Kulwant Singh

The Sikh who sought and found the Kiwi good life  

Words Jill Nicholas

Pictures/video Stephen Parker

At 1.91 metres (6 foot 3 inches) Kulwant (Kevin) Singh is an impressive figure; the more so with his luxuriant beard and distinctive turban.

They are the hallmarks that proudly proclaim him a Sikh, a follower of the religion which had its genesis in India’s Punjab province in the 15th century. 

With Kulwant In Profile continues our commitment to highlighting members of this city’s diverse multi-cultural community, their faiths, their customs and the value their presence has added to New Zealand’s first official bi-cultural city.

As a Sikh, Kulwant isn’t a rarity in this country. He’s one of 40,000-plus of his kind who live here. That was the 2018 Census figure. It’s anticipated there’ll be an advance on it when this year’s numbers are tallied.

There’s no official record of how many like Kulwant and his family have made Rotorua their home, but it’s in the hundreds. The statistic for Sikhs living in the wider Bay of Plenty puts the figure at close to 5000.

Included in that geographic spread is Te Puke. It was there Kulwant became an integral member of the kiwifruit industry, running his own contracting business for 15 years. He quit when back problems began to trouble him.

That forced him to accept the time had come to find a less physically demanding occupation. In 2015 Rotorua’s Lucky Lotto Shop was on the market. Kulwant bought it with the intention of it being a family-run business. His daughters-in-law, Shaminder Kaur and Bavandeep (Bavan) Kaur are his right and left hand women there. He is, he says, as close to them as he would be if they were his own daughters.

Family is everything

His elder son Lakhwinder (Lucky) is married to Shaminder. He’s a diesel engineer with the international agricultural machinery manufacturing company, Claas Harvest.

Kulwant’s younger son Gurvinder (Ginder) is Bavan’s husband and has been a police officer for nine years, all of them spent in Rotorua. Each couple has two children.
For Kulwant, family is everything. Four generations live in harmony under the one roof, continuing the tradition of their homeland .

His father, Swaran Singh, is 77 and the titular head of the family. His mother, Surjit Singh, died at the end of 2021. As Kulwant quaintly puts it, “she expired.”   Cancer claimed her life.

His wife, Charanjit Kaur, oversees the family’s wellbeing.

Kaur is the traditional name for married women in Kulwat’s family. Its meaning is Princess.  On the subject of names, Lakhwinder’s nickname Lucky has no connection to the family’s Lotto shop. Kiwi classmates gave it to him when they had difficulty pronouncing his given Indian name. 

Kulwant reasons another plus for him living inter-generationally is that it goes some way towards atoning for the years he was separated from his parents, wife and growing children. That was when he came to New Zealand in 1989 to lay the foundation for a better life for them all.

Dedicated to his faith

He’s a man dedicated to the ten guiding tenants of Sikhism (see below). Simply put, they are the faith’s version of Christianity’s Ten Commandments. 

Sikhism is based on the belief that a single divine force created the world and lives within it.

Kulwant is up at four every morning to meditate and read five chapters of Sikh scriptures. He prays again before going to bed. Sikh prayers play softly in the background when he’s behind the Lucky Lotto shop counter

It saddens him he can only attend temple services about once a month. They are held on Saturdays which clashes with the busiest day of the week for Lotto ticket sales.

However his father represents the family every week at the temple (Gurdwara) the local Sikh community established in Fenton Park in 2017.

Swaran is also a regular presence at its numerous community functions where men and woman dress traditionally.

The words that have gone before are an outline of the way we find Kulwant Singh today.

But what of his yesterdays? 

Early life

Good as his English is, Kulwant is assisted in his chat with us by his daughter-in- law, Shaminder.  She’s an early childhood teacher who graduated with honours from Toi Ohomai. 

With her encouragement, he tells of a childhood growing up in “A little country village” in the state of Punjab. Between them they give us helpful geographic and historical tips. It lies “up there” where the Indian subcontinent borders Pakistan. The name, which is Persian in origin, translates to Five Rivers.

Kulwant and his two brothers grew up on 4.85 hectares (12 acres) acres of family land.  

“We grew wheat, rice, vegetables, sugar cane, all the garden vegetables.” 

Kulwant didn’t complete his schooling, quitting to work full time tending the rotating crops.

Scholastically it didn’t handicap him. He’s a whiz at maths and rightly proud of it.

“In all the years I have been in business here [New Zealand] I have always had a clean audit by the tax department, even the GST.” As any business person will attest that’s no mean feat.

He describes his family as neither rich nor poor, but 12 acres was not enough for them all to survive on. 

It was the stark reality of needing to provide his own family with a more prosperous future that brought the then 22-year-old to this country, leaving his pregnant wife and elder son behind. 

It was a replay of what his own father had done earlier. When Kulwant was a youngster his dad spent four years working in a Hong Kong clothing factory. 

Arranged marriages

Kulwant was 20 when he married his wife, Charanjit Kaur.

Theirs was a traditional, arranged marriage. Kulwant is all for them. Both his sons’ marriages were arranged, albeit via long distance. The go-between was Kulwant’s best friend from his primary school days. Despite him now living in the Netherlands  Kulwant regards him as a man with all the right connections for pairing  up couples,  frequently sight unseen.

Lakhwinder and Shaminder’s marriage was in her native India. Kulwant and Charanjit met her before Lakwinder did.  Gurvinder and Bavan wed in Auckland, 

 “An arranged marriage generally lasts a lot longer than a ‘love’ marriage,” he says with conviction. “It is about understanding. It teaches couples to learn mutual respect,  how to overcome hazards together, how to value their relationship.” Shaminder seconds that.

Lakhwinder was a year old and Charanjit was six months’ pregnant with Gurvinder  when her husband left India.

“It was hard, very hard but I had to leave to secure a better life for us all. That is why I came here, India was too crowded. There was no future for the kids, we had to look into the future.”

Family connections

Kulwant didn’t arrive without knowing a soul. Six generations of his family had preceded him.

“I have relatives who came to this country 103 years ago. They were pioneers in the dairy industry in the Waikato.”

He joined a couple he regarded as an aunt and uncle on their farm near Te Awamutu.

“I thought I was used to milking cows. We had two at home, I milked them by hand. In the Waikato there were 150 and they were milked with a machine. I found I was in a totally different world. New Zealand was beautiful in a different way to India. It was so green.

“My aunty and uncle had a son who was like my brother. They gave me lots of help to speak English and learn New Zealand culture.” 

He remained on the farm until his relatives sold it and bought the Waingaro Hot Springs complex. 

Kulwant struck out on his own. He headed to Te Puke where he had friends from his Punjab village.

 They flatted together while he worked on kiwifruit orchards.

“Before I came to this country I didn’t know what kiwifruit even looked like, I hadn’t seen them in India. I discovered they were very tasty, very nice”

 It took four years hard slog learning the art of pruning, thinning and picking and eight years separation, before he was in a financial position to bring his wife and sons to New Zealand.

“When they arrived it was the first time I had seen Gurvinder. By then he was seven. I was so very happy. I hugged and hugged them at Auckland airport”. 

 His parents followed shortly before the turn of the millennium.

Going into business

With the family settled in a rented Arataki house Kulwant set up his own orchard contracting business, Kevin Bachada Limited. It operated for 15 years.  Kevin is what his Kiwi mates called him then and still do. In Profile is sticking with his given name to emphasise his Punjab-Sikh origins.

Kulwant’s former boss had encouraged him to branch out on his own.

“He took me to an accountant. I didn’t even know what a registered company was.”

Initially he employed five. Within a couple of years his staff had shot up to 30 “sometimes 40 at the height of the season.”  

In kiwifruit’s off season Kulwant didn’t put his feet up. He picked apples in Hastings and worked on Bay of Plenty asparagus farms. 

His wife and their younger son continued the kiwifruit connection Kulwant had begun.  Charanjit graded fruit. When Gurvinder finished high school he went into the same pack house, working his way up to manager before joining the police.

“When he left the boss gave him a big party to celebrate him passing the police exams. He said it was to show other young people there that everyone can do well if they work hard too.” 

Kulwant lives by the belief that hard work is the cornerstone upon which success is built.

“People shouldn’t be sitting around watching TV all day. They need to be out working hard, making money for a better life for them and their families.”

Work’s about to start on the fourth home he’s owned since his family’s New Zealand arrival. It signifies the security he dreamed of as a boy in India.  

Benefiting charities

Kulwant’s ingrained work ethic has him at his shop by 6am. He frequently bikes there.  

“I open the doors to customers then. That’s when the papers and magazines are delivered and the milkman comes. The Lotto terminals open at 6.30.”
Since he’s presided over the Lucky Lotto Shop it’s sold two winning first division tickets and several in the second division.

“I have no idea how many winners there have been in the other divisions and Scratchies but very many.  I like to make people happy, I enjoy people and giving good customer service.”

The obvious question; does he buy tickets himself?

There’s a rumbling laugh as he confesses he probably hasn’t bought more than eight. That’s before and after he acquired the Lucky Lotto Shop.

We challenge him how he can reconcile selling game of chance tickets when Sikhs do not favour gambling?

Kulwant puts us straight. Lotto, he says, isn’t gambling; it’s as source of funding for charities.

“When I bought the business I thought ‘okay this will help me work for charities too’.”

Practising forgiveness

This is a man with a charitable heart. Outside work he supports many charities and individuals. 

Despite the shop being targeted by thieves and its windows smashed several times, Kulwant doesn’t hate those responsible. Rather, he pities and forgives them.

“They get drunk and take drugs, they don’t know what they are doing. They do not know about respect for other people and the property they have worked hard to own.

“It is their parents’ fault. They don’t educate their kids how to live in this world 

“To make a person good it is like a garden, a farm, an orchard. You need good top soil to grow good grass, good fruit, good trees so the future is good. It’s the same with people.  That is why we must look after the next generation and the next and the ones to follow that.”   

Demystifying turbans and Sikh beards

The Sikh belief is that hair is part of the created human, therefor it is not cut. The turban is its cover and is only removed when washing and, for some wearers, sleeping.

Originally known as a Dastaar, it’s generally made from six metres of fabric which can take up to 20 minutes to wind and unwind from the head.  

Colours vary, generally but not necessarily, representing where the wearer comes from. Kulwant says these days it can be seen as a fashion statement “Like you have shoes that match your dress.”  

For practical purposes not all men today have beards as long and flowing as Kulwant. He ties his under his chin while at the gym.  He was clean shaven until 15 years ago.

Some Sikh women wear turbans. Most cover their heads with scarfs. 

Sources: Various

The Ten Tenants of Sikhism

*Respect the equal rights of all other people, regardless of their rank, gender, caste, class, colour or creed.

* Share your worldly belongings and your knowledge with others, especially those in need.

* Perform altruistic service for benefit of all humanity.

* Earn income by honest employment and determined, hard effort.

* Come to the aid of the defenceless.

* Keep all hair intact and unaltered.

*  Meditate and read or recite daily prayers.

* Worship and recognize the one divine light that is manifest in all things.

* Become initiated as Khalsa through baptism and wear the five articles of faith as a symbol of your dedication and faith.

* Follow the ideals of the ten gurus, accepting the perpetual guidance of Sikh-ism’s scripture, the Guru Granth.

Source: Wikipaedia