How the Idea Came Along
For this blog entry, I decided to focus on the adverse effects of life narratives locally, specifically how life narratives of prominent South Asian gang members are, in a way, influencing our generation in extremely undesirable ways.
I had the privilege of watching an early screening of the Deepa Mehta film “Beeba Boys” (“Beeba”= good in Punjabi) courtesy of the Vancouver International Film Festival (VIFF). The use of the word “beeba” in the title is extremely ironic. “Beeba Boys” has to be the most accurate (among very few) portrayals of the violent and brutal realities of South Asian gang life in film. The movie is centred around the daily life of fictional gang leader Jeet Johar and his crew, who at the time of the film are creating a name for themselves. As the film progresses, Johar meets a young man named Nep in prison. Nep is a former Simon Fraser University student who had been lured into the drug trade and eventually succeeds in his mission to join the Beeba Boys. In the movie, it was quite obvious the character of Nep was driven to serve the Beeba Boys in any way, shape or form because of the promises of the easy money it can bring along with expensive European cars, women and respect from the rest of the criminal underworld. This ambition in South Asian society can ultimately lead to unnecessary waste of life and it is indeed a very real issue, not just in movies.
Background/The Narrative of One Man
Many people in Vancouver, especially in the South Asian community (due to the majority of gang deaths being South Asian) recall the gang war of the 1990s. In this era, one man rose to the top ranks of Vancouver’s criminal underworld and that fellow was Bhupinder “Bindy” Singh Johal, whose life is probably the inspiration for the character Jeet in “Beeba Boys”. Bindy was known as one of the most violent kingpins to ever be involved in Vancouver’s lucrative drug trade. Bindy introduced the idea of broad daylight shootings (for example, the Dosanjh killings) and it was known that he even killed several friends for perceived disloyalty. In the South Asian community, Bindy was known as an extremely multifaceted character – at the same time he directly or indirectly caused the end of so many promising young lives and created devastation for the families left behind, the fear created by his actions in the wider community is widely considered one of the primary factors ending the racism towards the South Asian population. My family sometimes argues that he is the reason nobody dares to demonstrate overt racism in Vancouver today, which was not the case before the era. It is interesting how one person’s life narrative can intersect and affect, whether negatively or positively, so many others. Sadly, Bindy met his demise in 1998 amid further intensification of the South Asian drug war.
Bindy may have died but his narrative has resonated and thrived in South Asian gang cultures and youth all over North America. Young adolescents to this day still read indirect and sometimes direct narratives of those close to Johal and become undesirably driven to emulate Bindy’s life despite the risk to their lives. His way of living has set a precedent for many other South Asian adolescents entering despite knowing that the only way to leave the gang world is death. Many in our generation become blinded by the possibility of millions of dollars in income, gold watches, European cars and lots of girls. Although Johal arguably did create some positive change for the South Asian community, he left a legacy of numerous senseless killings of South Asian adolescents. Hundreds of young men, full of potential and life were lost, not to mention the devastation of the families they left behind.
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Sources
http://www.imdb.com/title/tt4170186/
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bindy_Johal
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AyKn5uuaEEw
In case any of you are interested in “Beeba Boys”…….Pardon the language.