Simran Kaur and the Knot

Tuesday

Tuesday was art afternoon.

Simran liked Tuesdays for this reason. Ms. Larson cleared the desks at one o’clock and put the materials out — watercolours on Mondays, pencils on Tuesdays — and for forty-five minutes nobody had to do maths or spelling or answer questions about main characters. They could just make things.

Simran wasn’t a drawer like Maya, so she usually did something adjacent — labelling diagrams, making careful maps of things she’d noticed that week. Last Tuesday she had drawn a map of the bus route from home to school with every stop marked and the approximate number of people who got on or off at each one. Ms. Larson had put it on the wall.

Today she was working on a floor plan of High Park from memory — she wanted to see how accurate it was. She had thirty-two steps to the bus stop, seven stops to the park gate, twenty-two stones in the bridge arch. She was working out how to put these into a shape.

Maya, next to her, unrolled her Toronto skyline.

The Drawing

It started with the CN Tower.

Ms. Larson had given them free art time on Tuesday afternoon — no prompt, just paper and whatever they wanted to draw. Maya had been working on her Toronto skyline for three sessions. Today she unrolled it on her desk with the careful pride of someone showing work they believed in.

It was good. The buildings were drawn from memory — Bay Street’s towers, the lake behind, and in the middle, the CN Tower rising above everything.

Simran looked at it. Maya had made the tower graceful, slightly curved, tapering to a needle point.

“You’ve made it too thin,” Simran said. “The CN Tower is wider than that. Especially at the base — the base is really wide. It goes out before it goes up.”

Maya looked at her drawing. “I know what the CN Tower looks like.”

“I’m just saying. The proportions are off.”

Maya picked up her pencil. She didn’t say anything.

“The pod partway up is bigger too,” said Simran. “It’s like a disc. Yours looks like a small dot.”

“Simran,” said Ethan, from behind them, “she didn’t ask.”

Simran stopped. The words were already out. She looked at Maya’s drawing, then at Maya, who had turned back to her work and was drawing something else now, not the tower, just adding clouds to the background in quick small strokes.

“It’s a really good drawing,” said Simran.

Maya kept adding clouds.

Simran went back to her floor plan of High Park. She drew the stone bridge. She drew the pond. She counted the geese from memory — twelve — and put them on the pond as small oval shapes. She drew the hill where the boy had brought back the sketchbook. It looked right to her. She thought the proportions were good.

After school, walking to the bus, Maya went ahead with two girls from her class. She didn’t look back. Ethan fell into step beside Simran.

“You should have just not said anything,” he said.

“The proportions were wrong.”

“She knows that. She didn’t need you to tell her in front of everyone.”

Simran was quiet. She counted the cracks in the pavement: six, seven, eight. She thought about the drawing. She had been right about the proportions — the CN Tower’s base was wider than Maya had drawn it. But Ethan was also right, which was somehow worse.

Both things were true at the same time. She wasn’t sure what to do with that.

Thirty-two steps from the bus stop to her door. She counted them. Usually counting helped. Today it didn’t.

Zero

On Wednesday morning, Simran decided she would fix it.

She had a plan. She would find Maya before school, explain that she had been right about the proportions but wrong about the timing, and Maya would understand, and everything would go back to how it was. It was a clear plan. It should work.

Maya was at her locker at eight thirty. Simran walked over.

“I was right about the proportions,” she said. “But I should have said it differently.”

Maya closed her locker. “I know the proportions were wrong. I figured that out on my own.”

“I’m just saying — I wasn’t wrong about the actual observation.”

“You already said that.” Maya picked up her bag. “You said it when you said it the first time, in front of everyone.” She looked at Simran. Not angry — more tired. “You’re apologizing for the way you said it but you keep saying it again.”

She walked to class.

Simran stood at the locker and felt the plan fall apart in her hands. She had started from the wrong place.

At lunch, Maya and Ethan were at their usual table but at a different angle — Maya half-turned toward the girl who drew birds too, Ethan neutral in the way he went neutral when he didn’t want to take sides. Simran sat down and ate her lunch and said very little.

She counted the cafeteria ceiling tiles: forty-four. She counted again: forty-six. The grid was irregular and she couldn’t get a reliable number. She gave up at the third count.

She had started from the proportions because the proportions were true. But truth wasn’t the only thing that mattered about when and how you said it. She had known this from the beginning, somewhere. She had just thought she could skip past it to the part where she was right.

The problem was that every time she thought through what to say to Maya, the conversation tangled up. There was the fact of the proportions being correct, and the separate fact of the moment being wrong, and she kept pulling the two things together into one and making it worse.

You’re apologizing for the way you said it but you keep saying it again.

Maya was right. Simran had gone straight for the middle of the tangle and pulled.

On the bus home she sat alone. Seven stops. The white dome of Gurdwara Dasmesh Darbar appeared between buildings in the grey afternoon.

She counted it: once.

The Comb

That evening, Simran’s mum called her for the nightly kanga.

It wasn’t always the nightly kanga — sometimes it was the morning kanga only, sometimes both, depending on what Simran had been doing. Today she’d run around at lunch and the braid was loose and messy at the ends.

Simran sat on the stool in the bathroom and her mum began at the ends — always the ends first, carefully working the knots out from the bottom of the braid before moving up. The kanga her mum used for this was old. It had come from Amritsar in a suitcase, wrapped in a cloth, decades before Simran was born. Nani had used it every night on Mum’s hair in a house in Punjab. Now it lived in the second drawer of a bathroom in Brampton, doing what combs do: patient, steady, starting at the edges.

Simran watched it in the mirror.

“Maa,” she said. “Why do you always start at the bottom?”

“Because if you start at the top, you push the knot further down and make it worse.” Mum worked a tangle gently — not forcing it, angling from the side. “You have to start at the edges of the problem. Find where it’s loose first. Then work in.”

Simran watched this happen. The comb found a free section of hair, moved through it easily, then approached the tangle from the outside — working in small strokes, loosening the edges bit by bit. The tangle didn’t disappear all at once. It got smaller and smaller until it was gone.

She thought about Maya.

The edges of the problem: the timing. The fact that she had said something true in the wrong moment, in front of other people. She could start there — not with “I was right” or “I was wrong” — but with I should have said it differently.

She thought about whether that was true. She thought it was.

“The kanga was Nani’s?” she said.

“Her mother’s before that. It came from a shop near the Harimandir Sahib. Very old wood.” Mum continued working upward. “A good kanga is patient. It doesn’t rush the hair. It finds where the hair is willing to move, and starts there.”

“What if the knot is really bad?”

“Then you’re more patient. You never force it. You just keep working from the outside in.”

The tangle in Simran’s hair was gone now. Mum worked up to the roots in long smooth strokes. In the mirror, the old dark comb moved steadily.

Simran thought: start at the edges. Find where it’s loose. Work in.

Dinner

At dinner, Simran’s dad asked how school was. He asked this the same way every evening — not urgently, just as part of the rhythm of sitting down.

“Fine,” said Simran.

“Fine meaning good, or fine meaning it happened?”

“Fine meaning complicated.” She moved her daal around her plate. “I said something to Maya that was true but wrong. And then when I tried to fix it I made it worse because I led with the part that was true.”

Dad broke a piece of roti and said nothing.

“The true part was that her CN Tower drawing had the wrong proportions. The wrong part was saying it in front of everyone while she was showing her work.” Simran looked at her plate. “I tried to apologize today but I kept saying the proportions were wrong. So it wasn’t really an apology.”

Dad ate for a moment. Simran waited for him to tell her what to do.

He didn’t. He said: “Knots get worse if you pull.”

Simran looked at him. “What does that mean?”

“Just what it says.” He picked up his chai. “You pull on a knot, the knot tightens. Everyone knows this.”

“That’s all?”

“That’s all.” He drank his chai.

Simran ate her daal. She thought about the kanga working from the bottom. The way it found the edges first — where the hair was loose, where it was willing to move — before working up toward the actual tangle.

The edge of the problem. The loose end. Not: I was right about the proportions. But: I shouldn’t have said it the way I said it.

Just that. Just the loose part. Nothing about whether she was right.

She could start there.

Seven Streetlights

Simran sat at her bedroom window after dinner.

Seven streetlights visible from here — she had counted them so many times they didn’t need counting anymore, but she counted them anyway because it helped. One, two, three. The same ones in the same order, making the same circles of yellow light on the pavement.

She thought about the kanga in the bathroom drawer. The old dark wood. The fine teeth. It had come all the way from Amritsar in a suitcase, and now it was in a drawer in Brampton. That was a long way to travel for a comb to do what combs do.

She thought about the knot in the back of her braid this evening — the tight one at the nape of her neck that her mum had worked loose in small careful strokes without once pulling. The knot hadn’t disappeared all at once. It got smaller and smaller. First the edges loosened, then the middle, then it was gone.

She had gone to Maya this morning and pulled at the middle. Led with the true thing. Made it worse.

Tomorrow she would find the edge.

She counted the streetlights again. Still seven.

The Edges

The next morning on the bus, Simran sat in her usual seat and waited. Maya got on at the fourth stop, her sketchbook under her arm, and came down the aisle.

She sat down next to Simran. This was what she did every day. Maya didn’t reroute around problems — she walked through them.

Simran spoke first.

“I was wrong about how I said it,” she said. She didn’t add but I was right about the proportions. She just stopped there. Let the loose end be the loose end.

Maya was quiet for one stop. Outside, Springdale slid past — the plaza with Gurmukhi and English on the signs, a fabric shop, the corner where the 37 bus turned, the grocery shop with the vegetable crates out front.

“Okay,” said Maya. She didn’t say it’s fine. She said okay, which was different.

They sat. Another stop. The bus filled and thinned.

“I’ve been fixing the drawing,” Maya said. She pulled out her sketchbook. “Look.” She opened to the Toronto skyline. The CN Tower had its proper base now — wider, more solid, the pod more prominent, a disc not a dot. “I’m going to resubmit it for the exhibition. Ms. Larson said I could.”

Simran looked at the revised drawing. It was better than the first, and the first had already been good. “It’s really good.”

“I know.” Maya looked at it. “I was embarrassed when you said it — because I was showing it as if it was finished and it wasn’t. I wanted it to be done and it wasn’t done.” She closed the sketchbook. “That’s not your fault. But it made it worse.”

“I should have waited,” said Simran. “Or said it on the way home, just to you.”

“Yes.” Maya turned to look at her directly. “But you didn’t do it to be unkind. I know that. I’ve known that since Tuesday.” She paused. “I just needed a few days for the embarrassed part to stop being louder than the rest.”

Simran felt something loosen. Not all at once. In stages. The way the kanga worked.

“Are we done?” said Simran.

“We’re done,” said Maya.

Ethan, in the seat ahead, turned around. “Finally,” he said. “Do you know how uncomfortable it is to be adjacent to a disagreement you don’t want to take sides in?”

“You were three rows ahead,” said Maya.

“Disagreements have range,” said Ethan.

Smooth

That evening, Simran sat on the bathroom stool again. Her mum worked the kanga through her hair — thirty-eight strokes now, at the end of the day, smooth all the way from root to end. No tangles. Just the steady movement of the old wood comb.

Simran looked at it in the mirror.

The kanga was small — smaller than she’d thought as a child. Just a comb. Old dark wood, fine teeth, a carved edge. Her nani had carried it from Amritsar. Now it lived in the second bathroom drawer in a house in Brampton, doing what combs do.

“Maa,” she said. “Why is the kanga one of the Five Kakars?”

Her mum kept combing. She didn’t answer right away — she was working a small tangle at the nape of Simran’s neck, finding the edges of it first. “What do you think?”

“I think—” Simran watched the comb move. “I think it’s about taking care of things. Your hair, but also — things that get tangled.”

“Keep going.”

“If you don’t comb it, it gets worse. And if you rush it, it gets worse too. You have to be patient. Find where it’s loose first.” She paused. “Like fixing something with someone. You can’t just pull.”

Her mum worked the small tangle loose and continued upward. “Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave the kanga to the Khalsa so they wouldn’t neglect what they’d been given. Your kesh, yes — but also yourself. Your mind. Your relationships.” She made the final long strokes. “Care and patience. Discipline that looks after things instead of forcing them.”

“I didn’t know it meant all that,” said Simran.

“You mostly figured it out yourself,” said Mum.

The Bridge Drawing

On Friday, Maya brought the revised skyline to school to show Simran before she submitted it. She laid it on Simran’s desk before Ms. Larson arrived.

Simran looked at it carefully. The CN Tower was right now — the wide base, the pod, the tapering needle. The buildings around it were laid out with a specificity Maya must have researched: the Royal York, the Scotiabank Arena, the lake horizon behind them.

“It’s really good,” said Simran.

“I know,” said Maya. “It’s the best thing I’ve drawn.”

“Better than the crow?”

“Better than the crow.”

Ethan leaned over from the next desk. “What was wrong with the original crow?”

“Nothing was wrong with the crow,” said Maya. “The CN Tower was wrong. The crow was fine.”

“Then why are you submitting the skyline instead of the crow?”

“Because the skyline is harder. And now it’s right.” She looked at the rolled drawing in her hands. “I wouldn’t have fixed it if Simran hadn’t said anything. I knew it was wrong but I was pretending it wasn’t because I wanted to be done.” She rolled it carefully. “Things that are hard and right feel different than things that are easy and fine.”

Simran wrote that down in her sketchbook that afternoon:

Things that are hard and right feel different than things that are easy and fine.

She thought it was one of the truest things Maya had ever said.

The Bridge

That weekend, on the bus into Toronto to see Dad’s cousin, Simran and Maya sat together. Ethan was there too — he had come along because the alternative was staying home, which he said was worse. He had brought a book about engineering disasters that he read for the first twenty minutes and then put away because Toronto from the highway was more interesting than engineering disasters.

Simran counted the exits: seven from the Brampton boundary to the downtown ramp. The CN Tower was visible from the highway — really visible, larger than she expected, the pod exactly as prominent as Maya had drawn it in the revision.

“There it is,” said Simran.

Maya looked. She held up her revised drawing next to the window. The proportions matched. The pod was right. The base was right.

“There it is,” said Maya.

They sat with that for a minute — the real tower in the window and the drawn one on the paper, both the same.

Simran thought about the kanga. The tangle that you start at the edges of. The patience that finds where the hair is loose before it works inward. She thought about saying the proportions are wrong in front of everyone, and then about sitting on the bus two days later and starting at the edge of the problem: I was wrong about how I said it.

The tower slid away as the bus curved onto the ramp. Maya put her drawing away.

“Thank you for the correction, by the way,” said Maya. “I mean it.”

“You didn’t seem thankful at the time,” said Simran.

“No,” agreed Maya. “I wasn’t. But I am now.”

Ethan, behind them, looked up from his phone. “I was right that you should have kept quiet.”

“You were,” said Simran.

“But the drawing is better because you didn’t,” he said. He went back to his phone. “I’ve been thinking about that.”

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Gurbani Verse

ਆਪੁ ਤਿਆਗਿ ਸਰਣੀ ਪਵਾਂ ਮੁਖਿ ਬੋਲੀ ਮਿਠੜੇ ਵੈਣ ॥

Aap ti-aag sarnee pavaan mukh bolee mithrhe vain.

“Forsaking self-conceit, I seek shelter — and with my mouth I speak words of sweetness.”

— Guru Arjan Dev Ji, Ang 136, Sri Guru Granth Sahib Ji

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Discussion Questions

Let’s Talk About It: Simran was right about the proportions but wrong about how she said it. Can something be both right and wrong at the same time? Have you ever experienced that?

Let’s Think About It: The kanga works by starting at the edges of a tangle, not by forcing through from the top. When you have a problem with a friend, what is the “edge” you might start from?

Let’s Talk About It: Maya corrected the drawing and said “things that are hard and right feel different than things that are easy and fine.” Do you agree? Can you think of an example?

Let’s Think About It: Ethan said Simran should have stayed quiet — and also said the drawing is better because she didn’t. How can two opposite things both be true?

Let’s Try It: The next time you have a tangle — with a friend, with a task — try starting from the edge. Find one small thing that’s already loose, and start there.

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Word Meanings

Word	Meaning
Amritsar	A city in Punjab, India — home of the Harimandir Sahib (the Golden Temple)
Gurdwara	A Sikh place of worship — “the door to the Guru”
Harimandir Sahib	The Golden Temple — the most sacred Sikh gurdwara, located in Amritsar
Kanga	A small wooden comb — one of the five articles of Sikh identity, representing the discipline of care
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
Nani	Maternal grandmother
Puttar	Child — a term of love used by Punjabi parents
Waheguru	The Wonderful Creator — the Sikh name for God

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About This Story

This is the second 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 Kanga — a small wooden comb — is shown as what it truly is: not just an instrument for hair care, but a lesson in patience and the discipline of starting at the edges. Guru Gobind Singh Ji gave it to the Khalsa as a reminder that what you have been given — your kesh, yourself, your relationships — requires care. You cannot rush a tangle. You start where the hair is willing to move, and work inward from there.

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Explore More

• The Five Kakars — Articles of Sikh Faith — What the Five Kakars are and why they matter
• Simran Kaur and the Lost Sketchbook — The first story in the Five Kakars series
• Simran Kaur and the Picture — The third story in the Five Kakars series