Avtar was the youngest of 6 children of Charan Singh and Chanan kaur. He was born in Randhawa, a village in Punjab in 1950. Randhawa is a historical village. It was established on 500 acres of land by Babba Sillah at the instegation of Babba Buddah. Babba Buddah lived to the age of 125 years and served the first five sikh gurus. Among other achievements he was the first sikh priest

Our great grand parents came to Randhawa in search of work. They were tenant farmers and later generations became carpenters and blacksmiths.

Avtar did his primary schooling in the village school an secondary schooling in Rurka Kalan. Our father was absent when we were growing up.  He left Randhawa to work in East Africa and returned home after eight years. After a couple of years he left home for England.  By 1964 half of the family was in England. By the time Avtar was 16 years old, he had joined us in Coventry.

He started studying GCE at Nuneaton Technical College. This was not his calling so he left and started engineering apprentice with National Coal Board in Nuneaton. He excelled there winning several  prizes. He worked during the day and attended evening classes eventually passing HNC in Mechanical Engineering.

He was short-listed several time to study at university but was never selected. This was a great disappointment to him and had detrimental effect on him mentally. At this he left National Coal Board job and joined our elder brother Gurdev Singh to work as a builder.

In 1971 he married Balbir. As to why he was marrying so young, his answer was 'he was lonely'. I remember his wedding vividly. All three older brothers had matching shirts and ties. At the time I was working in Bern. I booked on a student chartered flight from Zurich. While talking to someone at the station, I missed my flight. So I had to buy a new ticket. On insistence from   Avtar, I overstayed and missed my return flight as well.

While working as a builder, he was meeting building inspectors frequently. He was invited to apply to become a building inspector. Unfortunately, soon afterward he became terminally ill from an industrial injury from his previous profession in the coal industry. I miss him dearly