Imposed Ignorance
by Hartej Gill

My mother’s story...
“reflects the ‘voice in my head’ recounting the story I constructed
out of fragments of story that she told me out loud
and that I gathered by existing in her presence
over many years....”
( Neumann, 1997, P.93).

              Her story of deep regret due to her inability to access educational opportunities in India has had an unbelievable impact on shaping me/my identities. I have not always been aware of this impact; it is only through writing that I am beginning to gain some understanding of the meaning of this interconnectedness.

              After writing a poem about my mother, I felt a need to somehow include my mother’s story and my mother’s voice. It took me almost three weeks to approach her to ask her if she would write about her educational experience in India and about her grade ten diploma. I was afraid that the experience would unnecessarily bring back painful memories. However, I also realized that her voice needed to be an integral part of her story/my story/our story.

              When I asked her, my mother approached the activity as something she needed to do to help me with my education. She approached it as if it was “a job” that needed to be completed for me to do well in my schooling. She did not worry about how difficult this process would be for her. When I offered to go get her grade 10 diploma to help her get started, she said that she did not need it. She remembered all the details of “this story.”” She took her pen and in what seemed to be a very short time, four full pages of her anguish poured out. And she cried. Perhaps the words came out so easily because they have been painfully writing themselves inside her body for almost 40 years.

“I learned from my mother’s life
that even in the silence of a story that lives without words,
there exists a text to know and to tell ....”
(Neumann, 1997, P.92).


              After she realized that I had hoped to translate her entire work, she was not comfortable sharing everything that she had written with an unknown public. She rewrote her wor(l)ds in prose form deleting anything that would in any way offend anyone. It is reassuring to know that she, at least allowed herself, to write freely for us. I will place her original copy with my many “unreadable” works and return to it one day when I reclaim the written language of my Mother-tongue.

              As I attempt to decode my mother’s story (at a level comparable to a grade one student), she reads it aloud for me and I write out the Punjabi language in English letters. Re-re-translating her story, I realize the incompleteness of words to fully capture ideas, emotions and nuances in an/OTHER language. Ironically, I learn in our discussion about translations and languages that my mother has deep regret about not receiving an English education in India and through this writing experience, I begin to feel immense regret for not having had the opportunity to learn Punjabi throughout my Canadian EDUCATION.

              My mother’s story/my story/our story is a story of silent solace. It is a poemed-story about my mother’s grade 10 diploma. My sister and I found it last summer crumpled up in a tiny drawer in the storage room of our basement. It is marked by many creases of her regret and her shame of not being allowed to continue her education after grade 10. The fact that she was the most educated women in her village at that time, only creates further regret and resentment of what she refers to as her imposed ignorance. As my sister and I carefully framed it for her (or perhaps for ourselves), our attention was drawn suddenly to all the imprints of history, patriarchy and colonialism. The very name of the school that she attended is written in English – it is written incorrectly in English. Punjab, the place of her birth meaning five rivers is written as Panjab. And on the second line, the name of my grandmother is absent. This is the line that indicates that my mother is the daughter of, as it states – my grandfather – Mr. Pritam Singh Sull. The woman who carried my mother in her womb for nine intense months is completely erased from this text. Unacknowledged, silent.

Silent and invisible somewhere between the text of the page and the text of the body.

Silent Solace

Although there is a space behind my Father’s
she refuses to hang her diploma on the wall.
Entombed in darkness, she resents its
numbing re-appearance of inadequacy.

She is haunted by the possible public display
of her imposed identities,
of Patriarchal imprisonment,
and of COLONIZED hopes
of EDUCATIONAL emPOWerment.

Decayed by immortal memories of
the “proper” placement:
The “decent” dutiful daughter,
The “decent” dutiful daughter-in-law
The “decent” dutiful wife
The “decent” dutiful mother.
Burying alive the invisible “indecent” identities
refusing to be veiled.

Now, each factory button-hole she transforms
into knowing resistance.
For her determination and strength
she has CULTivated
in the identities of the next generation.

My voice is our voice.
My education is our education.
My degrees are our degrees.
In the language of a
“MultiCULTural” Alie/Nation.

Carefully re-folding and re-placing her pain
in the empty space between the wall
and my Father’s degree,
she grieves her/self momentarily.
And then in silent solace she whispers:
“Ethey fark ki pana si?”
“What difference would it have made here?”

A different DOMINANCE.
A different de/valuing
Difference all the same.
“Ethey fark ki pana si?”


__________________________________________________________________
Ug ma bahthi kosh han.
Today I am very happy.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Marryria bettia ne buth tho buth Education parapath karlay ha.
My daughters are educated women.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Eh ho marry athuri echa so jo purri hogai ha.
My regretted wish has come true through them.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Marray dil bich satha thuk ria che ma parahi puri nay kar saki.
In my heart there was always such pain that I could not finish my education.

(DELETE....)

_________________________________________________________________
Marray ma pap thi be galthi nayhi si.
I cannot not blame my mother or even my father.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
1958 ch larkia nu parana chunga nayhi si samaji jana.
In 1958 it was not considered acceptable to educate girls.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Marray mamaji thi mathut na may peli larki pend bich si gen thusmi (metric) kithi.
With the help of my uncle I was the first girl in my village to complete grade 10.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Marray pathiji B.A. sun, Larka nu buth tho buth poronay thi koshish kartha si puma purha bi na chan.
My husband has a B.A.. It was the common practice to provide boys with as much education as possible even if they did not want to go to school.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Sathai ma shochi thi si ke maria bettia thi parray uthri na raja be.
I always prayed that my daughters would not be forced to live without an education as had been my fate.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Parmathma thi enthi mar hoy che marry soch tho be buth milia.
God has blessed me with more than I had imagined.

(DELETE....)

__________________________________________________________________
Ug ma bothi kosh han.
Today I am very happy.


(DELETE....)


(DELETE....)


(DELETE....)

Conversation as text is embedded in the silence that surrounds
it, that breaks it up into words and spoken thoughts, letting those
words and thoughts exist as distinctive sounds; written text exists
on a page that is otherwise blank and whose blankness lets black
print emerge, word by word, as part of distinctive statement. While
oral and written texts, emerging as conversation and as writing from
silence and blankness, have clear and identifiable authors, so, too,
do the silence and blankness that exist with these articulated texts,
holding and supporting them, serving as wordless backgrounds
against which the spoken or written words of authors may appear
and become real....Discerning untold stories is bound to take an
unconventional ear and eye, and mind and heart, for the evidence
we collect – even that these stories exist – will be drawn less from text
than from the silence and diffuseness of context. It requires attending
more to what is absent than to what is present, more to what remains
unsaid than to what is said, more to what is unacknowledged than to
what is acknowledged, more to what remains unknown than to what
is known.

(Neumann, 1997, P.108).

(Aside:
Should I take into
consideration my mother’s needs
to not appear to be causing any problems
or should I just continue writing my
resistance as I need to?
Is this her story, or it is my story or is
it ours’. What are the ethics of care in shared
stories being shared?)

              In writing with my mother, I have learned that there are many silences that even I will never know. My mother refused to talk about her life in Canada. “Today I am very happy” is all that she wanted written and read by OTHERS. I wonder how much the fear of any ungratefulness being known and her citizenship being revoked forces her to keep her internal silences. Knowing that my Father continues to hold his Indian passport – “just in case,” – further confirms her fears and justifies her silence.



We speak.
We remain silent.
But are we aware that our
silence and our speech is about
the actual lived experiences of
individuals being violated, oppressed, exploited?

The unsaid, the unknown, the unknowable

My mother’s silent tears
bleed the regret of her soul.
Her dream in ashes,
She is to marry, not mourn.
They awaited her subservience, her body, her children.

And now, in Canada, the factories also await .

Everyone waiting.
Knowing.
That in her labouring immigrant “obedience,”
she will tolerate, accept and remain silent.
Even when she is “dutifully” resisting.

And for different reasons,

THEY also will
tolerate,
accept,
and remain
SILENT.