lives now
* * * * *
Jaspreet Singh is a Canadian citizen and lives in Alberta. He is the author of Seventeen Tomatoes, a short story collection (Véhicule Press, 2004) and Chef, a novel (Véhicule Press, 2008; Bloomsbury, 2010) — both books engage with the damaged landscapes of Kashmir. His novel Helium
(Bloomsbury, 2013) is a powerful meditation on historical forgetting.
Jaspreet’s work has been published internationally and has been
translated into several languages. This poem is from his first
collection of poems, November.
May 5, 2018
Conversation about this article
1: Sukhmani Kaur (Chandigarh, Punjab), May 05, 2018, 1:49 PM.
Jaspreet Singh is, for me, the uncrowned Poet Laureate of the Sikh diaspora. How fortunate for us to have such a gift and blessing to our community!