Antion | Red Beach
“What did I like about the way I was raised? There was always food on the table. There was always a sense of love in the house, always had a feeling that my needs would be taken care of.
Well, I wasn’t raised in Auckland. I’ll tell you that, I grew up in West London.
Well, my values are a little different from my families. I grew up in England, lived in California for 25 years, lived in Hawaii for 16 years, and I’ve lived here in New Zealand since about 2008/2009. My family values, well, my family were good people, but there was a lot of alcohol in the family. I didn’t like that.
My values are spiritual. As you can probably see, I’m a Sikh, and I’m an unusual Sikh because I don’t come from India. I’m not of Indian extraction. I chose the Sikh way of life, because its values meshed with mine, which are integrity, honesty, courage, helping others, loving God, and being there for people.
Well, you know, I think a common thing that happens, I can certainly say it’s true in my case, is that parents try and give their children what they didn’t get in their childhood. So, I got, you know, reasonably financial security. We weren’t rich, but we never had to go without. We were never homeless or anything like that. There was always food like I said, but what was missing for me was spirituality, and so I brought my children up in a spiritual way. They may, they may not have appreciated that so much, but that’s what I did for my children; I gave them what was missing in my childhood.
My father was American. He was an American serviceman that was killed in the Second World War, and when I was seven, my mother took me to see his family in New York, and I can still remember arriving on this big ocean liner in New York City harbour, and seeing the Statue of Liberty and the Empire State Building, on a beautiful June day when, absolutely clear skies, and just, it was an amazing experience for a seven-year-old.”
