I have come to stay for a short time with Karak Singh. I wrote to you about him before—the man whom I met in the gurdwara in Hong Kong. For three weeks we stayed there together, waiting for the ship to carry us to Seattle, then we were together for six weeks more as we journeyed across the sea. We became great friends, although you will laugh to know that I do not always trust him.

Karak Singh is from Ludhiana District, from a farming family that somehow lost their lands. When the family was desperate, he joined with the British Indian Army and served in Shanghai, then in Hong Kong. For a few years he worked as a security guard in Manila. I do not know what sort of family he is from, but he has been generous to me. He has joined up here in a farming venture with his cousin-brother, an older man of 50 or so, Jivan Singh, who seems very honorable, and to whom I’ve taken a great liking. Jivan Singh is here with his wife and very young daughter and also his nephew. Altogether, they are good people. Can you believe that there are other Punjabis in the Valley, Padma, perhaps 200 or so, and that among them is a woman? It is true what they say—wherever the earth can sustain life, the potato and the Sikh will reach there sooner or later. Please give a kiss to my son. Every day, every moment, I think of you both.

Thera,

Ram

The next morning Karak showed Ram around the farm. The large field bordering Jivan Singh’s home would be planted in a few weeks with cantaloupe, and there were smaller fields of strawberries, date trees and a grapefruit orchard. Farther away were acres of alfalfa and barley. One hundred and sixty acres that bordered the other side of Jivan Singh’s home were sharecropped by a Japanese family, the Moriyamas. When Karak and Ram stood on the roadway near the entry to Jivan’s fields, they could see the Moriyamas’ house, three-quarters of a mile away.

The home that stood across the cantaloupe field from Jivan’s house belonged to the owner of the entire property, Stephen Eggenberger, a Swiss immigrant who had married the daughter of a wealthy family based in Los Angeles. Eggenberger lived in Los Angeles permanently now, Karak said.

To Ram, the home seemed a luxury: clay brick that would keep the heat outside and leave the inside cool, so different from the wooden boards that formed Jivan’s home, the metal screens framing his porch. Through the window in the door Ram could see several rooms, well swept and clean.

“Why doesn’t he live here?” Ram asked.

“His wife suffers from an ailment and cannot tolerate the heat.” Karak explained more: Eggenberger had helped Jivan settle here when he came in 1905. Jivan had come to find work fighting the flood, but after the waters receded, he had wanted to stay. Eggenberger hired him to help on the farm. When Jivan wanted to grow a field of melons, Eggenberger offered him a crop share and some seed to get started. “They are generous people, bhai. Once Eggenberger’s wife nursed Jivan Singh through an injury. He will not forget that.”