to transfer Bikkar to the Dosanjh School. Obviously, the switch did not hurt Bikkar’s prospects in life.
The school was not conceived as a profit-making venture. The founders who taught there received a salary if the school could afford it, based on the very reasonable fees for students. Chachaji was the only founder still teaching there when I came back to the school for grade five. His friends Maula, Mehnga and Davindra had left for England, and Thakar Singh and Chanan Singh had gone on to do other things, but these young men of the 1920s and 1930s had a special bond that would last till the end of their lives.
Chachaji too had made plans to go to England, but Biji persuaded him otherwise. After her death, he again thought of leaving for England, but Jajo dissuaded him, worried that abroad he would marry a “white woman” and our lives would be neglected and ruined.
Chachaji continued his studies privately while he taught at the school. He wrote and passed his FA (Faculty of Arts) examination for English. Next he turned his mind to writing the Punjabi examination for the certificate of giani (literally, “the knowledgeable one”), and passed that. He was preparing to write the BA papers for English when Biji got ill. My father’s dream of a BA died with her.
Chachaji’s political involvement also took a hit, as he needed to pay more attention to us. Whenever elections came around, though, Chachaji organized and canvassed for the Congress party. He was a “Congresswala,” and like most of his contemporaries, he was an impeccably honest man. He had participated in the freedom movement in his country, and its ideals still glowed in his heart.
Chachaji made sure Bhaji and I were up by 4:30 AM , the kerosene lamp illuminating our books as we studied for an hour before doing our morning chores. Then it was time to run to the khooh to help Tayaji tend to the cattle and cut and chop fodder for the day. Bhaji and I barely had time to dip in the chalha for a bath, run home, dress, tie our turbans and get to school on time. Combing our long hair posed a perennial problem. Overnight, and as we worked on the farm in the mornings, it would become knotted, so on the days we were running late, combing got a miss. Chachaji kept a keen eye on his students. Some days at the end of the school assembly he would ask those who had not had a bath or combed their hair before coming to school to stand up. On the days Bhaji and I had not combed our hair, he would never fail to ask. And if we did not stand up to confess and then run the obligatory four rounds of the grounds, our father would call us out as liars. My brother and I took the punishment, in our hearts blaming Chachaji because he worked us too long and hard on the farm.
Chachaji himself wore homegrown and homespun cotton clothes. Dressed all in white with a white turban, he looked angelic, yet he was merciless to all slackers. Our family was poor, yet our father exuded richness through his appearance. Many believed we had high status and did not need to work in the fields, or work at all. Physical labour had little value in Indian culture. Some people would rather starve than be seen to labour manually.
I have always wondered why so many of my countrymen felt shame doing physical labour. Despite India’s indisputable riches, a history of poverty and hunger in the country could stretch to several volumes. At one time, I put the shame down to the slavery practised by British colonialists. They hired servants to do everything for them and did no manual work themselves. More recently, I have speculated about the lighter-skinned Aryans who are alleged to have invaded India from the north and conquered it, subjugating the darker-skinned original Indians and assigning them the most menial labour, eventually creating the caste system. No matter what its origin, the problem persists.
Mahatma Gandhi’s efforts to promote self-help through manual chores had a great influence on Chachaji, though, as did the teachings of the first Sikh Guru, Nanak, who, after many years of preaching and teaching, returned to his native village to eke out a living by subsistence farming.
Chachaji’s honesty and simplicity were also reflected in his politics. During the independence movement and afterwards, he worked with many men who became politicians, including the first defence minister of independent India, Baldev Singh. Swaran Singh went on to hold many positions in India’s central cabinet, including that of minister of external affairs. Darbara Singh’s last public office was that of the chief minister of Punjab. Chachaji did not befriend these men because they were in government. Power held no allure for him, and India was already slipping into ways he felt wouldn’t lead to Gandhi’s Ram Raj, or just society.
I once asked Chachaji why he didn’t run for state or Indian Parliament, because I knew he had been approached. “If one wants to befriend camels, one needs tall doors,” he said. The reference, which I did not understand then, was to the corruption that was beginning to take root in India. My father was not prepared to use crooked methods to amass the wealth necessary to run in an election. He was not prepared to make the moral and ethical compromises Indian politics demanded. The country of his and Mahatma Gandhi’s dreams was fast becoming a cesspool.
Chachaji had risked his life many times for his principles. After partition, he organized men in our village and the surrounding area to gather Muslims and safely escort them to the camps from which they could leave for Pakistan under proper protection. Some people in the region wanted to rob and massacre the assembled Muslims in revenge for the killings of Sikhs and Hindus across the border. When Chachaji got wind of it, he gathered a group of strong young friends. Somehow he located some liquor and handed it to his comrades-against-crime to fortify their courage. The group begged and borrowed some weapons, and at nightfall they started the journey with their charges to the nearest camp at Behram, some six miles away. Chachaji walked his bike along with the caravan. Rumours had spread about him — that Master, the teacher, was carrying bombs and a pistol in the cloth bag slung over his handlebars while in actual fact it was only his food and air pump for the bicycle tires.
Chachaji and his group continued to help Muslims escape the avengers and robbers. In a futile attempt to dissuade him from his work, some of his enemies threatened to kill my siblings and me. One day he was returning from Neehr, a predominantly Muslim village, when a gunshot rang through the air. A bullet whizzed past, missing Chachaji by inches.
India was turning its back on the collective dream of the freedom fighters. The English sahibs departed, leaving sahibdom behind. Elected and unelected officials alike began to behave like the rulers of old. Instead of a healthy challenge to authority, sycophancy gained currency. Chachaji’s rebellious streak remained, and he showed it often. One day the chief minister of Punjab, Chachaji’s old friend Darbara Singh, decided to visit our village school unannounced. One of his functionaries showed up at our khooh looking for Chachaji, who was working with us in the fields. The chief minister wanted to see Chachaji at the school, the functionary said. Chachaji thought for a moment and said to the functionary, “Tell my friend I am busy making a living. I am not a rich man. I need to finish this work today. But I am happy to receive him here.” So the chief minister came by to see Chachaji on his way to his next destination. The green wheat crop, less than a foot tall, was turning and twisting in the cool breeze. After the minister left, we got right back to weeding it. I learned from Chachaji that freedom and equality are like crops: they must be diligently weeded, watered and fertilized.
Chachaji was also a voracious reader of Punjabi and Urdu books and of the Tribune, the prominent English daily that Mahatma Gandhi had once called the most important newspaper in North India. Our father had a small library at home that included English titles such as Shakespeare’s Hamlet and many Urdu titles I could never make out. His Punjabi books, of which there were many, included works by the premier Punjabi novelist, Nanak Singh, and the Punjabi translation of Gorky’s The Mother. By the end of grade six, I had devoured most of the Punjabi titles in Chachaji’s collection. My facility with the language was recognized when I received the award of a book of Punjabi plays at a public function in the Dosanjh School, in the presence of hundreds of people from the surrounding villages. I still needed to work on my Hindi, however.
6
ONCE BHAJI AND I got home from school, we would eat quickly, change into our khooh clothes and walk over to help with the work. I did all the chores except ploughing and levelling the land, for which I was considered too young. As the sugarcane grew taller, we tied it together in bunches, using