Beyond the Railways

By Roopinder Singh

MY father never opened a telegram, not if he could help it. A deeply ingrained attitude, developed and nurtured in the early decades spent in his village, Mithewal, had convinced Giani Gurdit Singh that telegrams were harbingers of bad news.

The fact that he had a fair share of telegrams coming his way, and most of them were positive messages, did little to assuage his bias against the magic of “Morse”. Some were important, some not, but hesitation could always be seen in the way my father handled them. As such, we often would intercept them and convey the contents so that he would not have to open them. He never asked for it, but then he never had to.

As a family, we had to deal with a deluge that we were happy to contend with — many congratulatory messages from all over — when Mrs Inderjit Kaur, my mother, was appointed Vice-Chancellor of Punjabi University, Patiala. I have been going through them these days as I work on a Festschrift that we hope to finish by her 90th birthday, which is coming soon. A highly-organised person, she has kept them in files, tagged and annotated. Some of the names belong to notables of the past, most are senders who she felt were notable in her life — her family, students and colleagues.

As I read them, I marvel at how much meaning and emotion the staccato sentences conveyed. Telegraphs, which will no longer be a part of our life, had urgency and a certain definiteness about them. For the families of soldiers, these were all too often harbingers of bad news, cancelled leave or worse. For newspaper men, these were the very soul of communication. For ordinary people, they brought in news from faraway lands. They were the fastest way to get messages across.

So convinced was I of the effectiveness and speed of the telegraph system that on my maiden trip to London in the mid-1980s, I sent a telegram to my host, indicating the date and time of the arrival of my flight. Landing at Heathrow airport, I was rather disconcerted to find that no one was there to receive me. I took some change from an impeccably turned young woman behind a counter and tried to call my friend using a nearby pay phone. I would get a recorded message and the call would just not go through. My desperation was evident by the time I went to the counter to get some change for the third time. “Bhaaji, tusi bare pareshan lagde ho,” commented the girl in chaste Punjabi. Even as I came to terms with her Western attire and rustic Punjabi, I poured out my tale of woe to her.

“Show me the number,” she said. I did and found out that I had been dialling the area code all the time, which is why I had been getting the wrong message. On her advice, I went to the payphone and retrieved a handful of coins that I had deposited earlier, which had collected in a receptacle. I dialled again, sans the area code, and reached an answering machine, but no friend at the other end of the phone.

By now I was a little more confident and took the tube to my friends’ house, which I found locked. On this nice and sunny day, I decided to take a nap near the entrance, only to be woken up by a pair of Bobbies who wanted to know what I was doing there. They checked my papers and directed me to wait for my friend at a nearby coffee shop.

Eventually my friend showed up and I was made more than welcome. I called home instead of sending the usual “Arrived safely. Letter follows” telegram. Two days later, I answered the door and was given a telegram…one that I had sent intimating my friend about my arrival details! “My God, telegrams are more efficient and prompt in India,” I said, and thanked my stars that I had called home to confirm my arrival in London, for once agreeing with my father’s bias against this medium of communication.

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by Gauhar Vatsyayan

BEING the eldest among the grandsons of the family, I am fortunate to remember glimpses of moments spent with my maternal grandfather before he passed away suddenly when I was just five. We used to enjoy considerable hospitality at his house during the summer vacations. This is the reason why even a mention of my maternal house invokes a sense of immense pleasure in me.

Born at Jammu, 10 years before Partition and coming of a family of Purohits of the Dogra rulers of Jammu and Kashmir, he didn’t enjoy a carefree childhood. Due to the early death of his mother and domestic issues, he was brought up by his widow aunt, who had to work as a domestic help in a vaidya’s home. Blessed with strikingly sharp features, light eyes, a fair complexion and a splendid intelligence, he got noticed by the vaidya, who also became his initial tutor.

He was adopted by the vaidya’s elder daughter and was sent to Delhi for further studies. Not to be a burden on her, he started knitting beaded chairs during the day and used to study under the streetlight, which became my first lesson on self-respect and dignity. As a highly principled man with a heavy voice, my mother used to narrate his reprimands while teaching maths.

After completing his graduation in arts he had a short stint in the railways. He, however, left the government job soon, saying that it didn’t suit his temperament. Due to his continued pursuing of knowledge and hard work, my maternal grandfather happened to be among the first five to obtain a masters degree in law in the country. He became an advocate. For a few years he taught in the Law College of Delhi University and my heart is filled with pride that some of today’s senior lawyers of the Delhi High Court and the Supreme Court of India are, in fact, students of Shyam Lal Sharma. His zeal to gain and impart knowledge became the hallmark of the usual instructions given to me by his daughter during my academic career. Though he died at a relatively young age of 52, it was his sheer sense of commitment that he used to attend court even after going through a session of kidney dialysis in the morning.

Having grown up listening to the stories of people’s lives and their settlements during the turbulent and toughest period of our history, I realise that the generation born and grown up before partition of country was more hard working and sincere in its pursuits. The rising India of today is the fruit of their sweat and perseverance. That was the era when simplicity was not stupidity, and honesty and hard work were immensely respected. Anyway, stories of achievers of a modest background are always a source of inspiration for all.

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by Harish Dhillon

MY father was a prisoner-of-war in Singapore and my mother a patient in a T.B. sanatorium. So my poor grandmother was landed with the responsibility of looking after me. I say “poor” because I was a particularly obnoxious child and often drove the usually patient lady to the very edge.

I don’t really blame her for accepting the offers of generous relatives to relieve her of this burden for a few months. The people who hosted me have all blurred in my memory but I do remember that all of them, without exception were extremely kind to me.

A few things have stayed in my mind chiefly because I have never come across them again. In Sialkot, I think there was this huge cast iron griddle, like a waffle iron, which had a dozen half egg shapes scooped out of the tray. Every time we had egg curry, the eggs would be whisked, poured into these scoops and the griddle placed over the cooking fire. The cooked eggs, would be made into curry. They were delicious — the white and the yolk firmed into one. I have never, never again come across this.

I have asked many people over the years but no one seems to know what I am talking about. Was that griddle custom built for that particular relative or was it an invention which failed with consumers? I don’t think I will ever know.

Another relative, probably in Bannu, garnished our “kheer” with the thread like fibre from the inside of banana peels.

“It will make you grow big and strong,” she would say. I have never again come across anyone who carefully shreds the inside of banana peels. All my questions to doctors and dieticians, in this regard, have been met by the same uncomprehending look. Where did the lady garner her belief in the nutritional value of this fibre?

The third unique experience was in Lyallpur. The family lived in a typical colonial bungalow with its wrap-around verandah and acres of largely untended garden. But there were a large number of trees and most of them had monster plants trained along their trunks.

The year I was there these plants bore fruit. It was a long, green, scaly fruit, which was plucked and then buried beneath clothes in the chest of drawers in my room. At night the whole room would be permeated by the strong but beautiful aroma of the fruit.

Finally the fruit, now yellow, was taken out, peeled, sliced and fed to the rather large family. It was delicious, a splendid combination of the best of a pineapple and the best of a banana. The bonus was that my clothes carried the wonderful fragrance for weeks.

I have never again seen, leave alone eaten, the fruit of the monster of a plant and everyone I’ve spoken to about it, has looked at me incredulously as if I was making up another one of my endless stories. Under the circumstances I can’t really blame them.

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by Ramesh Luthra

MY recent ordeal in a renowned hospital of the city was very trying and testing. I was in for a big shock when I opened my eyes. Pipe here, pipe there. A number of them were fitted into my beautiful frame I always boasted of. Shall I have to live with these crutches for the rest of my life? The thought nagged me constantly. I lay cursing the Almighty. What for all the troubles and tribulations had been hurled upon me by God? I felt as if the very heavens had fallen on me. Why, of all the human beings, have I been made a scapegoat and undergo this ordeal – the mother of all surgeries? Why should one who had been leading a very austere and saintly life be made to bear all these problems?

What an odd creator He is! He makes His own creations suffer, groan and sigh. May be, He derives pleasure out of it. I have seen hundreds and thousands of men and women being blessed with a healthy and joyous life, making others envious of their good stars. But for me life had been an endless tale of trials and tribulations. Alas! To me the cup of life had been dealt in another measure, I felt. Faced arrow after arrow from the Almighty’s bow.

Lying all by myself, I was reminded of ‘Surgical ward’ by AH Auden. The patients in the ward, their wounds covered with bandages, lie ‘remote like plants’ from each other, unaware of and indifferent to the pain and suffering of the patient on the next bed. A very grim but realistic description. Isn’t it? Frankly speaking, I too focussed on my pain presuming as if I was the only patient in the ICU. When back at home, life wasn’t the same as it used to be before my brush with surgery. I got dependent on others for even little things, making me depressed and disgusted with life. Gradually medicines and motherly care bore fruit. I thanked my stars after having noticed a number of people suffering in the hospital voluntarily. In a moment of thanksgiving I did realise that timely medical aid and that too of the topmost quality did save my life. What else did I ask for? God had gifted me with a new lease of life. Indeed a moment of awakening it was for me. I wasn’t the only one suffering on the earth. There were others who were born only to suffer.

Seems everything is preordained by God. Nothing moves against His will. There is no point in cribbing and feeling jealous of others. My mother, well versed in scriptures, seemed to put in all the wisdom of the world, saying, “Tera bhana mitha lage (Whatever you give should be accepted willingly and gracefully.) At last, the ultimate truth of life dawned on me.

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by P. C. Sharma

THE star attraction of a visit to Athens is the magnificent Acropolis. Built on a high mountain, this citadel dominates the city of Athens and beckons, as it were, all visitors to come and see the wonder that it is.

Huge columns standing majestically, exquisitely carved statues of gods and goddesses depicting Greek mythology and legends of yore, hold you in thrall.

The mass of columns that are still standing retaining some of their freshness and some that have fallen on the ground are a timeless tribute to the Greek art of architecture and sculpture.

This hilltop view of Acropolis holds visitors in so much of thrall that rarely do they notice an equally historic site cut into the mountain wall of the hill. This is the Socrates’ cave. He was confined here before he was given poison to drink to his death. Greece is known as much for this philosopher as for its Acropolis. People passed by it in their hurry to make it to the Acropolis on the hilltop.

I stopped by. This featureless hole in the mountain rock looks like a hugely magnified nest made by a woodpecker on the trunk of a tree. It is as unattractive in shape and size as Socrates was unassuming in his real life.

Described as the wisest of the Greeks by Oracle at Delphi, the fame of his learning had spread far and wide, even up to India. Some Greek books have recorded that some learned people from India visited Socrates and engaged him in intellectual discourses. ‘Gnothi seauton’ (know thyself), Socrates said. This is also what the ancient Indian seers have said: ‘atmanam veti’. It is difficult to say whether Socrates said this under the influence of Indian thinkers. However, this wisest man of all times described as the ‘gadfly of Athens’ by Plato was accused of impiety and corrupting the morals of the youth. He was tried and condemned to death and sent to this cave. The Athenian government offered him a choice: change your methods or face death. He refused to change his methods of enquiry, saying “…as long as I have breath and strength I will never cease with my occupation with philosophy. I know not what death is — it may be a good thing, and I am not afraid of it”. He preferred the cup of hemlock poison which brought him death to giving up what he considered his duty.

This man of knowledge and learning took his prison life in the same calm and stoic spirit as he did the rebukes from his wife Xanthippe, who thought he was a ‘good for nothing idler’. It is said that once, while sweeping the floor, she ordered Socrates to move out of the house. The philosopher did not budge much. He just shifted to the threshold of the house. The irate lady threw the refuge on the philosopher’s head. Unperturbed, Socrates just observed: a dust storm followed by thunder and rain!

Being curious to see the cave inside out, I walked up to it. It frightened me as the most inhospitable cell for anyone condemned to death. But it gripped my mind with all the knowledge of its great occupant. It defies all attempts to capture in camera the captivity of the great philosopher. Though a nondescript gaping hole in the mountain rock that Socrates’ cave is, it refuses to be dwarfed or effaced by the grandeur of Acropolis.

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by Air Marshal RS.Bedi

HERE or there, men in the police uniform are the same everywhere. In public perception, they are law unto themselves. They can be authoritative, officious, brutish and even boorish, depending upon the prevalent circumstances. They can mould themselves to fit into any of these roles without vacillation, particularly when their avarice comes to the fore. They have no qualms whatsoever about stooping to any extent to make a quick buck.

A few years ago, I happened to be in Delhi. After our shopping in Connaught Place, my wife wanted that we visit Gurdwara Bangla Sahib. Accordingly, I took a left turn near Rivoli cinema for the gurdwara. I was stopped immediately by a traffic police man because I was not supposed to have turned left without the green lights. I told him that I was not aware of it since I had come from another place. He did not seem impressed and demanded the documents which were duly produced. On seeing my driving licence, he seemed to condone my offence but felt it obligatory to admonish me mildly. “Sir, people like you should not be violating the government rules”, he went on to say. And then he let me go.

I felt quite sheepish. However, I thanked him for his magnanimity and decided to move on. As I started my car, he came into his true colours. “Sir, chai pani ke liye to kutcch dete jao.” Fifty rupees were all that he asked for. I paid him with both a sense of relief and profound guilt.

Again, a few days back when I happened to be in Delhi, I got embroiled in yet another similar episode. My grandson was driving me from Gymkhana Club to New Delhi railway station to put me on the evening Shatabdi for Chandigarh. Not realising that Rafi Marg was temporarily closed for one-way traffic, he entered it but soon realised the mistake and promptly U-turned to exit. We were promptly beckoned to halt by two policemen who were, perhaps, waiting for such an occasion. They threatened us with a penalty of Rs 1100 for violating the one-way traffic rule. The policemen were impatient and were flaunting Rs 1100 challan again and again. Their conduct was aggressive, to say the least. They would not let me come out of the car. They were obviously interested in a bargain and kept asking us to hurry up instead of hurrying up themselves with the challan.

My daughter sitting in the rear seat was getting hassled and asked the policemen if Rs 500 were enough. It was perhaps beyond their expectation. He pocketed the money fast and positioned himself again at the same vantage point for his next catch.

The enhanced penalty for traffic violation has only provided an opening to policemen to exploit the public. Knowing their reluctance to shell out heavy fines, the police strike quick bargains. It suits both parties, ethics getting a go-by. Indoctrination and inculcation of the value system at the initial stages of training alone may not help change the mindset. Policeman’s stature and self-esteem need to be enhanced.

Here is yet another episode, an interesting encounter between the Chandigarh police and a university student. My grandson, in the same manner as mentioned earlier, was checked for tinted windowpanes in his car in Sector 17. After long entreaties that he had completed his studies in Chandigarh and that he was on his way back to his parents in Delhi in the next couple of days, the cops condescended and decided to let him go; but not without a cost. They asked him to fetch quickly a 1.5-litre coke bottle. He obliged them with a sigh of relief. They could well have extracted money from him but did not do so. Coke was only an element of humour in the episode.

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by Ram Varma

WE seem to have forgotten Mahatma Gandhi in all but name. He practised stark simplicity; we flaunt our wealth — our marriage pandals today are majestic mansions with arrays of multi-cuisine stalls serving thousands of guests. He said India lived in villages — modern India lives in high-rise glass-façade towers of Mumbai, Bangalore and Gurgaon. He dedicated his life to serving the nation — we have become a nation of self-servers! But in one thing we continue to pay homage to him — we print his photograph on our currency notes of all denominations. Ironically, we have made the man who was wedded to poverty, daridra narayan, an icon for the Indian rupee! Although his name continues to command respect all over the world, sadly the Indian rupee does not.

Years ago when I had gone to London, I was told that I needn’t change rupees in pounds as there were any number of Indians there — exchange was not a problem. But when I showed a wad of rupees with Gandhi’s smiling visage printed on them to a girl at the exchange counter in London, she said, “Throw them in the garbage bin.” I have found that there is only one country in the world where the Indian rupee is respected — in Nepal. Nepalis welcome the Gandhi-face rupee with alacrity — they seem to be the only lovers of Gandhi left in the world. I like good old Kathmandu, its old palaces and temples, and the beauteous lake at Pokhra reflecting the snow-clad fish-tail mountain peak — matsya puchcham — but you can’t go there every time.

I had gone to Manila recently where my daughter Jyotsana lived. It was a pleasant surprise to find that the Philippines currency is called the peso. I imagined that like Indonesia, which called its currency Rupaiya due to Indian influence in South-East Asia in mid-centuries of the last millennium, the Philippines too had named its currency after our lowly paisa. But I was puzzled when I found that the peso was stronger than our rupee — while 40 pesos would get you a US dollar, you had to shell out 56 rupees for it!

Indeed, I was mistaken. The Philippines peso came from its former ruler, Spain — the word was derived from the Latin word pensum, meaning to weigh. But that was not all. The worst insult was that while the exchange booth in Manila listed the Indonesian rupaiya on its display board, though way down in value, there was no mention of the Indian rupee. They don’t recognise the Indian rupee, Gandhi and India’s greatness notwithstanding.

It beats me hollow. We claim to be the fourth largest economy in the world and yet our currency, carrying the noble Gandhi image, can only be bartered through the shady hawala wheeler-dealers. What a shame!

One thing more. When the British ruled this poor down-trodden country, 15 rupees equalled one pound sterling. Since Independence, we have taken rapid strides towards prosperity — look at our six-lane highways being chockablock with swanky cars. But, curiously, the poor Gandhi-face rupee, descendant of the Sanskrit ‘rupya’ (‘a stamped coin in wrought silver or gold’, according to Monier-Williams), has been going down against the dollar and the pound in inverse proportion to our growing economic strength. Today the pound sterling is over five times stronger! My feeble mind fails to solve this conundrum.

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by Rajan Kashyap

I have a compulsive habit of entering bookshops in every neighbourhood that I visit. As a student, such sojourns turned out to be merely browsing sessions, since the glossy titles could only be ogled, being beyond one’s capacity to purchase. Nonetheless, God bless their perspicacity, the shop attendants usually indulged avid visitors like myself. Now that more resources are available with me, every outing helps to augment my humble library.

Imagine my consternation then when, during a visit to Chandigarh’s elite shopping complex, I found that my favourite bookshop was nowhere to be seen. Numerous brightly lit establishments in the vicinity tempted shoppers with cosmetics, clothes, jewels and the like. But the musty precincts, where I had spent quality hours, well, they seemed to have just disappeared into thin air. Overnight, the book store had been transformed into a shoe shop. Gone was “the precious life blood of master spirits”, as English poet John Milton had labelled the treasures of classical literature. The storehouse of knowledge had been usurped by highly priced, branded, mundane foot ware.

Deterred by the mysterious vanishing act of the city’s famous landmark, I rushed to another familiar haunt, a book shop in the hallowed academic premises of Panjab University. Here I was in for another rude shock. Mercifully, one old bookshop, bearing the imposing title, “booksellers and publishers with 100 years of service to the nation” survives, but that proud label is dwarfed by a proclamation, set in huge font, that it is now “a gift shopee”. The establishment no longer offers the classics, histories or best-sellers, as it was famed to do, nor even textbooks or guides for academic and professional examinations. In just one lonely corner, on the bottom shelf, are the sad remnants of a few dozen tattered help books published in the last century.

The upper shelves are occupied by, hold your breath! shoes for children. The erstwhile book store is now brighter, more glitzy and sparkling than it ever was. It is loaded with imported goodies. Perfumes, baubles and choice apparel adorn the shelves tastefully. Quaint handbags and designer dresses seduce women shoppers. Not to forget a selection of the ubiquitous dainty shoes for all. There is a special section displaying cards with messages for every loved one. Valentine messages, currently out of season, find pride of place on a shelf dedicated to evergreen lovers. Apparently the display of affection in the present era entails exchange of expensive gifts, matched by romantic outpouring, even if the sentiments contained therein are composed by proxy.

It is time to philosophise. Books have, for centuries, provided food for the soul. But the vendors of the published word seem to be a dying tribe. The retail outlets in today’s market pander to the taste and demands of a multitude of fresh clients. Satisfying the hunger of the soul with reading material is out of fashion. There is more glamour attached with owning, and perhaps gifting, costly consumer goods. We now perceive shoes as a more desirable good than books.

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