Like thousands of others, my family was also a victim of the Partition. The undivided country was partitioned into two countries – the Muslim majority Pakistan on the north –western and the eastern parts, and the remaining Hindu majority India. My younger sister and I were too young to understand why India had to be divided or the horrors of the war of Partition. We did, however, suffer the ensuing travails that led to our migrating from Lahore to Moga in the Indian part of Punjab in the early part of 1948.

My father, who was a teacher in Lahore, was, after a lot of difficulty, able to find a job as a part time lecturer in one of the colleges of Moga, but my mother, who had also worked for some time as a school teacher, was not so lucky. So she stayed at the makeshift arrangement that we called our temporary home and scrounged around for food to try and feed the family on the low wages my father was earning. After about a year of this refugee life, my mother met one of her old friends who had moved to Delhi, was making good money and living in a regular home. Although my father did not like the idea, my mother moved to Delhi with fifteen rupees in her pocket and hope in her heart.

After a few rounds of visits to various schools, she found a job of a school teacher on a grand salary of eighty five rupees a month with which she hired a room in the ‘government quarters’ in the Gole Market area. The room rent was thirty rupees. She thought the remaining amount was sufficient to call my sister and me to Delhi for our schooling. When my father protested, my mother said she would supplement her income by giving tuitions. She was a stubborn woman and before we knew it both of us were living with her in the one-room hutment in Gole Market.

At School

My mother was ambitious, besides being headstrong. For her, only the best school would do. So I was taken to St. Columba’s High School that was only ten minutes walk from our home. It was run by an Irish Christian Brothers’ Society and was an ‘English medium school’. A tall Irish Brother asked me something in English of which I did not understand a word. Then he brought out a paper and wrote two problems of arithmetic—one of addition and one of multiplication. Since I was familiar with the mathematical signs, I did the two problems in a jiffy, correctly. I was admitted to the school without knowing a word of the language I was to study. After some time, my younger sister Kiran was also admitted to the adjoining Convent of Jesus Mary Schoolfor girls. The fees for the two of us must have been a big burden on my mother. I don’t know how, but she somehow managed.

Being one of the best schools of Delhi, St. Columba’s attracted boys of many rich families including those of the top bureaucrats of Delhi and foreign employees working in the various embassies. There was no Chanakyapuri in Delhi in 1952. The embassies, and there were a few of them, were scattered in various parts of the Lutyens’ Delhi and our school was only a kilometer or two away from the Central Secretariat offices and Rashtrapati Bhawan. Before I knew it, I became familiar with the names of some of the countries which had their embassies in the city and whose sons studied in our school.

Once, a boy named Robert invited me to his big house on Janpath. My sister Kiran looked on wistfully as Robert and I were driven in his car to Robert‘s home. I felt so excited and a big grin would not leave my face. I didn’t remember ever being in a car before although I had traveled a few times in the buses that plied in certain parts of Delhi. We were told to sit down for our meals. The table was a grand one with six chairs and a bearer to serve. The food was sumptuous – so many items with rice, chapattis, vegetables, dal and fruit. We played for some time and then we felt hungry again. Robert’s mother offered us a plate of cake.

“What is it?’’ I asked.
“Cake.”
“And what is cake?’’
“It‘s a kind of sweet bread’’.
I took the plate. It had six or eight slices. I ate one and liked it. One by one, I finished all the pieces without offering any to Robert. He and his mother exchanged meaningful glances.

A few days later, Arun Kaira and I were walking home after school.His car had not come to take him home.

“The car probably has a flat’’, he said.
“What‘s a flat?’’ I asked, innocently. He looked at me with amusement. I had traveled once in his car to his huge government bungalow that was a little distance away from my home. But now that we were walking together and were about to reach my home, I was wondering how to prevent him seeing our one room hutment, which had no furniture except wooden charpoys, a few old suitcases, and assorted things.

A few yards before my home, I bent down, pretending that I was tying my shoelaces. Arun stopped. “Keep walking, I’ll join you’’ I told him from my bent position. As soon as he was a little distance away, I got up and ran into my home. The next day when he asked me where I had disappeared, I looked away sheepishly.

My mother used to celebrate our birthdays by buying some sweets or ice cream for us. When my tenth birthday was approaching, and my father had come from Moga, my mother decided that she would invite some friends from the school she was teaching in.

“Go to Santosh Mausi’s house and borrow their tea set.”
“But we have our own cups and saucers’’, my sister protested.
“How silly you are! Don’t you know that we are going to have important people for your brother’s birthday?’’

So we went to Santosh Mausi who lived two blocks away. When we asked her for the tea set, she was a little surprised and probably wanted to turn us away. But something in our appearance made her change her mind and she agreed to lend us her tea set.

“Be careful’’, she said, “they are expensive’’.

The next day, we all had goodies to eat- pakoras, aloo ki tikkis, jalebi and above all, gulab jamuns. There were some teachers and a few other guests. We made tea and offered it to them in the beautiful, borrowed cups and saucers. That evening was a joyful one.

After it was over, we went to the tap in the courtyard to wash the cups and saucers. The handle of one of the cups broke while we were washing it. We were crestfallen.

Our mother scolded us no end. The next day, with the money my mother gave us, we went to the market, trying to buy a cup of the same design. No luck. The shopkeeper instead offered us a similar looking tea set, but that was too expensive. Imagine Mausiji’s horror when we went to return the set the next day. She seethed with anger and must have silently abused us. She didn’t utter a word, though. After all, I was ten and Kiran only seven!

Schools had reopened after the Christmas break. Our school had its annual examinations before this break and our results were announced after the school reopened. I had passed the fourth grade examination – standing second in the class. Gone were those days when I did not know a word of English. In fact, English and Arithmetic were my favorite subjects and I had obtained 90 and 100 in these two subjects. Only Geography somehow did not appear very interesting to me and I had got only 50 marks in it.

There were twin brothers in our class – Suraj and Chander. Suraj had stood first and his brother third in the class. The other boys asked us for a treat. Suraj and Chander readily agreed. I was also forced to say yes. It was decided that each of us would bring fifteen rupees each for treating all our classmates and our teachers.

My mother was late in returning home that night. We were hungry and I also wanted to ask her for the money. As soon as she stepped inside on that cold January night, I told her about my results. She hugged me. But when I mentioned the fifteen rupees that I would have to take to school the next day, tears came into her eyes.

“I have not received this month’s salary. Where can I get so much money now?”
The next day, I bunked school.

After a few days it began to rain; the January rain in Delhi is cold and merciless. In school, I sat shivering in my sweater hardly able to pay attention to the teaching that was going on. My classmates were wearing sweaters, coats and mittens. My Mathematics teacher scolded me for not being attentive. It continued raining when it was time to leave school. No coat, no umbrella! I longingly looked at Arun and Parminder who were fully dressed and who would return home in their cars. Imagine my joy when I saw Kiran and my mother approaching me with an umbrella in her hand. I loved my mother then.

If winters are wet and cold, summers in Delhi are hot and humid -- at least that is what adults say. But for us children, summers were a source of unending fun and games with no school and no homework. I have no recollection of what we did in the mornings or evenings excepting that it was unbroken excitement and pushing and jostling and playing hide and seek, keekli and pithoo. And we children had improvised another game that we called kenchi which in Hindi means scissors. The game was called such because we would collect discarded covers or dabbies of various cigarette packs – Scissors, Red & White, Cavenders and assorted other brands. Then we would draw a circle on the pavement and put these dabbies inside the circle. From a certain distance, we would slide in a flat-bottomed stone and try to move the covers outside the circle. Each dabbie had fixed points. Points were awarded on the basis of dabbies we managed to win over. The winner was the child who could push the maximum number of dabbies outside the circle. I remember these dabbies were our most prized possessions then.

It was natural that this game would occasionally lead to embarrassing situations. One day, when my uncle was visiting us, he saw me with some dabbies in my pocket. He naturally assumed that I was smoking on the sly. It was a difficult task to convince him that we were only playing games and that I had never touched a cigarette.

Lalaji

Two years had passed. We had moved out of our Gole Markethutment to a slightly bigger house in Karol Bagh which had been largely inhabited by Muslims before they fled to Pakistan at the time of Partition or soon afterwards. The Muslim architecture with its arched doors and chajli was apparent even to novices like us. We rented the upper portion of a house which consisted of a big room, a small store, a separate kitchen and bathroom and toilet. What luxurious living in comparison to our Gole Market hutment! Of course, the rent was also more – fifty rupees instead of thirty earlier. My mother was earning more and my father would also send some money from Moga.

The house now belonged to a tall, old, austere religious person named Nihal Chand Puri. He lived all alone in the ground floor of the house – his wife had died some years ago, as he never failed to inform us. In the evenings, after finishing our homework, we would go to Lalaji as we called him and he would regale us with stories of his past. One morning I saw him standing outside his house with a lota in his hand and gazing towards the rising sun and chanting a mantra. He sprinkled some water around him, paid obeisance to the sun and returned to his house with a beatific look on his face. When we later asked him later the significance of his ritual, he patiently explained that the sun was the giver of all life on earth and without the Surya Devta (Sun god), neither humans nor animals, nor plants would exist. The mantra he had recited was the surya namaskaar, an acknowledgment of our debt to Surya Devta. We had never learnt anything like this in our schools.

Although Lalaji lived alone, he had a big family most of whom were living in Bombay. His wife had died but he had four sons and a married daughter who lived nearby. Two of his sons, Chaman and Madan Puri, worked in Hindi films in Bombay. The younger son Madan was a villain par excellence on the celluloid screen. Watching him tormenting the beautiful heroines and coming up with various schemes of defeating the heroes would send shivers down our spine. We asked Lalaji if Madan Puri was really so wicked. He laughed out aloud. His younger two sons, Amrish and Harish, were not working in the films at the time. Some years later, Amrish also joined the film industry and became another unforgettable scheming villain.

One evening, Kiran and I heard a haunting melody being played on a flute from Lalaji’s home. We quickly ran down to see his son Amrish playing soulfully on his bansuri. When he stopped, we told him how beautifully he was playing. I asked him if he would teach me how to play. He gladly agreed and taking out another flute he had with him, taught me the rudiments of flute playing: how to hold it properly and how to play the sargam – the seven notes of music. He also gave me his spare flute on which I would practice energetically and with great devotion. A few weeks later, I started playing simple film tunes, our school song and our national anthem.

I never met Amrish Puri after he became a star in Bombay but once many years later, I participated in a music competition and even won a prize, I silently acknowledged the debt I owed him for initiating me to the world of flute playing.

From playing the flute I started playing the harmonium or the baja as it was popularly called. The Hindi film Nagin became exceedingly popular mainly because of its lilting music which was composed by Hemant Kumar. One of its most popular songs was Man dole mera tan dole…, which was on everyone’s lips. I used to play it quite well on the baja, so much so that one day when I was playing it, Madan Puri who was with his father downstairs, heard me playing the song. He called me downstairs and offered to take me to Bombay and introduce me to films as a child actor. I would have accepted the offer had I wanted to become another goonda a la Madan Puri!

Gandhi Janata College

1953 was an important year not only for me but also as a landmark year in the history of the world. This was the year when Mt. Everest was conquered for the first time on the 29th of May by two mountaineers, Edmund Hillary and Tenzing Norgay. Queen Elizabeth II ascended the British throne a few days later. Chandigarh became the joint capital of the two states Punjab and Haryana and I went to Shimla for the first time in my life. My uncle used to live there and was running a coaching institute grandiosely called Gandhi Janata College.

Lalaji, who had another house in Shimla, was going there too, and he agreed to take me along. The journey to Kalka at the foothills of Shimla was by broad gauge train. There, we changed into a train that was almost like a toy-train. The British, who had developed Shimla as a resort for themselves during the torrid summer months, also developed this comfortable and picturesque method of reaching there. The entire Secretariat would shift to Shimla either on this mini train or by road. En route, there were small stations with breathtaking scenery and a few locals who would wait for this beautiful train’s arrival and offer hot tea and samosas.

When we reached Shimla after about a six hour journey from Kalka, I looked anxiously around for my Uncle to receive me. He was not there. I was alone without any family members in a strange town. I did not weep but my face said it all. Lalaji saw my distress. He put his hand on my head and took me to his home.

The next day, he walked with me and the coolie who carried my luggage along the undulating streets to my uncle’s place. My uncle was happy to receive me. The post card we had written about my arrival reached him only after I had arrived at his home.

I became a celebrity of sorts with the students who came to my uncle’s College to study. Most of them came for English tuitions. I could speak and write better English than them even though they were five to seven years older than I was. I was also good at table tennis and played the flute and harmonium better than most. The music teacher, Ram Rattan, who was blind, wondered where I had picked up playing the flute. He did not believe the explanation I offered.

In the evenings, after the students had left, only my uncle and Ram Rattan would remain. Both were bachelors and would gossip or play cards that were especially designed for the blind. I did not understand many things that they spoke about. But gradually I began to put two and two together. They would play rummy for money and would fight for every anna.

I also came to know that my uncle had loved a girl whom he used to teach in Rawalpindi before he moved to Shimla. But the girl’s father, who was a rich landlord and a tyrant to boot, did not approve of the relationship. One day, when my uncle went to teach as usual, he was taken to a dark and dingy alley in the back of their haveli and given a sound thrashing by the girl’s father and his servant. That was the end of his love and teaching in Rawalpindi.

“Why don’t you try to marry now?” Ram Rattan asked.
“No decent person would give his sister or daughter in marriage to a tutor – a man without a proper job or house.”

The film Anarkali was running to packed houses in the Regal cinema just near Mall Road. The music teacher persuaded me to accompany him to see the film. Although he was blind, he loved to go to films for their dialogues and music. My uncle was not present at that time. So I left a message with the servant to inform my uncle when he returned. Apparently, he forgot. When I returned late that night humming the melodious songs of the film, my uncle was reclined on the sofa waiting for me. When he came to know where I had been, he lost his temper and gave me a harsh beating. Was he taking out on me the memory of his lost love in Rawalpindi or was he angry that I went with Ram Rattan and not with him?

The next day at breakfast he called me to his side and hugged and kissed me.
“Do you know how precious you are to me? There is no other boy in the family. What would I have told your father if anything had happened to you?”
He started weeping. I could bear his thrashing but not his tears.
A few days later, when my summer vacations were about to end, my father came to take me back to Delhi. My father was older but he looked more handsome and energetic than my uncle. I wondered why he appeared so subdued in front of my mother.

We returned to Delhi. The rains had started, quenching the thirst of the hot dry summer of Delhi and its surroundings. Somehow, I felt that I had lost my innocence in Shimla. I was transformed from a child into a mini-adult.

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