The great event of the year was our annual visit to the orchards of my great aunts who lived in Gujranwala district. It took weeks of planning and co-ordinating and there was much excitement and bustle in our Lyallpur house before we left. The entire family went by train from Lyallpur to Gujranwala, and along the way, at different stops, other relatives would join our train, and by the time we arrived, we had become a great big clan party. At the railway station at Gujranwala, we piled onto sad-looking tongas, and amidst much merry making, we headed for the prosperous orchards of our country cousins.
Their prosperity as landlords was recent. It had come with the canal. With water available in plenty, they began to grow fruit that was transported by agents to far away places like Lahore. There was a sharp divide in attitudes between our cousins and us. We were from the town and we considered ourselves superior even though they were wealthier. They owned lands but we were better educated. We felt squeamish about their bathroom and lavatory arrangements but they were more generous and their big-heartedness always won us over. My grandfather once observed that more than anything else it was the English language that divided us from our Gujranwala family. They had the money but we held the status. When Punjab was partitioned in 1947, they suffered far more than we did. All of us became refugees--both Gujranwala and Lyallpur went to Pakistan. But they lost their lands, and they became poor. We were educated and we could get jobs and get going.
My stay in Lyallpur with my grandparents came to an end when my father found a house in a canal colony in the Hisar district of East Punjab. We went by train and stopped en route at his Guru’s ashram. My father wanted to receive the Guru’s darshan, which he believed held the power to protect us and give us spiritual moorings. My father’s mother had also accompanied us to the ashram and she impulsively placed me at the Guru’s feet and asked him to give me a name. She suspected that my mother had given me my name, Ashok Kumar, because she thought my mother was secretly in love with the movie star of the same name. His film Achhut Kanya, produced by Bombay Talkies, had been a big hit in the cinemas of Lahore, Lyallpur, and in the rest of Punjab.
‘Since you have placed him at my feet, let us call him ‘Guru Charan Das’, he said with a smile. Thus, I was transformed overnight from the ‘prince of happiness’ to the humble ‘servant of the guru’s feet’. The Guru must have known that this child needed to be reminded about the virtue of humility every day. The first two parts of my name became gradually condensed into one, but it did nothing to make me humble or spiritual.
My mother was visibly unhappy in the canal colony. She felt lonely and the vast, unbroken horizon on the dusty, treeless plains of Hisar added to her sense of isolation. She missed her family, her friends and the comforts of Lyallpur. She was also anxious because I got diarrhoea soon after we arrived. Her only comfort was the continuing monotonous sound of the running canal behind our house. My father was a quiet and shy man and at first his silence also troubled her, but she got used to doing all the talking. As a sub-divisional officer, he was the most important official of the Raj for miles. His job was to maintain his portion of the canal, making sure that the water flowed efficiently through smaller distribution channels to the farmers’ fields. This was difficult at times because some farmer would invariably divert his neighbour’s water, and this led to a quarrel - and even murder. In such a situation, he became the judge.
The few buildings in the canal colony were of brick. They had flat roofs with wide verandas, all white washed inside as dictated by the Public Works Department. My mother tried to make friends with the wives of the overseers but she found them uneducated and could not resist a feeling of superiority. She liked being the wife of an important official. The farmers overwhelmed her with gifts of grains and vegetables from the fields, but my father invariably returned them. They were a bribe and he knew that the price he would have to pay, and it would be to look the other way when the farmer illegally widened the water channel to his field.
After eighteen months in Hisar my father was transferred to a desk job in the government’s irrigation department in Lahore. After the canal post, my mother was thrilled to be in the capital city of Punjab where she had been to college and had many friends. My father got a modest house in a middle-class area, not too far from the sprawling Lawrence Gardens, presided over by a statue of John Lawrence, the ‘Lord Sahib of India’. It was our first real home and my mother furnished it with pride and care - but within my father’s limited means. She was overjoyed to be young and alive and living in Lahore. She was under the spell of its enchanted streets, its vivacious bazaars and its beautiful women.
Their prosperity as landlords was recent. It had come with the canal. With water available in plenty, they began to grow fruit that was transported by agents to far away places like Lahore. There was a sharp divide in attitudes between our cousins and us. We were from the town and we considered ourselves superior even though they were wealthier. They owned lands but we were better educated. We felt squeamish about their bathroom and lavatory arrangements but they were more generous and their big-heartedness always won us over. My grandfather once observed that more than anything else it was the English language that divided us from our Gujranwala family. They had the money but we held the status. When Punjab was partitioned in 1947, they suffered far more than we did. All of us became refugees--both Gujranwala and Lyallpur went to Pakistan. But they lost their lands, and they became poor. We were educated and we could get jobs and get going.
My stay in Lyallpur with my grandparents came to an end when my father found a house in a canal colony in the Hisar district of East Punjab. We went by train and stopped en route at his Guru’s ashram. My father wanted to receive the Guru’s darshan, which he believed held the power to protect us and give us spiritual moorings. My father’s mother had also accompanied us to the ashram and she impulsively placed me at the Guru’s feet and asked him to give me a name. She suspected that my mother had given me my name, Ashok Kumar, because she thought my mother was secretly in love with the movie star of the same name. His film Achhut Kanya, produced by Bombay Talkies, had been a big hit in the cinemas of Lahore, Lyallpur, and in the rest of Punjab.
‘Since you have placed him at my feet, let us call him ‘Guru Charan Das’, he said with a smile. Thus, I was transformed overnight from the ‘prince of happiness’ to the humble ‘servant of the guru’s feet’. The Guru must have known that this child needed to be reminded about the virtue of humility every day. The first two parts of my name became gradually condensed into one, but it did nothing to make me humble or spiritual.
My mother was visibly unhappy in the canal colony. She felt lonely and the vast, unbroken horizon on the dusty, treeless plains of Hisar added to her sense of isolation. She missed her family, her friends and the comforts of Lyallpur. She was also anxious because I got diarrhoea soon after we arrived. Her only comfort was the continuing monotonous sound of the running canal behind our house. My father was a quiet and shy man and at first his silence also troubled her, but she got used to doing all the talking. As a sub-divisional officer, he was the most important official of the Raj for miles. His job was to maintain his portion of the canal, making sure that the water flowed efficiently through smaller distribution channels to the farmers’ fields. This was difficult at times because some farmer would invariably divert his neighbour’s water, and this led to a quarrel - and even murder. In such a situation, he became the judge.
The few buildings in the canal colony were of brick. They had flat roofs with wide verandas, all white washed inside as dictated by the Public Works Department. My mother tried to make friends with the wives of the overseers but she found them uneducated and could not resist a feeling of superiority. She liked being the wife of an important official. The farmers overwhelmed her with gifts of grains and vegetables from the fields, but my father invariably returned them. They were a bribe and he knew that the price he would have to pay, and it would be to look the other way when the farmer illegally widened the water channel to his field.
After eighteen months in Hisar my father was transferred to a desk job in the government’s irrigation department in Lahore. After the canal post, my mother was thrilled to be in the capital city of Punjab where she had been to college and had many friends. My father got a modest house in a middle-class area, not too far from the sprawling Lawrence Gardens, presided over by a statue of John Lawrence, the ‘Lord Sahib of India’. It was our first real home and my mother furnished it with pride and care - but within my father’s limited means. She was overjoyed to be young and alive and living in Lahore. She was under the spell of its enchanted streets, its vivacious bazaars and its beautiful women.
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