The 97-year-old Sikh grandmother feeding London’s homeless

In his narrow, sunny London kitchen, Nisharat Kaur Matharu, 97, follows his life motto: As long as your hands and feet are working, use them to serve others. For now, that means her hands are covered in flour as she kneads and hits dough vigorously.

It’s a sparkling, clean and functional space, where everything has its place and the smell of butter chapattis fresh from the hotplate fills the air. It’s also the room where, since 2017, she’s been cooking hundreds of meals a week – creamy lentils, Indian rice pudding with cardamom, nuts and sugar, crispy cumin seed pastry – for the homeless.

The food is served by Hope for Southall Street Homeless, a community initiative that runs an overnight shelter and reception center in the West London area that Nisharat has called home since arriving in the UK as as a 54 year old mother. -of-five in 1976.

By then, the trip of his life had already taken several unexpected turns.

With a huge smile, Nisharat’s 67-year-old daughter Kulwant prepares to share her mother’s story, but not before asking her for a masala chai – “the real Indian cha (tea), mum” .

“My mother was born in the Punjab and when she was six months old she lost her mother,” she explains, the two now sitting in the spotlessly clean, white-walled living room of Nisharat with her large industrial sewing machine in it. the corner. “My grandfather remarried shortly after – another arranged marriage – and when he and his wife had their first child… the mother-in-law decided she didn’t want her.

Nisharat was two years old when she was left on a rubbish heap outside her family’s home in Moga, Punjab. Hours later, she was found there by her paternal aunt – starving and sunburned. Her aunt took her to her paternal grandmother’s house, where Nisharat was kept as a child laborer, responsible for cooking, cleaning and all other assigned tasks.

With cuts on her fingers chopping onions, garlic and chili peppers, she would watch other girls her age go to school or the park and wonder why she couldn’t. But by the age of eight, she could cook a three-course Indian meal and was an expert at making perfectly formed chapattis.

The two women speak simultaneously – Nisharat often says in Punjabi exactly what Kulwant, director and mother of three, describes in English. At 5ft 10 (1.8m), Kulwant towers over his mother in her white salwar kameez, her fine gray hair neatly tied back in a bun. They are both mother and daughter and best friends.

When Nisharat was 14, a family friend arranged his marriage – with a 16-year-old boy from an Indian family living in East Africa. She didn’t question it, she said, and remembers little other than her father telling her, “Do what your husband says and don’t answer him. Never do anything that leaves a mark on his beard [meaning to always show him respect]. Nisharat dabs her eyes with a tissue as she remembers it.

A few years later, she moved to East Africa with her husband, who worked as an electrician. There she was expected to take care of her husband’s family, especially her father who had been incapacitated by polio. Life was difficult. She lived there for 40 years, giving birth and raising five children, and always did as she was told.

Then, when her eldest was 26 and her youngest 10, she was told they would move to the UK. Her husband had a British passport because his father had served in the British Army but would lose it if he did not return home. Nisharat did not want to leave Africa, but she accepted this decision as she had all the other decisions he had made for her.

They arrived in Southall, an area which today has the largest Sikh community in London, as well as a significant Muslim and Hindu population, and moved into the house in which she still lives today.

Nisharat struggled to adjust – to the language, to the culture, to the loneliness of a place where people didn’t just come to your house to visit, and to cook on a gas stove rather than charcoal. .

“My mother had a lot of difficulties,” Kulwant explains, increasingly animated. “Life was hard enough for her as a woman who moved from a village in India to Africa, not knowing [the] culture and did not speak the language. She was responsible not only for me and my four siblings, but also for my father’s siblings. You know the typical Indian scenario, where the mother has all the responsibility, ”she adds, rolling her eyes.

It hasn’t been easier in London. Kulwant’s voice grows louder as she describes how her father drinks to excess and when her mother serves her food, refuses to eat until the chapattis are cooked to her exacting standards.

“My mother never said anything, she would continue to make them. She would never eat with him, but after and sit on the floor. Nisharat interrupts his daughter to add more details, describing how she wouldn’t dare speak when her husband was drunk.

“I questioned that, but my siblings didn’t and I don’t know why they didn’t,” Kulwant continues.

“I remember one day my dad was really drunk and he threw something at my mom. I jumped on him to stop him, he was a tall, tall man. He then beat me, because Indian women were not allowed to say anything at the time. He didn’t speak to me for two years and I was daddy’s little girl, so it was really difficult for me… ”

Nisharat intervenes in Punjabi to tell his side of the story: “I hated his drinking. I couldn’t understand his behavior; he was a very angry and aggressive man when he had been drinking.

Despite the seriousness of the matter, their conversation is warm and cheerful and the two women regularly burst out laughing. Nisharat’s conversation is about how it is his daughter who inspires him.

“My daughter is a carbon copy of me,” she says. “I wish I had done everything she does; it supports poor children in India. She started a school there and loves helping others. I am proud of her, she went through a very difficult time, she had cancer, she was divorced but she remains strong and wants to give back. It is a real blessing. “

Kulwant turns to his mother and asks, “Make me another nice masala cha, mum.” Nisharat gets up and walks into the kitchen with a smile.

Kulwant lowers her voice and leans forward, explaining, “Her innate quality that she has is that she does it for others. She overcomes her own obstacles, very few people in life have them. This is how Sikhs should be. She is humble, genuine, generous and an honest soul. She never shows up. She will do whatever she can for anyone. She treats everyone like family, she has so much love in her heart.

“My mother is a real person; She is what she is. I don’t really remember how much she changed, we were more afraid of my mom than my dad, but she never hit us. She was also very good at sitting down and explaining things to us, which she didn’t have in her life.

Before the coronavirus pandemic, the two women spent one day a month together – walking around and going to the movies, where they ate popcorn with chai latte tea.

“During the lockdown it was very special in fact we don’t have the constraints of the mass pressures at work. I would come to my mother [and] we used to cook meals for the homeless together, ”she explains. They laugh at the Indian drama series that her mother loves to watch and enjoys spending time together.

“What I like most is her very kind and placid nature, [the] the unconditional love she gives to everyone.

Nisharat returns from the kitchen, cha in hand, and positions herself on the sofa, where she continues her knitting – a mustard sweater. “Who is it for?” Kulwant asks him. For you, who else, replies his mother. Kulwant laughs, “I knew it would be for me.”

“When I got cancer and got a divorce… my only support was my mom,” says Kulwant. “I need her in my life; she represents the world to me.

Nisharat looks at Kulwant as she explains it in Punjabi: “My daughter is everything to me… She is a very strong woman and I admire her.

They both say cooking for the homeless has brought them closer together. “This is the highlight of our week, we are a team,” says Kulwant, adding: “The majority of the homeless come from different backgrounds, but [there are] lots of punjabi people and when we arrive they are waiting with a smile. They always comment on how it reminds them of how their mothers used to cook for them in India. “

Nisharat has returned to stuffing chapattis now that Kulwant describes his method. “She boils the potatoes, then chills them, then chops them into small pieces, adding chopped onions, chili peppers, a teaspoon of cumin seeds, ginger, fresh cilantro, salt to taste. and mix them up. You then make chapatti flour, roll it in a circle, add the mixture in the middle of the chapatti then fold the chapatti into a round ball and use the rolling pin to roll it out. Then place it in the pan and cook both sides, adding butter on each side, and when it’s golden it’s cooked and it’s so delicious, especially with a masala chai.

Nisharat smiles. “Through sewa is meva [which means through selfless service you get goodness]. I recite Waheguru [wonderful God] when I cook and it’s this blessing from God that adds flavor to the food, ”she says.