Ravi Singh: The man who runs towards disaster

0:02This is a global production.

0:30hands it to me, the translator comes, she said, she wants you to hold the baby because she said, when I was baby, you came here, you saved me.

0:44Hello and welcome to Full Disclosure, a podcast project conceived entirely to let me spend more time with interesting people than I'd ever get on the radio. But this week, the two worlds collide, really, because Ravi in Ryslip rang me a couple of weeks ago. And while I was talking to him, My inbox started pinging with, well, lots and lots of people saying, I think this might be Ravi from Calcerade International, which was, to my embarrassment, well, it was news to me. So we double checked. And it was. Ravinder Ravi Singh is the founder and CEO of that UK-based NGO. We'll hear the story of when and why it was founded back in 1999.

1:25And he is my guest on this week's Full Disclosure. Ravi, welcome. thank you james a pleasure i'm not going to call you ravi and rice slip for the duration of the entire interview um we we should probably begin at the beginning because the the seeds that were sown in your early life perhaps helped to understand what was to sprout and blossom later um so i thought when when i sat down five minutes ago that you'd been born in in punjab but you weren't you were actually born in Singapore that's right yeah how come well my father went to work in the early 40s or late sorry before the war late 30s 39 38 and he got caught up when he was working in Singapore for the British Naval Fire Service and my granddad used to get telegrams or letters every few months or whatever.

2:27And unfortunately, the British assured that people in Singapore will never fall. It's a fortress, and it fell very quick to the Japanese end. He became a prisoner of war. And that really played a big part in upbringing, because every evening, you imagine a very small village, hardly electric, a few hours a day, very rural. My mom would make food right next to the clay oven and put it on a plate, and she'll say, take whatever you can. do not waste food your dad had to eat grass to survive so every meal my mother would tell us that that's ingrained and if you look at all my friends and ask them i tell them order what you can eat do not waste i'll make you eat it don't waste food there are people who have no food so it's ingrained so that was he told us about the suffering where the british officers were beheaded in front of him and they had to dig their own graves he was one of those old you know school guys just got on with it but they've seen everything and he did he did talk to you about he no he talked to our mother uh so i was young when i moved to punjab my father was working he had a decision to make in 69 60 where do you want to live because singapore's you know was given back to the people independent and uh he chose uk he came straight here worked in a foundry right i only knew him the few visits he made to punjab my memory of him is very vague i do wish as you older you knew him better but my mum became my father and mother and and he had confided in her about what absolutely to my older older siblings too it was it was a very is um and also our sikhs were used at target practice etc and other other also other uh captives by the japanese the brutality i think i talked to someone the other day because what the japanese beheaded people i said yeah haven't you seen what other prisoners are like like sticks when they go no so history been forgotten we shouldn't gloss over the circumstances in in which you lost your dad you you were 10 i think um and he was back in punjab visiting he came to get us here i didn't realize he was preparing to take you back with him me and my sister last ones yeah gosh yeah we were the last one mother three brothers and sisters were here and uh so we were last one but i didn't know him as well i wish i do because he wasn't he wasn't present he was too busy sending providing for us and and and doing brutal work really hard work very hard work i don't know how he saved money to bring us over it's you know we can't even save money nowadays so what um what happened that day you were in you were you were what were you doing on the outskirts of your home village i correct my pronunciation of mundi and jatan mundi and jatan yeah so it was a big gathering of relatives uh they all wanted to meet my father especially my future brother-in-law was came to meet my father and then me and my future brother-in-law and father let's walk in the fields just outside it's all green around the village for miles we got about half a mile outside the village and he he's holding my hand and he just collapsed i remember and i remember this electric running through me i didn't know what was happening he's like basically just dropped there and my brother-in-law myself like slow motion looked at me we're in the middle of the field he runs back i can see him slow motion running back to the village and my father is still holding my hand uh till the till the help came about 10 minutes maybe wow it's like electric running from me from head to toe he couldn't speak or anything like that nope it was just i don't know what was happening he just you know i was so young i was like what the hell like you know what's going on here my whole thought process just froze i just remember this electric current and I was like totally frozen, disabled.

6:01It was a long 10 minutes, by the way. I bet it was, endless. Yep, yep. And then you had to deal with your mother's grief? Mothers, then everyone had to come, the relatives. They all came for the funeral and we had to wait for my brother to come from the UK, the older brother. It was, looking back, it was a very tough time. But it was a very confusing time because I didn't know him as well as I knew my mum. did you have a mythologized image of him in your mind did he did he what sort of space did he occupy in your heart uh very hard working very tough when he used to come visit he'd make sure he'd test me on mathematics and english i remember i remember this very clearly once he said to me spell friend i was about 10 10 and a half i said f r e n d obviously he's wrong he looks at my sister across the room my sister knew i was wrong he said is that right she said yes so i don't get the you know the slap so he didn't know yeah yeah exactly so he double checked with her and uh i'm saying oh thank god she but he worked very hard for us i mean being a prisoner of war all the trauma i never talked about it to us carrie day worked hard in the foundry those were like you know that's a different generation it certainly is it's a different it's a different age really isn't it very different what was your relationship with england what was england in your mind given that your dad was there and not with you what did it represent to be honest i didn't really think too much about it we are so i believe you're small maybe a couple of hundred families very friendly very very amazing village amazing amazing upbringing not all sikh not all sikh no no no that's the thing so when my mom would come for a month at a time every year is we had a quarter of our village was muslim so when people here start talking bad about something i tell them i say look what's your next word you know what we do work wise and also my second mother was muslim she raised us you know when my mom was away we call her auntie auntie dolto and so she was um our like basically guardian angel as well she looked after us so much so our village was hindu muslim sikh and i didn't understand there was no differences we i remember when eid would come everybody a few days before get new clothes even we did and then we all celebrate every occasion celebrate i only hear when i came here i started looking at the hatred by there it was a very we're so busy trying to fill our bellies.

8:16I think here we've got bellies full and empty brains so we need to you know always think of something to do even if it's negative. So what did England mean? England meant a complete turnaround from being like I was me and my friend Charanji Singh Chani he was killed by the police in 89 in a fake encounter as it was a lot of young Sikhs were killed in Punjab from 84 to 92 and we were like the terror of the village young guys we were like i'll give you examples so we will loosen your animals we will bring a beehive and pick it with our hands and and the small honeybees cover it with a sheet and throw in your animal yard of your house uh cat weasels and you know go after snakes he was uh you know we were really you know very close the whole village very close so when i came here for five years it was a big big shock because i remember this guy called wayne in the neighborhood it's about 10 11 11 at time and he stuck a thumb at me when i opened the door in our culture some mean you're stupid so i'm putting two thumbs out of him and my brother comes up slaps me back at the head he goes no he means how are you okay so it was i didn't like it at the beginning you know did you want to come before you got no so it was a complete transplantation we know we had trees rivers all sorts of stuff is freedom but it's something like a lot of people this i never understood so when somebody says you don't belong here you you know we came here at the age of 10 11 12 whatever young age you know we came because the family came and uh the pain of letting go of those memories is not easy for us when we get picked on we'd rather be in that peaceful place again but that place has changed too as times change so yeah it was a best upbringing but england meant like new friendship being bullied at school being bullied at the language center Because you had no English when you arrived?

10:08I had no English, no. It was the second day of school. Not school, it was a school, a great school in Slough, Sipuna Middle School, fantastic school. On the side there used to be a little center for the English language. And we were there and a lot of people from Spain, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Punjab, India. And I remember the second day, I think it was, me and my Pakistani friend were 11 something and we're standing under this tree. And two white guys turn up and they're twins. They call them twins. They were our age. He said something. I don't know what he was saying. And I looked at him and I said, I don't know what he was saying.

10:44Next thing he punched me straight in the face and runs off with his brother. And I had my face and I said to my Pakistani friend there, I said, why did he hit me? He said, he doesn't like your color. He said, he does not like your color. I said to him, what's wrong with my color? I didn't know about race, color differences, whatever. and I couldn't understand why somebody punched me for my colour and I still remember that punch it was my first punch in the face in the UK then obviously I joined karate and taekwondo and done it for like a sport but it was it was crazy it's a wake-up call but the innocence of not knowing why somebody likes your colour is still like I reflect back.

11:25I suppose racism has always learned behaviour but from both sides I've thought about it from the racist's point of view nobody's born like that. Nope. But of course, your learning curve is just as steep, or steeper in many ways, except that you're the one who is paying the price for the learned behavior of the racist. And that's the thing. If the racist knew that my father was POW, along with the British officers, who he was great friends with, and he lost those friends, maybe they think differently. What makes me sad is the racists who are now in the forefront, causing all the riots everywhere, they're probably same as us in every way, like struggling to make ends meet, cost of living, family, kids.

12:05And then they go and do that without knowing the people. It's quite upsetting and disappointing and very hurtful because if you look at it, you don't know harm to anyone and they come and attack you. And when they go home, they've got kids, they've got family. Imagine the lives they live. Anger, bitterness, swearing, shouting. So the next generation in the household isn't going to progress. And that's what they should reflect. What are they bringing into the world? Just hate. And they will die bitter and hateful. And next generation will carry on. Not to do better, but to copy their forefathers.

12:39It's a cycle of hate which needs to be broken.

12:47Did Slough have any redeeming features? Slough's always the best place. I mean, when I joined the secondary school, I joined the secondary school almost straight away. This is Eton, Eton, Slaught and Eton Church of England business. So this is Slaught and Eton, by the way. So Eton is a completely different world to us. Although I'll tell you what we did in Eton. Every Tuesday morning, we do, we done a cross country. Right. Oh, it killed me. I hated it. We go through Eton school. Would you really? You know, the big fancy school. That's like having a face up against the sweet shop window, isn't it?

13:21Exactly. So we go around all the long tails, you know, we run past them. I was always at the back struggling. And, yeah, I mean, I think if you see why my father got there and my father or other people who are from Asia stick together because it was more racism widespread. So you had strengths with each other. You had shops, like-minded stuff going on. And when you're isolated, you were easy targets. And, you know, that fear is coming back now. It is coming back now. We will talk about that. were you conscious of class did it make sense to you that these boys who were your age were walking around dressed like Victorian gentlemen I didn't understand it first you know I was like still struggling to learn the language uh I think it was a very big transition for me then later on as you get older like in the fourth fifth year then you understand when you're running past then they we probably run run past Boris or something maybe at one time but then you understand like that there's a massive difference in class and we are like right at the bottom you know especially the families I knew in Slough we were like working class but you know even though we grew up with working class our fathers worked hard could be foundry could be bus driving could be on we had a pride we earned our money we didn't go up our hands out I never claimed a penny I've been out of job every now and then before when I was young I once I queued off of the dole and i never went back i walked out the queue i never claimed so we did we we're considered as that different class but if it comes to worth ethics we're the ones that i suppose not i don't mean just the seeks but asians are quite high up in their work ethics we don't want to be we don't want handouts it's uh i suppose it's like the english caste system in a way class isn't it It's the idea of people being stuck in the pigeonhole that most of us don't get out of it.

15:16Some people do. We talk about corruption because I've been traveling 27 years now in Asia, Africa, etc. But corruption here is worse. When you look at COVID, all the contracts, etc., it happens every day. I went to a dinner. Only one time I was invited to a Tory party dinner. Someone took me along a few years ago. and there's all these property developers and one of the guys looked at me, oh, you're a property developer? I was thinking, wish I got about 50 grand in the bank. But they were there for networking to pay 50 grand to the prime minister and have dinner with them and get things signed.

15:51So the corruption here is a major level. Maybe in Asia where I come from, it's straight in your face, give a bottle of whiskey or give a few thousand rupees and you get your work done. Here it's like billions as you saw. So yeah, it's a massive difference. it's an unjust society in no way when you'd got the english nailed down what what kind of student were you were good not good you weren't i came to this uh country and then i remember even to the center i asked my brother i said wow they don't beat you here with the stick because we were we were beaten back home in punjab he says uh no he goes they don't so i never really studied once I learned English.

16:31I don't want this to sound like an endorsement of physical punishment. Exactly it was like really it was like oh my goodness like people like me who but I was very stubborn the teacher used to beat me back in Punjab back of the hand back of the on the bum whatever the sticks are really brutally but then you say you're stubborn say it doesn't hurt. So here for two three years I was quite withdrawn it wasn't me I had no friends I didn't know what was doing so i joined taekwondo and the best thing i joined in 84 was uh air cadets okay so there was another two or three asian guys i had the turbans i wore a badge on the turban we got bullied a few times i stuck to it some of my friends left and i stuck to it so i had the fastest promotion in air cadets i love the uniform love shooting love flying so that really gave me a lot of confidence the officers became close friends so i think that was a turning point for me i really I think then stepped out of our culture into the English culture in a way concept of service as well absolutely absolutely it's just home from home and your senior officers one of them uh god rest his old Mike Sharp flight lieutenant Mike Sharp he's he passed away he's uh our CEO of one of the squadrons and Neil Paramore was the other one he's still around he moved from London might be listening in top guys I mean some people mentor you and mold you in a way that you reflect back thinking, yeah, these guys really helped me.

17:56And Sikhism also has a strong strain of service. Faith is our faith. Sikhi is based on service, seva, which means selfless service. If you go to the Golden Temple, the Drabasa we call it, there's food for about 100 ,000 a day. Anybody's welcome. Even here, the Sikh temples are gurdwaras. You can walk in and seek shelter, ask for food. The food is all vegetarian, by the way, it doesn't offend anyone you can all have a hot meal so my faith from the young age when i could have my senses when i was five or six uh being in the gurdwara in panjab helping clean up helping the dishes cleaning up it's instilling you it's it's part of your genes to serve others and partly because of the village that you grew up in your earliest years in and i think your mother's influence as well you were quite ahead of your time when it came to equality or equity your mother would really drill into you that everyone was the same?

18:55Absolutely. In the villages in Punjab or India now, it's very common to have different, very bad system of upper caste and lower caste. And so my best friend who was killed, Jania and his brothers, they lived in the area which our side of the village never went, never really met. But we used to go eat together, play together. They'll come and eat. Some of our relatives and some of the people in the village would tell my mother, you know, your son's playing with these guys like untouchable or whatever my mother my mother never said anything playing with those kids or with muslim kids you know it's all one village and she really had that profound effect that you know your thinking is about everyone's a human being where do you think that came from because i mean as as a woman as well as in that era in that part of the world that's three things that would have made it less likely that she'd arrive at such a worldview?

19:48It's that growing up, so she was about seven or eight, she tells me, still tells me the stories about 1947 the partition. So I remember she said, I remember when suddenly all the Muslims in the village were in the square and these several Sikh guys turned up with heavy machine guns like at the time they got the machine gun around the village and the guns and they said, we're going to protect these guys, nothing's going to happen to them. And there were many cases from Pakistan side, Sikhs were guarded, and on this side. But unfortunately, politics played a million people lost their lives in that time.

20:26The petition, as you know, was really not well planned. It became a bloodbath. So she remembers her village protecting the people of the village who were Muslims so they can go to Pakistan safely. They guarded them all the way to the next city to board the train. and my mom still remembers that, remembers the guns, the guard for them saying goodbye. She remembers her family and neighbors saying goodbye for the last time. And so she never forgotten that. So her upbringing is of, you know, war, in a situation which is, you know, you have to, your humanity has to surface or your evil dark side is humanity.

21:02For us, it was humanity and she never forgotten that. she talks about it, the memories, what she suffered then, what she saw, made her what she is. Wow. Yeah, so many in the community who saw the messengers, they carried that burden. Were you, I mean, did you get any O levels or anything like that? I just about made you get CSEs. Okay. So our school was based on when you joined the school, if your English was bad, you were in the lowest group. Straight to one. 2A, 2B, 2C. So I remember good old Mrs. Tucker, fantastic teacher in economics. She gave me a test while she was doing the cooking class.

21:38She goes, hey, I didn't understand what she said. I couldn't read what was on the paper. I could just speak. And then I was blank. And she said, oh, you're going places, aren't you? Like that. I said, oh, thank you very much. I don't know if I just said okay. And so now I've just managed to get CSEs. I tried to be an electrician. My brother forced me to be an electrician, got a trade. It wasn't for me. I always had a knack to, you know, talk to people and, you know, more like retail side. Oh, OK. So you didn't have any particular ambition of what you wanted to be when you grew up, except to pay the bills and...

22:12I wanted to travel. I know that. OK. So when I was about 17 or 18, I went to local Oxfam shop in Slough High Street. Mrs. West, dear old Mrs. West, God rest her soul. A very ugly lady. I said, hello. She goes, oh, hello, young man. How you doing? She's about 65, 70. I said I want to go on a mission I want to do something with Oxfam she said oh dear me it doesn't work like that I said how does it work she said you have to get a job blah blah blah I said so I thought about it for a few days then I went back can I raise money for you she said yes of course so I remember walking to Oxbridge which is only a few miles up and back on my own raised about 54 pounds for my community and I gave to Mrs West she goes oh wow she goes I said can I go on a mission can you talk to someone she goes you really have to get a job you know wish you all the best i remember those memories when we started karl saeed but yeah i mean how old were you then about 18 18 then okay 17 maybe younger 17 maybe so you had this sense of wanting to do something i had to do something meaningful yeah we grew up we grew up with this sense of duty responsibility serving others it's honestly you know if you see anybody even now when i'm walking up and down and now all over base water or whatever park my car i see someone I start talking on somebody sitting on the street just talk to them honestly I don't understand why we walk past people just asking how you doing I always talk to people can I get your coffee and I had the weirdest most funniest order has one elderly lady two three weeks ago before I went Lebanon she said I said hi how you doing she was quite ugly she goes oh I'm good so what can I get you she goes can you get me double macchiato very very specific and the security guard for Sainsbury's standing there he said she always asked that we don't do that i said can i get you something else he goes okay i've got another coffee i think yeah so it's in it's in us it's in especially me i'm the type of guy i'm going to talk to you yeah if you're standing next to me on the train station if you don't talk to me it's okay but i'm going to start a conversation and do that due to that i made so many friends so what sort of jobs did you do shops and i worked in retail and then uh i got a motorbike against my mother's wishes i was clean shaven which a sick boy shouldn't be yeah so you drifted away from me i drifted away i became right right like they call it in a community like somebody who's not in line they call it bigger than which is like a bad boy sort of thing but you weren't rejecting it you were just drifting i'm just drifting because it's a new world for me of course and i lost all my friends i mean you don't want to stand out even more than perhaps your ethnicity makes you stand out the turban and the beard and some of the other trappings of secret ism that they're even more identifying absolutely there was there was no meaning for me they wouldn't explain now we explain to people what it is your ideas so you know when i found out about my friend i told you about that was killed in i just want to pause here because it i mean you you had essentially embraced the western ways for want of a better phrase but you kept an eye on events back in punjab and you would be reading about the killings carried out by indian police in the late 80s early 90s and then you you literally just stumbled across a name that you knew yeah is that right Literally, yeah.

25:18One day I came back from London. I was sitting down about 10.30 at night. I picked up a book somebody gave me years ago. It had black and white pictures. Each page probably had about 20, 30 pictures of young men that never returned to their homes after 84. and I just honestly, I opened the book and it opened a certain page and suddenly these little eyes like from an inch by inch picture and it looked at me. I said, wow, the eyes are really staring at me. It's a black-on-white picture and number 26, whatever. I looked at the key. It says, my friend's name, so I rang my mother. You know what my mother said?

25:55I said, was he killed in 89? This has been the 90s. She said, what do you care? You become a white guy. I remember that. Wow. And she put the phone down. She goes, what do you care? Because I was in her home. I was away in London. And that, you know, stung me. So I was the type of guy getting a haircut twice a week. All my suit had to match, two hours to get ready. And all night I thought about him. What could have been? We were so close. And I regretted not keeping in touch. Next morning I just wore a very rough turban. And I never looked back. The way he was killed, I rang three in the morning UK time that day, which is eight in the morning in India.

26:32I talked to his mom and dad. And they told me that he was tortured in five police stations. And there was a doctor in the fifth one. And then what they used to do is take someone out, put a rifle in their hand, take a picture and announce a police encounter with a terrorist and get an award. And his radio announcement came fire from the fifth night from the police station. And that really hurt me big time. So that my identity, that he never got away from the identity. Where am I? Where am I? His offense was to be a practicing seat. He was a practicing seat. That was it? So much horrific stuff.

27:05His mom went to see him, told me. It was like really heartbreaking. And it happened to many people. So, you know, instead of living in hate, we started working on car side stuff later on, two, three years. I'm not the type of guy to have grudges and live a bitter, twisted life. I'm the type of guy, let's look for solutions to address this situation. So that was, because you already had the impulse, as we've discovered with your early visits to Oxfam. But then, did his parents remember you when you rang? Absolutely, absolutely. Your childhood friend, your sort of partner in crime, your partner in pranks.

27:37He was, yeah. He was. Your partner in pranks died, was killed in the most horrific circumstances. And something began to crystallize inside you, a determination to what? To make a difference? To talk about politics of hate, oppressive politics, to talk about injustice, this, to talk about minorities who have no voice, to talk about the people that I've known all my life, people who molded me, shaped me, being targeted because the state decided that it's not acceptable that any political activism is out there seeking. It could be independence or human rights. Anybody who stood up and spoke became automatically a terrorist.

28:24And that brutality, I mean, you know, not many people in the West know. There was many suspensions of law. There's presidents ruling Punjab, which means the police could do whatever with immunity and impunity. So that was one of the worst stages, dark, dark periods of Punjab. And we sort of like suffered so much, suffered beyond so many family members, a lot of families. Now, so many villages don't have young, a certain generation left, thousands missing. So that, for me, became a turning point to be vocal about it, be an activist. Hence why I talk about everything from Gaza to Lebanon to Yemen to wherever there's crisis going on, Sudan.

29:09We must speak, you know, the pain of the mother. It doesn't matter where the mother's from. It could be Sudan, it could be Gaza, it could be anywhere, it could be UK. OK, her mother's pain is the same. We shouldn't accept oppressive politics. There's nothing human about it.

29:31When did the idea of Kalsa Aid first occur to you then? When did you start to think? Because there's not a lot, is there, Ravi, in your backstory so far that would suggest you had what it took to head up a massive operation like the one you've ended up heading up. Yeah, I should have mentioned earlier, including, you know, Nobel Prize nomination from from people. You were nominated by people who really know what they're talking about. So where did the idea first take root? When did you first think, you know what, maybe I because I can see how you could have now gone down the path of being a very public activist, you know, a very strong advocate for decency and equality, for compassion, for kindness, to be giving a lot of speeches.

30:12And I'm not taking anything away from the people who do go down that path. but that wasn't for you. You wanted to be on the ground. I love being on the ground. I mean, I got invited to do talks or speeches. Of course, of course. But I don't have a PA to go. No. Seek someone to say, look, can we do a speech here? So I'm a very grounded guy. Put me in any crisis, I can set up an operation. I love doing that because I love people. It could be Lebanon, it could be Iraq, it could be Syria. I love people. It's not for me to seek accolades. I love meeting people. Even now, today, in your studio when I came in, the young guy recognized me.

30:48He goes, oh, I'm from this area. I said, we're working there. And so many people recognized me on the train on Tottenham Court Road. This young lady, she goes, oh, thank you very much for the work you do. So that's a recognition I love because, you know, people are grassroots people. But we don't go out to make ourselves big because we are funded by the public and we remain grounded. So when did the first, when did the idea begin to crystallize that you could do something very, very substantive? Well, 1999, as you know, Kosovo crisis, the war in Kosovo. I remember watching the pictures. They were throwing bread at people, and people are desperately trying to get a hold of Lofa bread.

31:24And we were celebrating 300 years of the Khalsa, which is identity for the Sikhs, that visible identity that you see, 1699. So I said, look, why don't we always have the big procession? We're very generous, give food to everyone. Let's take the food where it's needed. Who did you say this to? I said to my, first I was talking to myself a night before the procession in Slough. And I was talking about what can we call it. And this guy comes up, he goes, were you talking to yourself again? And I said, yeah. I said, I'm just thinking, I read something. I said to him, I read something in the garden.

31:53He says, there's a convoy going to Kosovo. And I just, he couldn't understand it, the guy. Then I talked to my friends the next day. He goes, let's do it. And it was a procession in Southall, 99, April 99. In buckets alone, we collected about 25 ,000 pounds, coins and five-pound notes. People are so generous. and we hired two trucks. And I can admit now after 27 years, we lied to the insurance company that we're going to go to, we're going only Italy, but we went to Albania. We prayed. Here's five Sikh guys praying on the water's edge in Italy. And this guy comes up, foreign guy, he goes, oh, you guys praying for the safety?

32:30We said, no, we're praying for the trucks because they're not insured from now. So yeah, it was a Kosovo mission. It was an amazing eye-opener. And it was something we never forgotten, especially when we came back to Italy. So many miracles happened. But then in Italy, they went searching eight or nine hours, what we said. They searched everything in the trucks back to front, empty trucks. It's always bringing something back. You were 30 years old. Yeah, 29 when we launched it, then 30, yeah. So still a young man. Yeah. Black beard. And you discovered your calling, I think. Yeah, I knew our community was very generous.

33:05But more than that, you knew that this was what you were meant to do. I absolutely love everything we've done so far. If people say to me, have you met bad people? It's like, you know, having like 100 apples. There's been one or two bad apples, so what? You don't define whole people with it. Generally, everywhere, people are great. People are great. So, yeah, my calling, and I knew our community's calling because the community in general, they wanted to do something. They always watched it, and now they had a way into assisting directly. Tell me about Sarbat Dabala. Sarbat Dabala means well-being of all.

33:42The Sikhs practice it in every prayer. There's prayers daily two, three times. So it always ends in Sarbat Dabala. Sarbat is the world. Bala is well-being. So we pray for the well-being of all mankind, all humankind. So it's in our blood. We don't say like, oh, may God bless the Sikhs. We say may God bless the whole of humanity. That is in every prayer. is the strength of who we are. It makes us what we are, which is like that we will, which is like that we cannot sit still. Basically, a seat cannot be comfortable with all the suffering going on. It's ingrained. You have to think about other people, regardless of race or religion.

34:20And it's not just abroad. Also here, when there's floods in the UK, whatever, we get stuck in with great friends in Somerset and Yorkshire. So, sirvata badala. Let's not gloss over that, because, I mean, you might go to places like Kosovo and Afghanistan and Syria, but you also go to Somerset when the floods are in place. Brilliant friendships. And I think you were giving out water to people stuck in the convoys on the way into Dover. That was in 2022, I think it was. A few years ago. So wherever there is need. We stuck in. We get stuck in. We have locals here. This is why when you talk about the politics changing, UK politics changing, far-right groups, there are communities that will not even touch that area, Hebden Bridge amazing people Yorkshire we helped Lancashire Somerset we got just amazing contact now because of that every year in Wells you know Cathedral Wells Cathedral in Somerset we do meet the Sikhs because of the floods because the Sikhs went in they wanted to remember so we do that annually now and become an annual event in August I think or July or something so it's a it's a great so like friendships now whenever anything threatens in Somerset or any of the parts they will call us we need sandbags we need this they don't need anything at the moment our last floods this year i was in somerset seems they need anything there's a very good group called flag they do amazing work for the floods and and you know for the community so they call us it's teamwork so this is what i don't get james like how do you want to wreck your country and when there's disasters people want to work together but like now we want to go out there express our anger at something by wrecking your country I really don't get that.