The Year of the Runaways ~ Sunjeev Sahota (79 of 2024)

 Courtesy : Nandakishore Verma

The book is structured into four sections, which accord with the seasons, beginning in winter. In each section, we learn about a character’s backstory. The four main characters are South Asian immigrants seeking a new life in Yorkshire. Avtar and Randeep already live in a rundown, communal house. Tarlochan, or “Tochi,” moves in with them when he arrives in Yorkshire. Narinder, Randeep’s wife, already lives in the UK and marries Randeep so he can stay there.

Their biggest concern is an immigration raid, and what they’ll do if they’re caught. They try to stay under the radar, working in menial jobs, such as sewer maintenance and food service, so no one notices them. Their main fear is going back to the misery they left behind in India. We learn about each of their histories in turn through flashbacks.

India is a beautiful country if you are privileged (read upper-caste, rich and preferably male). Otherwise, it's a sewer pit. The only thing any right-thinking youth (who doesn't belong in the above-mentioned category) will want to do with respect to the country is get out as fast as possible, to one of those "phoren"* paradises like the USA, Canada or Western Europe.

But of course, the prosperity one imagines exists in those countries is also the province of the privileged - something one learns to one's disadvantage after the crossing is made. The grass is always greener on the other side.

This the tale of a handful of young men - two from Punjab and one from Bihar - who reach England, their promised land, only to see their dreams turn into nightmares. It is also the tale of a Sikh girl, a citizen of the UK, whose tale becomes unintentionally entwined with tales of these three runaways. It takes a while before the characters tell each other about their lives back home.

Tarlochan Kumar (Tochi) is a Chamaar from Bihar - one of the most vilified and victimised castes of India - who has come to England illegally to make money by hook or crook, to offset the disadvantages of birth. His whole family has been murdered by "upper" caste goons. Tochi,  watched his whole family die in a massacre, and he’s traumatized by the experience. He lost his pregnant sister, his brother, and his parents. Because he is a “chamaar,” or part of the lowest caste group in India, he struggled to survive back home and can’t face the thought of going back. He worked in a brick factory for two years before he had the money to come to England; he spends this time grieving his lost family. In Yorkshire, he works in a shop, but he lies about his caste so he can get the job. When the family that owns the shop finds him a girl to marry, he can’t, because he lied about his caste. He must leave the job when they find out, however, he gets another when he offers to work for less pay. Tochi ends up leaving the group home and living in a flat under Narinder’s. When Randeep goes missing before an immigration inspection, he helps Narinder look for him. They strike up a fond friendship and exchange thoughts on equality and the caste system. They understand each other better by the end of the book. However, all is not well for Tochi. Avtar steals from him to pay his debts, and Tochi attacks him. He leaves Avtar in a very bad way and goes to Spain to find work because he knows he can’t stay in England. Tochi later marries and has children. During the epilogue, Narinder sees him and his family watching a play, but she doesn’t disturb them. She’s comforted to know that Tochi found happiness.

Randeep Sanghera is a callow youth, whose comfortable middle class world has gone up in smoke because of his father's mental illness and an act of sexual indiscretion in college which gets him expelled. He is on a fake marriage visa provided by Narinder Kaur, a pious young Sikh woman who is determined to provide a life to at least one person through this personal sacrifice. He flunked college because he spent his time looking after his ill father, and then he was expelled for raping a classmate. He doesn’t live with Narinder, but he knows the flat well enough to pass immigration inspections. Narinder didn’t meet Randeep before marrying him; she left her fiancé so she could perform this duty. Randeep and Narinder grow closer and become friends as the novel progresses, no longer seeing each other simply out of circumstance. However, they never love each other romantically, and they divorce when they get the opportunity. Narinder later marries her previous fiancé and scatters her father’s ashes back home in India after he dies of a stroke. It’s not clear she and Randeep will remain friends, but there is no ill will between them. 

And finally, there is Avtar Singh Nijjar, who has sold a kidney and taken money from a loan shark to get to England on a student visa, to earn money and support his family at home as well as carve out a future for himself. He is in love with Randeep's sister. He worked as a train conductor and secretly dated Randeep’s sister, Lahkpreet. When Avtar lost his job after a car crash, he sells a kidney to get the money for a student visa in England. In Yorkshire, he struggles to find work and juggle job hunting with studying for exams. When he goes to London to sit his exams and retain his visa, street creditors find him and beat him up for not paying his loans back. Avtar later marries Lahkpreet when he returns to India. He finishes his student visa but can’t secure work, so he steals chickens with Randeep for money. They’re eventually traced by immigration officials, and although they escape, Avtar knows he can’t make his life in England if he wants to ever feel safe.

This is an essentially bleak tale, set in the twilight world of illegal immigrants who, as underpaid workers, support the economy of Britain. There are villains aplenty here in the shape of money-grubbing employers, but no heroes (except for Narinder, whose supremely innocent saccharine-sweet goody-goody nature is sometimes puke-inducing, to tell the truth). These young men fight, cheat and steal to keep body and soul together and to keep their dream of "Vilayat"** alive. But all said and done, they are not totally unlikeable, because in such circumstances, we feel that we would have also done the same.

The story is well-written, and once picked up, the book is hard to put down. But at some point of time, the reader feels that it could all have been condensed into a thinner volume. One does not have to read pages and pages about the hardships of the protagonists to appreciate the inhuman nature of the world out there. And the ending, when it comes, is surprisingly downbeat - it's as though the author said: "Enough! Let me stop this!", put down his pen, attached an epilogue, and send the manuscript on to the publishers.