green in the dusk. Farmers were ploughing and levelling the earth, and the dust from the hooves of their oxen seemed to touch the heavens. As night fell, sounds took over: the steam engine and the wheels clacking along the steel tracks. Most of the passengers were dozing by now. As the train slowed at various stations, lights from homes and from tea and peanut stands punctuated the sleepy darkness. Dogs barked, disturbed by the activity. Inside lit-up factories, I could see people working away. Cities and towns never completely rested, I was learning. Chachaji slept on and off, every now and then glancing at me. He was worried, no doubt, about whether I would be able to make a go of it out there in the world.
It was still dark when we got off at Ghaziabad. The station was in need of repair and a thorough cleaning. Probably not much had changed in the city since the British left it in 1947. Dosanjh had its own share of filth, with raw sewage accumulating in puddles and ponds, but at least it had open fields one could escape to. In Ghaziabad, I soon saw, there was no escaping the crowds, the filth or the general pollution. Chachaji and I took a rickshaw to Siso Bhenji’s home, which had a big enclosed yard with a machine shed on one side. In one corner of the yard was a four-room house with a kitchen and a bath. Scattered everywhere were the machines and parts worked on by my Bhaji Sardara Singh, an expert machinist. Everybody managed to find a place to sleep.
The next morning we went shopping. Chachaji selected the fabric for my suits, which would be made by the fabric store’s tailor. I would soon be the proud owner of two woollen suits, my first ever. I also bought some toothpaste and a toothbrush, another first; I’d been told England did not have thorny kikar , acacia karroo, or cockspur thorn, trees whose thin branches had served as toothbrushes and tooth cleaners all my life.
Chachaji also bought me a small suitcase to put my clothes and toiletries in. I didn’t have much in the way of toiletries. I was a turbaned Sikh boy with virgin whiskers — nothing you could call a beard yet. I had never heard of deodorants. Natural body odour was fine as long as one was clean, we thought. And instead of body creams and lotions, we had mustard oil.
It had rained a little, and the puddles gave the paved roads an ugly, pitiful look. Traffic splashed the muddy water around, with bus, car and truck passengers avoiding the airborne mud only if their windows were shut. Travelling around as we were — in rickshaws, by bike and on foot — made us prime targets for mud’s fury. Chachaji’s outfit of naturally white khadi — homespun cotton — did not retain its pure whiteness for long.
That evening, Chachaji, Bhaji Sardara Singh and I visited Con-naught Place, perhaps the poshest commercial section of Delhi at the time. The rain-washed marble on the buildings, floors and pavement shone whiter than ever. Shops and stalls were full of the merchandise the elite of Delhi splurged on. The area was filled with expensive restaurants and emporiums; beautiful, colourfully bedecked women accompanied “kaala sahibs” in their London-style suits and boots. It appeared as if many of these “Mahatmas” had just returned to India after completing their dinners at the inns of the court in England. Certainly they had not gone to South Africa to be thrown out of first-class train compartments as coolies. This was the Indian idea of England. I wondered what the actual England would be like. Did the English people there hate doing their own chores, polishing their own shoes, cooking their own meals and doing their own laundry?
My mind was racing. A part of me longed to be like the rich of Connaught Place, though I knew intellectually that it was wrong to be consumed by the lust for wealth. I was travelling to greener pastures, and like all beating hearts, mine was a battlefield of competing influences. How would I navigate those influences to figure out what and who I would be? At that moment I had no business passing judgement on kaala sahibs. At least they were not abandoning India.
As the hour of my departure drew nearer, my fear of the unknown grew stronger. But Chachaji did not need to be burdened with the knowledge that his soon-to-fly son was ill prepared for the journey and beyond. The next morning was filled with love, food and laughter. Siso Bhenji made delicious pranthas , mango achaar (pickle) and homemade yogurt. As usual, I overate. Most human beings are blessed with a satiety mechanism. Within a few minutes of beginning a meal this mechanism sends signals to their brains to slow down and eventually to stop eating. I have never received such signals. We are all related to animals, and in this trait I am definitely related to dogs.
An old-model Ambassador taxi waited outside the front of Siso Bhenji’s house. Baggage tucked away in the trunk, our goodbyes said, Chachaji and I sped away in the cab through the descending fog. The turbaned sardarji driver artfully negotiated the traffic, offering a running commentary as we drove past places of historical interest. A mosque here and a fort there; he regaled us with stories of kings, queens, courtiers and intrigue from centuries long past. My head was spinning. My ancestors had struggled along with millions of others to free India from British rule. Now I was going to the home of our former colonial rulers in search of something better. It did not occur to me at the time that I was running away.
The Delhi airport was a building with a few high-ceilinged rooms. After I checked in, Chachaji and I sat down in the waiting area. I had three British pounds with me — all the money a person was allowed to take. That and the very restrictive controls on passports were Nehru’s way of encouraging Indians to stay in India. My leaving would be no loss to India, I was sure, but Nehru did have a point. He wanted Indians to stay and build their own country instead of providing cheap labour to the world. He was acutely aware of the history of indentured and other Indian labourers working on sugar plantations or building railways in other countries under exploitative conditions. In purely personal terms, though, I felt India was lucky not to have to expend any more resources on me. There were millions of others who were abler, keener and more useful for the future of the country than I was. I was not good at sciences or calculus, and I was more interested in politics than in engineering. India already had too many people interested in politics, not as a noble calling but as a means to power and influence for personal profit and glory. Had I stayed, the same fate might have befallen me.
At two hours past midnight, my fellow passengers began filing out to the airplane on the tarmac. “Get up, Bhai Ghunattha Singh, time to go,” Chachaji said. When he was feeling tender and affectionate, that was his favourite name for me: Mr. Ghunattha Singh. He hugged me tightly, then motioned for me to leave. Overcome with emotion, I focussed on climbing the mobile stairs reaching into the plane. But as I lifted my foot to the first step, a voice rang out, “Bhai Ghunattha Singh, come here.” It was Chachaji, a few feet away on the other side of the rope divider, standing among the relatives and friends of other passengers. “If you want to cut your hair, you may,” he told me. “When in Rome, do as Romans do.” He enunciated the latter in crisp English, employing the Indian accent later made notorious by the inimitable British actor Peter Sellers. “If you feel like drinking,” he continued, “it is all right. But don’t drink too much. And if you ever smoke I’ll kill you. Go. Run now. You are going to be late.”
Looking back, I am amazed at these words of wisdom from a father to his going-away son. Chachaji’s advice was at once liberating and arresting. He who had cherished his unshorn hair all his life and would have preferred me to follow his example had freed me from this Sikh religious stricture in an instant of foresight. He had never been out of India, but he had the wisdom of a seasoned world traveller. All those days as I was getting ready to leave, he must have been pondering the life and the challenges in store for me in England.
I settled in my seat. My feet were no longer touching the soil of my forefathers, and the plane was readying for takeoff. I had not even seen an airplane before. Once, a plane had landed in the fields near a village a few miles from Dosanjh, and the kids who saw it said it was larger than many guddas put together. Now I was not only seeing one for myself, I was sitting in one. By the old stored in our brain’s magic box of memory, we measure the new.
The plane’s interior was spotless white with a blue tone. The contrast with the earthy homes and streets, the dusty roads and fields of Dosanjh, was stark. It was as if I had entered an uninhabited and sterile part of the universe. I paid full attention to the flight attendant’s seatbelt and life jacket demonstration, struggling with her Aussie accent.
Though there weren’t many other passengers on board, they were all, as far as I could