By Shaman Singh
I had expected to spend no more than fifteen minutes with the family. A brief visit, a few questions about their well-being, and then we would be on our way.
I was travelling through the rural border region of Punjab, near Pakistan, visiting children supported through SAF International. It was a holiday, and I wanted to see how the children were spending their day, how their families were managing, and what life looked like beyond the reports and photographs that usually reached us.
This particular home was not easy to find.
For nearly two kilometres, our car travelled along a narrow dirt road, barely wide enough for the vehicle. Another uneven track eventually led us through the sugarcane fields to a small home tucked away from the main road.
It was late afternoon, perhaps two hours before sunset.
Outside the house, an elderly man was working in a cleared patch of land where the family had set up a traditional jaggery-making operation. Smoke rose from the fire, carrying the sweet smell of boiling sugarcane juice through the surrounding fields.
The man was the grandfather of the children we had come to visit. The children had lost their parents and were being raised by their grandparents.
As soon as he noticed our vehicle, he stopped what he was doing and hurried towards us.
We were strangers to one another, yet the warmth of his welcome made that distinction seem unimportant.
His wife, whom I would soon come to know as Bibi Ji, was equally welcoming.
She selected some of the best sugarcane and began preparing fresh juice for us. I protested, not wanting the family to interrupt their work simply because we had arrived. But Bibi Ji was determined that we would be properly looked after.
She offered me the best chair she had.
It was old, stained, and looked as though it might give way at any moment. Ordinarily, I might have hesitated before sitting on it. But there was something about the way she offered it that made its condition entirely irrelevant.
It was the best she had, and she wanted me to have it.
There are gestures that require no explanation. You understand them through the affection with which they are offered.
Bibi Ji embraced me, gave me her blessings, and insisted that I come inside the house for tea.
I had arrived to ask about the children, but the visit was becoming something else.
At some point, I noticed a kite and mentioned how much I had loved flying kites while growing up in Punjab.
That was all it took. The family brought out string and a collection of kites for me. We laughed together, and I found myself enjoying the kind of simple pleasure that rarely requires planning or occasion.
For a little while, I forgot that I was there on an organizational visit. I was no longer thinking about the road back, the distance we still had to travel, or the things waiting to be done.
I was simply a Singh, enjoying an afternoon with a family in the middle of the sugarcane fields.
A family I had only just met.
And yet, somewhere between the sugarcane juice, the tea, the kites, the laughter, and Bibi Ji’s embraces, they had stopped feeling like strangers.
I cannot point to the exact moment when that happened. There was no formal introduction that made us relatives, no shared history, and no particular reason for the affection that had developed.
But by the time the sun began to set, I felt as though I had known them for years.
I was born in Punjab but moved to Canada when I was eleven. Much of my understanding of relationships was shaped by the life I built there.
In Canada, I had grown accustomed to a certain respect for personal boundaries. We learn not to intrude, not to ask too many questions, and not to assume that another person wants our involvement. Even when we notice someone struggling, we may hesitate, believing that giving them space is the considerate thing to do.
There is kindness in that restraint.
But during the time I spent living in Punjab in 2021 and 2022, I began to experience another kind of kindness—one that was less concerned with boundaries and more willing to cross the distance between people.
A stranger might ask where you had come from, whether you had eaten, or why you were sitting alone. Someone with very little might insist on sharing whatever was available in the house.
Such gestures were not entirely unfamiliar to me. They belonged to the culture in which I was born. Yet I had spent so much of my life away from them that experiencing them as an adult felt like discovering something new.
During those years, I had an unusual opportunity to live in Punjab rather than merely visit it.
I was not spending every day sightseeing or travelling from one seva project to another. There were ordinary days, unhurried conversations, and time to observe village life without always having somewhere else to be.
For the first time in many years, I could pause the pace of my life in the West and pay attention to how people lived, how they spent time together, and how relationships formed in the course of everyday life.
I began to recognize something within myself that I had never quite understood before.
A hunger for human connection.
Not simply the desire to meet people or make acquaintances, but to experience the kind of belonging in which affection is freely given and relationships do not always need years to develop.
That afternoon with Bibi Ji brought those feelings back to me with unexpected clarity.
By now, the sun had gone down and darkness was beginning to settle over the fields.
We had a three-hour drive ahead of us. I knew we had to leave.
But knowing it and wanting to leave were two different things.
I said my goodbyes and got into the car.
Then came Bibi Ji’s voice, asking me to wait another minute.
She wanted to send some jaggery home with me.
I stepped out again as she went to find bags. Eventually, she gathered several kilograms of jaggery for me to take.
I offered to pay, but the family would not accept any money.
I returned to the car, only to be called back once more. I remember getting in and out several times, each interruption becoming another reason to delay the goodbye.
It seemed they did not want me to leave.
And I was in no hurry to leave them either.
There was something difficult about walking away from people who, only hours earlier, had been complete strangers but who now felt like family.
I did not know when I would return to see them. I could make a promise, and I did, but life has a way of carrying us in directions we cannot always predict.
Eventually, we had to go. I carried the jaggery back to Canada.
When I returned home, I shared it with my three children and told them about the family, the sugarcane fields, the grandfather who had hurried to greet us, and Bibi Ji, who had given me so much pyar(affection) in the short time we spent together.
I told them how difficult it had been to leave and how a family with so little had insisted on giving me something to take home.
When I finished, there was a quietness among us. We were happy, and there was little more that needed to be said.
I had brought home several kilograms of jaggery. But the part of that afternoon I most wanted to share with my children could not be weighed or packed into a bag.
It was the memory of being welcomed without hesitation, loved without expectation, and made to feel that I belonged.
I had travelled to that home to learn how a family was living.
But I left having learned something about my own life.
Author’s note: This essay was developed from a personal reflection originally written on January 26, 2023.