Madho Ram Mahimi

Madho Ram Mahimi was born in Bhardwaj, a village in Punjab, India, in 1918. He was most likely of Dalit caste. In 1958 he left his mother and wife to find work in Britain, settling in Wolverhampton, where, after a year of searching, he was able to secure employment at a foundry.

Over the course of twelve years, between 1958 and 1970, Mahimi wrote a long-form epic poem about his life in Britain, titled Mera England da Safr, which translates as ‘My Passage to England’. The poem, which takes the form of a traditional Punjabi qissa, captures Mahimi’s life in Britain, as he reflects on his arduous work as a labourer, the community in which he is embedded, drinking culture, romantic relationships and family reunification.

As with a traditional qissa, the poem centres stories of love and morality. From the poem, we learn that Mahimi’s migration to Britain was contentious, as he did not consult his wife about his plans to alleviate the family’s poverty by seeking work abroad. The overarching narrative, about a ‘hero’ setting off on a journey to a distant land, underpins Mahimi’s description of his migration and settlement. Upon arriving in Wolverhampton, Mahimi lives in a house with several other Punjabi men, regularly visits the pub and spends several months looking for a job.

In the years after his migration, Mahimi describes the guilt of forgetting the financial promises he made to his family in Punjab and the ways in which he has betrayed his wife, given his romantic relationship with a local girl. Mahimi’s moral dilemma is amplified by interludes and letters written from his wife’s perspective, which detail the emotional turmoil of family separation. After eight years of separation, Mahimi’s wife decides to migrate to Britain, following her sister’s revelation that, when she visited Mahimi whilst holidaying in Britain, she met his white girlfriend.

Following their reunification, Mahimi details the ordinariness of their life together, including buying a house, having children and learning about welfare provisions such as family allowance and free medical care via the NHS. In addition, the poem details how Mahimi negotiates his hopes of return to Punjab with the reality that he is no longer familiar with the place he once called home.

The poem consists of fifty pages and Mahimi self-published it as a pamphlet for distribution among friends and relatives in 1972. The poem was also often performed orally by Mahimi, and this process resulted in the poem changing due to altered events or additions. Darshan Tatla, an academic at Coventry University, happened upon the pamphlet at a bookstore in Birmingham in the late 1990s and in turn brought Mahimi’s epic poem to public audiences.