Simran Kaur and the Fence

Three Days

Simran Kaur counted thirty-two steps to the bus stop every morning.

She lived on Kennedy Road, in Springdale — the northeast part of Brampton where the streets were wide and the houses were brick with double driveways, and almost every household had at least one set of grandparents inside. On summer evenings the aunties walked the sidewalk in pairs, doing their sair in salwar suits and running shoes, going up and down the same stretch before it got dark. In October it was too cold for that, but the smell of chai still came from kitchen windows in the mornings, and the signs at the plaza down the block had Gurmukhi alongside English, the way everything in Springdale did — two languages, one neighbourhood.

There were fourteen red doors between her house and the corner. She counted them the same way she counted everything — not because she doubted the number, but because doing it the same way made the day feel orderly. Thirty-two steps. Fourteen red doors. The dome of Gurdwara Dasmesh Darbar, two blocks north — white against the October sky — just visible above the rooftops if she looked at the right angle. The mithai shop at the plaza was closed at this hour, but the smell of jalebi reached the pavement even before it opened, something sweet drifting out like it had nowhere else to be.

She had counted these things since September. They were hers.

On Monday, she counted a boy she didn’t know, sitting by the fence at the edge of the playground. He had his back against the chain-link and his knees pulled up to his chest, while everyone else played. There were forty-one kids at recess. The boy was the only one not moving.

On Tuesday, he was there again. Same spot. Same fence. Same knees. The football game roared past him. Two girls played hopscotch close to the doors. The boy watched all of it like he was watching television in another language — like the sounds made sense but the pictures didn’t.

On Wednesday, he was there again. This time someone ran past him during the football game, and he pulled his knees a little tighter. He had a small bag sitting beside him. He never opened it. He just kept it there, like it was company.

Three days. Same fence. Same boy. Same empty space around him.

At lunch, Simran sat with Maya and Ethan. Maya had her sketchbook open — she was working through every bird species she’d spotted in October, one drawing per species, and she was up to seventeen. Today she was drawing a crow. Very serious about the angle of the wing. Ethan had six straws and was constructing something architectural that kept almost standing up.

“Who’s that boy by the fence?” Simran asked.

Maya looked up. “His name is Aiden. He started last week. Ms. Park’s class.”

“He’s there every day,” said Simran.

Ethan glanced toward the window. “He probably likes it there.”

Simran looked at Aiden through the glass. He didn’t look like he liked it there. He looked like he was waiting for something that kept not arriving.

“He doesn’t look like he likes it,” she said.

“Maybe he’s thinking.” Ethan went back to his straws. “I think better when I’m alone.”

“For three days in a row?”

Ethan didn’t answer. Maya’s crow stared up from the page with one careful eye.

On the 37 bus home that afternoon, Simran sat by the window and counted traffic lights. Seventeen between school and the Gurdwara stop, the same as every day. Somewhere over the western rooftops, a plane from Pearson banked low and slow — she could see the white belly of it through the bus window, beginning its descent. She found that comforting too: something large moving in exactly the way it was supposed to, on time, following its course.

But she kept thinking about the boy. Forty-one kids at recess, and forty of them were doing something. Only one was just sitting. Simran had sat still once during a birthday party when she didn’t know anyone, and the whole afternoon had felt like holding her breath. She wondered if every recess felt like that for him.

The Third Recess

On Wednesday afternoon, the lunch bell rang.

Simran put on her coat. She had made a decision — she would go to the fence and sit next to him. She had been thinking about it since lunch, and she had decided.

She went to the door and stepped out onto the playground. It was louder than usual. The football game had already started. Maya was ahead of her, looking for a spot to draw. Ethan had gone to the climbing structure.

Simran looked across the playground toward the fence.

Aiden was there. Same spot.

She started walking. One. Two. Three.

The football game was loud on her left. Someone yelled about the ball being out.

Four. Five.

She slowed.

What if he didn’t want anyone to sit there? What if he looked up and then looked away? What if she sat down and couldn’t think of a single thing to say — not one sentence, not even a word — and they both just sat there in silence while everyone else played around them, and she had to count the seconds until the bell saved her?

She stopped.

She was maybe six steps away. She stood there for a moment, her coat zipped and her hands at her sides, looking at the back of Aiden’s coat.

Ethan ran up from behind. “Come to the climbing structure.”

“In a minute,” she said.

But she didn’t go to the fence. She turned around. She walked back toward the school — seven steps, eight, nine, through the door and into the warm.

She sat down on the bench by the coat hooks.

Through the glass door, she could see the playground. She could see the fence. She could see Aiden’s small shape against the chain-link, knees still up, bag beside him.

She counted the kids passing in front of him: four, five, six. None of them stopped. None of them sat.

She counted the steps she’d taken toward him: five. Maybe six. And then she’d turned around.

That was the number she didn’t want to count. Five steps toward, and then seven steps back. Twelve steps total, none of them adding up to anything.

She looked at her kara. Steel circle. She turned it on her wrist once.

The bell rang. She stood up.

She hadn’t walked past. But she hadn’t gone either. She wasn’t sure which one this was.

The Kanga

The next morning, Simran sat at the kitchen table in her school clothes, eating buttered toast. Her mum stood behind her, working the kanga through her hair in long, patient strokes.

Thirty-eight strokes. Always thirty-eight.

Simran had started counting them when she was five. Her mum didn’t know. It was a private thing — the warm feeling of knowing that thirty-eight was always thirty-eight, that the braid would always come out tight and even, that her mum’s hands were steady and sure.

“Sit still,” said her mum.

“I am sitting still.”

“You’re sitting still and also fidgeting. Different.”

Simran’s hands went flat on the table.

Outside, the maple tree had lost most of its leaves. Six leaves still on the branch — bright yellow against the grey October sky.

“Maa,” she said, “if you saw someone sitting alone every day, what would you do?”

Her mum’s hands paused in her hair for just a moment, then started again. “Who are we talking about?”

“Nobody. I’m just asking.”

“Mm.” Three more strokes. “I’d probably think about it for a while.”

“And then?”

“And then I’d probably go and sit next to them.” The braid began — her mum’s fingers working quickly and evenly. “You don’t always need to say anything. Sometimes sitting nearby is enough.”

“What if you’re scared?”

“Of what? Sitting?”

“Of saying the wrong thing. Of them not wanting you there.”

Her mum’s hands stopped. She came around and crouched in front of Simran so their faces were level. She had the kanga in one hand and a hair elastic in the other, and she looked at Simran the way she sometimes did — like she was reading something small and important written very carefully.

“Puttar,” she said, “if someone is sitting alone and you go and sit next to them, you can’t really say the wrong thing. Even if it’s awkward. Even if they’re quiet. The fact that you’re there is the whole message.”

Simran looked at the kanga in her mum’s hand — smooth, dark wood, small teeth, older than Simran, older than her mum even. Her nani had used it in Amritsar.

She nodded. Her mum finished the braid.

Thirty-eight strokes. Exactly.

Ten Steps

At recess, Simran put on her coat and stood at the door.

She looked across the playground. Aiden was at the fence. Same spot. Fourth day.

Yesterday she had counted five or six steps and turned back. Today she would count ten.

She started walking.

One. Two. Three.

Four. Five. Six.

She passed the hopscotch lines. Two squares, one square, two squares. She knew them by heart.

Seven. Eight.

What if he looked up and looked away? She kept walking.

Nine. Ten.

She sat down beside him. Not right beside him — a small gap of cold asphalt between them. Close enough to be there. Far enough that he could pretend she wasn’t, if he needed to.

The chain-link fence was cool against her back.

The boy looked up. His eyes were brown and a little bit surprised.

“Hi,” said Simran. “I’m Simran.”

A pause. “Aiden.”

“I know,” she said.

They sat. Simran didn’t ask why he sat there alone. She didn’t suggest they go and play. She just sat there with him while the playground moved and shouted around them, and the cold seeped up through the ground, and a pigeon landed on the fence post above them with a soft thump.

After a little while, Aiden said, “That’s a nice bracelet.”

Simran looked at her kara. The steel was cold today and slightly bright in the thin autumn light. “Thanks. It’s called a kara.”

“What’s it for?”

“It’s one of five things Sikhs carry. A gift from our Guru. It’s a circle — so it means there’s no end. No beginning either.” She paused. “Like Waheguru. That’s our word for God.”

Aiden nodded, slowly. “I like that,” he said, and he sounded like he meant it.

They watched the football game. The pigeon above them paced back and forth along the fence post.

“Four,” said Simran, quietly.

“What?”

“Four pigeons. There were three on Tuesday.”

Aiden looked up at the row of pigeons along the top of the fence. His face did something almost like a smile. “That one walks funny,” he said.

“They all walk funny. Pigeons always look like they’re surprised about walking.”

Aiden looked at her. This time he actually smiled — small, quick, like something catching light and moving on.

“Yeah,” he said. “They do.”

They sat until the bell rang. Nobody came to the fence, which Simran had thought might feel lonely but actually felt fine — just a spot, like any other spot, and they were in it together.

Simran stood up. Her knees were cold. “Same time tomorrow?” she said. She hadn’t planned to say it.

Aiden looked up at her. Something in his face loosened — not all at once, but the way a knot loosens when you find exactly the right thread to pull.

“Yeah,” he said. “Okay.”

That Evening

At dinner, her mum had made aloo gobi, and there was rice and daal from the night before.

Simran ate her first four bites quietly.

“I sat with a boy today,” she said. “At recess. By the fence.”

“Oh?” Her mum passed the rice.

“He’s new. He was sitting there four days in a row. I counted.” Simran looked at her plate. “Yesterday I didn’t go. I got halfway and turned back.” She took another bite. “Today I went.”

Her dad said nothing, but she could feel him listening.

“We didn’t talk about much. He asked about my kara. I told him it was a circle — no end and no beginning. I think that was the right explanation.”

“That was a good explanation,” her mum said.

Her dad set down his fork. He looked at her for a moment. Then he reached for the serving dish, and as he stretched across the table, his shirt pulled sideways. Simran saw something she hadn’t noticed before — a thin strap across his chest, and tucked against his side, a small curved shape in a dark wooden sheath.

“Papa, what’s that?”

Her dad looked down. He set the serving dish down and opened his shirt slightly so she could see — a small blade, smaller than her hand, in smooth dark wood.

“This is a kirpan,” he said.

Simran looked at it carefully. It was curved like a crescent, and the sheath was carved with a simple pattern along its length. There was nothing frightening about it. It looked like something old and quiet, kept close because it mattered.

“Is it a knife?”

“No, puttar. It looks like one, but it’s something different.” He held the sheath gently in his palm. “Do you remember Guru Gobind Singh Ji — and the five gifts he gave the Khalsa to carry always?”

Simran nodded. “Kesh. Kanga. Kara. Kachera. And—”

“Kirpan,” said her dad. “The fifth one.” He said the word slowly. “Kir. Pan.”

“Kirpan,” Simran repeated.

“I’ve worn it every day since I was baptised.” He rested the sheath in his palm. “I’ll tell you what it means. The word kirpan comes from two smaller words.”

Kirpa and Aan

Her dad kept the sheath on the table between them.

“The first word is kirpa,” he said. “Do you know what kirpa means?”

Simran thought. “Mercy?”

“Mercy. Compassion. The kind of care that sees someone struggling and moves toward them instead of away.” He touched the sheath lightly with one finger. “And the second word is aan. It means honour. The honour to act — not just to feel sorry, but to actually do something.”

“Mercy and honour,” said Simran.

“A mercy blade. That’s what the kirpan truly is. Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave it to the Khalsa as a promise: never look away. Always stand with anyone who cannot stand for themselves.”

Simran thought about Wednesday. The six steps she’d taken, then turned back. She hadn’t looked away — she’d been watching Aiden for three days. But she had turned back.

And then she thought about today. Ten steps. The pigeon. Aiden’s smile.

“I didn’t know that this morning,” she said slowly. “I didn’t know any of those words. But I went anyway.”

Her dad looked at her. “Yes,” he said. “You did.”

“So you can carry the promise before you know its name?”

He was quiet for a moment. “I think you carried it because you’d already seen it was needed.” He picked up the sheath and tucked it back under his shirt. “The kirpan is always with me, which means the promise is always with me. But the promise was yours too today, even without the blade.”

Simran turned her kara on her wrist once, slowly. “Can the promise be inside you? Even if you don’t wear a kirpan?”

“The blade makes the promise visible,” her dad said. “But the promise itself — kirpa — that’s something every person can carry.” He smoothed his jacket. “The blade is just the reminder.”

Her mum handed her the lunchbox for tomorrow. The kara clinked against the plastic clasp.

The Mirror

Simran stood in the bathroom with her toothbrush, looking at herself in the mirror.

She didn’t usually study her reflection. But tonight she was looking at the kara — the way it sat on her wrist, heavy and cool and permanent-looking, picking up the bathroom light in a thin bright line.

She had worn it since she was four. She had worn it so long she sometimes forgot it was there, the way you forget about a sound that’s always in the background. But it wasn’t nothing.

She thought about what she had done at the fence today. Ten steps. The cold ground. The small gap of asphalt between her and Aiden. She thought about Aiden saying I like that, about the pigeon that walked like it was surprised about walking.

She thought about Wednesday. She had counted five steps forward and then seven steps back. Twelve steps total, none of them adding up to much.

Today had been ten steps forward and they stayed that way.

She thought about the kirpan on the table between her and her dad at dinner. Small. Quiet. Kept close every day. Never used in the way people sometimes feared. But there, always there — a reminder: I don’t walk past.

She hadn’t known the word kirpa this morning. But she had felt something like it. You could carry something before you knew its name.

She brushed her teeth. She put the toothbrush back. She turned off the bathroom light.

Five

The next morning, everything was the same — thirty-eight strokes of the kanga, the braid, the lunchbox, thirty-two steps to the bus. The mithai shop smell drifted from the plaza two blocks down. The dome of Gurdwara Dasmesh Darbar was white above the rooftops — bright at this hour, the October sky still pale behind it.

At recess, Simran put on her coat and went to the door.

When she looked across the playground, Aiden wasn’t at the fence.

He was standing about three steps forward, near the edge of the football field, watching the game.

Simran walked over. “Hi.”

“Hi,” he said. He was watching a boy in a red coat who kept cutting through to the ball. “That guy’s fast.”

“He is,” said Simran.

Maya appeared with her sketchbook. She’d been looking for a pigeon all morning — she was trying to get to eighteen species for October, and house sparrows and crows were done but she hadn’t drawn a pigeon properly yet. “I need that one to stay still,” she said, pointing to the fence. “Look — five of them. Five!”

“That’s a lot of pigeons,” said Aiden.

Maya looked at him. “Hi. I’m Maya. I draw birds.”

“I’m Aiden.”

“Can you hold the far end flat while I draw? Wind makes it curl and I lose the line.”

Aiden looked surprised. But he reached out and took hold of the corner of the sketchbook.

They sat down in a row — Simran, Aiden, Maya — with the sketchbook balanced across Aiden’s knees while Maya’s pencil moved and Aiden held the corners steady. Maya drew quickly, her pencil tilting and pressing and lifting. The pigeon took shape — round body, small head, the funny rolling walk somehow visible even in pencil lines.

“It’s easier when someone holds it,” Maya said, without looking up.

“Yeah,” said Aiden. He watched the pigeon appear on the page. “How long have you been drawing?”

“Since forever. Simran counts things. I draw them. Ethan builds things. We’re all a bit like that.”

Ethan had appeared on Maya’s other side. He looked at the drawing, then at Aiden, then at Simran. “That’s the new kid,” he said.

“Aiden,” said Aiden.

“I said you probably liked sitting at the fence,” said Ethan. He was quiet for a moment. “I was wrong about that.”

“It was okay for a couple of days,” said Aiden. “But it gets cold.”

“Yeah,” said Ethan. He sat down. “I’m Ethan. I build things out of straws mostly. It’s better than it sounds.”

Simran counted. Five pigeons on the fence. Thirty-one kids on the playground, not counting themselves. Four kids sitting in a row with a sketchbook. Three steps closer to the football game than yesterday.

Maya held the sketchbook up so Aiden could see the finished pigeon. He looked at it for a moment. “You got the walk right,” he said. “The way they sort of — rock.”

“That’s the hardest part,” Maya said. “Motion is hard in pencil. That’s why I needed it to stay still.” She looked at the fence. “Species eighteen,” she said. “I’ve been trying to get to twenty by the end of October.”

“How many’s that?” said Aiden.

“Two more.”

“There are usually waxtails near the ravine,” said Ethan. “Or cedar waxwings. Whatever they’re called.”

Maya looked at him. “Cedar waxwings. You told me that’s a waxtail last week.”

“I was guessing. I googled it last night.”

She wrote something in the corner of the sketchbook. “Cedar waxwing. Okay.”

Simran counted the days: three days watching. One day turning back. One day of ten steps. One day of Aiden standing forward.

Five Kakars. Five gifts.

One promise she would keep.

---

Gurbani Verse

ਦਇਆ ਮਇਆ ਕਿਰਪਾ ਠਾਕੁਰ ਕੀ; ਸੇਈ ਸੰਤ ਸੁਭਾਈ ॥

Dayaa ma-i-aa kirpaa Thaakur kee; se-ee sant subhaa-ee.

“Those filled with the Lord’s kindness, compassion, and mercy — they are the true saints.”

— Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Ang 701, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji

---

Discussion Questions

Let’s Talk About It: Simran walked halfway to the fence on Wednesday and turned back. Then she went on Thursday. Why do you think it was easier the second time?

Let’s Think About It: Simran’s dad explains the kirpan as kirpa (mercy) and aan (honour). Simran says, “So you can carry the promise before you know its name?” What do you think she means?

Let’s Talk About It: Simran didn’t say anything very important to Aiden — they mostly talked about pigeons. Why do you think that was enough?

Let’s Think About It: Ethan admitted he was wrong about Aiden liking the fence. Is it easy or hard to say “I was wrong”? Why does it matter?

Let’s Try It: Tomorrow, look for someone who might be on their own. You don’t need to say anything important. Just sit nearby. Sometimes showing up is the whole message.

---

Word Meanings

Word	Meaning
Aloo gobi	A Punjabi dish made with potatoes and cauliflower
Daal	Lentil stew — a staple of Punjabi meals
Gurdwara	A Sikh place of worship — “the door to the Guru”
Kanga	A small wooden comb — one of the five articles of Sikh identity
Kara	A steel bracelet worn on the wrist — one of the five articles of Sikh identity, representing the eternal circle of Waheguru’s love
Kesh	Uncut hair — one of the five articles of Sikh identity
Khalsa	The community of initiated Sikhs, founded by Guru Gobind Singh Ji in 1699
Kirpa	Mercy, compassion — the root of the word kirpan
Kirpan	A small blade carried by Sikhs — one of the five articles of Sikh identity, symbolising the duty to protect the vulnerable
Puttar	Child — a term of love used by Punjabi parents
Roti	Flatbread — a staple of Punjabi meals
Waheguru	The Wonderful Creator — the Sikh name for God

---

About This Story

This is the fourth story in the Simran Kaur series — five stories set in Brampton and Toronto, each woven around one of the Five Kakars (the five articles of Sikh identity given by Guru Gobind Singh Ji to the Khalsa in 1699). In this story, the Kirpan — often misunderstood as a weapon — is shown as what it truly is: a promise of mercy and protection. The word kirpan comes from kirpa (compassion) and aan (honour). Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave it to the Khalsa not as a call to violence, but as a reminder that mercy is not just a feeling — it is an action. Simran carries the promise before she knows its name. The blade arrives later, as the reminder.

---

Explore More

• The Five Kakars — Articles of Sikh Faith — What the Five Kakars are and why they matter
• Simran Kaur and the Picture — The third story in the Five Kakars series
• The Drumbeat: A Holla Mohalla Story — A story about courage and community