The ‘Skipping Sikh’: A story of faith, loss and racism
Al Jazeera
From the murder of his father to the racism he encountered when he first came to the UK, the moments that inspired the 74-year-old to skip the London Marathon.
It is a warm summer’s day and the sun is shining through the large windows into the small living room of our terraced house in West London. I am holding one end of my father’s turban – it is six metres long, bright orange, made from cotton. He tells me that tying it reminds him of his father, my grandfather.
As a boy he would sit cross-legged, hands together in prayer, in his village home in Punjab, India, watching his father tie his, in awe at how perfectly he did it.
“Every pleat would be in place and if it wasn’t, he would undo it and tie it again,” he tells me. There is a smile on his face as he remembers his father, but sadness in his voice.
