Description:My cousin was already in England. In 1959 my brother was thinking of going to England. There were relatives in Jandiala village of Punjab who were already in England and had come back to India. Our family approached them and they assured our family that my brother would go to England. A day was fixed to meet up in a hotel in Amrtisar to pay the money, which was about £525, each person and to start the journey .I had a day off that day. My father, brother and myself went to Amritsar. We met our relatives and the agent in a hotel. After some discussion it was arranged that a group of people would be going by train to Delhi to start the journey to England. I was also encouraged by the agent to use this good opportunity and also said you pay today for one person and pay for the others in a couple of days. We did not think about the journey ahead because people in India think of England as a land of money and ease. My father said it was up to me. I agreed to go to the UK. I went to my village to get some clothes and money for the journey.
When I went home and told my wife that I was also going to England she was shocked and worried about the future. I explained to her that it was a good opportunity to go to England and I had to go. She was not very happy but didn’t stop me. My mother was also there. She was not very happy both because we were two brothers and both were taking this risk together. I got my things and took the train to Delhi. We were 18 people with the agent who was guiding us. From Delhi we boarded another train towards south of India and went to Mathura city, which is situated, on the banks of river Ganges. The reason for going to these cities was to evade the police. The agent told us to pretend that we were pilgrims and were visiting the Hindu holy places. We stayed there for a couple of nights and then moved to Agra. We stayed in different hotels because we were around thirty-four people by the time we reached Agra. We stayed there for a month and used to go to Taj Mahal and Agra Fort.
Then we boarded another train to Madras. After three days of travelling we reached Madras. From Madras we boarded another train to Dhanush Kodi, a village on the sea. During the day we used to play Indian games on the bank of the sea. We cooked our own food (dhal and chapattis). The food that we made was fantastic and the reason was that there was not much choice. We also helped the fishermen to catch the fish. It was just fun. From there we went back to a city called Madurai and stayed there for a few days. There was a college ground nearby and we passed our time by playing football. One day some of us who could read and write were asked by one of the agents to come with him. The agent took us to Midland Hotel by taxi and we were shown passports of Fiji Island. The agent asked us to write some thing in English to check if we could read and write in English. We helped the agents to fill in the details on the passports. We stayed there for a couple of weeks. Then we were taken to Dhanush Kodi seaport to board a ship to Ceylon (Sri Lanka). We reached Talminar seaport in Ceylon and from there took a train to Colombo. We all stayed in Colombo in different hotels and visited a number of places there. Our visa had run out and we were worried. We went to the Authorities in Colombo for an extension of visa, which was extended without much problem. About 20 days later a group of about 8 people were asked by the agent to be ready to go to the airport to board a BOAC plane. The name of British Airways at that time was British Overseas Airways Corporation. The reason for taking only BOAC was that this flight went via Karachi instead of India. After two days we received the news that they had arrived in England.
Nothing happened for two weeks and those of us left behind were worried about what was going to happen to us. Then our group of 14 people were asked to go to the airport to fly to Karachi by BOAC plane. We reached at Karachi Airport in Pakistan. When we reached Karachi, we received a telegram that we should stop there and not precede with our journey to London. We stayed in the hotel for a couple of days and then boarded a plane of Lufthansa Airlines to Paris. We got off at Paris airport and waited for about 8 hours at the airport without any food or drink. In the evening we boarded a little plane to Jersey. We were not sure where that plane was going. I asked the flight attendant that we wanted to go to Birmingham and she said that we were not going to England, we were going to Jersey. We were shocked. She said ‘‘you are going to an island and from there you will need a ship to go to England.’’ When the plane landed at Jersey, an Airport official called my name. Every body was surprised as to how anybody could have known our names. We all thought that as we are going to England, probably they were going to arrest us. An Airport official gave me £75 cash, as it was my Money Order sent to me by my agent. The airport people asked us where we were going to stay because that was the last flight. We said we wanted to go to Birmingham and stay over night in a hotel in jersey. They asked us if we had only that Money Order money or more. We said we had no more money. Then they suggested that we sleep at the airport and in the morning they would take us to seaport because we had money just enough to go to Birmingham. We were still frightened that they were going to arrest us in the morning. We bought some fish and chips, tea and spent the night there. It was a very cold night after Xmas. Next day we were taken to the seaport in Jersey and in the evening we reached the Southampton seaport. There we showed our passports and boarded a train to London. We were surprised to see trains running underground, and then we reached Birmingham by another train on 28th December 1960. We had the addresses. We showed the addresses to the taxi drivers and they took us to those addresses. I went with other three people by taxi to a house in Balsall Heath Road in Birmingham B5.We knocked at the doors and they were shocked to see us there, as we were not expected. They were really very happy to see us. We were given food and shelter and stayed there for about a year.