Life Back Then

Kanwarjit Singh Malik was born in Rawalpindi in 1930. His family moved to India at the time of Partition in 1947. He joined the Flying Club in Jalandhar, and was later selected by the Indian Air Force. After the retirement from the Air Force, he served as a senior captain in Air India and Air Lanka. He got married in 1961, and now lives in Mumbai with his wife.

Editor's note: This is a slightly edited version of an article that originally appeared at http://nativepakistan.com/pindi-memoirs-by-a-sikh-son-of-the-soil-part-2-rawalpindi-blog/, and is reproduced here with the author's permission. Part 1 is available here.

The details in this article are as told to me by my eldest brother Bhupinder Singh Malik, and my father Malik Mukhbain Singh, Bar-at-law.

Kanwarjit Singh Malik was born in Rawalpindi in 1930. His family moved to India at the time of Partition in 1947. He joined the Flying Club in Jalandhar, and was later selected by the Indian Air Force. After the retirement from the Air Force, he served as a senior captain in Air India and Air Lanka.

Editor's note: This is a slightly edited version of an article that originally appeared at http://nativepakistan.com/pindi-memoirs-by-a-sikh-son-of-the-soil-part-1-rawalpindi-blog/, and is reproduced here with the author's permission. Part 2 is available here.

I have recently read 19 episodes of "My Old but Ever New Pindi", a series of "Nostalgic Articles about Rawalpindi" written by Rafique Khan Sahib, in the website Native Pakistan. Being a native of Pindi, these articles took me back to the good old days. Today, sitting in Foster City, near San Francisco, USA, at the home of my daughter, I remember Pindi as it was in my mind as I remember.

Dr. Anand - an unholy person born in 1932 in the holy town of Nankana Sahib, central Punjab. A lawyer father, a doctor mother. Peripatetic childhood - almost gypsy style. Many schools. Many friends, ranging from a cobbler's son (poorly shod as the proverb goes) to a judge's son. MB From Glancy (now Government) Medical College Amritsar, 1958. Comet 4 to Heathrow, 1960.

Long retired. Widower. A son and a daughter, their spouses, five grandchildren, two hens (impartially, one black, one white) keeping an eye on me as I stand still and the world goes by.

In Campbellpore, now vanished from the maps! (Ed. Renamed as Attock by Pakistan).

In 1942, my mother, tired of seeing my father's difficult journey from Lahore, where he worked as a lawyer, to Muktsar, where she was posted as a doctor, requested the Government to transfer her to a nearer 'station' (the term then used in government service for postings).

However, the Inspector General of Hospitals, Punjab, decided to send her to Campbellpore - more than 400 kilometres from Lahore. The rationale was that instead of two or three changes of train from Lahore to Muktsar, my father could travel straight from Lahore to Campbellpore by Frontier Mail. A ten-hour journey. Then, a tonga ride to our hospital house.

Dr. Anand - an unholy person born in 1932 in the holy town of Nankana Sahib, central Punjab. A lawyer father, a doctor mother. Peripatetic childhood - almost gypsy style. Many schools. Many friends, ranging from a cobbler's son (poorly shod as the proverb goes) to a judge's son. MB From Glancy (now Government) Medical College Amritsar, 1958. Comet 4 to Heathrow, 1960.

Long retired. Widower. A son and a daughter, their spouses, five grandchildren, two hens (impartially, one black, one white) keeping an eye on me as I stand still and the world goes by.

1942. A little town called Muktsar, located in what was Ferozepur district at that time (now in Sri Muktsar Sahib district, created by splitting Ferozepur). In the Punjab, not far from today's Pakistan.

My mother was posted as a doctor in the government hospital in Muktsar - the only woman doctor for miles and miles. A slow train would pass through countryside, where wind would whip up sandstorms, and whirl up and move sand hillocks. Sometimes the sand, suspended in the atmosphere, would leave the sun shooting its rays in to the sand, producing intense heat but not too much light.

My father was a lawyer, practising in Shahdara, near Lahore, at that time. Instead of dismantling his practice there and starting from scratch in Muktsar, he maintained a flat in Lahore, and travelled down to Muktsar for the weekend.

Born in 1941, Vinod was brought up and educated in Amritsar. He attended Government Medical College, and subsequently trained as a surgeon at PGI, Chandigarh. He left for USA in 1969, and retired in 2003 as Director of Critical Care Services at a teaching hospital in Michigan. Married with two grown sons, he continues to visit India at least once a year.

At long last, we had passed our final MBBS exams. After five years and many upheavals in our young lives, we were done with the grind.

After another six months of an easy internship without pay, we would get our medical degrees at the end of 1964. And then, we would be on our way to glorious careers in medicine! That is the way it looked to me in early 1964 at the age of twenty two.

Jitinder, one of my friends, suggested that four of us friends could go on a holiday\; he would be able to get his family car for the journey. Others were equally enthusiastic ­- of course, no other family had a car! We agreed to gather in Ludhiana at Jitinder's home, and go from there to Simla.

Ashok Sarkar (born 1929) retired as an Air Commodore from the Indian Air Force. He was awarded the Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM) by the Indian government. His career included commanding a number of Air Force field units, and a diplomatic posting at the Indian Embassy in Moscow during the 1960s. He was an outstanding student and sportsman in his youth, and after his retirement, he was an inspiration for young sports talent in Agra, his hometown. He continues to run a play-school for young children, a labour of love he founded with his late wife, Chitra, and enjoys a quiet life nurturing the prize-winning flower garden at his ancestral home in Agra.

I was a student in Agra College, Agra over 1944-50. At that time, Agra College was one of India’s leading educational institutions.

Agra College was established in 1823 by Gangadhar Shastri, a noted Sanskrit scholar of his time. In the beginning, the College had two large hostels, namely, Hewett and Thompson. Agra College soon attracted students from many parts of India. A number of communities came forward to build hostels for students of their own community, such as Bhargava Hostel, Chaubey Hostel, Kayastha Hostel, and Vaish Boarding House. Each hostel had a cemented tennis court, apart from volleyball and basketball courts, as well as a large recreation hall, where functions were held from time to time.

Born in 1941, Vinod was brought up and educated in Amritsar. He attended Government Medical College, and subsequently trained as a surgeon at PGI, Chandigarh. He left for USA in 1969, and retired in 2003 as Director of Critical Care Services at a teaching hospital in Michigan. Married with two grown sons, he continues to visit India at least once a year.

In 1955, as a fourteen-year old, I was thrilled at the prospect of going to Bombay (now Mumbai) on a school-sponsored trip.

I was excited by the prospect of travelling almost a thousand miles from Amritsar, a small town in north India, to the glamour of Bombay, the movie capital of India. There were legions of stories of how actors and actresses had been discovered after arriving penniless in Bombay.

So it was natural for me to brag about it to my friends and other people in the neighbourhood.

Chaman Lal's mother heard about my planned trip. She talked to my mother because she had an interest in Delhi, which was on the route to Bombay.

Editor’s Note: Mr. Mody is a prolific contributor to this website. He has written a number of articles about pre-Independence India, and is now beginning to provide post-Independence articles. He worked with the Reserve Bank of India (RBI) for over 35 years. We look forward to further contributions from him about the RBI after Independence.

Shenoi, a civil engineer and MBA, rose to the rank of Deputy Director-General of Works in the Indian Defence Service of Engineers. He has also been a member of HUDCO’s advisory board and of the planning team for Navi Mumbai. After retirement he has been helping NGOs in employment-oriented training, writing articles related to all aspects of housing, urban settlements, infrastructure, project and facility management and advising several companies on these issues. His email id is mpvshanoi@gmail.com.

This website provides the impressions and opinions of many educated, elite persons. Some of them worked in bureaucracy, some of them were private individuals/men of standing. They have written about the historic transition of our country from a British colony to a free democracy and its governance during that period.

This story is about a person who served one wing of the government at the grass root level. He was not particularly articulate, but he sometimes spontaneously gave out his opinion in his own way, without any concern about style.

It was July 1958 when I received the posting order from Engineer in Chiefs Branch, Army Head Quarters, and New Delhi. I was eagerly waiting for the letter - I had passed the required UPSC examination nearly three years ago.

Dr. Juginder Luthra completed his MBBS from Medical College, Amritsar in 1966, and his MS in Ophthalmology from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI), Chandigarh in 1970. He moved to Nottingham, UK along with his wife, Dolly — a dentist from the Amritsar Dental College — and a daughter, Namita. They were blessed with twin daughters, Rohini and Rashmi, in May 1975. The family moved to Weirton, West Virginia in June 1975. Now their three loving daughters are married to wonderful sons-in-law, and Dolly and Juginder are blessed with six grandchildren.

Once you have lived in the U.S. for many years, as I have, silence is the first thing that hits when you return from India.

The orchestra of sounds created by dogs, birds and human vocal cords, along with a variety of man-made machines and amplifiers suddenly vanishes, making you wonder if you are losing your sense of hearing. No wonder it is sometimes called deafening silence.

This is particularly true of the era long gone, of the years I spent in Panipat in the 1950s. The years when the flower of life, as I know, started blooming and absorbed the panorama of the world around me. Times change but the memories of those days, somewhat faded, still linger.

Among the constant background sounds, one of the things that I miss most is the periodic yelps of numerous vendors and hawkers selling products in the trains, buses, on the streets and roads.