Book 27 - The Year of the Runaways by Sunjeev Sahota

Reading date - September 2020

I found this book in Poundland and how it managed to fly under my radar is beyond me. I snapped it up going on the name of the author alone.  I love reading stuff by Punjabi authors as they are few and far between.  I was hoping this would be about my culture and thankfully it was..sadly, it's about something that is very common within the Punjabi community.

The book is about three immigrants (two illegal, one on a visa) who find themselves in the UK for various reasons.  There is a fourth protagonist, a girl who is born and bred in the UK and is a baptised Sikh.

The book covers the back stories for all three men very well, the character development is written in a way which is not only truthful but also heartbreaking.  The story of what happens when they get to the UK is a no punches pulled account of what happens.  I know all about how bad life is in the UK for people who come from India to work.  I am talking about those who have to hide out in lorries, not those who are coming over to work legit for big corps.  It is a hard, hard life full of people ripping you off and surviving on little to nothing.  It hurts me to read this book because emigrating to another country for a better life is a matter very close to my heart.  I forever stand with refugees, the bossmen in your local chicken shop and in your newsagents aren't shopkeepers, they're engineers, lawyers and doctors who have to take any job they can in a new country.  I have done a lot of pro bono work to help new Punjabi immigrants to England because I come from immigrants and I will never forget this.  As the great Marcus Garvey said "A people without the knowledge of their past history, origin and culture is like a tree without roots".

 

The book starts with Randeep, who goes to see his visa-wife..

Anyway, I'll shut up and get on with the review.  This book gets a 4.5 stars for me, the only thing that annoyed me slightly about it was how pathetic the women in the book were shown as being.  The female protagonist is a baptised Sikh..as is her whole family.  She is shown as someone just willing to please her father and her brother without a mind of her own.  Her brother is a meathead.  This also annoys me.  It shows baptised Sikhs in a bad light, as if the women are just docile characters who agree to anything they are told by men and that the men are meatheads.  I am in no way a baptised Sikh but I am born a Sikh and the baptised Sikhs I know are nothing like this.  Showing them in this light is dangerous.  Her brother is a militant and her dad seems to have mellowed (her mum passed away). The girl manages to run away from home and is not found until a pivotal point in the story.

I spoke to my dad about how some parts of my culture (and others) expect women to just be docile and do what the man wants them to do.  My mum is not docile, I am not docile.  My mum, however, is well behaved and respects her elders.  I am not well behaved but I respect those who respect me.  I cannot get my head around just existing to please someone else..do you not have your own mind?

The story follows the lives of all four people.  Tochi is a chamaar (untouchable) and his whole family are wiped out in India so he decides to come to the UK as he has nothing to live for in India.  Avtar is a college student and leaves India to come to the UK so he can make money and send it home to his family.  Then we have Randeep.  Randeep has a comfy life in India, his dad is a civil servant but he slowly loses his mind (we are not sure why). Randeep is going to college and is set for great things.  Avtar and Randeep are tied together by something I won't reveal.  Randeep comes to the UK after failing his exams as he has to make money to send home to his family.

The book covers how they all work and survive in Sheffield, how Avtar, over on a student visa needs to balance work with studying (of course, leaving all studying behind in order to maximise earnings), Tochi showing that only the strong survive and Randeep trying to get along with his wife and making the immigration lokh think they live together when they in fact, do not.  The book also shows in detail how some of the more established Punjabi community already over here rip off the people that a few generations ago were their own parents.  

At its heart, this is a heartbreaking book which I was unable to put down.