Biography

I go back to Murthal. I have some of my dearest memories of Murthal. I must have been just a child when I accompanied my mother to have a nice holiday with my cousins: Jage Ram, Har Narayan and Jit Ram, sons of Munshi Ram Mamaji. My mamiji was a very efficient and kind housekeeper, very hospitable and a wonderful cook who loved to make good dishes and feed the people around. I remember the dual, two stage double bed, built by my Nanaji. One part was occupied by Jage Ram, the other by me. I remember the ‘ikkas’, tongas, which plied between the village and the local bus stand on Highway No. 1. The sound and music of the Arti in the Bohra’s (Paliwal’s) temple, ‘tuma bina aur na duja’ still rings in my ears since late nineteen-twenty’s and early thirty’s. Those words of the Arti are my original relationship with the Shiva temple.

Why these words alone? There must be a reason something deep in the mind.

My Nanaji also had built a Shiva temple, a simple but neat structure, close to the family homes. I also was taken to that temple by my mother and Mamajis whenever there was a special occasion, as on Shiva Ratri or during the Shraaddha forthnight in the month of Ashvin, on festival days whenever we happened to be there. But during that time, every evening, I heard the same words, the same melody, while outwards I saw the same ‘ikkas’ coming back home at the end of the day’s work. The words stayed on and stay on. Whenever I join the Arti now in any temple, the evening scene at Murthal revisits my mind without fail. The Bohra temple and Nanaji’s temple now are part of me.

The Bohra temple was built by Seth Sada Ram Paliwal who had land in fifty two villages. The local seats of the landlord in villages were then known as ‘kothis’. Mother used to say the Seth had fifty two kothis. Some sort of social romance had gathered round his life. I heard that whenever a girl of the family was married, he used to gift her with one kilogram of gold and four kilograms of silver weighed in scales. When he died, I happened to be there at my mamaji’s. They carried his body in sitting position, as if on a chair in a ‘Vimaan’, around the village in ‘parikrama’ and continued to shower coins and flowers over the ‘Vimaan’, and to pick-up a coin from the shower was regarded as a token of good fortune and long healthy life. Children passed underneath the Vimaan as an act of homage. I was also advised to do that act of homage and I did. I also collected a one-paisa coin which was kept in our home close to the evening lamp (jyot) which was lit with a new wick and fresh ghee every evening. I also attended his cremation which took place in the big open yard of the temple. The wood was all chandan (sandal) and there were loads of camphor to light the fire. All these memory associations, including the words of Arti, are now a part of me. When I was at Ramjas College, Delhi in 1943-49, Seth Sada Ram’s grandson, Shiv Charan Paliwal, was a college mate with me. We lived in the same hostel. After college, we never met. I am sure the change that swept over India after 1947 must have affected him and his social and economic status of life.

Now, my Nanaji, the ‘man of Gold’. I never saw him. He died in a building accident, may be before my birth, or may be when I was just a baby unaware of my surroundings.

My Nanaji’s were four brothers, and probably my Nanaji was the eldest. He was, as mother used to tell me, an extremely handsome person, so he was given a name with the most unwanted connotations: he was named Kooremal, at the best, may be, Koore Ram, or just Koora (garbage) to protect him against the evil eye. So nobody in the home called the usual garbage by the Hindi word ‘Koora’, they called it by another word ‘arangaa’. He had only one child and that was my mother, Baktawari, the name literally means ‘good at speech’. Nanaji loved her very much and looked after her food beyond the care-bounds of Naniji. So when ‘khichari’ was on the fire with all the ingredients, rice, bajara, daal, ghee, salt and all, he would ask baby Baktawari to go and put more ghee into the pot, especially when Naniji was away. Naniji was from the village Rithal, eight miles from Rohtak. The other thing mother told me about him was how he died at Rithal at an early age: when the bullock cart carrying Agra stone lost balance, he fell and had a vein cut and he died of excess bleeding at the accident site.

Mother used to talk to me of Rithal quite often as I now talk of Murthal. But I was then not grown up enough to understand and realize that she pined for a visit to Rithal. I was too young also at that time.

She also talked to me how with Nanaji she visited Haridwar on the occasion of Ganga Snan on Kartik Poornima. So when I was appointed Lecturer at Hans Raj College and when we had settled in our new home in Shakti Nagar, I did take her and other members of the family to Haridwar in 1958 and stayed there for two weeks at Mohan Ashram. One year later, my mother passed away.

Nanaji had three brothers: Sukhi Ram who had only one child, a son, Munshi Ram. He had no daughter, so Munshi Mama was without a sister. My mother was probably the eldest child of the family. So I do not know whether my mother adopted Munshi Ram as her brother or Munshi Ram adopted her as a sister. But what I observed and experienced through my life from early thirties or late twenties is this: that I have never seen a more loving brother-sister relationship than the love between my mother and Munshi Ram Mamaji.

The other brother of Nanaji’s was Khem Chand. Khem Chand had three children: Sarti, the eldest daughter, Chhaju Ram and Ram Singh. Together, they made a very loving trio. This trio on the one hand, and Munshi-Baktawari duo, on the other, made two wonderful groups of brother-sister combinations, not exclusive any way, still emotionally all the five together, and the trio and the duo at the practical level one identity. On social occasions, when the girls had settled after marriage, mother at Badha Malik and Sarti at Chhatehra, the whole family got together, and the two girls were honoured and cared for equally to the best of the brother’s love, respect and affection. It now sounds like the airy part of a bye-gone fairy tale.

The name of the third brother of Nanaji, I don’t know. I never saw him because, as I was told, he died early. He had one son, Sees Ram, who also died rather early. Sees Ram had three children, two daughters, Umrakaur and Bharpai, and one son, Sartu. They were very loving partners in their life, and, before their marriage, they lived together with the joint family of Chhajju Mamaji and Ram Singh family.

Munshi Mamaji had three sons and three daughters: Jage Ram, Harnarain and Jit Ram; Misri, Kasturi and Munni. I attended the wedding of all of them. I also attended the wedding of Chhajju Mama’s children. When I was in my teens, I remember, the one duty I was given was supervision and charge of the food stores and, in addition, making a list of the community contributions of ‘nyota’ and ‘kanyadan’. This was because, otherwise, the local ‘bania’ had to be called in to do the job and he recorded it all in ‘Mundi Hindi’ which no one else could read. I introduced the Deva Nagri script for the record so that anyone could read the record whenever a reference was required at some wedding in the community.

‘Nyota’ and ‘Kanyadan’ were and still are community co-operative forms of joint social activity in financial management at the time of wedding: ‘Nyota’ at all weddings and ‘Kanyadan’ at a girl’s wedding. When you, as a house-holder, join the community as an active member, you pay Rs. 5 or more or less as your contribution to the wedding. This contribution would be recorded in your account. When there is a wedding in the giver’s family, that receiver would pay Rs.10, five on account of the five he had earlier received, and five more to keep up the on-going contributory process.

‘Kanyadan’ was recorded too, but it was more a ‘gift’ for the girl’s wedding, paid more as a sacred obligation than as a matter of duty (as in the Nyota account). The custom survives in the villages still, but because of the mobility of people at the present time, it is on the way out. Still when I happened to visit my village and attended the wedding of the son of my next door neighbor, Chandan Singh, I felt happily surprised to see many of my Rai Primary School mates in the Nyota party, and so did they all feel happy and surprised to see me after a gap of more than six decades.

In 2011 I went to India to transfer ‘by a gift deed’ my house, 28/15 Shakti Nagar, to Gian. In 1984, I had given the general power of attorney to him and also signed a will in his favour. But he left the ownership position as it had been since April 16^th 1953. Having done that transfer through the court, I decided to visit Rithal.

I went there with Gian and Jagdish, from Sonipat via Gohana. On the outskirts of the village, we saw a group of young men playing cards by the side of a tea stall. I wished them Namaste and asked them if they could guide us to some Jangid home. They asked us what our business was. I said “We are on a pilgrimage to this village because this village is a ‘tirtha’ (holy place) for us, being a sacred spot in our family history. They pointed out to a house close by. We went to the house. The lady of the house greeted us and prepared a cup of tea, so welcome to us after the journey. When the master of the house, Arjun, came we asked him if he could guide us to the house of my Nanajis’ in-laws. He said that was too remote for him, but he would guide us to meet a senior man of about more than eighty and working at a particular place in the village. This senior man’s name was Sunehra.

Our host’s name, if I remember it correctly was Arjun. He guided us to Sunehra’s work place. We wished him courteously and respectfully, the man at eighty doing the hard building work still neatly and efficiently. I explained to him that this village was the birthplace of my Naniji, and my Nanaji, who married her long long back was ‘koore’, and once working there. He immediately added, “And he died here too”. We felt sure that he certainly knew my Nanaji and the home of my mother’s mamaji’s place, the house and the place of which she was so fond. Sunehra Ji led us to that ancient home. The inmates of the home were informed of who we were and of the sanctity of our visit. We saluted the place and did silent homage to the soil wherefrom we received some of our cherished genes through Murthal. The residents were surprised how we, at that distant time from earlier days, could feel interested to visit that house. Old memories were revived through Sunehraji which were, quite a few at least, news to the family.

The Rithal family of my Naniji’s birth place now is spread over two hundred and fifty families. How did it begin? Who was the first ancestor or migrant? This too is a mysterious story which was narrated to us (while we were visiting Rithal), I think, by Sunera: The first migrant who came to Rithal was a man who came alone with his wife only, no children. His wife was pregnant at an advanced stage. After some time, almost at the time when the baby was due, his wife died. In a way, the family line seemed to close for him. But the saying is: When God is the savior no one can kill. The body of the wife was taken to the cremation ground and put on the pyre. The pyre was lighted too as usual. But as the fire arose, the stomach of the dead wife burst and the baby fell out and away from the pyre. The baby was alive and it was a boy. It was nursed by some noble lady of the village, and the two hundred and fifty families of the community are the extended progeny of that mysterious baby.

At Rithal, we also visited the house which my Nanaji was building when he suffered that fatal accident. It was the house of the village zamindar and lamberdar, the local level revenue assistant. The house must have been at least 150 years old. There, more than five or six generations of the family have passed since it was built. The house stood neat as it had been built, without any repair at all. The walls built with small bricks of not more than six inches size stood in absolute vertical shape. The doors and windows, of ‘Shisham’ wood, stood without the least wear and tear of joinery. We saluted the building with homage to the memories associated with it.

I asked the owner of the house why their great great grandfather brought the builders from at least a distance of forty miles while other builders were available close by.  Rohtak, a district town, or Gohana, a tehsil town, must have been a centre of builders too. He replied that Murthal then enjoyed a reputation which no other place around could claim. So if you value quality, you have to search for the quality of work you love. Hence, Murthal, even though it was distant, expensive too.

My Nanaji’s reputation was that high. He took up projects which took years to complete. His real love was temple architecture and he specialized in carving sacred stories in plastic medium, stories such as those of Harish Chandra, Shivi, Mordhwaja, Ramayana and Mahabharata. I saw some of those carvings on the Shiva temple close to Murthal in Kamashpur. That temple now needs repair since it is partly damaged. The community of traders and money lenders who got temples built and maintained then has been ‘diluted’.

Since Nanaji’s projects took years to complete, mother told me, he insisted on his wages being paid in gold coins. In fact, sometimes he stayed away at work, away from home for months on end. Mother told me that, after her wedding day with my father, Nanaji gave her twelve Mohors (gold coins) of Akbar’s time. In those days there were no bank lockers the way they are available today. So she kept them somewhere hidden in the home. One of those coins is still with us in the family. No one knows about the others, especially about the eleven. Could there be some remote connection between those eleven mohors and more and the potful discovered from the foundation wall on which I had played as a child of four years, may be? No one knows. So much of ourselves lies in the dark of history, the unconscious of personality and in the stories that survive over time.

After my Nanaji’s generation, my Mamaji’s generation inherited the Vishwakarma tradition of building. Munshi Mamaji specialized in house-building, specially the cantilever projections called ‘baarjaa’ in the local language. One specimen of such projection is there in Chaudhary Dharam Singh’s haveli in my native village, where the name of the owners’ family was written in black paint by me. I was then a boy of eighth class. That is because I was given the credit of having a good hand writing. I enjoy writing even today, the very physical part of it, and pass my spare time scribbling ‘Aum’ whenever and wherever I can. Munshi Mamaji specialized in making bullock carts also. Chhajju Mamaji and Ram Singh also specialized in making bullock carts more or less exclusively, though Ram Singh Mamaji did a lot of house-building work also. In fact they contributed a lot of time and work to the building of our house in the village and in Delhi also.

In those days, in fact even today, there are no safeguards for the building workers. Ram Singh Mamaji suffered an electric accident in which he got his hands got badly burnt while plastering a wall in Murthal.  In a state of helplessness he lost his life because the damage done to the body system was beyond repair and the deterioration ended with the end.

Here I am reminded of an accident which my father too suffered in the village. When I lived in the village up to my early studies upto 6th class, I remember the musical repetition of two sounds: the music of the grinding stone (chakki) in my home very early in the morning every day, and the ‘cut-cut’ repetition of the neighbor farmer at the same time cutting fodder for his cattle. The farmer sat by the side of his wooden anvil ‘neh’ and plied his cutting tool ‘gandaasaa’. While he did so, a fraction of the ‘neh’ also would bear the brunt of the blow with the result that in the central area it would become concave, the sides would remain intact like the ears of a rabbit (in our boys’ language of the time). When the farmer came to face this problem, he would need the services of the village carpenter. In such a situation, once, Chhotu Chaudhry came to my father and requested him to level up his wooden anvil. The time was evening, dark for the kind of work required. My father declined. But Chhotu persisted: No dear, please do it for me, at least for the bullocks, which, otherwise, would have to go to work without food. For the sake of Chhotu and the children of the cow, my father agreed and started the work on the ‘rabbit’s ears’ of the anvil. And at one of the strokes the ‘basola’ (cutting tool) at one corner went through close to the thumb of my father’s left hand, which held the anvil. Fortunately it was Diwali time and there was a heap of lime in the home for white washing of the house. My father pushed the bleeding hand into the lime heap. The hand emerged with a lot of lime around the wound which was awfully deep. What I now remember is that the wound was cured and then my father bade farewell to the service he was doing professionally to the village. Whenever he did anything for the farmers, later, he did it on a friendly neighbourly basis, not on a professional or commercial basis.

All this is to show that life for us was really hard, to come out of it was harder, the need and the costs were to be the hardest.

Now back from memory, it is the story in terms of time:

My grandfather, Uday Ram with his younger brother Fateh Singh, used to work in a common place close to the village deity, ‘Bhaiyan (Bhoomian) Dada’, where there was also the grand old banyan tree, the grand old ‘great father’. They specialized in manufacturing wooden wheels for bullock carts. The wheels were all wood, hub about twelve to fifteen inches in diameter, spokes that passed through the hub through holes made by the brothers and fixed by them so fast and hard that it was a challenge for anyone to make it tighter even by a millimeter. Further than this I did not see them working any more.

My grandfather’s was a joint family of three sons, Rati Ram, the eldest, my father Juglal, and Bhagwana. I didn’t see Rati Ram because he died before my birth. Bhagwana also died at around the age of eighteen, unmarried. Rati Ram had two children, Basanti, the elder one married to Bhalle Ram of Mandauthi village in Rothak district. The other one was Ramoo, a handsome young man with a zest for life up to his death at full ripe age. He was fond of good food and, fine clothes, avoiding the hard work of a builder as far as he could. He was married to a young girl from a village, Khod. That girl, I remember, was a beautiful girl. I saw her work in the home as any married girl used to, but for some reason unknown to anyone, the couple did not go on smoothly. The result was a slow separation. One day she disappeared and went back to her parents, never to come back. Long after, around 1935, he was married to Lakshmi and had four children: Suraj Bhan, Krishan, Dhanpati and Prem.

As far as my memory goes I never saw my parents living in the joint family. Since Rati Ram was the eldest of my grandfather’s children, there must have been reasons for my father to separate from the joint family.

Father and mother lived in a small home which, I remember, consisted of two rooms, 12 ft by 10 ft, each, and a second home which was on a piece of land measuring 108 square yards. My father had bought up that land for Rs. 30. This was before my birth. When father separated from my grandfather, he got only two kg of food grains and no cash at all. At the best, I think, he got a few utensils just enough to cook. Otherwise his heritage was only the two rooms of 120 sq. feet each.

Mother told me that when my father separated from grandfather, he borrowed one rupee from Chaudhry Dharam Singh. For eight annas he bought a ‘karni’ and for the other eight annas he bought a ‘basoli’, his tools for work. With that equipment, he launched upon the career of a builder.

My mother and father both told me that they bought a cow which cost them Rs. 90/=. The purchase was financed by Chaudhry Dharam Singh who liked and respected my parents as a responsible couple. Mother told me that while my father worked hard as a builder, she looked after the cow and the home. In those days, milk was not sold except in the vicinity of the cities. My village was twenty miles from Delhi. So milk was not to be sold. The essence of the village culture was that milk was sacred and it was not to be sold. Ghee could be sold. So my mother managed the milk and ghee economy of the home and within three months the Rs. 90 loan was paid off.

My father was a very intelligent and a very sensitive man. He was also a highly innovative person. Neighbours told me that once, with a few gadgets from the town, he structured a wooden bicycle. I did not confirm it with him. But I do remember that with three gadgets bought from the town he built a grinding machine which he dedicated to the village so that anyone could come and grind his grain. I also remember that he constructed a wooden machine for the making of noodles ‘semian’ (vermicelli).  The energy to be used for making semian was just your body weight. You just had to sit on the handle of the machine and the natural weight would work as power. I remember that the machine was borrowed by many families and for no charge at all.

My mother and many others also told me that my father was very fond of making and playing on the ‘been’, the normal musical instrument of the snake charmers in India. I myself saw, when I was just a boy, that he manufactured two parts of a music lover’s ‘been’ and that too without any charge. The music lover was Chhotu, a member of the Fakeer community of the village, who was also a tailor. As children we used to join the Fakeer children to listen to the ‘been’ music of Chhotu, playing the tune of some of the ‘raagnees’ of the village ‘saangs’.

Mother told me that once my father was playing on the ‘been’, and a snake came away from the forest as if to dance with the music of the song my father was playing. It was then that my father stopped playing on the ‘been’, though he continued his love for the musical instruments, both ‘been’ and ‘bansari’ (flute).

As a child, I often used to be at my grandfather’s home which was just a few yards away from ours. He lived alone. Ramoo was normally away, either at work or, more often, with the ‘chhailas’ (romeos) of the village. I saw grandpa cook his meals, rotis as well as khichri especially in the winter season. I saw him also clean his own utensils. I could never understand this: I never saw my father cook, normally speaking. I did not realize that since mother was there my father need not cook. At the best, I realized that since ‘Dadi’ (grandmother) was not there, so grandpa had to cook and also wash the utensils. But I never could think that at my age as grandpa myself, I too would have to make my toast and wash my own dishes.

Here I am reminded of an old Haryana saying which my mother used to tell me: ‘Thekre ko dhobre taiyyar’. It can be approximately translated as ‘Unusable for the throwable and throwable for the unusable.’ A ‘thekra’ is a cracked or broken earthen pot, and a ‘dhobra’ is an old, crooked unusable metal pot. The saying is illustrated by a hard realistic mother-child parable:

A china cup got cracked but not fallen apart. The child wanted to throw it away. The mother asked him not to throw it away. ‘Why’, asked the child. ‘Because it would be okay for the grandma’, the mother advised. The child was quiet. After sometime another cup got cracked, the handle too fell apart. The mother wanted it thrown away. The child would not. ‘Why’ asked the mother. ‘Because when you grow old and become a grandma, it will be okay for you,’ the innocent replied.

Life is a cycle. I realize it now, and I think everybody else also realizes this hard fact of life in this age of individualism, human rights and man-vs-woman power. The Veda itself says life is a circle. Moving in the circle, you come to face whatever you cook and leave for yourself, single or married or widowed. ‘There is a power that shapes our ends, with and in spite of ourselves’.

My father was a man of very strong will. Persistent, perseverant, dedicated to the course of action he had taken, he would move on and on until the end. His will dominated his habit as well as his work. He was a smoker. He smoked neither ‘beedi’ nor cigarettes. Beedi, cigarette in the village was a rare sight. He smoked tobacco, self-blended, even self-grown. He dried tobacco leaves in the shade, never in sunlight directly. Then he pounded the dry leaves of tobacco to his own specification. Then he mixed the dry tobacco powder and the jaggery paste, and then pounded the blend further. This much for the tobacco. The hukka he looked after like his own pet: kept it sparkling clean, himself made certain wooden parts of it—an expert carpenter as he was, changed the water every morning, prepared the right kind of fire with the right kind of fuel, and enjoyed every ‘cush’ (puff) with a gentle inhalation. His smoke was, in reality, a ritual. Once he himself designed the clay cover for the tobacco, followed the whole process ‘like a potter’ and distributed the covers over the whole village and earned the thanks of the smokers, all of them. With all this ritualistic ‘sanctity’ of his smoke, one day it happens:

The fuel for the hukka fire was not of the right quality. So at the ripest degree of his smoke, he missed the kind of aromatic pleasure he expected. His disappointment turned into frustration.  He repeated the exercise, but because of the quality of the fuel—which was beyond his controls any way—he again missed the thrill of his ‘ritual’. He now took a deep breath, I watched his mood of silence and he uttered a voice from the very depth of his heart: “To hell with smoking!”  A life-time of his dedication—I could have said ‘addiction’—and another life time of abstinence! This was the strength of his will. I now believe that in spite of all the researches on the brain effects of addiction, in spite of all psychological justifications of the persistence of habit, in spite of all anti-drugs against drugs, what really matters is the will, nothing but the will.Addiction is karmic, and we must eradicate it with our karmic will. No other way.

Now, something more interesting than habit and all:

The Smoker apprentice: The hukka smoke and pleasure takes time to mature. It has a beginning, the middle which is really the climax, and the end which is faint. The hukka lover wants to enjoy the climax only. Moreover, if he can have someone to prepare the smoke for him, nothing like it. Serving a senior brother even for hukka is part of the younger folks ethics, ‘sewa’ for a senior. The hukka takes time to come to the right temperature. The fire takes time to heat the ‘chilam’. The tobacco cover takes time to heat and burn the tobacco for the smoker’s palate. Nobody cares when the fumes are faint. So the young boy is taught and trained to continue his act of sewa to bring the fumes to the climactic degree. That is how the tobacco addiction spreads in the village. In the cities the addiction begins with young folks picking up the beedi or cigarette butts even while the butts are burning and thrown around by careless and irresponsible smokers.

I came across the pleasure of the apprentice when we were living in Shakti Nagar, Delhi: While for some time we lived on rent in Delhi, we had a very fine neighbour in the same house. Our neighbor had a son, a pretty child who played around in the common courtyard. After a few years we moved to our own house and there was a gap of about eight years before our neighbor one day rang the bell. I opened the door. Our neighbour of about four years earlier entered with his son, now a promising handsome boy of about ten years or eleven. We three sat in the sun in the courtyard. My looks were inquisitive, I wanted to know the reason of their visit to our place.

The boy had been caught by the police because he and his friends were doing something prankish by the roadside. The police didn’t like that, because they could have got into trouble with the people living around. They were taken to the police station just to save them from that possible trouble. The police telephoned his parents and asked them to take the boys home. So the father and son were on their way back home from the police station, and on the way they came in to see me. The father then said to me: “Doctor Saheb, please say a few words of advice to him. He is a terrible smoker and he is ruining himself.” I said to the boy: “Sonny, why are you wasting yourself? You know smoking destroys your health. So why smoke?” And immediately the young man of ten or eleven shot back: “Uncle, suroor ata hai,” meaning: uncle you can’t understand the pleasure of it. That’s it. “Hats off”, I said to myself silently. Long after that, I heard the boy died at the age of forty five.

I heard a similar, if not better, story of another young man from my cousin, Jagdish, from Nawada. He told me he was at Bahadurgarh bus stand, waiting for a bus. There were a few boys around, again about eleven or twelve. They had ‘pauwas’, a quarter bottle of desi liquor. They must have been having their version of ‘suroor’ (pleasure) in their own way. And one of them said to the other: “Tell me when my legs do falter.” Another case of addiction apprentice. Kudos to Bacchan: “mere shava ko vey kandha dain jinake paga dagamaga rahe hon.” Meaning: Let those bear my coffin whose legs are faltering.

A better version of this addiction I saw at Loharoo bus stand. We were going from Delhi to Pilani by bus. The bus used to stop at Loharoo for a few minutes more than usual, waiting to have some more passengers from the railway station. A young boy of ten or eleven, a ‘blind boy’, used to come into the bus and beg for his maintenance. The passengers did help him, ‘blind’ as he was, at least known to be blind. On that day too the beggar boy was there. He did collect his tally for the day. But the bus, instead of going to Pilani straight from the bus stand, went to the Loharoo railway station to collect some passengers direct from the train. There was also a ‘sharab ka theka’ (liquor shop) close to the station. The beggar boy got down by himself, bought a ‘pawwa’ for himself from the liquor shop, and joined back the passengers of the bus, with the pawwa tucked safely in his beggar’s bag.

I have gone into these memories for a reason: My father was a smoker. He thoroughly enjoyed his smoke. Then with a single act of his will he gave up smoking. But even at the best of his smoking spree, he never asked me to do anything with regard to his hukka or the preparation or the initial stages of his smoking process. In fact, he said it again and again that I must not do anything about this part of his life. He kept me away from smoking and told me again and again that smoking was a bad habit. Ultimately, when he gave up smoking he showed me, by example, that howsoever deep-rooted a habit might be, the habit is never stronger than the will. I hold on to this view of life and living, not only on the basis of my readings and associations, but also, and mainly, on the basis of what I inherited from the example of my father and mother. He was a man of few words. He was generally quiet. To me he generally talked in imperatives: Do this, don’t do this, follow this, don’t go the way the others do generally, except for a reason.

Another thing which I observed in him and learnt for my own way of life was his strict sense of what you deserve and what you don’t. If you don’t deserve something, don’t try to have it. And this was in relation to his apprentices and the commission he was allowed by the practice prevailing in the building business in the villages and small towns.

You know that if you are an artisan of merit and repute, you have apprentices. My father also had apprentices, young boys such as Jage Ram, Sher Singh, and sometimes Kehar Singh too. It was a practice among some of the builders, especially from certain other areas, that the master builder regarded himself as the ‘employer’ of the apprentices. Generally, the master of the project regarded the head of the workers and all the apprentices as equals. But the head paid others something less than what he received for them from the employer. This was true in cities also. But my father never allowed the others, apprentices and all, to be actually paid anything less than what they deserved. All of them were paid equally or what was openly known and paid by the employer.

Another thing was the commission the head builder was paid if he went with the project master to the suppliers for the sake of quality materials. The rate of commission was two paisa for the rupee (3%). There were artisans who settled with the supplier a rate higher than that, and for that purpose, they did make a compromise with the quality of the materials purchased. My father never indulged in that sort of under-the-table arrangement, never charged more than the two paisa for the rupee, and for that kind of open practice he earned a good reputation. The result was that he was always in demand and seldom without work in the area and around. These are things which silently seeped into me.

My mother too was a quiet woman. For the whole day, when father was away at work, she was alone in the house and I was her only companion and object of attention. Whenever it was meal time, she would ask me to come and eat. If I did not go on the dot, she would not ask me to come, again, and it had to be me to ask her to give me food when I felt hungry and ready to eat. In fact when I was a child she told me a story which has stood me in good stead throughout life.

I am not sure whether you know that in those days, laddoo and jalebi, these were the two sweets we knew in the village, laddoo in a boy’s marriage, and ladoo-jalebi in a girl’s. So mother told me the story of a sadhu and his chela (disciple). The disciple once said to his guru that he was tired of the bland food he (the sadhu) was able to afford for the disciple. So he protested and said that he would have nothing short of jalebi. The sadhu agreed and promised he would get him jalebi. Then the sadhu was silent. The disciple felt hungry as well as impatient for the jalebi the Baba had promised. The Sadhu said that it required just a little more time for the jalebi to be ready for the disciple. To cut the story short, the sadhu made the disciple wait and wait and wait until the disciple could not wait any more. The disciple then in a state of desperation cried that the Baba should give him something to eat, whatever was ready. The sadhu gave him the simple bread that was in his hut. The disciple thanked the sadhu for having relieved him in that desperate situation. When the disciple had eaten, the sadhu asked him how the food tasted. The disciple replied: ‘Better than the jalebi he had been waiting for.’ For the moral, mother said: “Dear child, wait till dry bread turns into jalebi and you will be happy.”

In spite of mother’s quiet nature, at this ripe age, I realize that I was her only jewel in the home. And to care for this jewel, she had to face very hard times. Twice there was a health crisis in my life. I do not remember those two times. Of the first of these, both father and mother told me. Of the other, only mother spoke to me. Like her, I was the only child of my parents and therefore the only hope and future for them. I have the scars of one on my body, and of the other, I am the only proof, whatever I am.

The first crisis was when I had twenty-two boils on the upper part of the chest. My parents had no hope of my survival. No medical help in those days, and even these days in the villages, things are difficult. Fortunately, as my parents told me in a mood of deep gratefulness to the powers of nature and God’s will, a snake charmer came to the village. The snake charmers then were half entertainers and half medical sustainers. He looked at me and looked up to the sky as if to pray for the showers of health. He brought out from his bag a few bits of a medicinal creeper about six to eight mm diameter. He rubbed them on a piece of stone, made some kind of paste with water and applied the paste to every boil and around the chest. Dirt flowed out from the chest and I felt relief from the pain I was feeling. He gave that herb ‘booti’, to my parents and advised them to make a similar kind of paste and apply the same to the wounds. In a few days after the application, I was back in my normal state of health. The snake charmer promised to come again and said he would expect my parents to offer him a double layer cotton shawl. My parents agreed, and spent a life time in hope, thanks and expectation. But the man never came back. I remember I saw a similar kind of ‘booti’ in the jungle around my village but still I am not sure whether it was the same herb or something different.

The other occasion was mysterious. I fell ill again. Mother went to Mamaji at Murthal. Hope of survival, almost nil. Opposite to Mamaji’s house was the house of a Devi Mother’s Bhakta (devotee). That was the house of the father of Mathura Dass, a water crop farmer, whom I knew when I had grown up. Mamaji requested the Bhagat ji to come. He came and with a prayer to Devi Mother, he saw me as if to find for himself the chances of my survival. He said he would hold a night-vigil session of prayers to the Mother, and for that purpose he asked Mamaji to go out and collect some ‘aarnaas’, dry dung, from the forest where the village cows and buffaloes sojourn to graze during the day. The ‘aarnaas’ are dry, untouched, sun-baked pieces of natural cow-dung regarded as pure fuel ‘untouched-by-hand’, pieces of prayer-fuel in the vigil. Mamaji arranged for the ‘arnas’ up to the evening. The Bhakta asked for freshly spun cotton thread. Mamaji arranged for that as well.  With that thread he made a seven-knot sacred mala (garland), lighted a heap of ‘arna’ fire with prayers to Devi Mother, put the thread-mala into the fire and started his long vigil and prayer for the night. He asked Mamaji to guard the fire and continued the prayers. The heap of arnas caught the fire, became amber-red, and cooled down to a heap of sacred ash by the morning. He asked Mamaji , my mother and others to search through the cool ash and find the thread-mala. The mala could not be traced—burnt out, it was feared. But he would not give up. “Collect the ashes”, he said, and again over the heap of cold ash, he continued the prayers. There was a strain of protest also in the prayer, meaning: “Bhawani, Mother, this is the child of a daughter of the village, and you know, no one, even you, the mother, cannot take away or accept anything from a daughter within  the  bounds of her native village”. “Search for the thread again, he said, this time more intensely than before and try to find it.” The ashes were searched, even passed and sifted through a sieve. The thread mala was found. Devi had heard the protestive prayer. He held me in his arms and passed me on to my mother as Devi Mother’s blessing, saying: “Dear child, take it, the child will remain with you as your jewel for a life time.” No questions, no reasons, no play with the gods. Mystery is mystery. I regard myself as a miraculous child of the mother’s and there I stay at the centre, where the Main-stay sustains me. I am with the Mother, never alone even when no one else is around.

Loss of my parents children:

The way my parents lost their children was such as no one would believe these days: Mother told me that someone, a family senior man (who had earlier passsed away) whom she knew appeared to her in dream and said he wanted to hold, love and play with the child. She handed the child over to the old man and he would go away with the child. And in a day or two the child would die. I cannot at this stage, say how I escaped his clutches of love. But sure, as a miraculous child, as I must have been, I escaped like one of the Vasus of Ganga’s children. My mother was awfully conditioned by that repeated experience of loss and suffering….

My father was extremely fond of my daughter Indira, since she was the first girl child in his direct family line. He passed away on 16^th Sept. 1951. After a few months of his death, once my wife dreamt that he came and wanted to hold and play with baby Indira. She handed the baby over to him. He handled and played with the baby for some time, as he used to do when he was alive, and then returned the baby to the mother with his blessings.

My wife narrated the dream to my mother. During this narrartion, at the stage where she said that she handed over the baby to him, my mother got almost soaked in sweat, and she heaved a sigh of relief when she heard that the baby was returned to the mother with his blessings. Life is a mysterious story and what is happening at what stage and why, nobody can say.  

Mystery prevailed around even in the air. There was an open ground at a distance beyond the fields on the west of G.T. road. Grand Trunk Road was then the name of Highway No. 1. It was also known as Lahori Sarak as it started from Calcutta through Lahore to Peshawar in United India. It was said to have been constructed by Sher Shah Suri. This open ground was known as Reda, the ‘destroyed’ or ‘deserted place’ void of all signs of life. It was said that Reda was the earlier locale of our village. The village was destroyed in 1857, and it rehabilitated itself after that ravage at the site where it was in my childhood. And over the Reda wandered the spirit of a dead man (bhoot) without the head. It was said that the man had been beheaded. We used to go to our fields across that area, but never did we see the ‘sir-kata-bhoot’. Of course so deep is the impression of mystery on the mind that when I was grown up, Kehar Singh and I had to pass over that area around midnight, and all the time our heart was pounding for the bhoot.

Even our homes were covered in mysteries. Our second home (bahar wala ghar) was said to have a mysterious presence, the dark woman with big teeth. Sometimes I was assigned the duty of lighting a jyot, lamp or diva with ghee, in the evening, and I remember the fear of the mysterious presence was so deep that sometimes I somehow lit the jyot and ran away for my life.

Now I realize that the mysterious presence was more kind than cruel, because she never came to scare me.

Another story is associated with the spirit or ghost at the hookah: Father normally slept in the second home, and he had his hookah by his side. Once, Mamaji came on a visit from Murthal. He too slept there with my father. Father told me that at night the hookah started sounding as if someone was ‘cushing’ at it. Father was strong in such situations. He asked the spirit not to disturb him. ‘Go away, brother’, said he. The hookah continued sounding. Father removed the ‘chilam’, but still the hookah continued sounding. He then unscrewed the upper part from the base so that the hookah could not be used any more. At that stage I was a grown up boy. So I wanted to confirm it with Mamaji. He confirmed it saying that it happened in his presence and it was a fact.   

All kinds of ghost stories and uncanny presences were associated with deserted or lonely places. One such place was the ‘bania ki haveli’ which was said to have been once surrounded by a dark and fearfully thick forest. Children were advised to pass through that area without looking back. The kacha (earthen) road also, from the twentieth mile stone (Beeswan meel) to Sevli village, was so lonesome that when I passed through the bush in the middle of the road early morning around 5:00 a.m. to reach school at Jakholi by 7:00 a.m. I used to have the same heart-pounding experience. Then there was the grave stone pillar of an ‘angrez’ (English man) army officer who had died while camping in the Rai camping area (Padao, now a tourist spot) whereby we must pass with a chant of prayer for our life. Now all those presences have been scared away by the pressure of population all round. In fact, quite sometimes, living presences are more bothersome than dead ones because, perhaps, our living values are pressure presences more than mere superstitions were.

Here, I would mention two of my own real experiences which would show that all superstitions might not have been mere superstitions. There could have been, and can be, some truth in them:

Once, in the fifty’s, we were in the village. Our village home was rather damp especially in the rainy season. It was the rainy season too. There was almost an onslaught of big ants in the home. My mother suddenly started crying with pain. I thought she had been bitten by an ant. So I focused my torch light on the area. I saw a scorpion. May be the ants are food for the scorpion and the scorpion was having a feast, but it was disturbed by my mother’s foot and so it bit her foot. I converged the torch light on the scorpion and held it under the torch. The scorpion got crushed.

Now there are two things about the scorpion which the village people know and often say: ‘Sarpa kaa kaataa soye, bicchu kaa kaataa roye’, i.e., a person bit by a snake sleeps, and a person bit by a scorpion cries with pain. So my mother was crying with pain. The other thing is that if you apply the scorpion ash to the wound, it acts as an immediate anti-dote. So I got an amber from the fireplace, put the dead scorpion on it and reduced it to ash. Then I mixed the ash with some oil and applied it to the wound. It immediately acted as an antidote and my mother got free from pain and had very comfortable sleep. There could be something scientific in the ‘superstition’.

The other superstition is in relation to the ‘evil eye’, or ‘nazar lag jaanaa’. And here is the experience: My daughter was about a six-month old baby. She was a very pretty baby. One day in the afternoon she was given a bath, kajal applied to the eyes, and she was given the dress of a red frock sewn by my wife. My mother was holding her. Suddenly a woman appeared, one who was known as ‘the woman of the evil eye.’ She came, saw the baby and said, “What a pretty baby, O God!” The girl started crying, cried and cried but no relief. She continued crying for hours in spite of all kinds of toys and words of love and caress. Then my mother thought of the common cure: She took seven good and whole red chilies, passed them over the head and body of the baby with a silent prayer and put them all into the ‘chulhaa’ fire.

My nose is so sensitive that even if there is a slightest disturbance of something pungent, I sneeze and sneeze and sneeze. That evening, the seven chilies burnt as with pure ghee in the fire. I felt absolutely no irritation at all. And what is more: the baby too stopped crying immediately. I have recited this experience of mine to many of my friends and all of them, highly educated though they are, have agreed: “Yes, it is true. There is the evil eye and this is the cure for sure.”

I have certain other experiences of my own: My grandfather was a mysterious man in certain ways. After I had joined school at Rai, he taught me two mantras, one for stiff joints (vaayu problem) and another for boils higher than on the neck. I had to chant these mantras on Sundays, on Purnima and Amavasya, and especially during solar and lunar eclipses. I did as he advised me. Then certain people who suffered from stiff joints started coming to me and, strangely enough, they said they got cured. Why, I never asked nor ever answered. But after some time I gave up the practice and I do not remember the reasons. May be it was because I had started on my way to reasoning.

Indeed when I think of my parents now, I pray: may no parents suffer the way my parents had to and did with stoic patience. Mother told me that I was their fourth child. Earlier they had Diwan, Hari Singh and Devi Singh, they died in childhood. After me, she bore Ram Chander, my sister Chanderpati, then Pooran, Paras Ram and Ram Mehar. Ram Chander and I played together on the foundation wall of our plot close to Ramoo’s. But Ram Chander died at age two, Chanderpati died at age four, and the other three died in infancy. I remember the way my mother suffered and I pray that no mother should suffer the way she had to. Father was away at work, his sufferance, I am sure, was more silent than expressed. Now sometimes I remember people whose destiny it was to be alone, Bhisham Pitamah, for example, of the Mahabharata, whose lot it was to survive and suffer, but I regard myself as fortunate for my parents who looked after me the way they did in spite of their suffering otherwise. I thank my parents and I thank God for what I am and what I have. Alone as I have been and almost exclusive, I have tried not to bother my parents, either by youthful pranks or by neglect of studies. For all this I had the blessings of my parents.

In the midst of all superstition and ghost stories I lived on, a lonely child with a lonely mother at home and a lonely father normally at work either by himself or with a few apprentices or with fellow builders. I didn’t generally play with village children, and whenever I did, normally in the evening, soon enough either mother, or father whenever he happened to be home, called me. There was no obvious reason why I did not play with them. But there must have been a reason especially in the form of something hidden, like samskars from time immemorial. But one reason I do remember and realize even now: I must have been, unconsciously, unlike what the other boys generally were. And quite often, whenever I played with them, I felt something embarrassing, not agreeable to my inner self, silent though that self then was.

 But certain things which I member more than others would certainly suggest what kind of boy I must have been: One thing I remember is the dark dust storm, ‘Kaali Aandhi’. The storm was so dark that I could not see even my own hand. I stood there on the plot of my ‘gher’ (second house) by the side of my grandfather’s home where my cousin Ramoo also lived. Though it was utterly dark, I stood without fear up to the time when the storm subsided and disappeared and the daylight was normal. Long long after, when I was in my fifty’s, at Pilani, I had an experience of the same kind of storm from a distance. I was coming from Pilani to Delhi by bus. It was afternoon time past four. In the distance on the left there was a herd of cattle.  The same distance, I saw a dark shadow of dust moving at fast speed. The herd of cattle, as if in fear, was running fast to escape from the dark storm. The storm  was away from the bus, it was dark though not pitchdark, still it was a repetition of the childhood experience I had had earlier in the distant past.

I remember a solar eclipse either in early thirties or late twenties. The eclipse was complete and we all, children, grown ups and old, saw two stars in the day. This was so rare that I haven’t had a second experience. One of course, normally described as the ‘diamond ring’ eclipse, I saw when I was in Delhi.  I didn’t see any stars, but I did see the birds deceived by the rare phenomenon: they felt the night was returning and it was time to come back home. The birds came to their nest in the Pilkan tree in front of our Shakti Nagar, Delhi, home.

Of the earlier eclipse, I remember one thing: Almost the entire village, had collected in and around the village chaupal, community center of the past. There people gathered either for mid-day rest or for some common business such as for leasing the village pond for  the cultivation of ‘singhaaraa’, a water fruit,  sacred for festivals  such as ‘holi’ or ‘Diwali’, or for collecting money for pavement  of the village  streets. On the eclipse day, the village people gathered to join or watch the Havan conducted by a Vyas family. There was a heap of grain contributed by the village   families. There was chanting of mantras, and there were prayers and exhortations, and gifts of grain to placate the planets –Rahu and Ketu.

In the same Chaupal, there were community recitals of sacred stories, ‘kathaa’ of Ramayana and Bhagawatam, conducted by Pandit Kali Ram, elder brother of Chander Bhan, later my senior school fellow at Rai. I used to go to the Kathaa with father. The village Patwari, first government Officer of land and revenue, Pandit Prabhu Dayal of village Chulkana, had his residence also in the Chaupal. I remember one evening I sat on the Patwari’s charpai. I sat because the charpai was there. But the Patwari gave me a slap without any warning. My father protested for me, but after all the Patwari was an officer.

To be fair and faithful to the office of the Patwari, I must confess, incidentally though, that to be a Patwari after the eighth class, was once my ambition also, following the line of my senior school fellow Maru, son of Pandit Jodha of Rai village.

The Katha continued any way and I continued going to the Kathaa every evening with my father, careful enough only to sit on the pucca (cemented) boundary floor wall (jeh) of the chaupal. Thanks to the Patwari Pandit Prabhu Dayal and Bhai Kali Ram, the love of Kathaa survives with me even now.

The School (Rai):

One day late April or early May, 1931, there was a meeting of the village people in the chaupal. People who had children of the age group from six to eleven were required to assemble in the chaupal, preferably with the children. My father went to the meeting. I accompanied him. The meeting was addressed by Pandit Har Sarup of Jakholi village, who was Head Master of the District Board Lower Middle School at Badh Khalsa or Gadhi as Badh Khalsa was known in the surrounding area.

Pandit Har Sarup explained the government’s scheme of compulsory education for children of the 6 to 11 years of age. To send the children of 6-11 years of age, he said, was the order of the government. If someone refused to send the child to school he could be punished. The village attitude to education was, in those days, explained in terms of extremes. If someone did not agree and you asked him the reason, he would say:

“If I send him to school, after all, he is not going to be a Collector.”

“But then you could be punished.”

“Oh, then you would hang me, would you?”

So, if you send your child to school, he is not going to be a Collector. And if you threaten me with punishment, you are not going to hang me. Thus I want nothing short of the Collector’s job, and nothing short of hanging for punishment. This was the word of the people.

Pandit Har Sarup tried to persuade the people, but no one cared, not even for the punishment any way. At last my father agreed. “Okay, if I send my child to school, I would send him, but in that case, I would not send him to your school. I would send him to the school at Rai.”

To send a child to school in Rai was easier than sending him to Badh Khalsa School. The way to Rai was straight. The way to Badh Khalsa was rather difficult. It was tortuous and probably longer also.

The next day, father took me to school. There were three teachers there: Lala Lakhi Ram of Kamashpur, Pandit Mir Singh of Jaunti, and Rati Ramji of Revli. I am sure Lakhi Ramji was the Head Master.

My father had earlier worked in Kamashpur. Perhaps for that reason he knew Lakhi Ramji. Lakhi Ramji noted that I had golden tops (‘long’, not ‘murki’) in my ears. He advised my father to remove the tops from my ears and then send me to school. Two boys of the village were already studying at Rai Lower Middle School; they were Chander Bhan and Duli Chand. At least three boys were studying at Badh Khalsa, they were Dani Ram, Sher Singh and Soondu. The next day, with the tops removed from my ears, I went to Rai with Chander and Dulia. The school started at 7:00 AM. At 10:00 a.m. my father came with four beautiful chapatis and green-grain  chutney. Till today I remember the taste of that chutney. But of the four chapatis, I can eat only one now. That is the slow gift of life and time if you realize the higher values of it.

I reached the school after prayer. Then the teaching started. Chander was asked by the teacher to give me the first lesson. Chander just cleaned the ground in front, made it look like the floor covered with a faint sheet of fine dust, and drew a straight vertical line. I too did the same. He called it ‘alif’. I said ‘alif’. I didn’t know if it meant anything else. Nor did Chander either. But this day, after a life time, I can realize its meaning and significance: It is the first letter of the Urdu alphabet and the first matra of AUM, meaning the waking state of Existence. Last time when I went to India and visited my village, I met Chander and reminded him that he had been my ‘first teacher’. He felt highly and deeply touched, and asked me the meaning of ‘alif’. I explained and said that it takes a life time to understand that ‘alif’ is the beginning, beginning of the end of life and existence.

After ‘alif’, Chander wrote ‘bey’ on the floor. I wrote ‘bey’, and both ‘alif’ and ‘bey’ became ‘ab’ (now). That was the end of the first day’s lesson. The teacher then highly appreciated my intelligence. The lessons continued up to the last of the alphabet and their combinations in words. I got a copy of the Urdu Primer which was called ‘Qaaidaa’ in Urdu. My speed of learning was fast, faster than that of average boys, and in the first year I learnt the numbers upto hundred, multiplication tables upto ten by ten, and fairly good  speed in reading simple sentences in Urdu.

Of the three teachers, I remember, Lakhi Ramji most, because from class one to three it was he mostly who taught us. Moreover, he knew my father, both of them being very friendly. He was a very hard task master. He was in fact an object of fear. Even a slight mistake and you had it. He used to come from his village everyday via G.T. road, and from the road, after passing by the Rai police station,  he used to take a right turn for the school, a distance of a couple of hundred yards. In winter especially he came wearing a red shawl. Every morning his boys looked to the road side and the moment they saw the red shawl, they all scampered to their places with a shudder. I was the best boy of his class. I had a very sharp memory and a special skill in the calculation of numbers. But my class room efficiency was more a gift of fear than, I think, of innate nature, because I was mortally afraid of punishment. Boys in those days, up to the high school were punished, sometimes caned also. The fear stayed with me up to the end of the school stage. My parents also never scolded me, never hit me, and all this fear and freedom from fear, I feel, was a gift of Grace.

Pandit Mir Singh too was a fine person. In those days there was only one chair for each teacher and one table for the headmaster. For children there used to be jute carpets called ‘farash’. There were no ‘farash’ for us. In winter specially we used to cover ourselves with our cotton ‘chaadars’. All of us, when we sat in the sun, folded the chadar and made a seat of it for ourselves. One day, Mir Singh ji noted me sitting on the bare floor without chadar. I explained the reason:

Mir Singh ji had a son, Tika Ram, who was studying in the same class as I. His chadar was inside in the school. So he took away mine, folded it and used it as his seat. After all he was the ‘Prince’ as the master’s son. Pandit ji asked me why I was sitting on the bare floor. So I explained to Pandit Ji the reason why I was sitting on the bare floor. He asked Tika to stand, give the chadar back to me and scolded him hard with a slap. Pandit Ji’s sense of professional integrity I remember till this day.

To my learning efficiency, my mother made a great contribution, though she herself had not been to school. Girl’s education was rare in those days especially in the villages, and even in the cities, I think, it was confined to certain families. But my mother had a very clear and arithmetical mind. I was very much in love with writing, the sheer physical act, specially, maybe because my father painted pictures on the wall. He was very fond of the “peacock in the field of chilies” and of “gora saheb with the hunters’ gun”. I used to see him drawing his lines and curves and angles and circles specially when he painted the hat for the saheb.

I was so fond of writing that even while lying in bed I used to write in the air, figurers of numbers, zeros and lines of favorite numbers, and names of objects such as mango or guava and berries, fruits occasionally available in the village. My mother noted all that, and with her innate arithmetical sense  taught and confirmed my knowledge of multiplication tables (pahaaraas) up to ten by ten, and later, when I was in class three, up to twenty by twenty to four hundred.

Now something akin to the arti: “tum bin aur na duja”. When I was in class three, my village boys, Sher Singh and Soondu, who had changed to Rai, and boys from Jatheri village, Johri and Bharat Singh, they were in class five.  In the school, Urdu was the first language up to class four. Hindi started as second language from class five. In addition to the Primer, Varna Deepikaa, Baal Ramayana was prescribed. While reading Baal Ramayana, the boys used to recite some ‘chaupais’ of Ramayana.

I remember them singing:

Kotuma shyamala gaura sharira,

Kshatriya vesha phirau bana vira.

From Kishkindha Kanda of Ram Charitamanas of Goswami Tulsi Das.I dreamt of the day two years away when I would sing the same verses. I used to hear the Ramayana Kathaa by Chanders’s elder brother Kali Ram Ji.  In fact later, when I was in the eighth class, I asked Kali Ram Ji from which book he recited the Kathaa. He told me he got the book from Nyadrey Chaudhry of the neighbouring village Pitam Pura, just one kilometer away.  I asked my father to request Nyadarey Chaudhry to lend me the book. One day, Nyadrey Chaudhry came to our house with Ram Cahritamaanas, edited and translated by Pandit Javala Prasad, published by Nirnaya Sagar Press, Bombay.  Closed in clean holy yellow cloth, holding the book on his head, Nyadrey brought it for me. I received the holy book with deep thanks to ‘Tauji’ and homage to Ramji,   and in due time read it from cover to cover. I returned the book to Nyadrey, and I have been waiting till today to have the same edition of Ramayana, but I have not succeeded. I am still waiting for my early love, it is rare indeed, with explanatory stories in the footnotes.

I was extremely fond of stories. I would grab any story book available. Along with the course books from Urdu primer to the eight class texts, one of which was Khazina-e-Adab, there were prescribed, optionally though, Hikayate Sheerin (Mithi Kahaaniyaan).  In class three itself, I got one book of stories from Chander. One of the stories was “Duniya kee be thabatee”, of which the moral was “The transitory nature of life”. I asked Chander if I could buy it. He quoted “three paisa”. I asked father, father consulted the teacher, the teacher said it was not a prescribed part of the course; I failed to buy the book. But Chander had another “treasure” of stories: Kissaa Totaa Mainaa. The book belonged to his brother Kali Ram. I got the book from Chander, and though it was so early in life, I devoured the stories from first to the last. Later at the post-graduate stage of studies I felt the echoes of this early reading in the Middle English poem. The Owl and the Nightingale. Still later I got an English translation of Panch Tantra which I read through on a marriage visit to Nawada in three days.

Therefore, now, back to Rai, class four. Pandit Umrao Singh Nagar, Vyasji, came to Rai and took over as Headmaster of the school. Lakhi Ram ji was still there. Mir Singh Ji and Rati Ramji had been transferred. Vyasji was there at Rai only  for a couple of years, but I remembered him not so much for the quantity of time as for the quality of time in which he impressed me and other boys too such as Bhim Singh of Jatheri village as the “guruji”. He was a wonderful man and an exceptional quality teacher. He belonged to a village close to Rajasthan, Khoodan Chhapar, thirty-forty miles away from Rai. His problem was residence.  Lakhi Ramji spoke to my father if something could be done.

We had two houses in the village, one in the middle of the village and the other at the outskirts. We lived in the house in the village and maintained the second house (bahaarlaa ghar) for occasional social purposes or whenever Mamaji visited us. Then father and Mamaji slept in the second house and mother and I slept in the first home. So it was decided that Vyasji would have his residence in our second home if other arrangements of all our family could continue as before.  Our second home with Vyasji, became a community home. We became an extended family. Life became a shared experience. Privacy then was not an absolute value as it is now.

Vyasji joined us in 1934-35 or about that time. He belonged to the Vyas community which was very exclusive in their life and behavior. He cooked his own food, which was necessary for him in his situation. There was no lock in the home, and everything was open. While he was at school, mother used to come, clean the house and provide water refills. She never did all that work while we were all there. The house was some kind of men’s home.

After some time I also started sleeping in the second home while I was in the fourth class. Lakhi Ramji taught us Arithmetic with all the formulas of corn rates and rates and practices of money lending. Vyasji taught us language and geography of Rohtak District and of Punjab.

One thing in relation to geography I still remember: While we were in class two, we were taught the directions as if natural geography was part of the course. We were six boys in the class and often we sat in the small room called the kitchen (kothari). The lessons went like this:

The direction in which the sun rises is East (Mashrik).

The direction in which the sun sets is West (Maghrib).

If you stand with your face to the east, on your left would be North (Shamal).

If you stand with your face to the east, on your right would be south (Janoob).

One day, the Inspector came for a surprise inspection. He made us, all the six, to stand in the open on the maidan. He asked one and all. What is East?

One boy raised his hand extremely anxious to answer. The Inspector asked him: “OK, please tell me what is East?” Pat came the boy’s reply. “Sir, first let us go to the kitchen”. Later on, when I was at the high school, I realized how universal things become localized and then fossilized in form.

Now back to Vyasji:

Vyasji was a very efficient teacher. He introduced us to the Red Cross movement. He wrote songs for us and taught us how to sing those songs in the Graam Sudhaar (village improvement) movement of the thirties.  He got us the school uniform of khaki shirt and blue shorts so that we could join the Silver Jubilee celebrations of the King Emperor George V at Kheora Village. He organized a meeting of the village people of Rai with senior officers of the Education Department in which students and teachers of Middle School Jakholi  also joined, and while  we sang  the song “O farmers,  change and improve the village”, in Hindi (Zamindaaro karonaa sudhaar gaon mein), he played on the harmonium. In that meeting, I joined the song and heard the village people speak of me as the boy who knew the rise and fall of the rhythm of music. I never saw Vyasji scold any boy in the school. In fact, when a few years later, he was transferred from Rai, the entire school felt sorry and held a meeting to bid a tearful goodbye to him.

While Vyasji was with us, father slept in the second home as usual, and after sometime I also joined them. I sometimes brought a bucket of water from the nearby well. In those days, besides Arithmetic of the written form, we had mental arithmetic (zubaani hisaab) also. In the evening, after meals I used to have a session of mental arithmetic with Vyasji. Vyasji observed my speed of calculation and he slowly guided it so as to accelerate it. I remember that I could do as many as eighty sums in the evening. In the morning I heard him chant bhajans of Divine nature, especially “Bhaj man Naaraayana Naaraayana Naaraayana”. He also read Urdu Sangeeta Ramayana of Jaswant Singh, especially holy songs sung by ladies such as Anasuya’s upadesh to Sita. Vyasji also had a Mahabharata in verse form.  That was Mahabharata Manzoorm.  He also recited verses from Radhey Shyam’s Ramayana. All these recitations had a great effect on me.

The fourth class was a turning point in life for me. When earlier I went to school in 1931, there was nothing like planning for education. In the fourth class it became clear that I would go on at least for four years more. And then perhaps things could become further clear in the time to come.

In the Punjab scheme of education there was a provision for five scholarships of Rs.4.00 p.m. to be awarded to meritorious students on the basis of an open competitive examination of 4th class students of every tehsil. In the fourth class with me there was another boy, Mauji Shah, a Muslim Fakeer boy from village Sawarpur. Mauji and I were selected from our school to take part in the competitive examination to be held in the tehsil town of Sonipat. Sonipat now is a district.

On the day of examination I rose early, took bath and was ready to go to school at Rai from where we were to go to Sonipat by tonga, to collect there by a definite time. In the morning, next door aunty Mrs Rai Singh came with a katoriful of dahi (curd) saying that taking dahi was very auspicious for children at studies, especially in the exam. I enjoyed the dahi with breakfast, and then we, all the village boys, went with Vyasji to school, and from there Mauji and I, with Vyasji went to Sonipat. The exam was to be held in the Municipal School, then close to the tehsil headquarters.

Two hundred and fifty two boys took part in the competition. The first test was in Arithmetic. We were given two or may be three questions to be done within limited time. The answer books were to be examined on the spot. Those who did all the questions correct were to take part in the rest of the test. Those who made mistakes were eliminated. The ‘correct ones’ were selected for mental Arithmetic (Zubaani Hisaab).  Of the 252, only 52 qualified for the next test. Two hundred were eliminated. Mauji and I survived.

We assembled for the test on the open grounds of the Municipal Office building. It was evening time close to sunset. One question was given, dictated on our slate:

“A lawn, …yards long, …yards wide, to be paved on the four sides and inside in cross (chaupur) design, three feet wide, at …. Rate. per sq. yard. Find the cost.”

Reverse your slate, question downward, the other blank side for answer, stand up, keep your palms at the back of your head. Time…… minutes.

Time up. Write the answer. Reverse the slate with answer downward.

We wrote the answer. It was 58 rupees and eight annas (Rs. 58.5). The answers were to be collected and marked on the spot.

Vyasji was there all the time. The sun was setting. Vyasji asked for our answer. We gave him the correct answer recorded on our slate. Vyasji jumped up with pride and joy, thanked God and asked us to thank God. Out of 252, only 52 took part in the mental Arithmetic, and out of the fifty two about thirty were eliminated. About twenty two remained for the next day’s test in Urdu, reading and writing (dictation). We stayed with Vyasji at the house of his friend, one Mr. Nagar. This friend I later learned was the famous “Tau Jhagru”   of All India Radio fame.

The next day’s test went off very well indeed. Both reading and writing were challenging indeed. We came back, and our teachers waited for the result.

There were five scholarships per tehsil. One was ‘Victoria’ reserved for a Muslim. Another was reserved for agriculturists recognized as ‘zamindar’ by the Government. The rest three were open. I got the ‘open’ and Mauji got the ‘Victoria’.

Now one compliment for my mother: After the scholarship, there was a surprise inspection of the school. The inspector asked the teachers to take all the boys outside on the maidan. We all stood in a single line. The inspector asked every boy what he had eaten for breakfast. Sixty four of us had eaten something which was a remnant of the previous evening meal. Only I was the one who had fresh food cooked in the morning by my mother. I must thank the sacred memory of my mother, that as long as she was alive, I never had anything left over from the previous time. I had food freshly cooked by mother. After her, the same tradition of fresh food was followed by my wife, who carried on the tradition till the last breath of her life. The inspector took note of the exception and said: “This boy’s scholarship is the gift of God and of his mother who nourished his brain with fresh food.” The fridge now is something great. But sometimes I ask myself the question: “What is the gift of the fridge?” The answer: “Stale food”. The change is the gift of time.

When the ‘grant’ of the scholarship was notified, my father happened to be at school at the time the notification was received. The teachers congratulated my father and asked him to celebrate the good news with sweets. My father gave five rupees to Lakhi Ram ji who then was to go to Sonipat and buy and bring laddu and barfi (actually ‘pede’) from there. Lakhi Ram ji brought laddu for four rupees, sixteen seers at four seers per rupee, and he brought two seers of ‘pedaa’ for one rupee. The children were seated in one line and they ate their fill of laddu freely. The teachers too had their full share of laddu and pedaa. Vyasji didn’t eat any bazaar sweets in which water had been used. So he had only ‘pedaa’. There were visitors also to the school that day. They too had their share of the festivity.

What was the value of four rupees then? Gold was eighteen rupees per ‘tolaa’, so with four rupees you could buy about 2.5 grams of gold in those days (now worth about 180 Dollars).

When I passed class four, two teachers from Hindu High School Sonipat came to our school to persuade the teachers and my father to send me to Sonipat. But the teachers at Rai including Vyasji were interested in keeping me at Rai itself. However one thing now became certain: That I was going at least up to Vernacular Final Middle School Examination. Vyasji started teaching me English, reading and writing both, privately, feeling that after class six at Rai, I could probably join class seven at the high school. But it did not work. Another alternative was to complete the Vernacular Final Exam and then try for training as a patwari or a Vernacular teacher like some of the teachers around as in our own school too.

Then came something totally new, wholly unrelated to education, but socially very prestigious in those days. The earlier the marriage of a boy or girl, the greater the recognition and prestige of the family. And I being the only child of my parents, and in addition intelligent as well at studies, why not book at the earliest? So when I was in class five sometime in 1935 messengers from Nawada  came, guided by a member of our community in Nathupur, with the proposal of engagement (sagai). They wanted two boys: I was one, and the other was Kehar Singh, two years my junior and a student of class three at Rai. The messengers satisfied themselves, with the agreement of our parents, and reported back at Nawada that this proposal and recommendation be accepted. The suggestion accepted, they came for the engagement ceremony. Kehar Singh’s grandfather declined, my father decided to keep his earlier word, but the messengers had to go back for their yajaman’s agreement to the changed position. One is okay if the two are out of reach. I was engaged. For my parents, it was ‘settlement’ of their child according to the values of the time prevailing around. On April 30, 1936, marriage was solemnized, with Maya Devi. Both Maya and I were two living beings being moved around by the powers, social or divine whatever they be, and our job was just to move. It happened thus all around, all over the schools and in the villages, and when these children came to be able to think what all this meant, every one took his own decision. I don’t think the girls could take any decision even later. Theirs was the fate to accept and submit to whatever was made to happen. More than this of it, later.

My studies continued uninterrupted. But during the time I was at Rai, there were two phases of my contribution in relation to the school boys:  One when I was just a junior, the other, when I myself was on the senior side. One thing was certain both ways, I was different, not wholly like the other boys. I loved reading and writing, only that, not even playing. Other children played cards. I never did. They played ‘chausar’, I never did. They made hookah on the ground, I never smoked. They sometimes got away with singharas from the ponds on way to Rai, I never did. They took away sugar cane from the fields, I never did. I was afraid of all these things. I never liked any conflict. So wherever the children wanted me to conform, I declined, and quite often I had to go to school all alone by myself, because other boys had ‘outed me’ and did not allow me to go with them. But this does not mean that I was proud, or arrogant. I was always friendly with them and they were friendly with me too. But I was what I was, others were of the general run that boys were. When I was in the senior classes, five or six, I became a role model for many because of my results.

 Our sixth class examination was not local at Rai, it was central. It was at Jakholi, the center for Rai, Badh Khalsa, Nangal and Kheora. We all boys of Rai went to Jakholi and were accommodated in the school hostel.  Question papers, marking and assessment, everything was done by Jakholi. The examination result was declared at Jakholi itself. Jagpat, a Jakholi boy, stood first, I stood second. I joined the Middle School at Jakholi for the 7thclass.

Jakholi:

After the introduction of Hindi in the fifth class, in the seventh, a new subject was going to be Sanskrit. The boys could go on with Hindi as well, but Sanskrit was taken up by students who were understood to be above the average.

At Rai, after the transfer of Vyasji, Pandit Chhotey Lal of Rathdhana village joined the school. He taught us in the fifth class.  One course in Indian history had been introduced in class five. The first lesson Pandit Chhotey Lal gave us, I remember vividly, on April 22, 1935, after the summer break of twenty-one days, was the “sources of Indian history”. He told us the following sources which I remember to this day: Four Vedas, Brahmana Granthas, Upanishads, Shat Darshanas, Ramayana, Mahabharata, Raj Tarangini.

These seven stuck in my mind, and remain there till this day. I loved Sanskrit because that is the doorway to the Vedas, Upanishads and the Darshanas.  I opted for Sanskrit, in fact the subject was selected for me by the teacher and I was happy with it, perhaps because of something somewhere in the unconscious which silently said:  “Sanskrit is the doorway to the Vedas”. There were other subjects also, Algebra, Rural Science which included agriculture, physics (heat and light), Chemistry (gases), and hygiene (cleanliness, infectious diseases).

I lived in the hostel because the school was about 3-4 miles from my village. So hostel life was new for me. Each boy was given one almirah inbuilt with the wall, and one chaarpaai (cot), that was all the furniture. Bedding we had to provide for ourselves. For the dining room we had to have one thaali, one katori and one lotaa (jug) for water. For bath etc. we had to go round and fend for ourselves and see if some well was working for irrigation of the fields around. We had to leave bed early in the morning and prepare ourselves for school. No breakfast. The school started at 7:00 a.m. in the summer and 10:00 a.m. in winter. In summer, at 9:00 we had half an hour for ‘recess’.  At 9:00 with the recess bell we rushed for food to the kitchen which was the kitchen as well as the dining room. By 9:30 we must come back for the classes. The school and the hostel were close. We must finish eating during that half hour.

In winter, we had to finish our brunch by 10:00 AM to join the classes. The school continued up to about 1:30 in summer and about 4:00 PM in winter. In the evening we had games but only for the game teams, not for all. Evening meals were served at about 6:00 PM. In winter specially we had ‘study’ from 7:00 to 10:00 p.m. in the hostel. In the eighth class, specially, the whole class met and studied and slept in the same one classroom with the Headmaster supervising and sleeping at the head of the whole class.

Hostel life was a new experience for all of us. Not the freedom of the mother-presence, under the supervision of the superintendent. Pandit Ram Sarup was the hostel superintendent. We must leave bed early in the morning, leave the bed clean, spick and span, everything neat, nothing clumsy, neatly covered under the sheet.  Any deviation and we had to attend the ‘court’ of the superintendent. The sluggards were punished also. For me, the fear of punishment I had at Rai continued at Jakholi too. Since my father was a builder and I often watched him at work, I absorbed some sense of symmetries from him and never left the bed in a clumsy state. Any boy whose bed was clumsy, had to face some punishment, the least being hard scolding and a warning. The lesson learnt was regularity, responsibility and self-reliance. The hostel experience for me lasted from 1937 to 1949. The hostel experience upto the high school was supervised. At college it was left to ourselves, we had to look after ourselves. For me, the lesson had been confirmed at school. I was as regular at college as I had been at school under supervision, and something of that discipline still remains with me.

At Jakholi I had no difficulty in Urdu, Arithmetic and geometry. But I had difficulty with Algebra, specially with things like minus plus minus becomes plus. Manage it I did but mechanically, not with understanding. Pandit Prem Raj of Jakholi was a wonderful teacher and I was his favorite disciple, but the difficulty, though managed, did remain. He taught us science also, agriculture included. In agriculture, we had to work in the field also, even in high temperature. I did work, but, except for agriculture field work, I managed science very well.

I loved Urdu, Hindi too, though it was not a part of the course, and Sanskrit which was the gift of Pandit Ram Sarup and Sanskrit teachers, Pandit Banmali and then Pandit Jage Ram.

Pandit Ram Sarup lived in the hostel itself. He used to read the Gita every day in the morning. He had a bold-printed Gita Press copy of the Gita neatly wrapped in beautiful yellow cloth. Often in the morning, he used to ask me to bring that copy for him. That ‘guru-seva’ confirmed my love of stories and raised it to the level of thought. Then the lessons in Sanskrit, specially its declensions of nouns and of verbs, converted my love of poetry recitation to recitations of the declensions. I never felt bored. In fact, there only, I realized that I had good memory. I recited the declensions as if I had been doing that for a lifetime. My Sanskrit teacher also was very happy. We were taught a few Sukties (good quotes) from Sanskrit specially from the Gita too and from Hitopadesha.  I loved that copy of the Gita covered in yellow ‘gold’.

The scholarship of Rs. 4 continued upto the eighth class, and that money enhanced my love of books. In those days 1937-39, Pandit Nehru’s Meri Kahaani, an Urdu translation of his autobiography, had been published in two volumes. Saledi Singh ji, one national minded teacher, got me a copy of Meri Kahaani for Rs. 4. A weekly newspaper, Haryana Tilak published from Rohtak by Pandit Shri Ram Sharma and other Freedom fighters also was subscribed for me. And then Pandit Banmali got me a full Hindi translation of the Mahabharata, about 1500 pages, only for Rs. 2. Earlier I had bought a copy of Jaswant Singh’s Sangeet Ramayana for Rs. 2, bought his other works also such as Haqiquat Rai, Amar Singh Rathor, and so on.  From the school library also, I had read stories about Sheikh Chilli and Hatim Tai, etc.  I read Meri Kahaani also, though I could not understand the political parts of it in chaste Urdu. But the Mahabharata I read almost nonstop, so much so that the school boys wanted to listen to my oral katha recitations, and on holidays when I was at home, the elderly villagers sat round me in the shade of neem trees to listen to Sangeet Ramayana and Mahabharata.  In these readings and re-citations, the closest boys to me were Ram Chander, my lifelong friend, and Chander, my village companion from Rai days.

The Vernacular Final Middle School Examination (1939) in which I appeared was conducted by Punjab University under a special scheme of government education. It was held about two months before the expiry of the session, sometime in January. It was a central examination for schools of Punjab from Peshawar District to Delhi. We went to Sonipat for the examination which was conducted at the Hindu High School, under the superintendence of the Head Master, Shri Jagdish Mitra, who sat on a high chair in a posh suit and hat. It was an awful scene. During the examination, the boys of Middle School Jakholi and the boys of Middle School Murthal used to stay together in Sonipat. After the examination, between the Jakholi boys and the Murthal boys, there was a ‘ragni’ competition. There were more ‘chhailas’ in the Murthal group than there were among us, the Jakholi boys. I tried to sing some poems from Jaswant Singh’s Ramayana, but I was not allowed. In fact our boys were not interested in ragnis at all. So we lost and Murthal boys won the ragni contest.

I was not interested in certain things such as ragnis which were totally romantic in the rural way. In fact, sometimes there were ‘sang’ plays acted by Lakhmi, a famous author player and a craze in Haryana villages. Whenever there was a ‘sang’, at Rai, we were allowed to go and watch it. I remember I watched ‘Nautanki’, ‘Jani Chor’, ‘Raja Harish Chandra’, ‘Chap Singh’, ‘Lakkad Hara’, ‘Roop Bala’ and others. Whenever there was such a play, the teachers allowed us to watch the play and later asked us what we liked. Some of us said they liked the ragni, others liked the Lakhmi music (dolli). When it came to my turn, I said I liked the ‘Barta’, the story narration part in the play. The boys made fun of me. But I never minded because I was not interested in things other than stories and katha-varta. The point of all this is not that I was too good as compared to others, but that I was different with my own interests.

The result of the Vernacular Final Examination (1939), for the whole Panjab was published in a booklet form towards the end of March, 1939. I found that I stood fourth in order of merit with 580 marks out of 700. The first boy was Manzoor Ahmad with 585 marks. The other two boys, second and third, got 583 and 582. The main purpose of stating this is that the higher you want to achieve, the greater is the struggle for each mark, to cross each step upward. There is no let up in the race.

There is another reason which is possible, more conceptual than real. That is the ‘local commitment’ against general assessment of quality above the local commitment. I say that this is possible, not that it was real for sure, because I was, after all, the person assessed, not the assessor or the examiner. Still my reason is this:

When we, the Rai boys, appeared in the sixth class central examination at Jakholi, Jagpat Singh, a Jakholi (local) boy stood first. I stood second. The reason could be quality and competence, but the reason could also possibly be that he was local, being from Jakholi school, and I, from Rai, was an outsider. I think this way because, after I joined Jakholi school in the seventh class, then I also became a Jakholi boy, and in all subsequent exams. I stood first and Jagpat stood second. Even in the final exam, I got 580 marks and Jagpat got 565, Ram Chander got 544. The same could possibly have happened in the final exam in which I stood at number four. There was a reason, possibly: our practical exam in rural science was conducted at middle school Murthal, where there was a competitor just like Jagpat at Jakholi. I was not too good at farm work, and the competitor, Mukhtyar Singh from Murthal School, was from a farmer family and at the same time a local (Murthal) boy. For Murthal, I was an outsider. Therefore, for that reason, the Murthal boy could have been first, and the outsider, second, and if that were so, I would, to that extent, stay lower than the other good boys. The practical exam marks were added to the final score. Hence the fourth position since there is a struggle for each mark upward.

In the same context of the struggle higher up, the real thing is that you have to be vigilant at every step. This, in relation to the 11th class exam of the Delhi University which I joined after matriculation. I stood second in the exam with 441 marks out of 600. The first boy got 444, three more than my score. The reason for the loss of the first position was lack of vigilance in the last but one step of a question in Trigonometry. The step was ‘three under-root into three under-root is equal to three’. I missed the vigilance and wrote that it was nine, (instead) of three. The last conclusive step was the wrong answer nintyone, not nintyseven (the correct answer). I lost five marks for that carelessness and lost the first position which could be otherwise mine with 446 marks. Hence the better but indispensable truth: the higher you want to go, the greater the degree of vigilance you need. The moment you wink, down you go the snake way from the ladder.

By virtue of my fourth position in the Vernacular Final exam. I got a merit scholarship of Rs. 6 per month. As I went up from fourth to eighth class because of the fourth  class scholarship, so now I could go up to the High school because of Rs 6 p.m. scholarship. Somewhere higher up, that was the plan, next.

English Now: Narela:

But from the 8th class I could not straight go up to the 9th class for want of English. Had I been at Hindu High School from class 5th, I would have gone to the 9th class. So I had to do special classes for English for two years before I could be qualified for admission to the 9th class. These special classes were called junior special class for English only equal to the fifth and sixth class English. The next higher class for English only equal to 7th and 8th class English was called senior special class. I had to do this special course in English for two years. This special course was available at M. B. School Sonipat for junior class only and at Hailey High School, Narela for both junior and senior classes. Hailey High School was affiliated to the Board of High School Education, Delhi, and M. B. School was affiliated to the Punjab Education Department.

The headmaster of Hailey High School read the Vernacular Final examination result and fixed upon the Jakholi boy who had stood 4th in the Punjab. So one evening early April, 1939, Shri Raja Ram , a teacher at Hailey High School, came to our village home and asked my father to get me admitted to Hailey High School.

The headmaster of Hailey High School, Shri Hari Ram, M.A., B.T., had joined the school only a couple of years earlier, in 1937. This school was reported to have no good results in the high school exams, only 37 percent. Hari Ram ji had taken over the school as a challenge. As a part of that challenge he was attracting good boys to his school. Hence the visit of Raja Ram ji to our home. Raja Ram ji succeeded in his mission. I was admitted to the junior special class of the Haily school.

Lakhi Ram ji of Rai and my father some time later, discussed the matter: ‘Sarkari after all is Sarkari and sure, private is just private, may be paid, maybe not. Both cycled the distance to Narela. They met the headmaster, Hari Ram Ji, I was present there. Hari Ram Ji assured them that the school would compensate the amount of Rs. 6.00 for all the four years, but there was no agreement. Reluctantly Hari Ram ji agreed to allow me to leave. I was withdrawn from Hailey and was admitted to M. B. School, Sonipat. The scholarship was restored by the government.

I studied in Sonipat up to March. 1940 and completed the junior special course. Shri Sita Ram taught us there, sometimes the headmaster Shri Mahdi Hussain, and sometimes Shri Kundan Lal Hamdard, Raja Ram ji’s younger brother and later my senior lifetime friend, specially for his love of the Ganga. The Murthal boy Mukhtiar Singh and Ram Chander of Jakholi were my classmates at Sonipat. We lived in the hostel which was housed in the erstwhile municipal office building, where in 1935 our mental arithmetic test was held. The superintendent was Pandit Mansa Ram of Sahnewal, Punjab. He was a very kind man, very pious, who sometimes told us the story of some of the scenes of ‘Sikander’, the movie characters played by Prithvi Raj Kapoor and Sohrab Modi.

My love of the sacred stories and of the Gita continued. On Sundays I spent about three hours reading the Gita in Hindi translation along with the ‘mahatmya’, the divine reward, as a result. I used to go to the Shiva temple close by on Murthal Road.

And then, one day, something happened which gave me a turn in my life as now I realize. Somebody told me that the piety sort of ritual I was doing was useless. God would not recognize it, nor accept it because I had no ‘janeu’, the sacred thread (yajnopavita). So I must have the ‘janeu’. Since class five, I had also been looking for the Veda, thanks to Pandit Chhotey Lal. Without ‘janeu’, perhaps Veda also would be of no use or of no real value.

In search of the sacred thread, I went to an old Hindu Temple in Halwai Hattha, Sonipat. I met the priest and requested him for Janeu. He asked me a question: Who are you? I did not understand the question. So he put me another question: What does your father do? I said: “He builds homes and makes doors.” And then, came the paralyzing answer, a kind of judgment on my fate:  “You are not entitled to have the janeu, you are a shudra, and you cannot have the janeu.” The doors of the life divine seemed to close on me. My face fell and my mouth dried. The priest saw my condition and he relented a bit. He said that there was a way I could have the janeu. I felt all shine and joy and I requested him for the initiation. But he said that he would have to do some ‘anushthana’ (a ritual) and that would cost money. “How much?” I asked. He said: “It would cost you about Rs 500.” Gold was then Rs. 18 per tolaa, my father earned Rs. 20 per month. The door not yet open, nor even possible to open, what next? I knew not.

The junior special class was complete in March, 1940. The senior special class in some Punjab recognised schools was at Jat School, Rohtak at the closest. We, Mukhtyar Singh, Ram Chander and I joined the Jat School, Rohtak.

I stayed at Jat School only up to June, 1940. One good thing there was that beside English, we could opt for Sanskrit on an optional basis. In addition to English, I took up Sanskrit. Pandit Shivananda taught us Sanskrit. He gave us to memorize some well-known shlokas from the Gita, Panchatantra and Hitopadesha. But I, for personal reasons, decided that I would not be able to continue at Rohtak anymore. I told father and he withdrew me from there.

What next? Father took me to Hari Ram ji again. He apologized for the earlier withdrawal, but Hari Ram Ji, I called him ‘Guruji’, was happy at the return of the ‘prodigal son’. I was admitted to the senior special class. The school gave me the scholarship, Rs.6.00 per month, and in the hostel I was given a seat in the ‘simla house’.

In the hostel we were given one ‘phulkaa’ in the morning for breakfast. I used to load it with ‘shakkar and ghee’ for making it up for the quantity I needed. In the morning and evening there was ‘Sandhya’, and in the morning on Thursdays there was Havan according to the Sanskarvidhi of Swami Dayananda. I read the Satyartha Prakash, Kartavya Darpana of Mahatma Narayana Swami, and Swami Shiva Nanda’s Brahmacharya hi Jiwan Hai. In addition I read some parts of Upanishads also. I had learnt both Sandhya and Havan and my English poems.

We were 105 students in the hostel. One Thursday morning after Sandhya, with Havan, all of us, hundred and five, were given janeu, the Yajnopavita. I was thus admitted to the humanity denied to me at Sonipat. When I was in the 9th class in 1941, I also got a full set of all the four Vedas from Arya Samaj Narela, without knowing though, what I would do about them. But someone else knows what you are and what you are going to do in life. From year 2000 to 2012, I translated the Vedas into English with that same set I had got in 1941.

Here I bow my head in gratitude to all my Hindi and Sanskrit teachers from Rai to Delhi: Vyas ji, Pandit Chotey Lal (Rai), Pandit Banmali, and Pandit Jage Ram (Jakholi), Vidya Ratan ji Shastri and Pandit Tilak Ram Shastri (Narela), Pandit Ganga Ram, Dr. N.N. Chaudhury (Ramjas College), Dr. Vachaspati Upadhyaya, Dr. Baldev Sharma, Dr. M.M. Aggarwal (Delhi University).

I pay homage to all the Rishis from Agni to Angira, from Brahma to Jaimini, and from Panini and Patanjali and to Swami Dayananda.

I learnt to love English at Narela. I confirmed my love for Sanskrit also there. We loved to go to the Samaj on Sundays, and, on all other days too whenever there was some special function there. School life habits which were initiated at Jakholi were confirmed at Narela. At 4 o’clock in the morning, there was a long bell for us to get up and leave the bed. We finished the daily routine, bath, etc. with good exercise before the morning Sandhya. In winter, we were at study from 7.00 to 10.00 o’clock in the evening and up to 7.00 in the morning. The habit of going to bed at 10.00 and getting up at 4.00 stays with me till today though I cannot always follow it in practice.

Guruji knew better than I did what I was going to do. The Senior special class was rather relaxed. But from 9th class, studies became a very serious affair. Close to the annual exam of the 9th class Guruji told me that if I got 825 marks out of 950, he would give me a prize of Rs. 6. And if I got more than 825, then I would get Re. 1.00 in addition per mark. I prepared for the exam with all my effort. Probably, even surely, he was confirming his expectations of me at his calculations.

The first result I got was Hindi, seventy-one out of seventy five. The Hindi teacher was very happy and to share that happiness with me, he disclosed it to me. I too felt happy, and excited to share my joy with Guruji, I informed him. He was happy, but to advise the teacher against hasty declaration, he called the teacher. The teacher, feeling that the head master disapproved of his assessment, reduced the marks from 71 to 65. How could I accept that reduction in that challenging situation? I again met Guruji and he advised the teacher to restore the marks to the original 71. My total score in that exam was 831, six marks higher than 825. I got a beautiful Swiss Jaz clock which now mounts on the study table of Sultan Singh, my brother-in-law, in his house till today, 75 years after the gift.

Of those days, I remember a few things with joy and pride: in the Senior Special, the teacher gave us an exercise: “the best dream I had”: I wrote, in fact, I created a dream. I got a prize. In the tenth class, we heard a three-hour lecture in Hindi on world education by Mehta Jaimini. Guruji announced, after the lecture, that the next day there would be a competition among boys to reproduce that lecture. We gave our names for the competition. The next day in the competition I was the first to be called upon to speak. I started in Hindi, because the original lecture had been in Hindi. No, Guruji ruled, you must speak in English. On the spot I spoke and reproduced the lecture in one hour and 30 minutes. The next boy took 45 minutes, that was Baljit Singh.

In December, 1942, we four boys walked a distance of eight miles up to Badli, then covered another eight miles by train to attend a lecture by Pandit Buddha Deva Vidyalankar on the occasion of the annual function of Arya Samaj, Diwan Hall. The other three were Jai Dev Dabas, Narayan Singh and Shiv Kumar. That was easily the best lecture we heard on Varna Ashrama Dharma. During that very period, I read Swami Dayananda’s Granthamala, Upanishads and a three volume work, Dharma ki Khoj, a Hindi version of Talasha-e-Haque in Urdu. I read a few biographies too including Gandhiji’s translation of the Gita and My Experiments with Ttruth.

My 10th class was a high tension period for me and also for Guruji, because after the 37% period of the Hailey School, 1942-3 was the trial year. Guruji asked me to move from the hostel to his own first floor room so that in that state of seclusion I could devote all my time to studies. Nobody could come in there and disturb or share my time. He himself decided where my study table would be, where the bed, etc. I was to study the whole time, remove my chair close to the bed, put the clock on the chair and go to bed at 10.00 p.m.  One day I went to bed at 9:45. The next day I was called up to explain why I went to bed at 9:45.

Once guruji went to Delhi for the day and stayed there at night also. We prayed that he might stay there for another day as well. But no, we saw him walking home from the railway station at 9:00 a.m. He called me from my room, and asked me, “Did the boys go out yesterday during the recess break?” I replied, “Yes Sir, they did”. Pat came the warning word also, “That means you also went out, else how would you know that the boys were out during recess time? Never waste time.”

Guruji had arranged for a glass of milk for me close to my bed time. He had a servant who would come up the stairs around 9:30 and report back to him that at 9:30 I was alert, not sleepy. At 10:00 when I removed my chair from the table close to the bed, he would hear the sound of the chair removal, at the ground floor. If the process was earlier, I had to explain why.

Guruji had prepared the year’s time table for our class so that the course would be complete by December. Then we would have 15 days break to revise. Then after a month, the pre-exam test. My English answer book of the test, he showed to a professor friend who was in those years the High School Board Exam examiner. Guruji had given me 78 out of 100. The professor agreed that was right. Then after some preparation time another full test. This, before the high school board Exam. We had three full home tests this way. The board exam was over in March, 1943. The result was declared on May 18, published in Delhi papers on May 19. I stood first, that was with 756 marks out of 950. That was the headline in Delhi newspapers. Twelve boys of our school passed in first division, ten in second, none in third, none failed. With the first position and cent per cent result, Guruji resigned on May 24 with all credit and admiration. He had done his best for the school and left it for others to carry on.

After 4th class I had gone up to 8th with the scholarship. With scholarship in the 8th, I went up to 10th. With scholarship in 10th at Rs. 25 pm, I prepared to go up to B.A. at college. Where was the planning? Not with me, not with my parents, it was somewhere else. My parents, I, and all my teachers were participators in that higher plan, everyone in his or her place, obedient to the Unseen. With the first position I could go to any college, but with this involvement of Guruji and his teachers around, I am sure I was part of a tradition, and that tradition too was calling me. After the declaration of the result, in a letter written to me from Kasauli, Guruji described my relationship with him as something deeper and higher than blood relationship. That is the spiritual relation between the Guru and the disciple as described in the last mantra of the Shvetashwataropanishad, in Taittiriyopanishad, and in the Gita.

Here in the light of spiritual relationship, I must pay a tribute to the sacred memory of Mataji, Mrs. Savitri Hari Ram. She always looked at me as her own child. Whenever in the family there was a social occasion, she called me not only to join but also to help as young members of the family used to do in those days. For example, when Chaudhry Deva Singh, then District Inspector of schools, Rohtak, visited the home or when Shri R.C.Sharma of Ramjas College came to visit the family, I was called in to help, and on such occasions I also had the pleasure of a sumptuous meal, so different from the routine hostel food. She continued to shower the same motherly love on my family throughout her life, and that family relationship continues till today with all the children of Guruji and Mataji. They were always proud of me, as parents generally are, of their able and obedient children. No one else knows of this more than my son Gian and my daughter Indira. Another teacher who also loved me that way was Shri Satya Swaroop who taught us mathematics. His wife, much younger than Mataji, treated me as a brother. God bless them all. Their blessings inspire us all even today.

Sometime after the high school result, in May or early June, Guruji took me to Delhi. First he took me to a photographer in Chandni Chowk who took a picture of me for publication in the Illustrated Weekly. But at that time, living in the village, I could not know whether it was published or not. Then Guruji took me to Ramjas College, then housed in Ramjas School No. 1 building, Darya Ganj, Delhi. Ramjas Intermediate College was there before the College moved from Anand Parbat to Darya Ganj after the intermediate scheme of education had been abolished in Delhi University. Shri B.B.Gupta had been Principal of the Intermediate College, and, at that time, he was the Principal of Ramjas College. Guruji took me to Shri B.B. Gupta, a very graceful personality with a golden aura around him.

B.B. Guptaji’s first words to me were: “Welcome young man, you have done so well.” Guruji got me admitted to the Preparatory class and to the hostel also on the site itself.

Preparatory class was the pre-college class. The Intermediate College system had been abolished in 1942. Instead, the high school course had been upgraded to the higher secondary course of eleven years, and the two-year B.A. course had been made a three-year course. Before the complete change over to the Higher Secondary scheme of the schools and the change over to 3-year B.A., the Preparatory class of one year had been introduced as an interim provision for those students who had done the High school course.

Self-assessment:

From home to Rai, from Rai to Jakholi, from Jakholi to Narela, Sonipat, Rohtak and back to Narela, and from Narela to Delhi, this was the major part of the journey so far. It is now the time to observe, analyze and conceptualize the inner movement and advancement of the journey.

In the village, I just observed things and remembered them, and the memories stay with me still to this day: Mrs. Rai Singh seeing me struggling with the fire, trying to cook some chapaties for me because mother then happened to be at Murthal. She came and cooked the chapaties for me. She also came with a morning gift of dahi when I was going to Sonipat for the scholarship competition. Mrs. Chet Ram, mother of Bhola, gave me a gift of ‘sabji’ when I was eating only chapati. Mrs. Kanshi Ram gave us her ‘arvi’, cut and cleaned for her family when Mamaji visited us in the evening. Sher Singh’s mother persuaded me to eat ‘methi paratha and dahi’ when I waited to join Sher Singh to school in the morning. Mrs. Siri Chand, mother of Bhima, my class mate, almost ‘forced’ a bajri roti and saag when Bhima was having his evening meal. All these events left a positive and lasting impression on me.

When I used to go to our second house from the main home, some senior boys, all non-school-going, used to make fun of me. The result was that I tried to avoid such local elements, but there was no fear of them in my mind. It was rather the inner sustenance of being myself, which sustained me.

Once we all village boys, with Sher Singh’s initiative, decided to stay away from school. We stayed to play at the well close to the village, on way to Rai. Father happened to come that side. He collected all of us and led us to school. We learnt that day never to avoid school. No fun anyway for me, in spite of the fun elsewhere.

Father happened to visit school one day. He saw Shera, a Livaspur boy and my class mate, scantily clothed in a half dhoti. That was the fashion of the young fellows in those days. Father advised him never to do that again and even offered to buy a dhoti for him if he had no money. “This is not the way you should clothe yourself. It is not good”, he told him.

Once I read a story in which a boy’s father, after ‘Entrance’, High School exam, held a feast for his son’s class mates. He advised the boys to eat quietly without making a sound while they chewed the food. “Some people don’t want to hear that sound, because it is not good.” Since then I have always remembered and followed that advice.

In front of our main home there was an open space where, in Phagun, girls and young women of the village used to sing and dance and act simple village plays. Some boys used to gather on the roof of the house opposite and watch them under cover of the parapet in the lying position. Father strictly advised me never to join them. I never did.

Once there was no ghee in the home and mother had forgotten to buy some the previous day. But she did not want to give me the lunch chapatis without the ghee. She heated the pot itself, collected the melting flow and thus gave me the soft kind of lunch she loved me to have. Mother advised me always to respect persons senior to me. I remember that advice and follow it to this day.

All this is to show that if the seniors, especially the parents, keep the children under care and, with love, give them attitudes of positive quality, the children follow and do not go astray. Psychologists say that by the age of five, eighty per cent of the child’s attitudes in life are formed. It does happen that way, I am sure.

In the village, before Rai, my responses for growth were only two: Response of love and dedication to my mother’s love and dedication for me, in fact I was the sole centre of her life’s interests. The other was my response of obedience and dedication to my father’s sense of discipline for me. Thus love and care to the point of fear were the driving force of my early life in the village without any awareness as such, then, but these two were the real forces. Life otherwise just flows on.

When I joined the school at Rai, then, by sheer force of circumstances, the two attitudes of love and care, carefulness rather, became a discipline and habit. These were in fact, gifts of the fear of punishment. I saw children at school being punished, even mercilessly sometimes, but for me, chiefly by virtue of my memory and my habit of obedience at home, the fear gave me the gift of regularity and punctuality in respect of homework and memory exercises. In fact, I developed some sense of initiative also in my own way.

In the fourth class, for example, in addition to Urdu as language, we started the study of Urdu grammar also. Themes like the structure of a sentence, subject, definitions of object, verb, etc. were to be learnt. I got a book of grammar from my cousin Jage Ram also; the title was Sarf-o-Nahave. I did not understand that book, but we had for us a simple grammar book prescribed in our course. At that time, at school, we had a morning session and an afternoon session of study with a long gap of two-three hours in between. The boys in general had a long interval of midday siesta. But I did not sleep. Instead, I continued study on my own, learning difficult Arabic and Persian words accepted into Urdu, from a book titled Tas-heel-ul-Imla which was prescribed in our course. One day, during the interval, I made a list of technical grammatical terms such as subject, object, verb, transitive and intransitive, and I prepared a booklet for myself. When the teacher, probably it was Vyasji, saw this booklet, he felt surprised and admired me for that initiative on my own. I used to learn the whole Urdu book in a short time of a few months. In fact, once I wanted to complete two classes in one year. But the teachers did not allow me because that was not the rule. Therefore I started learning the whole book by heart– what else to do? Extra readings like readings from the library were not available.

During the fifth and sixth classes at Rai, we had night studies also in winter. The time went like this: school time 10.00 to 4.00, play for an hour or so, going back home for evening meals, and coming back by 7.00, study from 7.00 to 10.00, getting up in the morning, preparing ourselves for school before 10.00. We did not go home in the morning. Other village boys used to bring our food in the morning. The boy, who used to bring food for me, was Sube Singh, our neighbor of the main home, who in fact became my life-long friend.

One day while going back home after school, we saw an Englishman and a lady, they were the Police Captain and his wife, strolling in the ‘parao’, the military camping ground. We got so awfully afraid of them, that we ran the whole one mile distance and breathed at ease only after we had reached home. There were stories of the white man’s (gora’s) terror around. We heard these in the thirty’s from our grand parents. A five-six feet thick ‘grinding stone’ at the twenty-forth mile stone on the G.T. road was a symbol of terror. But still we did sing ‘God save the King’ in 1935.

The terror-stone: The story of the ‘terror-stone’ I heard from Dada Harphool Singh, my grandfather’s peer and father of Ram Sarup, Sri Chand and Chhotu, the man who had brought the wooden anvil to my father for repairs.He was the grand father of Bhima, my school mate. Dada Harphool told me that after the failure of the 1857 movement (‘for freedom’ in the Indian version and ‘mutiny’ in the British version), the lower part of a white child’s leg ws found under the chhadra bridge on G.T.road between the nineteenth mile stone and twentieth. The British power felt angry and in fury of the ‘Raj’ they destroyed our village, collected the suspected rebels, laid them flat on the road and crushed them by the ‘terror-stone’ pulled by elephants. The terror we felt of the white man (Police Captain and his wife) was no less except in terms of life and death. The stories of the terror and torture of the Raj are recorded in Pandit Sunder Lal’s Bharat mein Angrezy Raj and other histories of the 1857 movement.

In the evening sessions of study during winter, sometimes I had to go back to school by myself alone when the other boys wanted to miss the night study. On the west side of the ‘paraao’ there was the village cremation ground. There in the darkness of winter evening, sometimes I saw the funeral pyre burning. Afraid or not afraid, still the school I never missed, day or night.

Thus during the six years at Rai, the simple attitudes of life – love and dedication to mother, obedience to father for his insistence on discipline, the morning ‘Ram-Ram’ to  teachers slowly through fear and regular practice – grew into habit and regularity. The fourth-class scholarship became a badge of distinction in spite of my village boy’s clothes and appearance.

One evening, I remember, I was walking back home from school with one of the teachers, Lakhi Ramji, my father and a senior Panditji, Pandit Prabhu Dayal, from the neighboring village Jatheri. Panditji saw me and my village appearance and made a remark: “This boy’s culture has not grown (is ladke ka culture nahin banaa)”. Immediately Lakhi Ramji retorted: “What would you do with culture Panditji, he gets a scholarship of four rupees per month (culture kaa kyaa karoge Panditji, chaar rupay maheene kaa vazifaa letaa hai). So culture and performance should go together, mere appearance would not work.

Here, incidentally, a morning scene from my early Delhi life of 1943 comes to mind. When I was at college in the preparatory class, I used to go home Saturdays and come back to college on Mondays. One Monday, when I was walking to college from Delhi Railway Station through Chandni Chowk and Edward Park, I was noticed by a tall man with a six-seven feet staff. He recruited young men for military service because then the Second World War was going on. My village appearance for some time continued in Delhi first in the name of simplicity. I was clad in dhoti and kurta with a short shaven head and a tin containing ghee for the week. He thought I was a village rebel boy running away from home and a good game for him. He stopped me: “Where from are you coming?” “From my village”, I replied.” “Where are you going?” To Darya Ganj”, I replied.

“Would you join the Army (Fauj main bharti hogaa?)”?

“No”

“Why are you going to Darya Ganj?”

“I am going to college.”

“What are you doing at college? Why?”

“I study there.”

“O, you are studying at college!”

He did not say sorry.

That is how the village boy with his village appearance happened to be at college, to start with.

Now back to school:

The movement from Rai to Jakholi with the habits and regularity, learnt through love and fear and the blessings of the teachers, was a continuance. Habits and regularity were continued and confirmed with attitudes of sanctity and love of piety because of Sanskrit. In fact, when we were going up to Sonipat to take the Vernacular Final Examination, the seventh class boys gave us a farewell party as was the practice at school. The teachers were all present. The Headmaster of the school was Chaudry Prithvi Singh. Our Sanskrit teacher, Pandit Jage Ram Shastri, composed a shloka in honour of Headmaster Saheb and asked me to sing it in the meeting along with other things I wanted to say as a mark of thanks to the teachers. To this day I remember that shloka:

Kim Varnayaamo guna-simhatimtaam

He prithvi te singha mahodayasya

Pathasya samchaalana maarga maarge

Singhopamaa te sutaraam cha devyaah.

“How shall we describe the facility, efficiency and expertise of your teaching, O Prithvi Singh, it is beyond words. As we think of the style and way of your teaching, we think of only one: The Singh (lion) of the Devi which the Mother rides and blesses all that hear the roar. ” Durga for Saraswati and singhati for samhati is allowed with poetic freedom.

The movement from Jakholi to Narela and the stay at Narela, I say, of four years was, intellectually, morally and culturally, for the mind and spirit, the real foundational period in full consciousness of the discipline. Character building, self-confidence, dedication to society and the Motherland, was the real purpose of education. I forgot the glamour of the Patwari and the junior school master, but at times I did think of being a teacher, possibly at a high school just like at Narela. I was good at all the subjects. I loved English, speaking and writing both. I was particularly fond of grammar; in fact I continue to be dedicated to grammar even today, because otherwise, I feel, we shall lose the beauty and power of the correctness of language. A few of our teachers too were only matriculates; some were intermediates and others, of course, graduates and masters. That thought, however, did not stick to me for long and I hopefully waited quietly to be what I could be. The attitudes, habits and regularity became a conscious discipline, discipline, the value, and value, the Dharma, Vedic Dharma. My love of Sanatan Vedic Dharma was a gift of Narela. Village simplicity became the discipline, the value, the Dharma, Universal, constant, instant. It was no longer lack of culture. Simplicity, neither rural nor urban, but basic and universal, became a synonym of culture, character and human Dharma. For me, culture is not a descriptive term, it is normative but open ended. Culture, Dharma, Yoga, all this is a continuous process: self-integration of the particle (individuality), re-integration of the part with the whole (Society), re-union of the finite with the Infinite (Existence). This has been, with me, the continuance of Narela, a life time search and pursuit. No fear but discipline and freedom, because discipline is the condition of freedom.

Narela was a fearless phase. Ceratin things did continue from Rai and Jakholi. I used to go home on Saturdays and come back on Mondays at 7:00 A.M. in summer and 9:00 A.M. in winter. So I had to rise early on Monday to cover the distance of four miles through the fields of Nathupur, Saboli and Narela. Often I started in the light of the moon, Mother would get up earlier to prepare something for breakfast that early. After some time I stopped that early breakfast. But still the distance had to be covered any way. There was a small pool of water outside Saboli on the Narela side in the midst of the jungle vegetation and around. On the sides of the pool there were heaps of ashes and sometimes even live fire. In winter time the darkness descended on the jungle, but I had to pass through that pool any way in spite of the darkness. I had read the story of the pool of water and the ‘Yaksha’s trial of Yudhishthira’. I felt the uncanny presence of no-thing around, but the good thing was that while I thought of the Yaksha, I passed that lonely spot through. During my Narela days, the superstition part of such scenes, I got over, but the instincts and associations persisted to appear and re-appear until the consciousness matured slowly through the growth of knowledge and experience.

There was one experience at Narela which I never forgot and which I love to remember: On August 9, 1942, the Congress passed the famous Quit India Resolution with Gandhiji’s famous dictum: Karo yaa maro(Either do or die). The leaders were arrested and imprisoned. There was all passion, protest and even violence all over the country. There was ‘tor-phor’ in Delhi also. The ‘Pili Kothi’ was said to have been torched. The daily passengers from Narela to Delhi had to walk the distance on foot for want of the train.

In the morning of 10th or 11th August, the Narela workers of the Congress came to our school, Pandit Moolchand and others. Almost all Arya Samaj members and sympathizers in those days were freedom fighters also with the Congress. The contribution of the Arya Samaj to the freedom movement cannot be denied. They came and met the senior boys. I was in the 10th class and Jai Dev Dabas was in the 9th. Jai Dev Dabas always gave me the position of an elder brother. So we two and all the boys of the school formed a procession single file and we all marched to the Arya Samaj temple. A meeting of the freedom fighters and the boys was held there. The meeting was addressed by Brahmachari Bhagwan Dev who later became Swami Omananda and took over as Acharya of Gurukul Jhajjar (Haryana). Bhagwan Dev Ji did not approve of our missing the school.

Bhagwan Dev ji said certain things which I remember to this day:

1. Freedom is a fundamental human right, says Veda. Swami Dayananda was the first man to say that slavery is a curse. No foreign government, howsoever kind, is a substitute for self-government.
2. Political freedom of the country is not the end; it is the beginning of national karma.
3. The first task of a free country is the building of national character, and development.
4. Your task as students is to complete your education and build your character.
5. English was introduced in India not for freedom or character building. It was introduced to produce clerks for the government to work as slaves.

These things I remember as words of truth for any country. In fact, later, in regard to No. 5, I wrote a full-length book of 325 pages with the titleTrading in language: the Story of English in India. It was published by GDK Publications, Delhi, in 1983. Still later, I wrote on the same subject in Hindi too: Bharat mein Angrezi: Kya Khoya Kya Paya.  It was published in 1996 by Kitab Ghar with a grant from the Government of India by courtesy of Dr. Ganga Prasad Vimal, then Director, Rashtriya Hindi Samsthan, New Delhi.

The other four shine in truth more and ever more specially in the light of the daily wranglings of the political parties in the Parliament which clearly show that India is not yet one country, and really not yet free, but as many as the political parties.

Guruji came to know of all this. He called me and Jai Dev Dabas and kept us with himself in his home. Later on, we concentrated our attention on our studies after which both of us joined Ramjas College, I joined in 1943 and Jai Dev Dabas, in 1944.

To Delhi:

The move to Delhi was, to begin with, a continuity of Narela rather than a departure except in studies. The style of life in Delhi was more or less the same as that in an urbanized village such as Narela. Life in the hostel was the same except that the formal institutional discipline was left to the student. No bell to ring at four in the morning, no bell for Sandhya or Havan morning and evening. We were free for bed time as well as for wake up time. But the time for students like me and Jai Dev Dabas, who were from Narela, remained the same as at school, voluntarily confirmed as regular habit. Guruji’s gift of Jaz and Shroff’s Eye Hospital time bell were welcome auxiliaries. The hostel and the college were on the same campus, in fact in the same building.

We were forty four boys in the hostel. There was no distinction between new comers like me and the senior boys. So, no ragging. We were mostly in single rooms of about 80-100 square feet. The same furniture, as at Narela, one cot, one table and one chair, bedding our own. The rates were Rs. 8 for room rent and Rs. 2 for electricity. There were a few double rooms also, but I was always, for all the six years, in a single room. The light bulb our own.

One thing interesting for today. It was war time, and electric lights (bulbs) were short in supply. I was able to find one, bluish in shade, 60 watts, made in Japan, price, eleven annas (seventy paisa today or 1.5 cents). I used that light bulb for all the six years and left it for the next student, in 1949. That was the quality of consumer articles then.

The kitchen was managed by the students on a co-operative basis. We elected one student as ‘manager’ who kept the accounts of groceries bought by the cooks. The menu was simple: chapati, one dal, one vegetable, sometimes raita, once or twice a month one special sweet (kheer or gulab jamun), sometimes even once a week also, depending upon our choice. One meal normally cost only four annas, or even less. We had to pay for one extra meal, for raita, and four times a meal for the special sweet. The salary for the cooks and helpers was paid by the college. The total hostel expenses for a month for food, two meals a day, no breakfast, and room and electricity charges came to about twenty five rupees, with extra payment for the special sweet and raita.

I was getting Rs. 25 p.m. as merit scholarship from the Education Department of Delhi. The College granted me exemption from fees, which were then Rs. 15 per month. For the rest of expenses, books for example, or transport back and forth between College and home on weekends, plus any unforeseen expenses, clothes, etc. were met by my parents. But I kept all expenses to the minimum possible, because I knew the hardship my father was facing in the village. For an ordinary village man, except for those who owned lands or businessmen, to support a boy at College was nothing short of a dream. But my father assured me: ‘Move on, free, responsible as you are and must be?’ He left me completely free, with complete faith in me and in my work.

My love of books had continued since my early school days in spite of the circumstantial limitations. So I found a way to continue my buying spree right in the midst of the limitations by virtue of what we now call the ‘art of management’. Here is the explanation:

When I was professor at Maharshi Dayananda University, Rohtak, once the students of the Dept. of Management came to me for a message for their journal. I said: “Okay, I’ll write a message for you but first tell me what Management is?” They jumped at the idea which they felt was contained in the question. They said: “Sir, just write about your own idea of management.” I said that I would give them a brief idea of my view of management, but it would be just a sentence or so. They welcomed the idea, and then I gave them my definition of management which, now I feel, I had been practically following in my own life. I still hold on to the same idea. I said: “Management is the art – call it science if you like – of creating the maximum out of the minimum.”

Having lived and watched the life around since nineteen-thirty’s, I still feel convinced and confirmed in the view that any individual or family or society or even the nation, which does not have a clear and conscious idea of the minimum it has and of the maximum it wants and plans to achieve, cannot rise to the heights it would otherwise be able to attain. And we, specially, because we inherit the Vedic and Upanishadic tradition, should understand and follow that tradition. I was inspired early while I was a student at Narela by the words of Lord Yama, in Kathopanishad, to Nachiketa: “Awake, arise, know, and stop not until the goal is achieved (1, 3, 14).” Originally the idea is in the Veda  (Atharva, 8, 1, 6) which celebrates life as “darling of the gods’ and shows the way to the goal, but the path is through discipline, life long, relentless, unquestionable, inviolable, just like walking and balancing yourself on the razor’s edge ( Katha,1, 3, 6). That is the gift of Saadhanaa.

I was a voracious reader, I still am. At Delhi, how to manage the books within the minimum available to me? It was possible to recast the budget:

The kitchen expenses were calculated not on a monthly basis, but on a daily basis, and that too item-wise. If you missed a meal with proper notice, you were not charged for the meal. If you missed the special or the raita, you save up to the price of four or five meals in the month. So I decided to forgo the specials, saving one rupee every time that way every week. My thinking was: If you miss the special, you still have the full meal even otherwise. Further, whenever I went home on week-ends, I saved one meal on Saturday evening, two meals on Sunday, and brought cooked food for two meals on Monday, thereby saving the money. This way I could save six rupees at least per month for the books of my choice. Some of the most loved books of my choice such as Swami Satyananda’s translation of Eleven Upanishads, Swami Dayananda’s Granthamala, Pandit Sunderlal’s three volume –Bharat Main, Angrezi Raj (then proscribed) and Oxford University editions of the English poets, such as Wordsworth Shelley, Byron, and Shakespeare were bought with money thus saved. Thus I could have the maximum I wanted with the minimum I could afford. I had gone far ahead of the earlier visions of becoming a ‘patwari’,or a junior vernacular teacher or even a teacher of English at a middle school or high school. I must work for something higher.

Now back to the College studies:

At the pre-university stage in the Preparatory class, I had to take up five subjects, 600 marks all total.

English and one modern Indian language were compulsory, other subjects were optional. So I took up English, Hindi, Sanskrit, Mathematics (Algebra and Trigonometry), and History of Civilization. History of Civilization was a new subject, but it was interesting because it satisfied my general interest in ‘Swadhyaya’. Mathematics was different from the Mathematics I had studied at school, because every new lesson was connected with what had gone before, so that the student had to be very regular in attendance and also fast in the logical understanding of the subject. Sanskrit at the school stage was taught through the medium of Hindi, but at college it was taught through the medium of English. The rest of the subjects were okay with me.

Mr. P.D. Gupta taught us Maths. As he taught us, I felt that, his speed was too fast for me. I took time to understand the concepts and keep up with the successive steps of the argument. My limitation was my speed of understanding, the same way as ‘the double negative changes into the positive’ of the school days at Jakholi. But my strength was that once I understood the concepts and the steps of the process of proof, then the ideas and the process both were mine. Sometime during the first three months of my stay at College I fell ill and I had to miss the classes. My difficulty stared me in the face. And at the end of three months there was the first test in all subjects in September. I managed Maths to the best of my capacity, still I was not able to do justice to the subject. My score was 46 out of 75, or may be out of 100. P.D. Gupta Ji felt disappointed. He warned me of what I might suffer in the future. He did so out of love for me, but he said so in words beyond the new comer’s capacity to digest. May be he was too worried for me, may be I was over sensitive.

Guruji, Hari Ram ji of Narela, was watching me all the time. He had been, also, a class-mate of Mr. P.D. Gupta’s at Ramjas in the thirty’s, and he used to address him by his first name, Purushottam.  Later I learnt that both Guruji and P.D. Saheb had struggled the same way as I was struggling then. But P.D. Saheb’s disappointment and warning, especially the tone of it, scared me. I felt afraid of Maths, the logic of it, and the relentless exactitude and the speed of P.D. Saheb’s fourth gear start and finish on the black-board. I almost decided to change the lane from Maths to English for B.A. English was Guruji’s line of travel too, and while he taught us at school, he told us the stories of Shakespeare’s plays. I remembered his narration of Othello, Macbeth, Hamlet, King Lear, Cymbeline and others. Charles Lamb’s Tales from Shakespearewas also one of our prescribed texts in the Preparatory class.

Memory has its own logic. It is not necessarily chronological. Long after, in 1981, I was offered an appointment as Professor and Head of the Department of English at Maharshi Dayananda University in Rohtak (Haryana). I took up the job in March, 1981. At that time, P.D. Saheb was Controller of Exmainations at the University. After some time, I was appointed Chairman of a committee which considered the cases of those candidates who had been alleged to have used unfair means in the examination. We called it the “Unfair Means Committee”. P.D. Saheb, as Controller of Examinations, presented the cases as prepared by the invigilators and the Superintendents of the different examination centres. It was a strange situation: The erstwhile teacher, who had, in 1943, issued a warning to an erring or negligent student, became the ‘prosecution counsel for the state,’ and the ‘warnee’, the ‘chief justice’. I maintained the decorum of the ‘court’ without compromising my respect for my teacher of 1943 and then a very senior colleague from 1949 to 1981 and after.

My teachers at Ramjas College loved me as their favourite student.  So did P.D. Saheb. In 1981 too he was as affectionate as he had been during my studies at Ramjas during 1943-1949. So one day, before the meeting of the ‘Unfair Means Committee’ started, we were sitting in his office. The old affection of P.D. Saheb asserted against his regret of having lost a promising student to English at Ramjas. So P.D. Saheb looked at me, the old affection shining in his eyes, and he said in his Ramjas language, “Tulsi Ram, you deserted Maths.” The old warning of 40 years before, with all the fear strings attached, re-asserted in me with the new version of my respect for him and I said with a touch of new-found frankness: “And P.D. Saheb, do you remember you were the cause of it!” P.D. Saheb smiled, and thus we carried on as teacher and the truant as long as he stayed at the M.D. University at Rohtak.

At Ramjas: I had taken up Sanskrit too. But my difficulty was the medium, English. I could not understand the Aorist nor could I understand the Preterite. The difficulty was because these grammatical terms were taken from Greek, and that does not work in the field of Sanskrit. Like the structure of words and structure of language, the structure of Grammar is also a language’s own. The teacher of Sanskrit was Pandit Ganga Ram, and a great scholar of Sanskrit grammar. His speed of teaching also was too fast for me. As language, I loved Sanskrit. We were only two boys in the class, I and Ramji Lal, younger brother of a famous clothier of Connaught Place. Ramji also loved Sanskrit. One day, I remember, Panditji taught us all the fifty-five shlokas of the Gita, chapter eleven, and I understood all that. But the English version of Sanskrit grammar, that was a problem.

One day Panditji was teaching grammar, English medium. I came across this same limitation: if understood, it is mine for the life time, if not, it is alien even now as ever. Panditji explained it again, again it was not understood. Panditji got irritated with my understanding speed. He explained again, but he wanted to confirm: “Have you understood it now, guru?” I took offence at Panditji’s use of the word ‘guru’. ‘Guru’ is ironically used for a stupid person, seriously it is a word of reverence. I took the irony quietly. For a few days I attended the class, but no discussion of any type, neither for explanation nor for clarification. Panditji understood the situation. Any good teacher wants response, here there was no response. So he broke the mutual silence. “Are you angry, Tulsi Ram?” I replied respectfully: “No Panditji, who am I to feel angry? But surely I am not ‘guru’. If used seriously, I am not the guru, I am the pupil. And if the word ‘guru’ is used ironically, I do not deserve it.” Panditji agreed and said that he did not mean to hurt me and advised me not to mind. Next year, I opted for B.A. (Hons) English and took up History, not Sanskrit, as the subsidiary subject, feeling that the developments in English literature and the general trends in history were related. But when I had opted for English literature with History as the subsidiary subject, Professor N.N. Chaudhry, Head of the Sanskrit department did express his regret saying: “Tulsi Ram, you deserted Sanskrit. I gave you nearly full marks in the university examination in Sanskrit.” I had got ninety-eight marks out of hundred. At Jakhauli too my score in the first test in Sanskrit was 98.

Probably my responses to the teachers, now I realize, were the result of my sensitive temperament born of my village background. It could be so. Still the teachers’ response to my sensitivity in the positive direction showed that all of them wanted me to join their department. If I didn’t, they regretted, and that regret, I take it, was their silent ashish for me. It gives me strength even now, because it was born of their love for me.

There were times when my very identity was challenged, at least from my point of view, though not from the challenger’s point of view: this happened once at least at Ramjas and once at my residence:

My favorite dress since my earliest days at school had been kurta and dhoti: it still is. Kurta and Pajama has been a compromise. In winter I love to have a chadar, i.e., a cotton shawl. That was the wear in the village. A woollen chadar or shawl for me was rare. I carried the chadar to Delhi also with full self confidence. In fact up to B.A. second year I had never had a woollen garment. For me, it was expensive too at that stage of financial limitation. Thus in the beginning of winter in the preparatory class, one cold morning I went to the class with my favorite chadar on as I used to go to the class at Narela. But I did not realize that in matters of clothes, life in Delhi at college was a departure from Narela. Other boys at college including my Narela school mates wore expensive and fashionable clothes, even full suits with the tie intact. But I did not care because I wanted to be confident only of my studies. And that morning, because of my chadar, my teacher scolded me for having ‘transported’ my village culture to the college. I really felt small and very embarrassed. I also felt hurt but I could not do anything in the matter. I have always felt that if I were in the teacher’s position in that situation, I would speak in a different style. The effect, however, was that somehow I managed to buy a woollen shawl, which I wore but not in the class. The first woollen garment I had was in B.A. second year and that too through the kindness of Gupta ji, head of the Department of English.

Now back to Maths and the 46 marks. Guruji, i.e., Hari Ram ji, felt worried for me in the field of Maths. He realized that I would need special help to make up for the gap that bothered me then and would continue to bother me. He thought of finding some special help for me. He knew Mr. P.D. Gupta, then my teacher. He also knew Mr. Lakshmi Chand Gupta who had been a lecturer at Ramjas Intermediate College and, after the abolition of the Intermediate stage, had been transferred to Ramjas Higher Secondary School No. 1, Darya Ganj, housed in the same building as the College. Both agreed to help without any payment, saying that in view of my quality as a student and the gap I needed to fill up, one month’s time would be enough. Guruji asked me with which of the two I would like to study for one month. I opted for Mr. Lakshmi Chand. I had no will or strength for another warning.

I started to study Maths with Mr. Lakshmi Chand. He lived in Kucha Lacchu Singh, Chadni Chowk, near Phawara. He gave me forty five minutes from 7:00 to 7:45 in the morning at his residence. I walked the distance from Darya Ganj to Kucha Lacchu Singh, a distance of about a mile, in the morning cold with my chadar on and back to College to be ready for regular classes from 9:00 O’clock onwards. In the second quarterly test in December, I got full marks in Maths. Guruji was happy, P.D. Saheb was very happy, and I was happy and relieved, the warning still ringing somewhere in the mind. In Maths, I felt, one has to be alert and instant, logical and relentlessly regular. I didn’t want to take another chance. I have already said that for the last step carelessness, I lost five marks in the University examination and thereby lost the first position also. For B.A., I opted for the Honours course in English, with History as subsidiary and Hindi as Indian language.

During the Preparatory class I had gotten some very good and kind friends, specially Jai Dev Sharma and Sushil Syal. Jai Dev Sharma was the son of Pandit Ramji Das Sharma, earlier lecturer in English at Ramjas College, and nephew of Shri Ram Chandra Sharma, then lecturer in English at Ramjas. Ramji Dass ji had been the teacher of Guruji also but, unfortunately, he had died in a railway accident sometime in 1939. So Jai Dev Sharma was like a brother to me. Guruji’s relations with Panditji were the same as mine with Guruji and that was a ‘familial’ reason for me and Jai Dev Sharma to be so close. Jai Dev Sharma visited our village also and stayed with us for a day or so there. I also became a member of the R.C.Sharma family, because it was an extension of Panditji’s family. Whenever Jai Dev Sharma and I were together at the family home in 4, Darya Ganj, we used to eat together. In a way, I found another home in Delhi, because of this Guru-Shishya relationship of three generations. Similarly, I got a family-child’s position in Guptaji’s family also, because Panditji, R.C.Sharma ji and Guptaji had been so close.

Govt. Job: a Trial:

After the declaration of the Preparatory class exam results, I got admission to B.A. (Hons.) in English. The classes were to start on July 26. So after the Prep Exam upto the end of July, I had free time for about four months. It was war time and there was a possibility that I could find a job and earn some money to supplement the money otherwise available to me. Guptaji advised me to meet Pandit Ganga Ram Ji who had been my Sanskrit teacher in the Preparatory class. The teachers at Ramjas College were, in reality, one family since they had been teaching and living together on the Ramjas Campus at Anand Parbat, then popularly known as ‘Kaalaa Pahaar’, the ‘dark mountain’. So I met Pandit Ganga Ramji as advised by Guptaji. Pandit Ji referred me to Mela Ramji, an officer in the office of the Chief Controller of Imports (C.C.I. Office, Ministry of Commerce, Govt. of India). Mela Ramji was pandit Ji’s friend and he respected Panditji as a senior of the family. Mela Ramji took me to a higher officer, Mr. Atri. Mr. Atri asked me to write an application for the job of a clerk, because that position was the entry point. I wrote the application. Mr Atri recognized my merit of the first position in the High School Exam and specially he liked my handwriting. I got the clerk’s job there then at Rs. 60 per month with Rs. 14 as dearness allowance. I joined the post the next day.

In the office, my immediate boss was Mr. Hasan. The next higher officer was Mr. Bansal. Because of my neat handwriting, my job was to receive the applications for imports of various commercial goods, to process the applications for the officers concerned, write the licence and dispatch the same after the application had been processed, accepted and proper orders had been passed. In the beginning I faced some difficulties because of my ignorance of the official procedure. Mr. Hasan guided me but there was no regular training. Still I managed the job and managed it well.

I had the problem of staying in Delhi during the summer. I was not a student, and even as a student, I had to vacate the hostel room during vacation. Pandit Ganga Ram, the hostel superintendent told me about the rule. In that situation, I spoke to Guptaji. Guptaji was very sympathetic as he always was. He said: “Go to Panditji again, request him to allow you to stay in your room because, after all, you are going to join and study at the College. And if he does not allow you, even then, come and stay for the night here with us. You can sleep in our first floor verandah. It is summer after all. You don’t need a room. And when you meet Panditji again, tell him this also that in case you are not allowed to stay in the hostel, I have allowed you to stay at our residence”. I went to Panditji again, pleaded with him in my situation and finances as he knew all this already. After all, he had helped me to find the job. I spoke to him about Guptaji’s permission to me to stay at his residence. Panditji relented and allowed me to stay in a room which opened directly on the college lawn, and this way it was not in the hostel complex as other rooms were. In that same room I chose to continue to stay even as a regular student till the last day of my studies at Ramjas.

I got the job. But as usual we were facing hard problems in the family. When at the end of the month, I got the salary of Rs. 74 in cash, seven new ten rupees notes and four new one rupee notes, I took the money home and presented it to my father. This money was the first experience of its kind for him in his life: he was earning about half that amount of money for a month in spite of the hard work he was doing without a single holiday. This process continued for the next three months also. After that period, he knew his son would have to leave his job if he decided to continue his studies. When I told him that I wanted to continue my studies, for once his earlier resolution of helping me to go up in studies as far as I wanted shook under the burden of his personal hardship and failing health. Very silently and most unwillingly, the words escaped his lips that ‘as the job was in hand, it could be fine too as it was’. Those were the words of a life-time struggle he had sincerely continued unrelented. And yet these words would not break down his resolution. He revived his earlier resolve to say that I could decide for myself, because his trust in me was complete and unquestioned. Throughout my studies and throughout my  career, I have carried a double strain of possibility: Probably I could relieve my father during the struggle he had maintained relentlessly, yet, on the other hand, he would have himself loved to earn the distinction of the village folk that he was the first father of the first educated man of the village.

I have mentioned the same double strain of possibility and shared it with some very senior friends of mine. Many of them have expressed the opinion that I should have continued with the job in the CCI office. I was intelligent. I would have studied the rules and regulations of the licensing process. I could have taken the internal promotion tests and passed them all with credit, and I could have gone up easily to the position of Deputy Secretary in the Ministry of Commerce, where I could have earned much more than I did as professor and college principal, especially under the dispensation of what now is described as ‘Lincense Raj’. And yet, in spite of this double strain of life, I have fully , honestly and sincerely held on to the view and the belief that whatever happens, as we go on with our choices and accomplishments, happens according to a higher dispensation, and every step that we take in life we take according to the will of God. If our faith in God is honest and sincere, we shall follow the right path prepared by Divinity for us. My father was always proud of me, thankful to God, and honest to the family tradition, honest to the core indeed, whatever the sufferance.

The double strain of possibility ended up, again with my father’s words, when I told him that I had gotten the first division in M.A. English, with the first position in the University, and I was going to be a ‘professor’ at Hans Raj College, Delhi, the salary being close to Rs. 250 (to be correct it was Rs. 245 per month, Rs. 190 more than what I was getting in 1944). The words I used were “My salary would be Rs. 200 more than the earlier salary. He felt very happy at heart. He said: God bless you. The double strain ended with these words.

One afternoon I saw that he was preparing to go somewhere.  I asked him where he was going. He said, “I am going to Mamuddin”, in the neighbouring village, Jatheri, a mile away. “Why?” I asked him, and pat came the reply: “I am going to ask him to make a steel almirah for us.” “What for?” I again asked him. His reply was the zest of a lifetime which I would never forget: “Now that you would be earning two and half hundred rupees, we’ll put the money in the steel almirah for safety.” I told him, and with great difficulty succeeded in convincing him, that we would keep the money in the bank. He objected, his objection to the bank was real in his own way: “I put my own money in the bank and then I have to make a request to the bank to give me my own money.” He agreed with me but never accepted the position. The double strain, however, ended for both of us. Once, when he had completed the building of our brick house (puccaa ghar) in our village, he sat relaxed one evening and said to me: “When I die, say farewell to all my tools.” This was to be his farewell to the hard struggle of his life, topped with his self-fulfillment through the promising performance of his child in the time to come. To that promise we bound ourselves when we bade him the last farewell on Sept. 16, 1951.

Having decided to continue my studies after the CCI job, I could not continue the job beyond July 31, 1944. I had to give one month’s notice to the Government. So after the declaration of the Preparatory class result I thought of tendering the resignation. I talked of it first to Mr. Bansal, superintendent of my section. Since my work was good and my handwriting better, the matter reached Mr. Mela Ram and even Mr. Atri.

Mr. Atri called me. I met him. He was disappointed with me but not angry. He felt that the few months spent on my work training in the job were going to be sheer waste for the department. He spoke of this waste in so many words as if expecting that I would explain why? Instead of explaining my position in the official way, I changed the trend of the talk and brought it down to a family version of the official position, knowing that I had got the job for other reasons than official, strictly speaking. Mela Ramji knew both Mr. Atri and Pandit Ganga Ram. So I said to Mr. Atri: “You know that I stood first in the Delhi Board of Secondary Education Exam. I joined College for that reason. I have passed the Preparatory Exam of Delhi University with the second position with 73.5 percent marks. Now if I were your son, would you ask me to go up to College or stay back at a clerk’s position?” Mr. Atri relented, and allowed me to put in my resignation. I did, and I was relieved of the job on 31st of July to attend College, from August 1, 1944.

B.A. (Hons.):

I joined the Honours Course in English, with Hindi and History. I cleared Hindi at the end of the first year and History at the end of the second year. The books for History, I got from a trust in Khari Baoli, and the books for the main subject I loved to buy on my own.

Jai Dev Sharma and Sushil Syal were my class mates. We three continued up to M.A. All of us lived close to the College, Jai Dev Sharma lived in 4, Darya Ganj and Sushil in 7, Darya Ganj. We all were like brothers in one family.Sushil’s father was General Manager of Lakshmi Insurance Company. He was a very noble and pious person. He used to pray while relaxing in a chair. He loved me too and promised that his prayer chair he would give to me. And he did give that chair to me to pray. I do not pray while sitting on a chair, but I did all my serious religious reading while relaxing in that chair and kept it with me till my last days in Delhi, and now its passed on to my daughter, Indira, along with our other belongings from our Shakti Nagar house.

The first reading suggested to us for the new course was W.H.Hudson’s Introduction to the Study of Literature. I boughtmy copy for three rupees and finished the study of it in a few days. We had the English Seminar in the Department. All the students and teachers were members of the Seminar. We used to meet every Saturday in the afternoon. One of the students used to read a paper in the seminar and this reading was followed by an open discussion. We were given time first to acquaint ourselves with this new activity and after a few months we were expected to write and present our papers in the seminar. One of the students was elected Secretary who did organizational work and recorded and kept the minutes of the meeting: a summary of the paper and comments of the students and teachers. The meeting ended with tea and light refreshments.

To begin with, there was no canteen in the College or in the hostel. I remember that there was one vendor who came to the College with a basketful of samosas at mid-day. Some students bought the samosas, one anna per piece, and that was the refreshment. No tea, no lemonade. I never bought anything from him. After a year or two, the College set apart one room for a canteen with light refreshments and tea. But I never had anything other than two meals in the day, and that discipline was with me a matter of self-confidence, even self-pride, not a matter of deprivation, since Narela days in association with Arya Samaj.

At College too I maintained my association with Arya Samaj, specially for havan and Vedic themes of lectures. Whenever at week ends, when I stayed back in the hostel, missing a home visit, I went to attend the weekly satsang at Arya Samaj Diwan Hall. Ram Gopalji Shalwale was then the Secretary and Vyasdevji Shastri the Purohit.

Diwan Hall had been my love since my Narela days. In 1942 (December 23-25), I and three other boys of Hailey High School, were informed by  Acharya Bhagwan Dev Ji that the Annual function of Arya Samaj Diwan hall was being celebrated and we would have a wonderful lecture by Pandit Buddha Deva Vidyalankara. Jai Dev Dabas, Narayan Singh, Shiv Narain and I got ready to go to Delhi for the lecture. We collected four blankets from the Samaj temple, ready to start. It was no train time. We decided to walk the distance, 16 miles, and started soon after 4:00 p.m. when the school was over. Acharyaji was still with us, he wore no shoes then, I think even after he lived bare-foot. We were walking by the railway track (‘patri’ as it is called). When we were walking by village Khera, a cyclist came up from behind and he rang the bell. We stood aside and the cyclist passed on. We took back to the track. Acharyaji stopped us to ask a question: Why did you move aside when the cyclist rang the bell? We gave no answer, because as everybody knows that is what it is. So no question, no answer. But the Acharya would not take our silence. So he had to suggest the answer for us for the life time: “Those who move fast, the world moves aside to make the way for them”. We took the lesson, but later on I added one caution for myself: “The world moves aside, but please do not push the others to ram the way for yourself.” My personal add may not satisfy all others, but I would certainly move fast without violence to others. We moved on up to Badli railway station. There was a well close by. On the suggestion of Acharyaji we decided to take bath and say our evening prayers. When we were free from prayers, a train, running very late, happened to come. We took the train, reached Delhi main station and joined the congregation on Gandhi Grounds in front of the railway station. Buddha Dev ji spoke on Varnashrama Dharma to a vast spell-bound audience which extended from Hardinge Library to the backwall of Chandni Chowk.

After the lecture we went to Diwan hall to have some space to sleep. There was no space, the hall was full. We went to Pataudi House and went to sleep at about 11:30. Early in the morning Acharyaji awakened all of us. We had had no full sleep.  So we pleaded with him to let us go back to sleep because we had gone to sleep very late. But he did not listen and said: “You made one mistake of going to sleep so late, and now you want to commit the same mistake again, of rising late.” We got up, we had to. By the side lane of Red Fort we went to the open space around what is now Raj Ghat for the morning chores. We had a long session of exercise, bath and a very long session of morning Sandhya.  Then the bell of Shroff’s Eye Hospital close to Ramjas College tolled us to 4:00 o’clock of the morning. That was our first tryst with Diwan Hall.

We attended the full programme of the Annual celebrations, the December break at school was on. We stayed at Pataudi House for the night. And in the day there I listened to Pandit Buddha Dev Vidyalankar on the Sanatan Unity of Vaishnavism, Shaivism and Shaktism. I listened to Mahatma Narayana Swami, Swami Swatantrananda, Kushhal Chandji (later Ananda Swami). There I also listened to the bhajans of Kanwar Sukh Lal, Sant Ram, and Jai Prakash and others.

While at Ramjas College, I used to go to Diwan Hall on Sundays. I was always No. 3 or No. 4 of the havan attendees. Once when the number remained low at Havan time, Shawlwale Ji felt strongly against ‘English education’, saying that English had made more atheists of the faithful than anything else. I told him that English was just a language, and English as other subjects of education too, had its own value. It depended on the learner to maintain his faith and Shraddha. I said I was a student of English literature and I was always the third or the fourth for the havan, sometimes even before him too. He did listen to me, but still he persisted in his opinion.

I have been with the Arya Samaj since 1940. I could have been with it since 1935 when I first heard of the Veda. But then the Samaj was nowhere around. And along with Arya Samaj I have been with ‘Sanatan Dharma’ also. I listened to the Ramayana Katha. I heard the Bhagawatam also. I am not able to reject moortis of Shiva or Rama or Krishna. I go to the Samaj while I do go to other temples also. I love and honour the Gita as sacred. But I maintain the position that Sanatan Dharma is a banyan tree on which various groups of what is now called Hinduism occupy certain branches for themselves. Some of them are perching even on the leaves. But of all the branches of this ageless banyan, only the Arya Samaj stands by the seed and the root, Veda, and interprets it as self-existent knowledge the same way as the self-existent Divine Consciousness. It is the Arya Samaj only which interprets the Veda in the Rishis’ way. All others vascillate between the Arsha way and the historical way. But once you dislodge from the Arsh way into the historical style, you slide more on to the wielders and propagators of the so-called scriptures, who stand by but do not understand the beauties and deeper meanings of the poetic style of imagination. They simply perch on the leaves and branches, scattered over and away from the root. For that reason, the monotheists make fun of the ‘Hindus’. For them all, Swami Dayananda is the answer.

At the end of first year, we had to appear in the University Examination for Hindi, the Indian language. As we had to go to the University for the exam, I had to go with Jai Dev Sharma or with Sushil Syal because they had the bicycle. As I used to go to the house of Jai Dev Sharma, so I used to go to Sushil’s house also. Sushil’s mother too, like Jai Dev Sharma’s, treated me as a child of the family. On the day of the exam, she asked me to have breakfast with Sushil. After breakfast all of us went to the University. Sushil or Jai Dev Sharma carried me on his bicycle. We wrote the exam and were declared successful. The marks of Hindi, high or low, did not count towards the division in the Honours subject.

During the second year, we concentrated on the subsidiary subject and the main subject both. In the main subject, a new practice of teaching was introduced. Teaching of the main subject was partly centralized on a cooperative basis. All students from different colleges collected in the University, and teachers from different colleges were selected to teach. So I now had to manage for myself so far as transport was concerned. It was war time still and bicycle sales were restricted and controlled. One had to register with the dealer and wait for his turn for the supply. Some people got themselves registered so that they could sell their bicycle at a profit. I could not do that, nor wait for an indefinite time. So I bought one, a second hand bicycle, for Rs. 80. The price of the new was about Rs. 110. In the ‘black’, it was about Rs. 140. But the one I bought proved no good. I sold it away for a lesser price, and bought another, a second hand Philips war quality one, from a fellow student again for Rs. 80. It served me very well, I loved it very much for all my student days. Ultimately I lost it because it was stolen. I still remember it as a faithful friend especially for its structural balance. At Narela, during the Junior and Senior Special classes, in the industry class, I had learnt the job of cycle repair up to assembling and dis-assembling. For that freedom of maintenance, the bicycle remains my only free and favourite mode of conveyance, especially during the age of energy crisis, pollution and global warming. But other than Scandinavian countries, no country values the bicycle. The first thing I bought after I settled with a job as lecturer was a bicycle, ‘Swift’, manufactured by the Philips company. I regarded the bicycle as a member of my family.

Incidentally, how did I get the idea of the bicycle being a ‘member of the family’? I got it from Pandit Prabhu Dayal of Jatheri village which was just a mile away from Badha Malik: Pandit Prabhu Dayal was, ‘the man in white, ‘safaid posh’ as he was known in the area. A young teen of my village, again in whites, whose father was working in Delhi, and a few others including Panditji happened to come together in the open area in front of our second home. Panditji loved his bicycle which was as old as he after his teens, old and aged so much that the pedals were worn out and reduced to the very axle bar. The young man said to Panditji, “Panditji you now change your bicycle and replace it with a new one. It is now too old.” The Pandit would never take that for anything. He retorted: “Your father also is too old. Can you replace him? You must know that the bicycle is a member of my family.” Panditji loved his bicycle as much as—I learnt it long after—the founder of my college, Rai Saheb Kedar Nath, loved his horse. Rai Saheb once ground a whole sackful of gram to dal after his servant had declined to grind the gram to dal, saying that it was not a part of his duties. I remember even now that I too loved my bicycle the same way. I used to service it myself, thanks to the Narela school industry class.

In 1945, before the classes started at the end of July, we had nearly three months summer vacation. During that time I stayed in the village with my parents. Guruji in those days was writing books of explanatory character with questions and answers, even specimen question papers in relation to the course books. He assigned one book to me which, I now remember, related to one of the lower classes of the high school. I remember the contents of one of the poems in story form: “There was a King, a Great King named Foolishman. He had a beautiful, very beautiful, daughter, Princess Folly. When the princess came of marriageable age, the King proclaimed that he would have his daughter married to the prince who would tell an unending story. Young princes aspiring for the hand of the princess came and told their stories. One lasted for a day. Another lasted for three days and so on. But none could win the hand of the girl. Then came the fortunate man destined, in God’s Book, to win the Princess. He started his story: “There was a king who built a big palace. One of the big rooms he built for grain. The builders made a mistake. They left one hole in the roof unplugged. He got the room filled with grain. And the sparrows around smelt the grain through the hole. So one sparrow came and took away one grain of corn. Then came another sparrow and took away another corn.  Another sparrow came …and so on and on.” The king then shouted: “What next?” “Another sparrow came and took away another corn.” Again: “What next?” Again: “another sparrow … and so on. The prince won the hand of the Princess, darling daughter of King Foolishman.”

This assignment was my initiation into writing. Guruji guided me to explain difficult words and difficult passages, write the prose order and explanation of poetic passages, form questions and suggest answers. He corrected and edited my draft and got it published by a popular publisher under his name. This job got me a few hundred rupees to meet my hostel and other expenses. Such assignments continued to come to me, and this exercise helped me later in my teaching, and for the time being it gave me some money also which I needed.

During the second year, I once needed money and then I had none. So I went to Guptaji, Guruji at College. I requested him for Rs. 20/=. He gave me the money. But I got much more than the money. His eldest daughter who had done the Oriental Examinations of Panjab University, such as Ratna, Bhushana and Prabhakar, was to appear in the ‘English Only’ examination. He asked me to help her for the examination. I started teaching her for an hour and more as needed. At the end of the month Guptaji sent me Rs. 20 in an envelope. When I saw the money I remembered the earlier occasion when I had gone to him for twenty rupees. I did not accept the money and returned it to him saying: “Guruji, I won’t take this money because I want a great deal more when I would need.” He agreed to take the money back.

Here now I remember the letter he wrote to me after my M.A. result had been declared.  He wrote to me a letter of congratulations and his blessings, saying that I would certainly get a lecturer’s job at one of the Delhi colleges, and at least the Principal of Ramjas College would surely recognize the merit and value of my achievement. This letter was that ‘something a great deal more’ which I had meant at the time of the return of Rs. 20. But Guptaji preferred that I should get a job at a college other than Ramjas, because at Ramjas I would grow for sure but grow in the spirit of a student as I had been for the last six years.

The advantages that came to me during that time of closeness with Guruji were many more than obvious, I became a member of his family, more than a student. All his children called me “Bhai Saheb”, even now they address me the same way. I could stay on in the hostel even during holidays. I was free to eat at his place in addition to that same privilege at the house of Jai Dev Sharma and his Mamaji, Dr. R.C. Sharma, who was our teacher at Ramjas and later a colleague at BITS Pilani where he was the Dean of the Faculty of Languages also. My gain ultimately was that I became a member of the old Anandparbat Ramjas family – late Pandit Ramji Dass Ji, father of Jai Dev Sharma and teacher of Hari Ramji, Guptaji, R.C. Sharmaji, and the next young generation, Jai Dev Sharma, Vinod the CA, Dev and Vimla, Sharda and other sisters with Mrs Ramji Dass and Mrs Gupta as mother figures.

As a member of this new family I also, along with Jai Dev Dabas and Jai Dev Sharma, became a member of the ‘work force’ at the time of the wedding of the family sisters, Sharda and Vimla. One day, late in the evening of Vimla’s marriage, we were carrying potfuls of hot milk for members of the marriage party from Punjab. It was past ten o’clock. A senior lawyer friend of Guptaji’s asked him: “Gupta, do you look after these boys for their food through the day? It is already so late.” Guptaji replied in a teacher-parents’ mood: “I look after them for the essays they write for me. I don’t force them for anything else.” That was the teacher-pupil relationship at Ramjas.

During the second year I came in contact with Dr. Sarup Singh, then lecturer at Hindu College. Dr. Sarup Singh had been a student of Ramjas during 1934-1940 and completed his M.A. with a first class first. In 1945, he was a member of the cooperative team of teachers at the University. Other members of the team were Guptaji, Mr. M.M.Bhalla, Mr. P.C.Sood, Mr. Samuel Mathai, Mr. Jarvis and others. One day after the class, Sarup Singh ji was walking back home from the University to take a bus from Rajpur Road. As he was walking by Flag-staff Road, I joined him from behind and started walking with him, my bicycle on the side. He was in kurta and dhoti. I too was in kurta and dhoti. Sarup Singh ji, feeling that I could be from a village, initiated the conversation after my ‘Namaste’. He came to know that I was from a village and I had got creditable results at the High School and in the Preparatory class exams. From then on, we came closer and closer till the last days of his life.

Sarup Singhji was a very clear headed and a very popular teacher. He taught us Spenser (Fairy Queen Book 1) for some time, and after that, Wordsworth. I remember his conclusion, one day, about the FairyQueen: He concluded: “It is neither an epic, nor romance, nor an allegory; it is a class of poetry by itself.” He supported his conclusion with internal evidence from the poem. After that he took up Wordsworth as a poet of nature and as a poet of man. His style was very simple, clear and straight, no play with words.

Sarup Singh ji had been a very favourite student of his Ramjas teachers, specially of Panditji (Jai Dev Sharma’s father), Gupta ji and Dr. S.Dutt. So Jai Dev Sharma had a place of privilege with the Sarup Singh family. Sarup Singh Ji was the warden of Hindu College hostel and so he lived on the college campus. Sometimes, I can even say not unoften, on our way back from the University to Darya Ganj, we, Jai Dev Sharma and I, used to go to his house which was on the way, and every time we went we had a delicious cup of tea there.  Slowly I also became a member of the Sarup Singh family and a favourite student of his. In fact, because of my village origin and his Haryana origin closer to Rohtak, and because of his clarity of mind, he became my role model. My new dreams of becoming a ‘professor’ started there.

Another stop for Jai Dev Sharma and me on our way back home was the house of Jai Dev Sharma’s cousin sister Sheela who had been married to Jagan Nath Sharma ji, a Government Officer in the finance department. Sheelaji lived in Jawahar Nagar. There also sometimes we went and enjoyed tea and snacks. Much later, when I became Principal Shivaji College, Jagan Nath Ji was very helpful to me with regard to the financial matters of the college, specially after the take over of the college by the Delhi Government.

My love of coffee, specially cold coffee, I owe to Jai Dev Sharma. There was a coffee house in the University where teachers, other staff and students used to have their favourite cups. One day Jai Dev Sharma suggested that we should have coffee. I had heard, though not tasted, that coffee is bitter. So at first I declined. But Jai Dev Sharma persisted. So I agreed but laid down a condition: If I cannot take it all because I find it too bitter, then you will have to take the rest of it. Jai Dev Sharma agreed, after all we were just like brothers. I tasted the coffee. It was bitter. I could not finish it. So Jai Dev Sharma had to ‘help’.

That affection was the gift of the Sharma family, specially Mataji’s and Sharda Behanji’s. Professor R.C.Sharma was married in the mean time, and because Jai Dev Sharma called Mrs Sharma ‘Mamiji’, so all of us, Jai Dev Dabas and I and Sushil, all called her ‘Mamiji’. She was an extremely affectionate and hospitable lady. Thus our brotherhood was further intensified. Thus I tasted my first cup of coffee.  It was bitter, very bitter indeed, and Jai Dev Sharma had to take the rest of it. I loved it not. Jai Dev Sharma did, and so he drank the rest of it. I love it now but not the bitterness to that degree. I have it diluted.

About the ideal coffee, I learnt much later from a short story published in the IllustratedWeekly: The coffee hawker at a railway station is calling for customers: Coffee! Coffee! The intending buyer answers: Is it hot? As hot as hell. Is it bitter?  As bitter as gall. Is it black? As black as sin. “Okay, get me One.”

This incident reminds me of another occasion, much later, in 1972. I was staying with a friend, Dr. J.C.Sharma in London. J.C. also calls me “Elder brother”. I call him “a young man of seventy’s”. No one enjoys a drink more intensely than J.C. I don’t touch it though I don’t mind the flavor which I appreciate more with the nose than with the palate. So one day when J.C. was pouring a drink for himself, he looked at me as if asking: “Shall I…?” “No, thanks.” I said.  “You are many ways inhibited, Bhaiji”. “No! Never! This is my choice, my own. Not inhibition!” “Then religion?” No! not even that, my choice! “Proof?” “Okay, bring me all that you have and let me taste a tea-spoon-ful of each”. He brought a variety of all he had. I tasted a tea spoonful of each. Only one I found similar to amla juice, sherry dry. But nothing more than that. The next day we happened to go to Croydon town centre, a beautiful place. We sat in the sun by the side of a fountain. He brought two glasses of cyder or, may be, lager, one for himself, and one for me. I said: “Look, my Dharma is not vitiated by anything like this.” But the condition is: “If I decided not to take it all, you will have to take the rest of it.” He agreed, and I began the trial. I emptied the glass at the slowest speed down to about half an inch at the most. I felt my brain was swollen and awfully oppressive. I gave up and JC took it over. I still feel and ask myself and others: Why do people do all that violence to themselves? Man is, at least can be, the best and the strongest of the animals, even god-like. Call me a Platonist if you like. But I insist I am my self. That is my choice and privilege to be. Why should I do violence to me only to win your approbation? My choice is my choice to be and I have the freedom to choose what I am and what I want to be.

During B.A. Second year one step more: I had never had a woolen garment. I had seen others who had, Jai Dev Sharma, Jai Dev Dabas, Jaiswal, Bhanubhai Patel (who wore a jet black Jawahar jacket with spotless whites). The cold season was approaching and the class warning against the cotton shawl ‘khes’ still rang in my ears. Guptaji’s was a large family, a joint one

 in fact, with his elder brother and younger brother living together closely. They had employed a whole time tailor who was busy repairing old clothes, altering some for the growing children, and sewing new ones. Guptaji noted that I had nothing warm. So he asked me to buy the cloth and the tailor would sew a Jawahar jacket for me. I bought the cloth from Khadi Ashram, Chandni Chowk, and the tailor gave me a smart first woolen jacket ‘to fight the winter’.

On January 17, we celebrated the Founder’s Day in the College. The founder, Rai Kedarnath, had struggled in his life as many of us were struggling then at Ramjas. Ramjas was, in Rai Saheb’s words, his ‘parent’s college grand child’, created and gifted by Rai Saheb for his parents who were, otherwise, without any grand children. I spoke on Rai Saheb’s struggle to move up and onwards in life. I was wearing a kurta and pajama, with the new found jacket and Bata homely chappals without socks. My teacher, Mr. M.N. Ghosh, noted me and appreciated what I said and blest me, late in the day. I love the jacket today, my first warm achievement of life, by virtue of Guptaji’s love for his pupil and Vimla’s brother-teacher of English.

Guruji’s vacation assignments continued. I wrote many explanatory books for school children for which I was paid by the publisher through Guruji who then lived in Kamla Nagar in 10 D, then called ‘Buaji’s house’. Earlier he lived in Sadar Bazar main road where too I visited him fairly often. There I had come across an interesting experience with reference to the practice of caste system. There was a tenant in the house who regarded himself as belonging to a higher caste than the house owner’s caste. There was a common water tap for all the ground floor people including this tenant and the house owner to use. Whenever the higher caste tenant saw that the lower caste owner had earlier taken water from the common tap, he cleaned, in fact cleansed, the tap with some clay. This was noticed by the owner. So whenever the owner saw that the tenant had taken water from the tap earlier, he also started cleansing the tap for himself. This became a silly, in fact, comic situation, and then both of them reconciled as human beings, neither lower nor higher, just humans and equal. For my present and future time I also learnt a lesson for no price.

I never regarded the ‘Harijans’– as Gandhiji loved to call the ‘schedule castes’– as inferior human beings, and I did mind the general practice of disallowing them from taking water from the community wells. Indeed when I visited my village from college, a word went round among the Balmiki community that I was home, and when I went to the well to take bath, Balmiki girls and women used to come to the well with their pitchers. I drew water from the well and filled their pitchers for all the families. Sometimes I filled twenty to thirty pitchers for them. In fact, as I look back I feel grateful to them. Being a small family all of us three, father, mother and myself, we had no cow or buffalo for ourselves. But for me, my parent’s had got a few goats which were kept and maintained by a Balmiki family, Soondoo Tau’s family. As a child and also when I was grown up as a boy up to my sixth class, I used to go to Soondoo Tau. He milked the goat and I used to hold the container during the milking process. I called his daughters ‘sisters’ as was the practice of boy – girl relationship in the village. It was a very simple innocent relationship between boys and girls of the same generation. The girls of the next higher generation were ‘Buas’ (aunties), and of the still next generation were called ‘Daadis’ (grand mothers). So also it was between me and the Balmiki girls. I feel grateful to all of them as I remember them at this age too for their contribution with goat’s milk to me and to my intellectual health. I am told that goat’s milk is good for the brain. And while I say so, I never forget the bowl of curd from cow’s milk brought by ‘Chachi’, Rai Singh’s wife, one morning when, in 1934, I was going up to Sonipat for the scholarship examination.

In my memory, in the 1930s our social conscience was stirred against the discrimination prevailing in the caste system. So far as I am concerned, there was no discrimination between the boys from the Harijan families and the others at Rai and Jakholi schools. When I was at Narela, there were a few Harijan boys who were accepted not only as equals but also as specials because they were close to the freedom fighters whom we knew and respected. At Narela, having read theSatyarth Prakash of Swami Dayananda, I had realized the social damage that had been done to the Indian community by the discriminatory practices of the Hindu community. Both the Arya Samaj and the Congress were fighting for freedom and against this practice. In fact, the same persons were members of the Arya Samaj and of the Congress. At the Arya Samaj temple and in the Gandhi ashram we had shouted the slogan “Sehgal, Dhillon, Shah Nawaz, Inqualab Zinda bad”. And at Delhi, we followed the trial of the same three fighters at the Red Fort reported in the news papers. There at the Red Fort, we saw Pandit Nehru in black robes and with the staff of the defence counsel with Bhoola Bhai Desai. At the Red Fort itself, I saw Pandit Nehru unfurl the National flag of freedom on August 15, 1947. I was a member of the crowd that listened to him spell-bound in front of the Red Fort, and I always listened to him on 15th of August as long as I was at Ramjas in Darya Ganj up to 1949.

Second and third year went on smoothly. During the second year university examination for history, the subsidiary subject, I suffered from sore eyes. The next day was the first day of the examination. I felt awfully worried. How could I write the exam with sore eyes? In that state of worry and fear I went to Guptaji and explained my problem. Guptaji listened to me with utmost sympathy and directed me to Dr. Agarwal.

Dr. Agarwal was a naturopath. He had his eye clinic close to the college at 15 Darya Ganj, if I remember correctly, next to Agra Hotel, in his own house. Guptaji and Dr. Agarwal were friends. I went to Dr. Agarwal around 4:00 p.m. Dr. Agarwal examined my eyes and applied a white powder-like medicine with a glass ‘salai’ and made me sit in the sun facing the sun with eyes closed. After about half an hour, he made me sit in a rocking chair, rhythmically rocking up and back. Next, he made me sit in another rocking chair, rocking right and left, all time with eyes closed in the sun. This exercise took some time more than one hour. Then he made me read a printed page, not reading actually but following the horizontal ends of the printed lines. This treatment worked wonders and the next morning I was more than fit and fine to write my Exam to my full satisfaction. If there was any bill for the treatment, I do not know because, if at all there was one, Guptaji looked after that. In fact, Guptaji looked after all my problems. If I was ever unwell, he had directed me to go and meet Dr. O. P. Gupta, a well known physician in Fatehpuri. Dr. O. P. Gupta was Guptaji’s friend and family physician and he looked after me as a member of Guptaji’s family.

I was never worried about examinations, we had been trained for the examinations at Narela. But once, I don’t remember why, during the second year or, may be, in the third year exam, both Jai Dev Sharma and I felt worried about some problems, and both of us did not know what to do. In other words, we felt bored. We were prepared and yet worried. So, not bothered about the exam next morning, feeling as if the exam would take care all by itself, we decided to go to a movie, anyone anywhere. We went to one close by, not at Jagat but at Amar, in a crowded street close to Hauz Quazi. I don’t remember the name of the movie but I remember the hero, Surender, and one song he sang, one line only: “sawan ki ruta bhaye sajaniya, sawan ki ruta bhaye” The result? We did really well in the exam next morning! But, to be honest about studies and exams, I am not suggesting that going to a movie is a pill for good results, I am suggesting that you must avoid worry about the exam. Instead, be ever prepared and face it well. The right guru will give you that discipline and that confidence, which would help you through.

If you are writing an exam, write it well. I love writing, the very physical act of writing. I have loved it right from the first day when I wrote “alif”, the first of Urdu Alphabet, on the ground as taught by Chander. My writing was loved and admired by my teachers. In the thirty’s we used to decorate the school walls with cardboards carrying the students write ups. My ideal model in Urdu writing was Vyasji. In fact I remember from which teacher’s writing of a single letter or single digit I learnt to form my letters and digits. For many years, after my leaving the lower middle school Rai, in 1937, the walls of the school continued to carry my writings one of which I member till this day:

Yeh chaman yoon hi rahega aur hazaron janwar

Apni apni bolian sab bol kar uda jaenyege.

This garden will remain as it is, and thousands of birds will come and fly away, having sung all their own songs.

Vyasji even made the pens for me with reeds of our choice, costing as high as two paisa for one. He made one for me in the fourth class exam for scholarship the day I was going to write the ‘Dictation test”, in 1934.

I formed my Hindi writing also after Vyasji’s, although his first love was Urdu. Throughout his life Vyasji continued writing to me in Urdu and I continued writing to him in Urdu. When I wrote my first exam in Sanskrit in September, 1937, Pandit Vanamaliji gave me 98 marks out of 100. When I wrote my Hindi Exam in the annual exam at Narela, the Hindi teacher gave me 71 out of 75. This is interesting even now: the story goes like this: (forgive me if I am repeating, because memory has its own laws).

Guruji had discovered me from Jakholi in 1939, set me a challenging test in the nineth class annual. I know now what he was doing for me, he was doing for himself too and for the Hailey High School also. He said to me: if you get 825 marks out of 950, the maximum, I shall give you a prize worth 6 rupees. Further, if you get more than 825, you will get one rupee for each mark more than 825. For less than 825, nothing. I got ready for the challenge.

I got back the Hindi answerbook assessed and marked. I got 71 out of 75. I felt too sure that I would make it to 825. In that mood of elation I went to Guruji and foretold him I would certainly make it to 825. Guruji was happy but silent. He later called up the Hindi teacher, I think, to tell him that he had told me the result too soon. But the Hindi teacher thought that Guruji had disagreed with his evaluation of my performance. In that mood of some sort of dismay, he called me back to surrender the answerbook to him. I did as he had asked me to do. He then re- assessed the paper and reduced my achievement from 71 to 65. With this reassessment, he gave the paper back to me. I felt awfully sorry for the loss of six marks, for me a loss of six rupees which could mean loss of the prize as well. I went to Guruji again, this time all disappointed after the earlier elation. Guruji advised me to wait for the total result. He called up the Hindi teacher again to inform him that he should not reduce the marks but he should not be too hasty to reveal the result before the total result. The Hindi teacher restored the marks to 71. At the end of the exam I got 831 out of 950, meaning six rupees more than six. I got a Swiss made Jaz alarm clock which even now is present and working fine at the age of 75. I carried the clock to the examination hall at the high school exam. Boys with wrist watches silently made fun of me, but I did not care. When the result was declared and published, I thanked both, Guruji and his gift.

When we were to go to Delhi for the high school examination, Guruji bought for me a fountain pen with medium nib. He selected and bought the same pen for two other boys. When I was at Narela, my choice was ‘Blackbird”. But then one could not be sure whether the pen available was original or reconditioned. So Guruji got us the “Otama”, one step lower than Parker Junior. When I went over to college, I changed over to Parker Junior. When I appeared at the B.A. (Hons) final exam, I wrote the papers with a pen given to me by a friend, Jayanti Prasad. This pen had a nib which was neither fine nor medium, it was something like a semi-spherical with the result that the letters were not neat and well-formed. But I could write with it from any angle, right or left or upright.

When the result was out, I got 464 marks out of 800, i.e., 58 percent, two percent short of first class.

Guptaji was one of the examiners. He called me, and there I learnt the importance of the visual impression of the pages you write. He said he disapproved of the pen with which I had written the papers. He said that because of the haziness of the outlines of the words there was clumsiness of the impression, and for that want of a pleasing impression, I must have lost at least half a mark for every answer I wrote. There were eight papers in the course and the exam. There were five questions to be answered in each paper. So there were altogether forty questions to be answered. And if I lost at least half a mark for every answer, I lost at least 20 marks in all in the exam. Had my writing given a neat and pleasing impression to the examiner I would have got, according  to the suggested calculation, 484 marks, a first class and the first position because the first student had got 483 marks and the first class.

This calculation would appear like wishful thinking, to the reader. But here I would like to share another experience of mine. I myself have been an examiner as well as a referee. The University once sent me one answer book of a certain candidate who had been awarded 26 marks out of one hundred by the first examiner in one paper. The answer book was referred to me for re-examination. Before sending in my acceptance of the assignment, I read through the first page of his answer book. It took me more than half an hour to read that one page, the writing was so bad and clumsy. Still, what the candidate had written did make good sense. I re-examined the answer book and assessed it at more than 60 marks. It took me hours really to do that job for the sake of an intelligent but ‘handicapped’ student. Then to confirm my assessment, I asked the University to send me the record of his assessment in other papers. The University sent me a list of his score in other papers. Almost in all of those papers, he had scored more than 60.

Examiners too are human beings. They have their moods and their pressures. Sometimes, if not quite often, they too count their scores. Once, long after in the late 60s, I had a regretful experience. I had been appointed paper-setter and head examiner of a particular course at the B.A. exam of a sister University. The practice was that the head examiner would hold a meeting of all the examiners, they would decide their common policy and methodology of assessment and evaluation, and follow the same. Every examiner would send in the results to the University through the head-examiner. The head examiner was to sample check, examine ten percent of the answer books, and approve of the examiner’s assessment of his candidates. So the result came to me, I sample checked 10% of the answer books of each examiner, approved of the results and sent in the results to the University. The whole process was over by the first half of June. The answer books lay with the head examiner for a specified time, probably six months, for record.

Some time at the end of June or early July, an elderly man, in the heat of summer, came to me. His daughter had appeared in the B.A. exam. He told me she had failed in a particular course. Therefore her marriage had been with-held. Somehow he had managed to find out from the University exam branch her fictitious (confidential) roll number and also the fact that I was the examiner. His source did not tell him the name of the examiner, but told him the name of the head examiner. I regretfully told him I was not the examiner and I could not do anything, the whole process had been completed and closed. The man went away. I could not do anything for him or for his daughter except the usual courtesy and hospitality in that hot season.

When the man had gone away, I asked my assistant to take out the candidate’s answer book, the answer books, all of them, were still with me. The assistant brought out the answer book. The score was 23 out of 100. Unfortunately that answerbook had not been one of the 10% I had to sample check. That chance too for the candidate had been lost as if by fate. Our policy too was that if a candidate could get 23%, we could, even the examiner could, moderate it to 25%, because if the candidate got 25 marks in a paper, the paper would not be cancelled and the shortfall of pass marks could be made up from other papers in the same subject. I just went over the answer book for the general impression. From me, the candidate could have safely scored more than forty. The whole thing was so regretful, but I could not do anything, sometimes things are what they are in spite of ourselves. So was it in my case too at B.A. (Hons) final. The pen was only an inanimate scapegoat. I had to lose what I had lost, all is what it is.

Mohana, Toward M.A.:

After B.A. (Hons) it was clear I would go in for M.A. But after the exam I had three or four month’s time when I could do something to earn some money, just as I had done after the Preparatory class exam in 1944. Guruji had a friend, Chaudhry Hari Ram, who had opened a private school to prepare students for matriculation, at Mohana, an important village between Sonipat and Gohana on the way to Rohtak. Chaudhry Hari Ram had met Guruji if he could suggest somebody as teacher of English for his school so that the next batch of students could be admitted and prepared for the next exam. Guruji decided that I would go for the job. One hundred and twenty rupees was the salary agreed. Guruji asked me to go and join the school. With all enthusiasm I prepared to go.

Mother gave me some money to buy the things I needed. First I bought what we called a ‘bistarband’, a hold-all to hold my bedding, for 12 rupees. I bought a box of steel, a suit case, for my clothing. I got a few kurtas and dhotis, I would need no uniform for a private school. I went to Sonipat by bus and hired a full tonga for Mohana, I think for Rs.9. It was a nine to eleven miles travel on a muddy road. When we approached the village, I asked a few young boys playing around where the school was. They said: “Go to the yonder ‘Bhooton Wali Haveli’, a sort of deserted house infested with ‘goblins’.”

The ‘Bhooton Wali Haveli’ had been, earlier, a prosperous home bubbling with life. It belonged to a business family which had moved to Calcutta or Bombay and the house was left to take care of itself. There was a well and a pond in front of the house and a cluster of shady trees around the pond. Chaudhry Hari Ram decided to open the school there as if to drive the Phantom Bhoots away with living ‘Bhoots’. As my tonga stopped at the gate, Chaudhry Hari Ram came down to receive me, and he asked a school servant to take my ‘saman’ (luggage) to a room reserved for me. I went up to the room. It was a small room with broken floor with a charpai whose seat almost coincided with the floor. This servant did tighten it up so that I could sit on it for a few minutes. I had a comfortable drink of water, and then I was asked to go to the class on the ground floor. I went to the class, that was the first trial for the teacher.

It was a class of 10 to 12 boys, may be more, who had either failed in the matriculation exam or were privately preparing for the same. The medium of teaching and examination was English. The lesson they were supposed to do in that class was a poem titled ‘Mercy’or perhaps ‘The Quality of Mercy’, a speech of Portia’s in Shakespeare’s play The Merchant of Venice. I had read this play in all its artistic details and I could speak on it fluently from my 10th class onwards as I have earlier said. One of the boys was Sumer, a policeman earlier, but terminated and now trying to do matriculation for some other job. Another was Maggan Singh who had failed once. Still another was Lakshmi, son of a local businessman. I introduced the play first, telling them the story Guruji’s way but briefly, and then explained the meaning of words and the poem the way I had written the ‘help books’ and ‘notes’ earlier. The class passed off very well.

After the class, at leisure time, the Manager Saheb, Chaudhry Hari Ram, asked the boys, specially Maggan, “How was your English teacher and his performance?” Maggan Singh wanted to confirm whether he wanted to know about me since I was in kurta and dhoti, nothing English for a teacher of English. So he asked, “You mean that new man who looks like a Bengali?” “Yes”, said the Manager. “Oh Sir, he plays with English the way you remove the cover leaves of corn,” meaning “Sir, angrezi ka tai pator sa padai sai.” You cannot easily translate this Haryanavi simile into English at all. There is a technique of removing the cover leaves of corn. If you know the technique, you play with the job, if you don’t, you wrestle with it. I love to think that those words of Maggan Singh were the best tribute ever paid to me for my English. Some thing like that was much later said to me by Prof. Don Wolfe of City University, New York, after reading my write up on Milton. Prof. Wolfe said, “For the first time I have read ‘distinguished English’ written by any student.” What Maggan meant was that my English was ‘highly distinguished.’

After the class, there was lunch prepared by the hostel cook. The ‘Bhooton ki Haveli’ was both the school building and the hostel building. The lunch was roti profused with ghee and aloo-piaz sabji.  I enjoyed the lunch to my hearts content, because I had known and lived the village life all through.

Life at Mohana was simple and happy. Chaudhry Hari Ram was the manager. Malik (Harkishan) was the head master, and the Bengali-like I was the reigning man of English. I was perfectly at home. We used to take bath at the well. Sumer would draw water for me, as many buckets as I wanted, I would provide him with a shaving kit with as many blades as he wanted. But I did not know all about the boys. One night, from the roof where I slept. I saw there was some light in the room on the ground floor. I had met my first day’s class in the verandah of that room. Was it the ‘Bhoots’ who had lighted the room? No, my Arya Samaj associations would not accept that explanation. So I asked Sumer about it. First he tried to put me off. But I persisted and he told me the secret: Some of his old associates had come to Mohana. Sumer had been earlier terminated from police service for such associates. They had come to him at night in suspicious circumstances and wanted food. So Sumer had to buy something from the market, and at that time they were all eating in that dim light.

Long after, about six years later, when I was at Hans Raj College and living in Karol Bagh, I had gone to the market to buy some thing for a few guests. I saw a person coming on bicycle, his head covered in the folds of a shawl because the air and the sun was too hot. As I reached Rohtak Road to cross it, he stopped to wish me. It was Sumer. He was a pleasant surprise for me. What’s up, I asked? He said some of his old associates had come to a neighboring village and he had bought and was taking some liquor for the party. Then, as if in the mood of guru-dakshina, he said to me: “Sharma Ji if there is any body who dares to bother you, tell me and I’ll set him right.” I replied: “No Sumer, nobody, nothing bothers me. Don’t worry. May God bless you.” That was the last I saw of Sumer.

At Mohana, all the boys and the teachers respected me, even the manager wanted me to stay on. But I could not stay beyond four months. I had to join back my college. Around July-August, the school was moved to a new make-shift building close to a cluster of banyan trees between Mohana and Pinana. I was given a very warm farewell under the trees with a gift of ceremonial turban and a fashionable walking stick which stayed and decorated one corner in our bedroom in our house in Shakti Nagar.

One experience of Mohana life I remember even today. One old teacher of mine from Narela, whom Guruji had sent to our village to invite me to join the Narela School in 1939, wrote to me in 1947 that he would meet me in our village on Sunday. I decided to go home to meet him. It rained on Saturday heavily so that all paths through the fields and jungles were muddy. I could not ride my bicycle, the wheels were loaded with mud. So I had to walk with the bicycle by my side, a distance of about 8 miles, then to join the Sonipat road. Then I cycled for about 12 miles and then waited for the teacher. He did not come although to come from his village (Sannoth) to ours he did not have to walk through any muddy paths. But this experience did give me the satisfaction and self confidence of a rare order: to keep up my promise. It was a wonderful gain for me. On July 26, the college reopened after the summer vacation. I joined M.A. classes on August 1. 1947.

It reminds me of Dickens’ description of the time of the French Revolution: it was the best of times; it was the worst of times. It was the best of times because in 1947 India became free: it was the worst of times because then India created or accepted or acquiesced in conditions and problems which it has been facing and is likely to keep facing for want of vision, or action, or imagination, or determination or commitment, to the spirit and character of India, whose foundation and culture go deep beyond the visible, even beyond the imaginable. It is difficult to imagine the consequences of what we gained and what we lost at that time. When pandit Nehru unfurled the national flag on the Red Fort and addressed the mutilated nation from the ramparts, I was one of the congregation. No doubt there was a general wave of enthusiasm and jubilation, but there were also a few ‘black bands’ on the arm scattered all over the crowd. The air in the town was oppressive in spite of the freshness of the morning. There are people even now, 70 years after 1947, who are not reconciled with the partition. The problem of integrating India, Pakistan just walking into Kashmir, the UN fiasco, the near East held by just a thread with the mainland, one country divided over as many as the number of political parties, as many castes or caste groups and languages, outmoded laws of colonial time, local pulls and  pressures, non-secular secularism, crime, cricket and corruption overwhelming the ‘aam-admi’ in spite of the  ‘Aam Admi Party’. It is difficult to see the future but yet not without hope—because the roots of the country are as deep as eternity.

August is hot in Delhi. There were no fans in the hostel. So with a few other students, I slept on the roof on a cotton mat ‘duree’ only. The population around the college was mixed. Till late in the evening we heard sounds of shots, sometimes in the night also. Fear, worry, insecurity, with daily rounds of news and rumours of violence on both sides of the newly created borders, life was becoming difficult. Some times we heard the whistle of volunteers going round the streets. The RSS volunteers did valuable service to assure the general people that they should maintain proper law and order. This lasted up to September–October. Toward the end of September, suddenly there was curfew imposed on Delhi for three days. After that, the curfew was relaxed for three hours from 8:00 to 11:00 a.m. We had also the first quarterly break for ten days or so. I picked up my bicycle and got out of the town for my village. On the way I saw dead bodies lying by the road side like sheaves.of grain on the harvested fields. About eight miles away from the town, around Nangli village close to Badli, I saw from a distance a crowd of people by the road. I felt afraid. I did not know who they could be. I cautiously cycled the distance, knowing well that if I saw some suspicious movement in the crowd, I would be able to run back. Fortunately, there was no such movement. It was the usual village crowd, all quiet yet waiting, as if, for something menacing.

I reached my village to find that the Jamna was in flood, the first time after samvat 1981 (1924 A.D.) when, as mother used to tell me, I was an eight month old baby. Our house was on higher ground and the grand daughter of the man who had performed the night-long Pooja during my childhood was staying at our house. She was the water-farmer who had taken our village pond on lease for one season. We had to work hard to build some sort of embankment to prevent the flood waters from inundating the village homes.

For the ten days of the quarterly break I stayed in the village where too I had a painful experience of the aftermath of political freedom, humanly parted. There was a village, it still is, Barota, about two miles from our village. It was dominantly a Muslim farmers’ village. Under the pressure of partition, they were planning to go to Pakistan, although some of them wanted to stay on in India. But the atmosphere was so oppressive for them that they had no choice. At least one family consisting of about fifty members is said to have perished in their home. Some of them fled away, some were killed. Some did escape to the Sonipat camp wherefrom they were able to go to Pakistan under the support and protection of the Government. That was the first year of my M.A. course. During the disruption of the village Barota, I read in the clouds something like the figure of Jove with his locks dishelved in frenzy before whom I saw human desperates praying and protesting for safety and survival. I remember I could not eat for three days.

Many of the Muslims around in Haryana, especially the Meos in Mewat, Gurgaon Dist. came back to Hinduism. After all, most of them, if not all, were Hindus before they converted to Islam for their own reasons. The Muslims of Mewat, all reconverted to Hinduism. There was a meeting of the Mewat people ‘come back home’ with the Hindus of the surrounding area at Dayananda Math, Rohtak. I was present in that meeting. Swami Omananda of Narela, then Acharya Gurukul Jhajjar, presided over that meeting. The agenda of the meeting was reintegration of the come-back people with the Hindu community. Many Hindu families offered to accept them and have marital relations with them. But in due course, this enthusiasm and liberal attitude waned away, while Muslim clerics too in the mean time stirred up and the result was that the ‘Meos’ went back to Islam. A  few days ago I heard on the TV that a Muslim leader was complaining of some ‘Hindu enthusiasts’ that they were trying to disrupt their ‘bhaichara’, Muslim community brotherhood, as if the moment you convert, your ancestors, families, relations, all become alien. If I convert, how do my parents and forefathers become alien? This is the bane of conversion, that is how and why the two nation theory, Pakistan and communal violence came in for nothing reasonable and realistic. That is how and why ‘the one family of man’ became divided, scattered and mutually conflictive, up to the level of terrorism, bloodshed and death. Freedom and partition, after 1947, became synonymous in India. The one family of Mother Earth living under the same one roof (Atherveda, 12, 1, 45) became two and many more with hate and conflict, that is the political journey of man through ‘religion’ for peace and self-realisation.

Hind sight is said to be 20×20. It is, and still it may not be. Sometimes I have heard my friends say that Jinnah’s threat of civil war – though it was surely a bluff like Pakistan’s parade of the use of nuclear weapons—should have been taken, like time, by the fore-lock. But even then, still, the Hindu-Muslim question? Well, some way, in some form, it still remains, with the minority question by virtue of the vote-bank politic. The Kashmir procrastination, the regrets of Sarahdi Gandhi Abdul Ghaffar Khan, Balochistan, Bangla Desh, the Indian democracy and the role of the opposition, all these problems in view of Hyderabad and Goa ask for answers which recede into the folds and darkness of corruption for want of determination. These and such things are the after thoughts of the audience of which I was a member on August 15, 1947 at the Red Fort. Ultimately all is as it is, except for doing your best.

In the state and constitutional order of democracy and secularism (Rgveda, 10, 53, 6) the term ‘minority’ is an insult any where in the world.

Now back to M.A.:

Finances first: My worry number one after the studies. The Jangid Brahman Mahasabha deserves my thanks and I thank the Mahasabha from the core of my heart. After matriculation, they had got the information that I had stood first in the High School Exam. Then at the All India Session of the Mahasabha at Fatehpur (Rajasthan), they had awarded me a silver medal of distinction in 1943. The Mahasabha, in 1947, when Mool Chand ji was President and Lakshmi Narayan ji was Treasurer, they awarded me a scholarship of Rs. 15/= p.m. for two years. Every month, I used to walk from Darya Ganj to Lal Kuan, to Lakshmi Narayan ji’s office. Lakshmi Narayan ji gave me a slip of paper with the number of the payment, I got the number registered in the Mahasabha office in Haiderkuli Haveli in Chandni Chawk, then collected the money from Lakshmi Narayan ji’s office at Lal Kuan, and back to College at Darya Ganj. I had earned four hundred rupees from the Mohana School. The College maintained all the facilities awarded to me in 1943, and with the Jangid Mahasabha scholarship of Rs. 15 p.m. I was free from financial worries through M.A. After M.A. when I was appointed lecturer at Hans Raj College, from the first few months salary I returned Rs. 401/= to the Mahasabha with heart felt thanks in order that the scholarship process for education be kept on.

With this freedom from financial worry classes started as usual. Seminar meetings on Saturdays, as usual. There were two new courses, rather unfamiliar: Old and Middle English literature, both poetry and prose, was one, and the other was History of English language from the Indo-European times onwards, through the Indi European family of languages, the Germanic language groups up to English. I was surprised to learn that Old English, like Sanskrit, was an inflexional language. But that presented no difficulty for me because I knew Sanskrit. Middle English too was inflexional but closer to modern English through Chaucer which we had read at the B.A. stage. First Mr. Sanyal taught us, and after Mr. Sanyal had left, Mr. M.N.Ghosh taught us both these courses. At the University, Mr. Sood, Mr. Jarvis and Mr. Samuel Mathai taught us. It was said about these courses that no student got good marks in these two. If I remember correctly, I got 64 and 68.

I remember two things of that time:-

One day the weather was cold but the sun was bright. So we had the class on the first floor terrace of the college building, in the sun. I was in kurta and dhoti, Jai Dev Sharma and Sushil were in combination suit. Suddenly Mr. Sanyal with all enthusiasm of a happy man almost burst forth: “Tulshi, you remind me that I am in India.” We all felt surprised, after all we were all in India, what was so special about me and the reminder? After some light talk I learnt that Mr. Sanyal’s happy sentence was a complimentary appreciation for me because of the kurta and dhoti. Mr. Sanyal was a Bengali, fond of kurta and dhoti. The Mohana boys also had described me as a Bengali.

The other occasion was a class with Mr. Ghosh. It was January 17, 1948. On January 17th we were to celebrate the birthday of the founder, Rai Saheb Lala Kedar Nath, who had created the Ramjas insitutions as a gift for his parents to take up for their want of grand children. Ramjas was the name of Rai Saheb’s father. For the celebration and to pay homage to Rai Saheb’s memory, we held a meeting in the College hall. I spoke in that meeting. I was in a kurta, dhoti and Bata ‘homely’ chappals without socks.

Navin Chandra Sehgal who was doing M.A. Hindi, had written a booklet in Hindi in verse form celebrating the struggle of Rai Saheb for education, the same way as I was doing in spite of the cold. I had read the booklet, it had inspired me and given me the self-confidence of rare order. I remembered my morning trips from Darya Ganj to Katra Lacchu Singh for the house of Mr Lakshmi Chand Gupta for Mathematics in class XI. I don’t remember what I spoke but I remember one sentence: ‘Rai Saheb walked to the house of his teachers and to the college in the cutting winds of December.’ I don’t know how, but my words struck a chord in the heart of Mr. Ghosh, and later in the class he spoke of my words, and my bare feet (without socks) in the cold morning of January. I am writing of this because I believe that whatever the way you live, simple, poor, personal, whatever it be, you may still strike a chord in the heart of people who know, who appreciate you, who admire you. Every-body comes with a purpose, that purpose is important if you don’t forget it in spite of the glamorous world around. Everyone has a purpose and a meaning.

Then something happened, which one way it inspired me and one way it tested my tenacity of purpose, even though a compromise was available at hand. It was a letter from the University through college that the convocation would be held in January, on the 14th if I remember it correctly. It was a wonderful news. Then I read the rules: ceremonial suit and the rehearsal. The rehearsal was fine, but the ceremonial wear was the problem. We had to attend the convocation either in a dark western suit with tie and shoes or in the Indian style with achkan, pajama and shoes. For my ‘ceremonial’ wear I had only kurta, dhoti and Guptaji’s gift of a Nehru jacket, which meant: ‘ruled out’. But the convocation, receiving the degree from the blessing hands of the Vice-Chancellor Sir Maurice Gwyer, was an ambition, a dream to come true. I could get the degree later also through the College or through post, but that was not acceptable to my conscience. Suits were available on rent also, but a picture, photograph in rented suit, would be a life time reminder of the ‘compromise’ against the determination. After all, my father too had faced the problem of choice between my CCI clerk’s job and my continuation of studies. He had rejected the compromise and decided to help me to continue my studies. I decided not to have the suit on rent. I concentrated on the less expensive but more patriotic Indian ceremonial wear: achkan, pajama and shoes. I must see my mother, the sure resort at any time of need. I picked up my cycle on Saturday and went home to meet my mother.

To my mother I explained the problem. She dug out of a wall, fiftytwo rupee coins, old ones of silver. I worked out the arithmetic of the situation: two and a quarter yard of black blazer from Gandhi Khadi Bhandar at Rs 10 per yard,  Rs 22, eight annas, plus Rs 12 for the tailor, for lining, long cloth lying in the home to be dyed black, all total Rs 35. Seventeen rupees I returned to mother.  On January 14, 1948, I received the degree, all told thirteen graduates with B.A. (Hons.) from all the colleges of the University. After the ceremony we had a group photograph with Sir Maurice Gwyer sitting in the centre. In the evening I went to Guptaji at his residence to pay him the homage due to the teacher.

M.A. went off very well. Teaching was centralized in the University, four days a week. Tutorials were held in the college. Senior teachers from colleges took part in the university cooperative teaching. Mr. Samuel Mathai from St, Stephens, Dr. Sarup Singh from Hindu, Mr. Sood from Hindu, Guptaji from Ramjas, normally taught different courses. Mr. M.M. Bhalla from Stephens taught the Romantics and he was often a subject of discussion among the students. There were no discussions, such as the English Seminar at Ramjas. At the university, it was purely lecture work. Teachers in the University Department were appointed much later.

Before the exam in 1949 we worked out a thematic scheme of revision. We used to go on long walks on Elgin Road up to Feroze Shah Kotla with Mr. M.R. Gupta and Mr. R.C. Sharma. My companions there were Jai Dev Sharma, Sushil Syal and Jai Dev Dabas who also had long sittings with me for Old English. I had prepared a special note book of the major part of the course texts with meanings of all the words of the text. In the History of English Language course, the change of meaning and the change of basic sounds were very interesting themes which we prepared on our own. With Mr. M.R. Gupta and Mr. Sharma we discussed other themes in the field of poetry, drama and novel.

The exam in April, ’49 was a trying as well as an interesting affair. I used to take breakfast at seven at Sushil Syal’s where his mother treated both of us as her own children. Sometimes in the evenings, Jai Dev Sharma and I used to take dinner at his house where sister Sharda used to bake special parathas for us. In the morning Sushil, Jai Dev Sharma and I travelled together for the University Exam Centre and discussed five important themes of the course concerned. As good fortune would have it, all those five happened to be there in the question paper. I had changed my pen after my B.A. exam experience.

For the first two courses things went off very well. But in the third course something happened, this time not by intellectual error but by a visual error: There were seven questions in all from which we had to answer five. I had prepared the course very well. In question No. 6, there were six options. In question No.7, there were only two options. In the answer to question 6, I answered one of the six options, but for question No. 7, by a visual error, I selected the last option of question No. 6 and not the first option of question No. 7. One unconscious reason also for the visual error probaby was that the option answered for the sixth and the option selected for the seventh from the sixth itself were on different authors. Still an error is an error. When I discovered my mistake, I felt there was a bomb shell fallen on my mind. I was preparing for a first, and I was going to lose at least ten marks for the error. I thought I would not be able to get a college job, and I might have to go to a school, for which I would need one year’s teacher’s training. One year’s loss in my family situation was unbearable, but I was sure I would have to endure the loss.

As I stood totally confused after the paper, the girl who had had a first with first position in B.A. (Hons.) came up with all sympathy and sincerity. She too was honestly sorry for the loss which I would certainly have to suffer, but she suggested that in view of that loss, I should drop and appear in the exam next year. I spoke of that possibility to Guruji, Hari Ramji, where I went for some tea and relaxation. He flared up: How can you think of that? Prepare for the rest. I felt quiet. I had to.

The worry continued. I went to Guptaji to tell him of the blunder I had made. His response to my distress was very practical and realistic. He said: “Look young man,” the same way as he had spoken to me after matriculation, “examiners too are human. Sometimes they do not tally the number of the question with the answer, specially when the substance of the questions and answers is different. You answered one of the six options on one author, from Q.6; the other option from the same question which you answered for question 7 is on a different author. So it could be possible that I would also make the examiner’s error and give you credit. But now you have made another mistake: you have forewarned me against that ‘lucky chance’in your favour. This means your loss is certain, but never mind, look after the rest and move forward.” Some consolation, some relief, some hope of good luck, and the determination to move out of fear and worry in favor of the work still in hand.

The day the result was to be announced (June 10), I was at my Mamaji’s at Murthal. A day or two before that I was with Dr. Sarup Singh. He put to me a question which I did not understand then: “If you had the choice, what would you have, the first position or the first division?” I replied, “If I had the choice, I would choose the first division, not the first position, because the first position, one can have even with the second division.” This had been the position from 1941 to 1948. He felt satisfied with my answer and wished me all well. On the day of the announcement of the result I cycled from Murthal to Delhi, saw the notice board, my name was on top, the only name in Division I. Dr. Sarup Singh had the first division in 1940, after that I had a first in 1949.

Hans Raj College:

After the M.A. exam, four of us were staying in the house of Prof. A. Bhattacharya of Hindu college, next to the house of Dr. Sarup Singh. Prof. Bhattacharya was away in Bengal during the summer vacation. Secondly, after the announcement of the result, I wanted to make applications for a job to as many colleges as had advertised their positions available. The first application I made was to Hans Raj College, Delhi.  The application was made on June 10, the day the result was announced. The first interview call I received was from Hans Raj. The selection committee met, I think, on 18 June. On June 27, I received the appointment letter with the order that I should report for duty on July 26.

Thus ended the struggle which had started one day in April – May 1931. This was the first phase of the struggle called ‘Abhyasa’ in Yoga Sutras which must be long-sustained, without relent and with absolute commitment. The ancients said centuries ago: “Sukharthinah kuto vidya, vidyarthinah kutah sukham. No vidya for the man in love with comfort, no comfort for the man in persuit of Vidya.”

Detractors and admirers both, like good and evil, live side by side in the world. Somebody in the village spread the rumour that I had failed in the M.A. exam. My father was deeply grieved, even angry with himself and the more with me. When I went back to the village on June 11, I told him I had passed the exam. He felt relieved, self-justified and proud of me. Both, my father, my mother, and Mamajis all blessed me. Guptaji and other teachers all blessed me. Guptaji in fact had written to me from Simla that Mr. Gurmukh Nihal Singh, Principal Ramjas College, would give due credit and consideration for sure to me for my merit, but on his own he would prefer that I should join another college. Hans Raj was my first, right and only choice. Before I joined Hans Raj, I met Guruji, Guptaji, Principal G.N. Singh and other teachers. I received a shower of blessings from all of them.

Having taken to the national Khadi wear since my Narela days and continued up to the convocation time, I decided to continue with it at Hans Raj also. There were other senior teachers too, Mr. Chawla at Hindu who wore a kurta pajama and a Nehru jacket. There was Dr. Sarup Singh wearing kurta dhoti and simple shoes, village style. During B.A. (Hons.) at Ramjas, it was in that style I had met him on Flagstaff road, myself too in the same style. So I got two Khadi achkans from Khadi Gramodyog, Chandni Chowk, Delhi. At the time of the Selection Committee I had met Dr. Om Prakash too in khadi, he wore the same khadi at college too but he was in bush-shirt and trousers. I was ‘pucca desi’.

My first teaching class was with B.A. III year. I introduced myself and began the teaching of the text. Some of the boys asked me the meaning of certain words. I told them the meaning but suggested that they should also consult the dictionary. The report of it went up to the Principal Dr. G. L. Datta. Dr. Datta advised me to help the students the way they needed although my suggestion of dictionary consultation, he said, was not wrong. The question and answer style continued in the normal style.

My appointment was ‘on probation’ for one year. During that one year and even later I listened to the advice of the Principal and of the then head of the department Mr. I.N. Bhatnagar. Mr. Bhatnagar, Dr. Om Prakash and I were interviewed the same day, and from the same day we were fairly close. After one year service we were all confirmed. From day one, I had decided that my first dedication should be and would be to the institution and to the seniors as senior members of the Institute, to each one his due in his respective place. My guiding principle was and is and always has been Rigveda 5, 51, 15: ‘Svasti panthaam anucharema surya chandramasaaviva…” To each one his due in his right place. Follow this and the you will never go astray.

I got the first salary, for July. I went home and gave the money to my parents. They felt settled and satisfied, happy with me every way and blessed me. With the next few months’ salary I bought a watch, then a bicycle and then paid the Jangid Brahman Mahasabha Rs. 401, with thanks for the 15 rupees monthly stipend they had paid me for the two years of the M.A. Course.

For a few days I was staying with Guruji at 10-D Kamla Nagar. Then my Ramjas College Principal, G. N. Singh asked me to stay at his son’s house in Darya Ganj. His son had gone out for a month on holiday and the house was, unattended, not safe. So I moved to Darya Ganj for a month.

For accommodation, I met Guptaji. He referred me to Shri Ram Chander Gupta, a teacher of English at Ramjas School No.5 in Karol Bagh. He had a couple of houses in the Western Extension Area (WEA) Rohtak Road. I got a room in house No. 3C/25. I knew R.C. Guptaji since his M.A. days at Ramjas College. Mr. Gupta in those days was doing M.A. English as a teacher candidate. He immediately recognized me. The one room I got was from a part of his own residence. Another house of his was under construction at 3C/14, the one room residence of mine was only a temporary arrangement.

Karol Bagh in those days was not a crowded glamorous area as it now is. I used to eat at the house-cum ‘dhaabaa’ residence of a senior Sikh gentleman who was very kind to me. Sometimes he gave me a glass of lassi for which I offered to pay, but he refused to accept that payment because the lassi was from the milk of his home-cow. One day, afternoon, I felt like having tea. I went to the Sardarji’s ‘dhaabaa’, it was closed. I went round Ajmal Khan Road, nothing proper available. Gurudwara Road, nothing available. I came back and drank a glass of water. That was Karol Bagh in 1949.

During that time at College, I had two funny experiences. One day for breakfast I had a full Panjabi glass of lassi. The first class at College was “Composition and Grammar”. Students had written their day’s assignments and I was reading and correcting one. And there I got the lassi effect. I dozed for a few moments but unconsciously my pencil kept moving, meaningfully or meaninglessly, I cannot say. But that day morning I decided for the life time never to have lassi in the morning. I have kept that vow.

The other experience is funny and very embarrassing: I was to be on invigilation duty in the first quarterly exam at the University. I finished the one or two classes I had at College, picked up my bicycle and tried to cycle through the rain water on the college campus. And as I did so, down I fell into a pit the workers for repair had dug temporarily. The college boys enjoyed the rain from the verandah, raised a peal of laughter, while I collected my bicycle, went home to change and then went to the University for duty. On my way back I went to Guruji’s home for something hot to counter the cold. As he saw me, he too raised up the same laughter because he too had watched my plight from the DAV school. Since then I have realized that cycling in the rain is no good except as a subject for comic poetry such as “John Gilpin”. Next day no one talked of it to me, they had all exhausted their battery the previous day.

My Indian wear continued for quite some time, but then I had to change: first for reasons of the weather, and secondly for reasons of convenience. The man who could keep it up for a lifetime was Dr. Krishan Lal who is now retired as professor of Sanskrit from Delhi University. When I was lecturer at Hans Raj, he was a student of Sanskrit Honours. The students of Hindi and Sanskrit Honours had to do one course in English, and this class was assigned to me. But he wore kurta pajama the same way as I wore at Ramjas. But as a ‘professor’ I thought I should wear the full suit even in summer. I did persist for some time but then I had to give up. It happened like this:

I used to travel to college and back by cycle via Rohtak Road. At the intersection of Rohtak Road and Ajmal Khan Road, there was a fruit vendor who sold very fine grapes. Almost every day I used to buy some grapes from him. One day as I was buying the grapes it started drizzling.The achkan served as rain wear, but my pajama, tight as it was, got drenched and stuck to my legs. Much as I tried, I could not take it off. Ultimately I pulled off the pajama upside down and asked my wife to pull it off with force. The pajama came off, all seams torn off down to the knees. Secondly, I saw that, slowly and gradually, Khadi Gramodyog also developed into something like a business organization with directors meeting at Metropolitan cities, travelling by air, which showed that Khadi was no more the poor man’s wear as it had been, because it had been promoted to the political man’s wear. I did maintain my love of khadi as I do till now, but now it is a matter of taste and choice, not the matter of national commitment. I am sure it is so with every khadi lover. My daily wear and formal choice number one is kurta dhoti, I am my real self that way, kurta khadi, and dhoti, not fine but medium, mill made. The quality khadi dhoti is too expensive, and the mills too are now national, not ‘angrezi’.

My wife and my son Gian joined me after the September break. Gian was about four years then. And this brings me to the sad and solemn part of my memories, because my wife had joined the sufferance and hardship of my parents with her tenacity of faith and dedication in 1941. She was a quiet girl, stayed in the family for a couple of days and went back to her parents for months, even years. But after 1943, she lived mostly with my parents while I lived mostly, even in the holidays, in the College. Her strength was faith in my parents and in me.

There had been other college boys in the similar situation while I was studying at Ramjas. A few of them deserted their wife with the result that the girl and the parents suffered a lot. While I was at school, I was also advised to join the Samaj for all time. But I did not agree, saying that I had my parents and I was married, and I could not forsake my duty to them. Acharya Bhagwan Devji said: “Don’t worry. Those who sacrifice for the country, the country looks after them.” This did not appeal to me. My parents knew this and they knew my dedication. My wife and her parents also knew this. But my persistence in education did cause all that hardship which I could at least relieve after 1944 when I was working in CCI office at Rs. 74.00 p.m. But things happen the way you choose or the way they are chosen somewhere for you. So I continued, my parents continued, my wife continued. My parents’ life was hard. My wife joined that same hardship quietly, faithfully, stoically. Once Jai Dev Sharma went with me to my village home. He was there for a day or two. He saw Gian, a child of about two. He knew what village life was then. He was all respect and admiration for my people in the family. As God’s will, or my choice, or my parent’s acceptance, but for no fault of my wife’s except for the system then, she continued until she joined me in 1949. We were all, as in a chess game, at that juncture of our family history where the line to Delhi and Canada was some time yet to begin.

At 3C/25 WEA, Rohtak Road, Gian used to sit in a window through which he used to look at the Rohtak Road traffic. He was generally giving a running commentary on the vehicles that passed by: “Here is a tonga, now it is a car, then comes a bus…” and so on. After some time the other house of R.C. Guptaji’s was ready and we moved there in a two-room flat. On the weekends I used to go to my parents sometimes by bus and sometimes by bicycle. My mother used to ask me to come with Gian. Once I took him on my bicycle and that I found was uncomfortable for him. Then once I took him by bus. In India normally there is no seat for the child though the ticket price was half. So I had to hold him in my lap. After some time I wanted to change my position. I asked him to stand for a minute or so. By my side there was a senior man sitting on the next seat. He almost scolded me for having asked the child to stand for my convenience. However from his movement I could feel that he was a smart man. I asked him what he was doing in life. He said he was a retired cavalry man and in his youthful days he was a jockey too and, further, that his horse never lost the race. He explained the secret or specialty of his expertise, but from his story I learnt a lesson: that for God’s gifts you should first prepare yourself (your ‘jholi’, your bowl) for the gift:

“I was in the cavalry. I was a jockey. When you ride the horse, let the wind not hold you like brakes, let it pass through the space between the horse’s back and your thighs. Once a cobbler staked one rupee on the horse I was to ride. My horse won the race. The cobbler won Rs. 4000/=. He received his win – it was the silver rupee coin time – he spread his ‘chadar’ (shawl) to receive the tally. When the count reached two thousand, he just threw up (vomited) and died on the spot.”

I am not sure whether this story is authentic or not, but the moral is true: first deserve, then desire and pray, not only for the gift but also for strength to hold the gift.

Mr. Gupta, the landlord, too moved to the new house, 3C/14, WEA. There we lived up to 1953. Mr. Gupta had lived a hard life, and he was still struggling for a sound financial standing in order to educate his four sons and a daughter. All his sons were well settled, two as college lecturers, one as doctor, and one migrated and settled in USA. His daughter was married in a well-to-do family of Agra.

Mr. Gupta was building his third house, 3C/24, and for that he was raising money on interest. He offered his tenants including me that if we deposited some money with him he would reduce the rent to the extent of 9% (annual) interest on the deposit, per month. He was a very honest, practical and courteous man. I deposited some money with him and for interest payment he reduced the monthly rent. That arrangement gave me some relief. I slowly deposited Rs. 4000/= with him and he reduced the rent by Rs. 30/= per month.

We had two homes in the village. One had been rebuilt in 1939–40. The other, my father started rebuilding in 1949–50. I used to give him hundred rupees per month for home expenses but he insisted on working as before and saved all that money. He completed the house around 1950. But under the strain his health deteriorated and in 1951 (September 16, Purnima evening) he expired.

At that difficult time when my father lay dead, Mamaji was with me. My cousins also came from the village. From the college certain colleagues were present. But Shanti Narainji was scheduled to deliver an inter college lecture at Hindu College, so he had to leave. Mr. J.D. Khatri and P.L. Soni stayed on for the funeral. That gesture of human solidarity in the crisis became the foundation of lifetime friendship between us three. On the third day we collected the ashes in just one big tray, a ‘tasla’, in all. My eldest cousin Ramu made a one sentence remark on life: “Fifty six years of the life struggle end up in a bagful of ash.” That’s what life is for all of us on earth: Bhasmantam Shariram.

Gian then was 5-6 years. On the morning of September 16, he said to his mother and grandmother that grandpa had gone away in white clothes. Where and which way? asked Dadiji. He pointed exactly the way we were to carry the body to the Nigambodh cremation ground on the bank of the Jamna River. Do children retain that faculty of premonition? We may ponder over this mystery.

In May, 1951, Indira was born. There was no girl in the direct line of my father. My great uncle, Rati Ram, Ramu’s father, had one daughter Basanti. But my grandfather had no sister or a daughter. So when my father was informed that he had a grand daughter, he kissed mother Earth and spontaneously spoke in ceremonial language, “I shall arrange and celebrate the wedding of my grand daughter in a royal style with a hundred chariots wedding party!” I had a sister, the second child of my parents after me. But she did not survive after the age of four.

After the death of my father, mother was left alone in the village home. We wanted her to move with us to Delhi. She agreed but before she did, she wanted to have a havan in the home and offer the ‘prasad’ to every home. I agreed and arranged for the havan and prasad for every home, Harijans included. But we did keep one of the village traditions. Brahmans first, others later, all included. Some people did not like it. They felt that we had equated all together. Brahman’s first all right, but how could Harijans and others be equal? Most of them agreed but some did not come. Ultimately all agreed, but Harijans, to avoid further argumentation, offered to sit in a separate line. To my surprise, I discovered that even among Harijans, now ‘Dalits’ for the politicians, there are higher and lower castes. Now, of course, I can see Harijans and others taking tea together at the village bus stand tea stall, which is partly, if not wholly, a gift of democracy and the value of the vote.

After the Havan and the ‘prasad’, mother moved to Delhi with us. Even earlier when father was ailing, she was with us, mostly nursing him. But because of the presence of an ailing man and other jobs which go with nursing, mother sensed that our situation was not really comfortable in a rented house. This sense convinced us that ultimately we shall need our own house. A mother’s sense is nothing short of ‘ashirvad’, a blessing.

For the room which we left when we moved to 3C/14,, a friend, Sahaj Ram, a school teacher in a close-by primary school, came for rented residence. On my recommendation, Mr. R.C. Gupta gave that room to him. To that primary school, Gian was admitted.

My wife expressed a desire that she too would like to read and write if possible, with the help of Sahaj Ramji. I engaged Sahaj Ramji as a tutor for her. In a few months she was able to read and write neatly up to, we can say, any person who has done the basic education. But her eyes gave her the problem. I got her examined by Dr. Pratap Singh Sandhu, a friend of Dr. Datta’s. The number was minus 9 and 11. For that reason she had to give up. She had to wear the glasses up to the last day of her life.

Gian was an observant intelligent boy from the first day at school. He was also a modest kind of boy, he had passed his first few years in the village with all those limitations which go with village children. He would not have felt at home in a school of children coming from affluent families. Moreover, I too was struggling for the kind of settlement I wanted. Still further, I too had come up through ordinary government schools and so Gian too may come up, I felt, and the teacher (Sahej Ram ji) was there to look after him.

In the meantime, my mother-in law fell ill and it was some fatal illness she suffered from. Chacha Bhartu, my wife’s uncle, who was very friendly with us, told us that she wanted to eat ‘dahi-bada.’ He knew that she was going, so he wanted that she should have her desire any way. He took her to Delhi where she had a dish of ‘dahi-bada’ to her heart’s desire. After a few days my mother in law expired.

Left to himself, my father-in-law decided that my elder brother-in-law, Sultan Singh, should marry so that the house could be managed properly. He was married to Poonam of Bahadur Garh, daughter of Shibdayal, a businessman of Kathmandi. Ram Kishan, my younger brother-in-law was then a school boy. For some reason the house was not being managed properly. Specially Ram Kishan was not too happy. He was also too sorry for the loss of his mother. During those days, my mother and my wife visited Nawada, my wife’s native village close to Delhi. They felt sorry for Ram Kishan and my mother suggested that Ram Kishan should be taken to our home so that his education could be properly managed. This is how Ram Kishan came to us. For some time he stayed with us but later he was admitted to Ramjas School No. 2 on Anand Parbat and he also joined the school hostel.  From Ramjas School he passed the High School Examination of the Delhi Board of High School Education. After High School he was admitted to Hans Raj College for the prepatory class.

House of our own:

At our level at 3C/14 WEA, we were thinking of somehow building our own house. In the newspapers I saw an advertisement that certain plots in Shakti Nagar were going to be auctioned by the Delhi Improvement Trust, a government organization. I had deposited Rs.4000/= with Mr. R. C. Gupta. The plots were around 150 square yards and the auction rate was around Rs. 12 per sq. yard. I spoke to Mr. Gupta for his advice because he had the experience. I said that for about two thousand rupees I would have a plot of about 150 square yards and with another two thousand I would put up some structure for a home. Mr. Gupta gave a serious thought to my proposal, ‘a village man’s calculation for a house in Delhi, not a dream house but something one’s own.’ He commended my proposal, but he said that these plots were just by the side of the ‘Ganda-nala’, called Najaf Garh drain. “So the first thing, the awful smell. Secondly, the plot is too small for you. Later if you want to add just one square yard, you will not be able to do that for any price.” Therefore, he suggested, “You better entrust the whole thing to a property dealer and he would be the best guide. So far as money is concerned, you can have your four thousand rupees at any time you want.” His advice appealed to me. My line of thinking changed.

Mr. Gupta referred me to a property dealer in Jawahar Nagar, where our college was going to move in the University Enclave.Nemi Chand Jain was the property dealer. His younger brother, K.C.Jain came to see me. He explained the whole business to me and offered that a plot in Shakti Nagar, in the external ring of Nangia Park, measuring 262 sq. yards was available at Rs. 22 or 23 per sq. yard. The plot would cost about Rs.6000/=. or a little more. I discussed this with Mr. Gupta. According to him it was a reasonable proposal. The deal was finalized with the seller, Mrs. Kapuri Devi of Chandni Chawk at Rs. 22.50 per sq. yard. The date of payment was March 31, 1953. The whole cost would be Rs.6200/=. The plot was a free hold property.

I had only Rs.4000/=. I had to arrange another Rs. 2200/=. I was not able to arrange the money on time. In that case the seller could break the deal and I could lose the earnest money. I won’t mind that. So I said to Mr. K.C. Jain, the agent: “Mr. Jain, you assure the seller that the buyer is a reliable party. He needs a few more days. In the mean time the buyer is prepared to make a part payment of the price, four thousand rupees and he can do so even without a receipt.” The seller agreed. I asked Mr. R.C. Gupta to pay me the four thousand rupees I had deposited with him. He gave me the money in cash, in the evening. How to keep the money safe? Mr. Gupta would not take it, a liability now for nothing. I put the money at night in my bed. A new experience it was. Even a mouse motion would wake me up, that was the fear of money for a village man. How do people hold tons of cash? In bullet proof homes perhaps. The next day, Mr. K.C. Jain collected the money, the part payment was made to Kapuri Devi. I felt safe and sure. I requested Mr. Gupta to help me get Rs. 2000/=, to make the full payment. He introduced me to a money lender. I got the money at 9% interest, the plot was registered in my name on April 17, 1953. Sixty two hundred all told.

Now building the house. Something happened which confirmed my resolve:  My father had made a small cot called ‘khatola’ for Gian when he was a child to sleep by himself. When we came to Delhi we brought that cot also as something precious. It lay in the courtyard in the day. The court yard was pucca, cemented like our room floor. Indira was about two years then. She was playing with the cot, pulling it this way and that. It was a simple pastime for the child, but it irked the landlady. She moved up, snatched the khatola putting off the hand of the child. I saw it, and the resolve was made.

I had saved some money after registration of the plot. I paid back the money lender Mr. Mathura Dass, as I continued to work for Guruji’s publisher. I requested the money lender to pay me for the building. He agreed to pay me a sum of Rs, 8000/= in two instalments of four thousand each. He said: “When you have spent the first Rs.4000/=, your property would be six plus four, 10,000/= rupees worth. Then against that property worth ten thousand, I shall pay you another four thousand more as you need. In short this way the house was built at a cost of twenty thousand rupees (the plot and the building), plot 262 sq. yards, built area 1600 sq. feet, only the ground floor, and the rest open yard paved with bricks for children to play. If a brick got broken it could be replaced. Thanks to Mr. R.C. Gupta, the house building guru, for his advice and the financing process then.

The day we dug up the foundation, we moved our residence to the plot: 28/15 Shakti Nagar, September 16, 1953. We erected a small building laborer’s hut and moved in there. It was about 8 feet high, roof of reeds first, then of iron sheets, simple food, a few utensils, sleeping in the open. We have pictures of that scene.

It was a Kodak box camera bought on Indira’s first birthday in 1952, the first picture of Indira, one year, walking up to me with the camera focused on her. The builders were my cousins from Murthal. Mamaji for the first few days guided us. We cooked in the open for ourselves and for the builders. The work began on October 2, 1953 and continued up to March 1954. After the roof of the front part was laid and secured, we moved there from the hut, inside. My wife and my mother did a lot of cooking and other work too. I used to wet the bricks with water early morning. It was there Indira first saw the rising sun. She ran to me, a two and a half year child, shouting “Tamasha, Tamasha”. Recently in 2016, when the other day I saw two or three, even one year children in their mother’s lap, trying to catch the havan fire flames at the Samaj temple, I re-collected that same child’s love for nature.

Mr. R.C. Gupta throughout helped us, our luggage, furniture and all kept on lying at 3C/14. We removed all that around April 1954. Then Hans Raj also moved from Chitra Gupta Road to the University Enclave some time in 1953.Gian was admitted to Corporation school, Prem Nagar first and then to Dhanpat Mal School, Roop Nagar. Indira was admitted to Corporation Girl’s school close to our house and later to government school No. 1, Shakti Nagar.

On the whole the house was the result of joint labor, the family and the workforce. When the house had been completed we were faced with the problem of completion certificate from the Corporation and income tax clearance certificate from the government. We had first to face the inspectors. There was one, Mr. Kapur, Corporation inspector of the area. He inspected the house in relation to the sanctioned plan. Here I would say, on the basis of my practical experience, that the plan on paper and its execution on the ground are two different things, both concrete, but one theoretical and the other practical. Mr Kapur compared the two, hesitated a few times, but after some minimum and meaningful discussion, agreed and recommended the house for the completion certificate which I got a little later.

Then the income tax clearance: the department, that is, the inspector, calculated that the house should have cost Rs. 23,000/=. I stated in my application and explanation that it cost Rs.19,000/=. There was no expense on chaukidar (security man), because I myself was on the spot all the time. The floors and wood work were simple, not exactly according to government schedule. And then I explained how I raised the money from my parents and my friends. The inspector’s response was: “You are telling stories.” My response to his remark was: “Okay, please write on the file that I am telling stories, and send it on to the Income Tax Officer.” He was taken aback by this freedom and frankness. He wrote something on the file and sent it up to the Officer. The officer was Usha Sowara, M.A. in Philosophy from Delhi University. She accepted my statements and explanation and ordered for issuance of the clearance certificate.

Here I am reminded of another, an interesting case. One teacher from Jakholi, the village from where I had passed the vernacular final exam, had built his house close to mine in block No. 33. He knew me very well. He was the same man who had come to our village in 1931 to ask and persuade the villagers, my father included, that they must send their children to school. He was the man to whom my father had said: “Yes, I shall send my son to school, but not to yours, I shall send him to Rai.” He came to me and told me his experience of house building and the Income tax ordeal. He had gone to the I.T. Office and met the I.T.O. The I.T.O. asked him to take seat on the chair which was meant for the applicant. He replied, “No Sir, though it is true that you are here in your chair because of teachers like me, still here you are the Officer and I am a ‘Sawalee’, i.e., a supplicant, so I shall stand only, that is as it should be.” The I.T.O. smiled and said “As you please Master ji. Now please explain how you have built this house.” Master Ji took a long deep breath, seriously thought, and with unusual self-confidence expressed with all humility, said: “Sir, in the service of people like you and your children, I have been worn down from 5ft 6 to 4ft 10. Is it a sin or crime that with the savings of a life time, I have been able to build a small hut for me and my children?” The Masterji was a short-statured man, the boys too used to call him short (Chhanga). The I.T.O. was morally touched: “Ok Masterji, it is done. Go home and enjoy yourself.” Before the I.T.O. in my case, I was at the beginning of the road, Masterji was almost at the destination.

At Hans Raj:

At Hansraj two experiences for life, I remember: one when I was late, the other when someone else was away.

We were holding the first quarterly exam. Mr. H.R. Gulati and I were on invigilation duty. Dr. S.S. Gandhi was the superintendent. Dr. Datta was in his office all the time. He lived on the campus. Mr. Gulati lived in 23/4, Shakti Nagar (main) Road. I lived in Nangia Park, block 28. I used to go to college by cycle or just walking. Both ways I used to pass by Mr. Gulati’s house. One day during the exam I decided to walk the distance. I called on Mr. Gulati, who took a few minutes to come out. We walked to the college and reached at 8.50. The exam was to begin at 9.00. We were supposed to reach college at 8.45 latest and be ready for duty in Dr. Gandhi’s Exam office. At 8.50 as we reached, we found Dr. Datta standing and waiting for us. A little embarrassed, but still on the defensive and rather self justified, we said, “Sir, there are still 10 minutes to the exam.” Dr. Dutta, his eyes on his watch, said, “Your ten minutes have caused me five minutes strain costing fifty.” I got the lesson: in the organization, time should be calculated from the organizers’ point of view, not from the point of view of the organized. The time of the organizer is one, the time of the organized can be as different and as many as the number of the organized. The time of the organizer and of the organized must be one and the same. Hence the commandment: “Samgacchadhvam. Move together, all together.”

The other experience, again with Dr. Datta: the college started at 9.00, twenty minutes’ prayer, another 10 minutes for preparation, classes: 9.30. One day at 9.30 I was with Dr. Datta in his office. There was a noise somewhere in the classrooms. Immediately I went out, found where the class was making a noise. I entered and found that a particular teacher had not come, hence the noise. I went to the office to know if there was an application for leave of absence. None. Telephone? None. I went in to Dr. Datta and informed him that one teacher had not come, hence the noise in the class. I had advised the boys to go to the library, or the play ground or the canteen as they pleased. And then, the beginner as I was, I said that the teacher should have telephoned at least. Dr. Datta caught at the tone and the strain:

“Are you angry?”

“No Sir, who am I to feel angry? If somebody is to be angry, it is you, the Principal.”

“No, I am not angry, in fact I pity him.”

“Why pity, Sir?”

“Listen: you are at Hans Raj?”

“Yes Sir”,

Hans Raj is a great College?

Yes Sir, it is.

So you are a great man too?

Yes Sir, as you say.

And the great man is great, important?

Yes Sir.

So I pity him because he feels that he is nobody, so small that whether he goes for the class or does not go, it makes no difference. He has no self-value, no self-importance.

And then he gave me the life-time lesson of Karma: “You are important. Be indispensable”.

The question of the Indispensable: Dr. Datta was in the office when I went to Britain in 1960. When I came back in January 1963, he had retired from Hans Raj. He was then Vice Chancellor, Vikram University, Ujjain. Retiring from Ujjain, he became President of the DAV Managing Committee. I had earlier met him at his residence in Panjabi Bagh.

Long after my Indispensability karma lesson of 1953, when I was at Pilani, I heard that Dr. Datta had died and the Shanti Yajna in his memory would be held on a particular date. I decided that I must attend that yajna. I did, at Mandir Marga.

After the havan, the memorial meeting was held in the hall. Many of his students, colleagues and admirers spoke and paid tributes to him. But in their tributes there was also a streak of self-approbation, at least I felt that way. But for Hans Raj and DAV I was an ‘outsider’. So I had to send a slip to Darbari Lal ji, then organizer of the meeting, that I wanted to speak.

I spoke of Dr. Datta’s contribution to my life’s experience and what I learnt from him. And I spoke, especially of the Indispensability lesson: “You are indispensable. Be indispensable.” Just then, as if by the sheer force of the situation, unconsciously may be, I said: “Dr. Datta is gone.” In spite of his lesson given to me, he was gone. Still the lesson had, all through and even then, stayed with me. Was Dr. Datta indispensable in the Book of Nature? He was not.

The question, though tragically real in Vedic terms: Mrityave dishtah, ‘destined to die’ (Atharva, 5, 30, 17), strikes a negative note. I couldn’t close with that note. I must give it a positive turn. I said: “Death is not the end of life, because life is eternal, and this world is “really beautiful, ‘darling of the gods’, place of desire and action. You go only to change the flight. So wherever Dr. Datta is, there he is still indispensable, and indispensable he shall remain wherever he happens to be. Our problem is to find the substitute.”

I retain and follow the lesson, I simply underscore the time/place clause and say: Wherever you are, there be indispensable as long as you are there. In terms of nature, no one is indispensable. In divine terms, you can be indispensable wherever you happen to be, provided that you choose to be indispensable.

From philosophy to hard reality:

After house building, the next problem was pay back of the borrowed money. We gave half the portion of the house, the better one, on rent, because for the owner the whole house is fine, he being the owner. But if the better portion the owner retains, the tenant is likely to compare and feel unhappy. For the better portion, the tenant in our house was always happy and fine. The money I got as rent I paid to the lender every month for the interest. The money lender was a retired government servant. He too had struggled in life the same way as R.C. Gupta, or me too, except for the fact that I did not want to be a landlord or a money lender. I just wanted to be free of the debt I had and then be comfortable with my family. Because I was a ‘good’ borrower, he tried to persuade me to borrow money from him and build the upper storey. I thanked him for the money offer, but declined to enter the land-lord-tenant business. I had a tenant only as long as I would take to repay the debt, not later.

Along with teaching work, writing continued. Then something happened which gave me further confidence: Guptaji had a friend in Kashmiri Gate. His daughter was to appear in English in a University exam. I am sure she must have been a friend of Bimla’s, Guptaji’s daughter, of whom I have written earlier. So Guptaji called me and suggested that I should help. The girl’s was a conservative traditional family and girls were not to go to anybody’s house. I would be required to go to the house of the gentleman and help the girl. I took this suggestion as Guruji’s ‘adesh’ and agreed. But Guptaji asked me to speak of it to Principal Datta so that I would not be regarded as a violator of my whole time job.  In addition to Guruji’s ‘adesh’, I needed money as well to pay off the debt. So having said ‘yes’ to Guptaji I went to Dr. Datta, He listened to me patiently, understood Guptaji’s suggestion because Guptaji was highly respected in the University. Further, Guptaji now was also the Principal of Ramjas College. Having considered all this Dr. Datta said to me: “I understand all this, you need money too, and Guptaji is your teacher, but request Guptaji to suggest some more respectable way of supplementing your income.” I did not speak a word in response. I silently bowed to him and came out. The next day I met Guptaji and informed him that Datta Saheb did not approve of this arrangement. I do not know how Guptaji helped his friend’s daughter. He only felt that so far as I was concerned the matter was closed.

The next year came as it does every year. Now an important personality of Hans Raj comes into the picture.His daughter too was to appear in a University exam. She too needed help in English and also in History. Dattaji called me. I do feel that my reputation as a teacher of English was good in the College among teachers and students both. But the subject given to me was prose, grammar and composition (i.e., creative writing). Moreover, I was regarded as a helpful and obliging sort of personality. Teachers of English loved to teach glamorous subjects like poetry and drama. I met Dr. Datta. He said to me (exactly as Guptaji had earlier spoken to me): “So and so is an important man for the College. His daughter needs help in English. You take up this job. I want you to do it.” I was silent for a minute thinking over the proposal. Earlier it was Guruji, now it is the boss, but for sure, I regarded Dattaji also as a teacher, a ‘guru’ in the matter of college management, whether it is teaching or administration. As earlier, I would have to go to the house of the gentleman. Then having gauged and probably valued my silence, he added: “You will get money (paise milenge).” I did not say whether he could suggest some more respectable way of supplementing my income. That would have been a violation of my own standard of good manners, a violation of Swami Dayananda’s “Vyavahara Bhanu”. I said “Yes, Okay Sir,” and felt sure that, after all, there is a way of supplementing my income. I did not talk of money at all. I was prepared to do this job purely in the interest of the College. I was there for the College because I knew the College was there for me. For History, another teacher of the College was requested and he too agreed as I did. I taught the girl for an hour and a half, the History teacher taught her for one hour. Six days a week, for a month and half.

Surely the girl’s father was an important man. Sometimes he used to discuss with me things of human as well as of professional interest. But the first day’s meeting was very interesting. I reached his home by appointment. When I reached there by my bicycle, he was playing tennis on his beautiful lawn. He saw me. I wished him. He said, “Go and sit in the verandah.” I parked my cycle, jumped up a little and sat by a column in the high level Verandah. He finished the game, came to me and said, “Yes, what is it about?” I told him that I had been sent by Dr. Datta to help his daughter in English for the coming exam. Having heard this he felt awfully sorry, saying that around that time he was expecting an insurance agent also and that he thought I was the insurance agent. I taught the girl for an hour and a half. I informed Dr. Datta next morning that I had started the job. He was happy. Both of us taught the girl for a month and a half. The girl did well in the exam and the result too was declared.

After sometime Dr. Datta asked me whether I had been paid. I said that I had not done the job for money; nor had I been paid anything, I had done it for the College. He said “No, not this way. Why not go, congratulate the girl and her father? You will also receive the money.” I repeated that I won’t, because I had done the job not for money but for the College. But again he insisted that he would speak to the girl’s father and ask him to make the payment.

About a week or so later, Dr. Datta called me and gave me an envelope containing money. I opened the envelope. There was a neat one hundred rupee note. Dr. Datta had already given the other envelope to the other colleague of mine who taught history for one hour. He thus explained to me: “There were two envelopes sent to me, one containing one hundred and fifty rupees for the teacher who taught for one hour and a half, the other containing one hundred rupees for the teacher who taught for one hour.” I said to Dr. Datta—after all the money had come some way—“Sir I taught for one hour and a half, and Mr. So and So taught for one hour only?” Dr. Datta had given the hundred and fifty rupee envelope to the other teacher. He said only this: “Then it is a comedy of errors,” and laughed the whole thing away. For me the situation was neither comedy nor tragedy. For me it was a situation of creative cooperation between the needy and the provider. It was so between the earlier situations also except for the money paid in different ways for different values, and with different sanctions. Earlier it was the relation between the guru and the disciple, now it was between the employer and the employee. Still I hold on to the sanctity of teaching and learning: first it is between the Ultimate Father and the earthly child, then it is between mother and child, then between father and child, and then between the teacher and the disciple. That relationship alone sustains the teacher.

The problem of debt repayment still remained. But my mind became comparatively free. I did my College duties sincerely in the DAV Vedic tradition. For that reason I was made convener of the Discipline Committee, teacher–in-charge of Bharatiya Samskriti Sabha, and as a partner in the prayer, I already was, along with Jai Pal Vidyalankar and with Dr. Datta himself. It was in that capacity that I had learnt the ‘Indispensability lesson’ from Dr. Datta whom I regarded as a guru more than as the employer. Thus in addition to my College duties, I continued doing other work also without interference with my College duties. For that order of sincerity, I was appointed secretary of the Staff Association also by the teachers unanimously.

The payment of a hundred rupees through Dr. Dutta gave me the self confidence that extra teaching work was not, after all, a disreputable or unrespectable way of supplementing the teacher’s income. But there were different ways of doing it. I did accept a student if he or she came to my place. We in the home treated the student as a member of our family. I decided it this way because of a lesson learnt from a colleague’s experience. The rule, unwritten though it was but practical, was that if the teacher goes to the house of the student, he is paid more, if the student comes to the teacher, he is paid less. I insisted that the student must come to me.

My colleague’s experience was this: The teacher went to the home of the student, the way I had to go to the College member’s house. One day when he went to teach, the student’s grandmother announced his arrival in the typical Punjabi way. While the teacher was parking his bicycle by the wall, she called on the boy: “Kakaji, mashtar aya ee”, meaning: kakaji, the master is come. My colleague said it this way to me: Kaka is respectable as kakaji. But the teacher is just ‘the mashter’. My colleague said he stopped going to Kakaji’s house there and then. Hence my insistence that the seeker must come to the giver.

I learnt slowly that many teachers did this extra teaching and some had worked out a way of self-advertisement this way: A student comes to the teacher, says that he needs help. “Okay”, says the teacher. “What time, Sir?” “Well, that’s the difficulty. The Chief Minister’s son comes to me at this time. Then there is the son of the Chief Secretary coming at this time. Then the son of Dr. so and so, you know he is the top physician of the town and, in addition, our family doctor also, he comes at such and such time.” This way the convenient time for the seeker was exhausted. The teacher would then give a very inconvenient time to the student. But after a couple of weeks, it would be all right, the time suits the boy and it suits the teacher both. Similarly, the strategy for getting as much money as possible. Money was more or less in inverse proportion to convenience. To me, not acceptable.

Mehta Family:

The effort to repay the debt continued. Paying the interest every month continued. In addition, when my savings came up to a thousand or two thousand rupees, I paid that toward the capital body of the debt. Further, among city values of life, owning one’s home became the main value. So no other values than work, and freedom to live within the minimum needs of life, without the glamour of the latest fashion or watching a movie at the first show or dining out, all ruled out. With this kind of spartan living we minimized the expenditure and increased our savings. Writing work for Guruji continued. In addition, limited extra teaching remained, one student at a time.  One student was K.K. who was completing her B.A. final.

This student came through Guruji’s daughter, Shanti. Kartar Kaur Mehta was a classmate of Shanti’s. Shanti spoke to me about her. Her brother also spoke to me. And because Shanti had spoken of me to her, she and her brother agreed that she would come to our house. Shanti lived in Kamla Nagar, Kartar lived in Prem Nagar just across the road, and we lived in Shakti Nagar. Soon this relationship developed into family relationship, and the teacher-student relationship also continued from Kartar to Hardayal, to Kirpal who was admitted to Hans Raj College after high school. It continued from one generation to the next and it continues till now.

The Mehta family was very hospitable. They had a restaurant, ‘Khushdil Hotel‘ in Fatehpuri, Chandni Chowk. Once they invited us to their home to dinner and served a ‘hotel made’ menu which was unique for its variety and its quality. So on the annual meet of our Staff Council at Hans Raj, we placed the order with them for tea and snacks specially gulab jamun. It was a delicious feast and they received a unanimous vote of appreciation. In response they asked me to come to their restaurant with my friends.

We went to Khushdil restaurant with Mr. Khatri and family. We had a long repast and a longer friendly chat. Having seen the service, and tasted the variety and the plenty, Mr. Khatri whispered to me: “This cannot be for money.” After the meal, we asked the manager owner, the eldest brother, Bhai Joginder Singh, for the bill. No bill, only the pleasure of it all. Mr. Khatri, who was a fan of friends and restaurants such as York and Moti Mahal, said to me again: “I had said so.” We thanked the brother and came back home.

One thing I noticed about this family: Whenever we visited them they insisted on profuse hospitality. Just a ‘cup of tea’ was like a full dinner. They were Radha Swami Sikhs, all vegetarian, no drink except water and tea. Whenever they visited us, they would not accept anything other than simple water. I disagreed on this unequal ethics of hospitality. I discussed with them the difference between hospitality for charity and hospitality as a purely social value. Since then they changed their attitude and then we continued on an equal social basis.

Once Hardayal after his graduation, marriage and settlement, spoke to me about his son Ginni (Preetpal Singh) who was then a high school student. He said the boy was so shy that he might not be able to settle in a society which was so competitive. I said he should ask the boy to see me. He said he would not come, he would not face me. I said: “Just come for tea, don’t mention anything about school or English. No studies, just tea.” They came, the boy too. I had a good chat with the boy. Slowly he became free, as free as a child with any senior member of his own family. He also read English with me for a long time. He is now a successful lawyer. He telephones me from India sometimes and specially on the Teachers Day.

With the self-imposed programme of minimum respectable needs, extra work and writing and publication, and with part payments of the debt I was free from debt around 1957. The whole house was then with me. As long as the tenants were there, I never spoke of them as tenants; I described them as my neighbours. All my neighbours generally left the house whenever they did on their own accord, not for a rented house but for their own homes. Thus their ‘contribution’ to me (with rent) and my contribution to them in terms of courtesy became a quality instance of economic cooperation. My brother Ram Kishan by that time had completed his high school. He joined Hans Raj College and since then he lived with us, until he built his own house in his village Nawada and moved there, around 1978.

London Dream:

Early rather than middle or late fifties, I think 1952, Sarup Singh ji completed his Ph.D. from the University of London and joined back Hindu College where he had been a lecturer since 1940. After he had come back from London, I was sitting with Gupta Ji. Guptaji said to me in appreciation: “Sarup Singh has built his house in London, you have built one here.” This was the beginning of another step of ambition for me. Sarup Singh from Haryana was a role model for me. He was a very great teacher for me, clear headed, simple in habits and very effective in teaching. For me, I had built the house in Delhi. That remark of Gupta ji’s led me to serious thinking: Can I too build a house in London? Very early Mr. Multani, lecturer in Chemistry at Hans Raj, had often toyed with the idea of going to London. For me, even Delhi had been a dream. Now that idea had been further stirred by the achievement of Dr. Sarup Singh.

One day I was sitting with Dr. Sarup Singh at his residence at Hindu College, he was then Warden of the hostel. He put a question to me: “Have you ever rubbed and shined a paisa?” This was with reference to a pastime as well as a game with Haryana children. When it rained in the village, then after the rain, if the child has a paisa by chance, he goes out with other children, and with a pinch of sand rubs and shines his paisa. I also used to do so when I was a school child at Rai. I replied that I had done so many times. Then he said to his wife, Sheelaji: “This young man, promising as he is, is like a dim rusted paisa. If he does Ph. D. he will shine like a gold coin.” The words got recorded in my mind. I had got the suggestive key to the next step. I got myself registered for a Ph.D. in Delhi University. Prof. M.N.Gosh, lecturer Ramjas College, was appointed my guide. The subject was: “Theory of Poetry in the Eighteenth Century.” Dr. Sarup Singh’s subject had been “Thoery of Drama in the Restoration Period.” I started my studies, but frankly, my mind was elsewhere, London, a distant dream every way. But the movement London-way had started.

The British Council in India had started sponsoring English seminars in Delhi. The All India English Teachers Association also had started holding yearly All India Seminars in English literature at different University centres. The British Council Seminars were normally held in Delhi. The British Council invited two professors from Britain to lead the seminars. In June 1957, two professors were invited. One was Professor Geoffrey Bullough of King’s College, London. The other was from the University of Nottingham. The teachers of English used to meet the British professors either to discuss their literary or critical problems or to seek guidance for further studies. I met Professor Bullough in 1957 but there was no definite plan or proposal before me. So it was a meeting, in Indian terms and in my tradition, a meeting for his ‘Ashirvad’, a Senior man’s blessings. Professor Bullough wished me well.

The British Council also granted Commonwealth Scholarships for further studies in Britain. The condition was that the candidate must be below thirty five years of age. I thought of applying for one. If I got it, then I would have to be on leave for two years. As a teacher at Hans Raj, I must have grant of study leave and also have my application forwarded and recommended by the College authorities. In this connection I met the Principal Dr. Datta. He listened to me carefully and sympathetically. But for that year (1957), he said, two teachers from the same department could not be on study leave. The application of Mr. I.N.Bhatnagar had been recommended already. So my application could not be accepted. I was then thirty three years of age. I missed that chance.

In a way that miss was good and positive–in my family situation. After the death of my father in 1951, my mother’s health had been deteriorating. She had been, for some mysterious reason, talking of Haridwar. She said more than once that she had been to Haridwar with my Nanaji when she was a child. She also talked of Nanaji who had died at her Mamaji’s house in Rithal village. I think a mysterious power there is at work inside the human being especially when the end of the road is near. Any way, after meeting with the Principal, Dr. Datta, I continued my earlier thinking of London Ph.D. even if it was to be entirely on my own. After the clearance of the house debt also, I had continued to be very strict with myself and my personal habits. My family too accepted to be with me in all the hardships they had to share with me for my ambition for a better vision and version of life. God bless them all for their vision beyond the comforts of daily convenience.

In those days, the rule was that after three years’ teaching; a teacher was entitled to go on study leave for two years on half pay. After two years, if the teacher continued to be on leave, the leave would be without pay. So I had decided that if I wanted to go abroad, it would be even entirely on my own. But my devotion to my mother was the supreme consideration. If she were to die in my absence, that is, if I failed to be there, present at her last breath, that would be the worst of sin on my part. So preparing for going abroad so far as money was involved, the chances of study leave after Mr. Bhatnagar was back in position, and looking after my mother’s health, all these three problems occupied my mind and effort at the same time. One thing I did at first hand, I took my mother, my wife and children to Haridwar in 1957 itself. It seems to me that after the visit to Haridwar, my mother felt a lot relieved.

My mother’s life had been very very hard for so many reasons. Even so, she had been very brave.  I know that even at night, in the village, if there was any disturbance on the roof, which was joined to the roof of other houses, she used to go up all alone to confirm that every thing was in proper order. When I was in a regular job, she felt relieved; nevertheless she was with me all through as a guide. Relieved and yet strained, she lived on, preparing at the same time to leave, all quiet and satisfied with her only son and also encouraging my wife to wait when she too was likely to see better days after my ambitions were to be realized. The day she died, March 12, 1959, she was as brave as ever.

On that very day a friend of mine came to invite me to join his wedding party to another town, Sonipat. He had been in very unusual marital trouble for years. Somehow his ordeal was over and he was going to re-marry. I said “no” to his request because I was not sure of my mother’s survival through the day. When I declined his request to his utter dismay, my mother happened to hear that part of the conversation. With all her strength of mind, as if by special Grace of God, she said to me that I should join his party. I hesitated to accept her commanding suggestion, but she assured me in no uncertain terms, saying: “Go Sonny, you will find me here for sure.” My cousin sister Basanti, daughter of my great uncle Rati Ram and sister of my cousin Ramu, was with us. So entrusting my mother to Basanti and my wife, I went with the wedding party on my friend’s assurance that he would make sure that I reached back home in the evening.

My friend’s wedding went off very well. He helped me to come back to Delhi by the courtesy of a common friend who drove me back home by his car.  Mother was in full consciousness when I arrived at 11 p.m.. In a few minutes she requested my cousin sister to move her bed out of the room to the verandah. My sister called me too. We were all with mother in the verandah. At 11.15 she expired in perfect consciousness and in complete peace of mind.

With my mother gone, after a few weeks, I was again all with my ambition of the Ph.D. ‘shine of the paisa’ of Dr. Sarup Singh’s description. I was free now of mother-care, free to make an application through the College for admission to the University of London. I went to the Principal. I found that, even after assuring me that two teachers could not be on study leave from one department, and that I would be entitled to go after the return of Mr. Bhatanagar (1959), another teacher had been recommended in 1958, and since the Principal had made the recommendation, for once the Governing Body approved of his recommendation, but not any more. The Principal told me of the resolution of the Governing Body. I reminded him that as he had assured me that I would be able to go after Mr. Bhatnagar returned after his leave of two years in 1959, I would be awfully sorry for reasons of something for which I was not responsible. The Principal saw the reason, he appreciated my mood of administrative discipline and allowed me to make an application for admission to London (1960). I wrote to Professor Bullough whose good wishes I had had in 1957. He advised me to apply to Queen Mary College and write to Mr. Norman Callan. I made the application with all my results of B.A. (Hons.) and M.A., along with a copy of the courses of study including my studies of Sanskrit, the classical language. After a few months I heard from Mr. Callan saying that informally my request for admission had been accepted and that the formalities would be completed in due course, and that I could start preparing for the travel. The Principal had assured me that study leave would be granted. I started making the preparations.

The main problem was finances. The University of London and probably the Government too wanted that the applicant should assure them that finances would be available at the rate of 50 pounds per month for two years. I don’t now remember how, but somehow I was able to arrange for this sort of assurance. At that time I had eight thousand rupees cash in the bank which was, at that exchange rate, about six hundred pounds. The British Council had sanctioned for me the air fare both ways. So I was sure that after all the ambition was coming true.

Guruji had earlier told me about a gentleman in Darya Ganj that he helped intelligent and promising students of his community with educational grants. He had earlier helped me to pay my examination fees of Rs. 74/= for my pre-university exam in 1944. That money, I did not return because I regarded that money as the blessings of a senior man and blessings do fructify. I decided to meet him with a proposal of my own.  He had earlier assured me that he helped students either for basic education or for higher education. He himself was an AMIE (London).

Here I recollect another instance of my own life in relation to a student of mine at Hans Raj. When I was appointed Principal of Shivaji College, then Mr. Bhardwaj, lecturer in History at Shivaji, came to me and told me that a certain inspector in some Delhi Govt. department wanted to see me. I asked him why? He told me this: “This gentleman asked me whether this Dr. Tulsi Ram is the same person who was earlier a lecturer at Hans Raj College. When I told him that he is the same man who was earlier at Hans Raj, he asked me to arrange a meeting with you.”  I said to Mr. Bhardwaj that the person concerned could come any day and see me. So one day the man came to see me. I did not recognize him. So many students I had taught at Hans Raj since 1949. And this time was 1964. So he told me the story in relation to his request to see me. This is what he said: “Sir, early in the fifty’s I was your student of the Preparatory class. It was time when the forms of admission to the University exam were to be sent in to the University. It was the last day by which the forms must be in. If the form was not sent in that day, the person would not be allowed to take the exam. That day I was standing all in dismay because my examination fee in my pocket was short by ten rupees. You saw me standing in that mood of disappointment, as if I was lost. You said to the College Cashier that he send in my form and write ten rupees in my account.” As was the cashier, he used to have our salary cheques cashed from the bank. Thus almost all of us had an informal account with the cashier, Mr. Iqbal Nath, one of the finest gentlemen I have come cross. This young man’s name was Bhardwaj. Hence his request to Mr. Bhardwaj, a family friend, for a meeting with me. The former student told me that he did not return the ten rupees to me because he felt that these ten rupees was the teacher’s blessings for him in his education.

It was in that mood of the value of the seniors’ blessings that on Guruji’s suggestion I met the gentleman from Darya Ganj. He listened to me very sympathetically and asked for my plans. I said this to explain my position, also reminding him of his earlier gift as well:

“It has been my ambition after M.A., which I passed with first class, that I should do Ph.D. from England. I have saved eight thousand rupees to meet my expenses. I have my own house where my family would live comfortably. Half my salary would be paid for my family expenses in addition to the rent they would be receiving. I am sure this arrangement would work, but as I would be away, may be some money might be needed either for home expenses or for me abroad. So my request is that you kindly pay that much money. I shall not be able to pay back the money during the next two years. But on my return I would pay the money and, if you like, with reasonable interest.” He listened to me carefully, and then asked me to write out the full plan of study and in addition to that, say how the community would benefit thereby.

I thanked him sincerely. I respected him highly and I respected his family too. But about the benefit to the community, I felt only this that if he agreed to give the money if needed–may be it is not even needed–then one member of the community would be educated the way he wanted, just that, neither more nor less. I did not see him again though my respect for him remained as it had been and as it now is. On September 30, 1960 I left for London.

Here I remember something similar to my ten rupees paid for the student’s examination fees. Memory has its own laws. The gentleman had wanted to know how my higher education would benefit the community. So just to say how life works–about studies later–but in the current context the following:

When I was in England from October 60 to January 63, this gentleman, Mr. K.L. Sharma died. His wife Shrimati Javitri Devi, whom we generally called ‘chachiji‘, decided to open a College in his memory in their native place Rewari in Haryana. The important people of Rewari at that time were also trying to start a college there. But they did not then have the cash they needed to buy land for the College. So they came to Chachiji and posed the problem to her. Generously enough, and on the spot, she agreed to pay lakhs of rupees for the College. The land was purchased, and then money was being raised for the building. It was agreed that, in view of the generous grant of money by Chachiji for the land, the College would be named ‘Kishan Lal Public College’. In due course the building too came up. Pandit Lakshmi Narain Sharma of Kathmandi Rohtak took a very prominent part in the start of that College.

After my return from England in January, 1963, I was appointed Reader in the Dept. of English, Kurukshetra University, Krukshetra, in Haryana. Lakshmi Narainji was a very senior friend of mine since the forty’s. As the college was coming up, they needed a principal to start the college. Pandit Lakshmi Narain wrote to me at Kurukshetra that I should suggest ‘somebody with my qualifications’ to take over the college as founder Principal. I thanked God in all humility and remembered late Shri K.L.Sharma’s desire to know how the community would benefit from my higher education. I did not join the College because my ambition was not administration but study and research. But quite often, when I was Head of the Dept. at M.D.University, Rohtak, I visited the College for elections, for inspection, and as chief guest on the Founders’s Day celebrations, and I never failed to express my thanks to late Sharmaji, even his payment of Exam fees for my university exam. How education helps the community you cannot ultimately define. No, never. God only knows.

Gold or Copper:

After this memory play in praise of education, senior’s blessings and divine dispensation of human calculations, now back on way to London, ‘the paisa in search of shine’, gold or copper who can say?

In those days the Commonwealth was a more familial political community than it is now. No visa was required to go to Britain. Only a ticket and probably an admission letter was enough. Mercury Travels sent me a ticket to London by special messenger on payment by the British Council. The flight was Comet 4, BOAC, 30 Septemebr, 1960, 2100 hrs. I was going with Mr Bhupender Gupta (who was going to Manchester for M. Tech), now a Professor in the University of North Carolina. There was a huge crowd to see me off at the airport. Guruji also came from Chandigarh. Mamajis from Murthal were there. Almost all staff of Hans Raj College was there. They all stood on the terrace of the airport and, while going up the stair case to take seat in the plane, I bade them farewell from the mobile stairs while getting into the aircraft. Life then was more compact than crowded. That was going to be my first flight. The plane stopped at Bahrain, Tehran, Istambul where they served very sumptuous refreshments which I did not touch, feeling that there would be a charge. Partly waking, partly dozing and partly napping, the plane flying at 42000 feet, I saw a frightful sight.

I was sitting in a corner seat, fixed with the belt. I looked to the right and saw a very huge dark black semi-circle covering space from one end of the world to the other. Had I been standing, I would have staggered and fallen. But being in the seat, I shook up all over. Behind the dark semicircle, huge flames like the world on fire arose as if the end of the world was coming. Then came the announcement: “Ladies and Gentlemen, you can see the dawn.” The plane was flying at 42000 ft. over Switzerland, Zurich was the place. After that experience I have flown over the world again and again, got the choicest seats, but I haven’t had a second chance of that apocalyptic experience of the sun–rise.

Landing at London: 0900 A.M. Octber 1, 960. Bhupendra and I took a taxi for YMCA hostel in Fitzroy Square. We did not find a place, but they guided us to the Indian Students Hostel at Guilford St. near the British Museum where I was going to study for Ph.D. in the British Library. We reached the Indian Students Hostel and got two rooms. We slept almost the whole day. Prof Callan, my guide, had earlier written to me that he would be at the British Museum Library on October 2.

In the morning of October 2, I went to see my guide. It  was something like a chance that my work started on October 2. We had started our home building too on Oct 2, 1953. In Guptaji’s language, the foundation of my ‘London house’ too was laid on oct. 2, Gandhiji’s birthday. The subject given in the admission letter was “English literature”. This was actually not the subject but the field of research. The subject was yet to be selected and specified. In Delhi it had been “Theory of Poetry in the eighteenth century.” It had to be further specified. Professor Callan suggested that it could be the theory of epic poetry. This was fine and decided.

In India, the specific subject had to be approved by the Board of Studies. In London, it was the guide who was the real authority. In one case, for example, an Indian student was approved, which means ‘admitted’, by the professor, without having done the required course in a classical language. If he were required to do that course, it would mean delay in the admission and a disturbance of his whole plan of study. So on the recommendation of the professor, he was exempted from that requirement and, intelligent and industrious as he was, he completed his Ph.D. programme in the minimum required time. In another case, the candidate had completed his study, written his thesis but not in the final form. The professor recommended that he be examined viva voce and he be allowed to submit the thesisfrom India. The recommendation was accepted, the candidate was examined,he was ‘successful’ convincingly, and he submitted the thesis from India. This was the power and prestige of the teacher in Britain. In my case the subject was specified with the approval of the guide and I began my work on Oct. 2 itself.

I started the work, but, in due course, I found that the way of guiding Ph.D. work in India was different. The guide in India was supposed to guide his pupil as the tutor guided his ward at the undergraduate level, telling him what books to read, how to think and how to compose his subject. In England, at the Ph.D. level, the entire work, whether it is the selection of books or the preparation of bibliography, or the structure of the theme and argument, everything was the student’s work. There was another difference too. In India, as I was told, the student had to advance the knowledge of the subject as it was available then. In England, it was the thesis you had to present with proper evidence. And I had been warned by Dr. Sarup Singh that the guide in London even reserved the right to reject the thesis. All this, to begin with, confused and even scared me. To spend India earned money and stand all alone was a new experience. I had to find my own way to proceed.

I didn’t have to go to College, I was free to read, i.e., to work, anywhere. Mr. Callan, then was working on the Introduction of his new assignment, the Tickenham edition of Pope’s Homer. He told me once that he was to write about 1500 words for which he was visiting the British Museum library quite often. This was good for me because I could meet him there, report my progress of reading and some sort of the formation of my argument. My strength was one: to begin with, the faith that God would certainly help me. Secondly, during my discussions with Mr. Callan, I was reporting my readings to him and also what I thought of those writers I had read. One day he said to me, and what he said confirmed my faith. He said, “I know, better than you, what you are going to do.” That is the essence, I believe, of the teacher-student relationship. The teacher knows the way the student is going, and he also knows where the disciple is going to reach.

In the mean time I discovered Swedenbergs’s The Theory of the Epic.This book was a sort of bouquet of all the themes in relation to epic theory.I read that book from cover to cover. I collected the relevant materials on the various constituents of an epic poem like definition, action, characters, etc. But I was not satisfied because, though I knew not then, I was looking for something else and deeper.

Just then something happened which gave me the light but not yet the flame I sought: Dr. Sarup Singh had worked under the guidance of Prof. J.R.Sutherland of University College. The University College was close to where I was living then at Gower Street. I went to see Prof.  Sutherland in the department of English. I got the appointment and I met Prof. Sutherland, a very graceful, gracious figure, kind and compassionate. From his talk I could realize that he knew me. I was sure Dr. Sarup Singh had talked to him about me. After the usual courtesies between the student and the teacher, he put a question to me: “Have you seen Swedenberg?” I said I had read the book, it was informative but nothing more than that for me at that stage. Still I must pay a tribute to Swedenberg because some of the references I needed I got readily from that book. I must also pay homage to Professor Sutherland because, consciously or unconsciously, and in some futue time, that would be a tribute to myself also:

One day as I was sitting with Prof. Sutherland, he asked me what I was reading. As I wanted to answer his query, I happened to smile. He asked me why. I said I felt reminded of an anecdote I had read. Tell me, he said. I described the anecdote, one of the smallest: “Have you read my last book,” said Lord Kames to Monboddo? “No, my lord,” said Monboddo, “not yet, because you write faster than I can read.” So I used to share what I had read with professor Sutherland. Mr. Callan and Prof. Sutherland were great friends also. Though Mr. Callan was neither a ‘Doctor’ nor a professor then, he was only a Reader, he was held in very high esteem in the University for his work. For that reason he was one of the editors of the Tickenham edition of Pope’s poetical Works. Prof. Sutherland had that affection for me partly because of Mr. Callan and Dr. Sarup Singh.

Once, when I was  Principal Shivaji College, Dr. Sarup Singh telephoned me at 11.00 at night and said this: “Though I know you had gone to bed, still I phoned you because I am going to tell you something which will make you feel very happy.” “Welcome”, I said, “What is that?” He was reading at that time professor Sutherland’s latest book, Literary Anecdotes. He read a part of the Preface and Acknowledgments and he read this: “This book has grown over the last 20 years, and it is chiefly the contribution of my students and of my friends, of whom I regard Dr. Tulsi Ram as one.” I went down on my knees to God and bowed my head to professor Sutherland for his affection for me. His generosity was overwhelming. So was Dr. Sarup Singh’s for me all through, for the ‘paisa’ which he wanted ‘shining as gold’. When mythesis as The Neo-classical Epic was published, I sent a copy to professor Sutherland as a token of my love and reverence for him. He wrote a personal letter, written in his own hand, saying “This is a standard book of reference for any seventeenth century reader.”I had acknowledged his suggession of Swedenberg in the Preface to my book.In response to that, he closed his personal letter with what he described as a ‘doggerel rhyme’ worded as something like this: “I shot an arrow into the air, It fell on earth I know not where, until I discovered it in the heart of a friend.”

I bowed my head to Dr. Rajan also for his affection for me especially when he was Professor and Head of the English Department of Delhi University. When I returned to Delhi I met Dr. Rajan at his Greater Kailash home. He desired to read my thesis. I had re-interpreted his view of the close of Paradise Lost in the light of my argument. I had a copy of my thesis in my bag, I gave the thesis to him. He read it through and added only one word: I had written “time was ripe…” He added one word: “The time was ripe…”

In English, the definite article the is a wonderful and very meaningful something, a rarely defining enigma. Dr. Sarup Singh told me about his own experience of it when he had written his thesis: The examiner, professor Harold Brooks, made one observation: “Good, except that your use of the definite article…” Professor Sutherland who too was present at the viva–he had to be, as one of the examiners–, simply added, “Yes, but who knows…?” The use of the definite article in English is a gift of the very very sensitive semantic sense in the structure of a sentence.

So time went on. I slowly understood what I was required to do and how. I always remembered what Mr. Callan had said about me: He knew better than I what I was going to do. With that faith in the guru and in God, I decided that at the end of six months I must submit one chapter of the thesis to my teacher. I wrote about 60 pages in my own hand writing and submitted these to Mr. Callan. Having read just a few pages, and when he came to the Museum library and I met him, he said: “Tulsi Ram, do you think in Hindi?” I was shaken up top to toe, but recovered the next moment and I said, “Yes Sir, may be I do, but I do perhaps something worse than that too.” “What is that?” Mr. Callan enquired. “The same as every Indian does.” “What is that?” Mr. Callan got more inquisitive. I said with some confidence now: “When we write in English, we think in Hindi, and when we write in Hindi, we think in English.” This was “Shiksha ka her pher” as one of the Hindi writers had written once, could be Bhartendu Harish Chandra. Mr. Callan read those pages very carefully, very critically, and on the back of every page he wrote out and raised as many questions as the page could contain.

I read those questions and observations. Some of them, many in fact, were question marks only. When I asked Mr. Callan what the question marks meant, he only said that it was for me to understand, interpret and answer.

At first, I did not understand. But I did not worry either. I decided that I would continue writing the way I did. I wrote something more and continued submitting it to the guide. It was Mr. Callan’s generosity that he continued accepting and reading through whatever I wrote. The questions too continued. After a few chapters, the style of my writing changed and consequently Mr. Callan’s comments too reduced in number and changed in style. In this way I almost wrote the whole thesis, completed, except for the Introduction and the Conclusion. I decided that one year would be the time for the first draft completion, six months for the second draft, and six months for the final draft and submission. I stuck to this plan.

Before I came to write the second draft, I went through all the comments and the question marks in the context and the continuity of the arrangement in which they occurred, each one. I understood what was really wanted. I submitted the second draft, first chapter. I received it back with the comments if any. Comments, not much. Then I made the final draft and received it back only with one remark: “This is a great advance. Stet.” I felt relieved and in my own reasonable way completed the draft in my own hand. This took me one year and six months.

After this relief, let me take a holiday with some of my friends in London who provided me the relief of a stay far away from home. First of all Dr. B.S. Sharma, who was a Reader in the department of African Studies in the University of Delhi. His wife was a German lady. So every summer, he used to visit Germany and then come to London. He was a reader in the British Museum Library. When I met him I felt almost at home. He was one of the Haryana fraternity in Delhi, from Ballab Garh. He spoke to me of Dr. Gaud who was then a teacher in the School of Oriental and African Studies, London, Hindi Department. Dr. Gaud had been in the BBC as well, Indian section. We met sometimes in the library specially for tea in the basement refectory. There we met a ‘chaiwala’, an English man who had been earlier a military officer in India. He saw me and BS and would immediately say: “Do pyala chai with hot milk.” We had other friends as well, Mr. A.S. Anand who was doing his Masters. first, then promoted to Ph.D. in Law.  He later rose to be the Chief Justice of India. There was Mr. Oad, who became professor of education in Banasthali. Mr. S.N. Pathak, a senior officer in the Ministry of External Affairs, Government of India. Mr. Pathak the historian, Mr. Maity who became professor of history in Calcutta, Mr. Rishi Agarwal who became on ophthalmologist of repute in Lucknow, and so on.

Dr. Gaud introduced me to Mr. David Stride, Director BBC, Indian Section. Mr. Stride gave me one assignment on Milton in the programme “Cultural Review” in Hindi. I phoned my wife that on such and such date I would speak on the BBC radio. On that day there was a crowd of friends at our Delhi home to listen to me. I got another programme on Indian manuscripts in the British Museum. There I saw a manuscript of the four Vedas written by a Muslim from Lucknow, bound in silk and kept on the shelf higher than the heart level. There was a Ramayana manuscript from Rajasthan, well bound in three volumes on which the Museum had spent at least four thousand pounds only on the binding. In this way I got programmes on the BBC, each for 15 minutes, 14 minutes for me, one minute for announcement before and after. Honorarium: fourteen guineas. Mr. Stride once said to Dr. Gaud about me in my presence: “This man can spend his life time in the BBC.” But my destination was back to Delhi via London. BBC made my stay less worrisome and more comfortable from the financial point of view.

My thesis was complete more or less by the end of June, 1962. I had now to get it typed, check every reference with the original and submit it to the supervisor, Mr. Callan for his final approval. I entrusted the typing work to Susan, a British girl, secretary in a particular department of Earth Sciences in the University, through Mr. Paithankar who was doing Ph.D. in that department. There was a trust in Oxford which gave 50 ponds for this work to any Ph.D. student. I made an application requesting for a fifty pounds grant. One professor from Oxford, Mr. Hardman, came to see my work for this purpose to confirm that the request was genuine. He approved and the payment was made to me.

Earlier than this, when I was entering the second year of my course, Sir Stopford Brooke Scholarship of for English studies was announced. My professor advised me to apply for that. I made the application with the recommendation of Mr. Callan. There were about 12 to 15 applicants in all. A selection committee of about seven or eight University professors met and interviewed all the applicants. My work was recommended by them for the scholarship with the remark that the work would be a valuable contribution to English studies. The subject had been specified by now, that being “English Epic Poetry from 1650 to 1750 with special reference to Ethical Interpretation.” With BBC work at times and this scholarship from July, 1961, I felt comfortable on the financial front during the second year of my course. The condition of my programme was two years stay in the University as an internal student for two years minimum.

In late June, 1962, four of us went on a tour of Europe for about two weeks. We were in Paris, Cologne, Bonn, Heidelberg, Geneva, and Rome. When we came back, I found that Susan had typed the manuscript of the thesis. She put to me a question which was the opposite of Mr. Callan’s remark on my language. She said, “Mr. Ram, is English your mother tongue?” “No”, I replied, “English is my fifth language after my native language, then Urdu, then Hindi, then Sanskrit, then English. But why do you put this question to me?” She replied, “Because I do not understand more than half of what you write.”

Now here arises a question: why did my English look Hindi-based to Mr. Callan and why did it look like my mother tongue or native to Susan? The answer could be one of the two I can think of: either my English had changed in the English environment after one and a half years, or my English being the language of thought and not of daily chores, appeared native to Susan. Around that very time I had written a sub-chapter on Milton, Paradise lost being one of the poems I studied for the thesis. I submitted that to Prof. Don Wolfe, a reputed scholar of Milton. He was Professor, City University New York, and general editor of the Yale University edition of Milton’s prose works. Professor Wolfe said in appreciation that he had read a piece of “distinguished English” through my write up. The point of saying all this is that the language of thought is different in character from the language of the street. But that time was the 60s of the twentieth century.

A lot has changed since the sixty’s. An English American scholar of Indian origin read my translation of the Veda (eight volumes) and is reported to have said, “It is a good translation, OK in a sense, but it is not American English.” A lot of such local exercise is only impressionistic, and there is no measure of exactitude now in matters of language and style with reference to any time or place. The language of thought has its own laws.

I checked each one of the references I had cited in the thesis, made the corrections wherever required, got it typed, three copies for submission just on the last day of two years. But I wanted to continue on the college rolls up to the declaration of the examination result. About three months for this much of work and process were required.

When I joined the University in 1960, the fees for Ph.D. were twenty five pounds for the year. In 1962, for the next year, the fees were raised to sixty seven pounds. To continue on rolls I was required to pay fees at least for one term. I thought I would pay at the old rate, but the college rules insisted on payment at the new rate. I spoke to Mr. Callan. He advised me not to enroll myself because my minimum period of internal studentship was complete. I did not agree, I wanted to keep on the rolls for the next term also. Mr. Callan then advised me to see the Finance Officer, Mr. W.P. Richards. In India the finance officer is called Bursar, or it could be the treasurer on the Governing Board. I met Mr. Richards. He advised me to write to him to say that I had made my total budget on the basis of fees at twenty five pounds per year. The payment at the rate of sixty seven pounds would disturb my budget. Therefore I may be allowed to pay at the old rate. I made the request to the finance officer as advised, in writing. My application was accepted on the spot and I wrote a cheque there itself for six pounds twenty-five pence. It was something rare for me this way.

Mr. Callan allowed me to submit the thesis in fold-back cover, without binding. He knew that I wanted to be back home at the earliest. I put three copies of the thesis in fold-back covers, made the payment for the binder at the University rate, and submitted it on October 2, 1962, exactly in two years, the shortest time in London, the same as Dr. Sarup Singh’s.

After about two weeks I went to the office of the Registrar to confirm whether the thesis had been sent to the examiners: Mr. Callan and Dr. Brooks of Berkbec College, London. I had also gone to pay the over seas postage charges for the result by air mail. I found that my thesis was still lying in the Registrar’s office. I immediately phoned Mr. Callan that I had lost two weeks for nothing just by oversight of somebody in the Registrar’s office. Mr. Callan spoke to the Registrar and also to Dr. Brooks. The thesis was examined very thoroughly and urgently by Dr. Brooks. Mr. Callan of course knew what it was. The date for the Viva Voce exam was January 2, 1963, at 2:00 p.m.

On January 2, 1963, I reached Berkbec College on time. Immediately I was called in. Dr. Brooks and Mr. Callan sat in the examiners’ chair. I was enthusiastically welcomed by Dr. Brooks saying: “Come in Mr. Ram. You have written a commendable thesis, but I must make sure that you have written it.” My thesis was: Language comes first, Grammar comes later. So in the field of poetry, poetry comes first, theory comes later. In the period under discussion epic poetry was guided by theory, and while the poets tried to write as guided by the theory, they failed, and, as a result, under the pressure of the creative urge and of the creative imagination, theory itself got modified. Thematically, Greek poetry, as the poetry of Homer translated by Pope, was written on the theme of personal, i.e., individual heroism. Roman poetry, as translated by Dryden, celebrated national heroism. By the time as of Milton, heroic poetry celebrated spiritual and moral heroism. There was a lot of question – answer discussion. It was expected that the exam would take about one hour, it lasted for more than two hours. The thesis was recommended for acceptance.

Dr. Brooks gave me a copy of his hand written notes. He praised my style, saying that there were certain paragraphs written so well that he read and re-read them again and gain. During the discussion, he asked me to refer to a particular page and a certain quotation and asked me to read it. I read it as I was asked to do: “What do you say?” said he. I said: “Sorry Sir, I have left out two words. If you allow me I would write these words in the margin, otherwise I shall resubmit the thesis.” He allowed me and I wrote the two words in the margin. Then he asked me another question– by this time the atmosphere had changed from the exam seriousness to social relaxation. “Guess why I wanted you to refer to this quotation.” I couldn’t guess that, because he alone knew the reason. He then asked me why I missed those two words. I said that I remembered that quotation by heart and those two words jarred upon my sense of music and the tone. “Yes, very true. When I wrote my thesis years ago, I also missed the same two words.” The viva ended thus on that pleasant note.

A couple of days later I received a letter from Mr. Callan, written on a small slip of paper: “Congratulations on a splendid viva, one of the best I have been at, and well worth an eight mile walk on snow.”

Mr. Callan lived in his village home more than thirty miles away from the city. He came to the railway station by bus, took a train for Victoria and travelled to college by ‘tube’, the subway. On the viva day the exam took more time than expected. The result was that by the time he reached the station, the last bus for his village had left, and Mr. Callan had to walk back home for eight miles on snow. God bless his soul! He said not a word about the difficulty he might have had to face on the way back home in that difficult weather. Life must go on, the viva must go on its own way and at its own speed, snow or no snow.

On Januray 2 itself I gave a telegram home: ‘Thesis accepted. Back home flight January 13.’ I was back in Delhi the morning of January 13, an auspicious day. There was a crowd of friends on the airport, friends, colleagues, students, my family, Brijlal family, my neighbours, and Guruji. I was given a warm welcome and Mamaji garlanded me with a ‘garland’ of currency notes, a special gesture of affection and respect in the Indian society.

Here I must pay tribute to the sacred memory of my wife, Maya Devi, who, now shines like a flame in our family memories, and whom, for reasons, I call Maya Jyoti. She was a woman of absolute commitment and exceptional endurance for the family in spite of any limitations or deprivations which she faced with me and still more in my absence, with a smiling face. Before I left for England, a very senior woman and revered well wisher of the family, out of sympathy, tried to console her against the hardships she would have to face in my absence.She thanked her for the sympathy but she assured her that everything would be fine, no worry. Our house in those days stood alone, no other house around. She told me that she saw my mother in dream: My mother encouraged and assured her saying: “Never worry. I am always moving around the house. Nothing untoward can happen to this house while I am there. My mother had died a year before, in 1959 and this was 1960.

My wife maintained the house efficiently. Brij Lal family was our neighbour. Mrs Brij Lal was her ‘saheli’ more than neighbour and tenant. Gian was at Ramjas School No.2. Indira was in the Municipal Corporation Girl’s School close to the house. In my absence, Guruji took Gian to Chandigarh and admitted him to his DAV school there. Thus while our family friends were all around, my wife stayed firm as the centre pole. From October 1960 to January 1963, she kept on with the family as the rock-bed foundation of patience, forbearance and endurance.

On my return in January, 1963, I got her a gold chain of six tolas plus, equal to more than sixtysix grams as a token of family achievement. But it seems to me that our achievements are destined to be more silent than vocal.The chain was picked by a chain snatcher. I got her another, but a replacement is not the same as the original. In fact, before she left us in 2009, she had given her things away to the girls of the family. Her total commitment was me, my work and the family.

October- December 1960 had been a period of great worry. June- December 1962 was a period of great relief. In 1960 I was worried about the very definition of the thesis in which the only relief was Mr. Callan’s remark that he knew better than I did what I was going to do. In 1962, the greatest relief was the completion and timely submission of the thesis. The visit to Europe was a great experience too. But more than that, in London itself there were two experiences which I won’t forget. One was the introduction of visa for anyone who wanted to go to Britain after 30 June, 1962. Before that date there was a rush of Indians going to England. Before June 30, and close to it the headline in British newspapers was: “Plane loads of slaves from India.” When the Indians saw such write-ups in London, they felt sorry and did not feel like holding their head high. They just kept looking down or just quiet by themselves.

The other experience, if I remember correctly, was the Goa affair of the Government of India with the Portuguese authorities. The headline in the newspapers was “Nehru Invades.” This headline like the other quoted above shows the attitude of one community to another. Soon after the Goa affair, a meeting was held by Indians at the Friends Society Hall in Euston. It was attended by thousands of Indians and friends of India. Normally all the Indians spoke in favor of India and the Indian action. Some of the speakers spoke against the attitude of the BBC to India. One of the speakers said that he too wanted to speak about the action taken by India. The BBC replied to him, he said, that if he wanted to speak against India they would allow him. But if he wanted to speak for India, he was not welcome. He said that BBC did not allow him to speak. Whether he was right or wrong, only he knew, but generally the attitude of the locals was amply clear from the headlines of the papers quoted above.

The third experience was of a political sort of discussion held in the London University Students Union building known as ULU. The meeting was called by Indian students. The speakers were: Mr. Sorenson, he was, I think, head of the Labour Party then. Another was the London representative of the Indian Daily, the Hindu. The third speaker was Mr. G.L Jain who later became editor of the Times of India. The subject was who after Nehru?Each speaker spoke from his own point of view. After the discussion, there was coffee. During a short conversation, from the accent of Mr. Jain, I thought that he was from the area around Delhi, most probably from Haryana. I felt we were just like neighbors. I learnt he was from Pipli Khera, a village close to Delhi, near Badli. It was earlier, on the railway line close to Khera village that Bhagwan Dev ji had put to us the question: Why we left the way for the cyclist, when we were walking from Narela to Delhi. Soon the conversation took a personal tone. It was then Mr. Jain said that during the meeting no one had really spoken about who after Nehru. Mr. Jain was close to the Nehru family. He was an admirer of Nehruji like most of us. I had read an Urdu translation of his Autobiography Meri Kahani in 1939 when I was in the eighth class. Naturally I asked him “Who?” If he knew. He replied: “None of them knows, it is Indira Gandhi and Nehruji is preparing her for the position. Wherever he is going he is taking her with him and he is introducing her to the world leaders.” One of the other three speakers had said that Shastriji would succeed Nehruji. Now I remember how true G.L. Jain was.

Another experience at Basal, the city of “Favre Leuba” watches. During our Europe visit, we were at Basal, looking for accommodation for a couple of days. When we were visiting the University, we could get a place in the University hostel because we were students. So we went to the hostel. Unfortunately, the secretary who could allow us was in hospital, and no one else could allow us. But a girl who lived in the hostel asked us to wait. After about an hour, she came and brought us the permission that we could stay in the hostel at fifteen shillings per night. She had got special permission of the hospital to see the patient outside of the visiting hours. She had seen the secretary and got us the permission to stay on the third or fourth floor. We were guided by her to the elevator which was only meant for four. We were four. She could not come in. So she said we could go up by the elevator, and she would go up by the stairs and meet us up there. When we reached the required floor and came out of the elevator, we were surprised to see that she was already there. God bless her, how hospitable and helpful a person can be. She was an example.

Those were the days when airlines too were much more hospitable than now they can afford to be. I got the ticket through Thomas Cooke. The agent advised me that if I wanted to see some places on the way I could break the journey. I saw some places in Greece and then Cairo. I saw Athens, Athene’s Temple, the theatre and the door of the cell of Socrates. I also saw Mycane and the theatre of Epidaurus, and then moved to Cairo for the pyraminds and the Sphynx and the great museum specially the Casket of the Great King and the big mosque which Sufi Gianendra Dev, earlier Haji Abdul Rahman, mentions in his write-up Religion of the Ancient Arabs. The guide took me to an old shop in an ancient bazaar wherefrom I bought three small bottles of traditional perfumes, rose, sandal and mixed. I was told that we could make one small bottle of modern perfume in alcohol with one single drop. Again when I visited Cairo in 1972, I could not get the same traditional perfume; it had been taken over by modern marketing and overwhelming advertisement.

Kurukshetra and back to Delhi:

Back in Delhi, I rejoined Hans Raj College. In those days the rule was that if a teacher did Ph.D. he was given two special increments in his grade. I was given two additional increments. There were two special grades too, the same as the Reader’s. But I did not qualify for that because there were teachers with higher experience and standing in the college. I was happy with my higher degree. Nothing more wanted in the circumstances.

While I was in England, I had received a letter from Dr. Sarup Singh. He had joined Kurukshetra University as professor of English, and he had written to me that when I returned to India with Ph.D. from London, he would like me to join him there as Reader. But Dr. Sarup Singh did not continue at Kurukshetra. He took over Kirori Mal College as Principal. His college too had moved from Sadar Bazar where it had begun as ‘Nirmala College’ started by the Jesuits after the name of Mother Mary. Later Seth Kirori Mal Trust took it over in the name of the founder of the Trust. Dr. Sarup Singh, self-confident as he was, insisted on calling the full name of the college as Kirori Mal College, not K.M. College. When I rejoined Hans Raj, I met him and he still had a soft corner for Kurukshetra and for me. Dr. B. K. Kalia had taken over the professor’s position at Kurukshetra and Talib Saheb, much senior to me in age and experience, was one Reader.

Kurukshetra University advertised the post of the Reader. Dr. Sarup Singh advised me to apply for the post. I did. Lala Suraj Bhan, the famous D.A.V. educationist of Punjab, was the Vice Chancellor. Dr. Sarup Singh and Dr.Amrik Singh were experts on the selection committee. I was one of the candidates called to meet the selection committee. Dr. D.D.Jyoti was to be considered for selection in absentia. I appeared before the selection committee. I had a copy of my thesis with me and also the Examiners’ Report on the quality of my work. For some reason the selection committee could not reach at a unanimous decision. Dr. Jyoti too was considered in absentia but there was neither any published work nor any other evidence of his work. Therefore in deference to the Vice Chancellor, the Committee left the decision to the discretion of the Vice Chancellor. About a week or ten days later, I received the letter of appointment as Reader from the registrar of Kurukshetra University.

Prof. Shanti Narayan was then the Principal of Hans Raj College. He felt sorry that I would leave Hans Raj but he was happy about the chance I was getting. A little later I applied for leave from Hans Raj because my appointment was ‘on probation’ for a year. The college granted me the leave and I joined Kurukshetra University sometime in August or, maybe, September 1, 1963. I had requested for a house on the campus. I was given a house, No. D-19, on the campus. One year later I was confirmed.

About June or may be July 1964, my wife and Mrs. Agarwal, our next-door neighbor, were sitting in our verandah. They saw a senior man in yellow clothes coming by the road that led to our house. When he came close, he saw the ladies and walked in. In India, a man in yellow or saffron clothes enjoys traditional respect. They greeted the man and asked him if he wanted something, food or water. He wanted water only. It was hot season then. He asked my wife when we had come to Kurukshetra. My wife said that we had come about a year back, and quiet as the place was, we proposed to stay. He looked at her forehead and said that our time was going to be over soon. On my wife’s insistence also that we did not plan to leave, he said, “On September 13, you will leave this place.” God knows how he said so.

Dr. Sarup Singh was principal Kirori Mal College as I have said. In Delhi, a new college had been started, named after the World Agricultural Fair, in the early 60s. Dr. Panjab Rao Deshmukh  was  Minister of Agriculture in Nehru’s cabinet then. He was also President of the Bharat Krishak Samaj which had organized the fair. Bharat Krishak Samaj started the new college in Delhi: World Agriculture Fair Memorial Shivaji College. It was temporarily housed in Najaf Garh first, and then in a primary school building in Matiala village. Dr. Bhan, retired Deputy Secretary, Ministry of Education, was appointed principal. For some reason differences arose between the principal and the staff and even among the students. The Governing Body decided that Dr. Bhan should not be given extension any further. Dr. Bhan left the college and a group of eight teachers also left with him for another new college. In such difficult circumstances, Dr. Sarup Singh was given additional charge of the principalship of W.A.F.M. Shivaji College till such time as the new principal was appointed.

Around August 9 or 10, I received, through a friend, a message from Dr. Sarup Singh that I must immediately see him in Delhi. I met him, I think on August 10, at Korori Mal College. He asked me to put in my application for the post of Principal Shivaji College. I put in the application. Dr. Sarup Singh’s message got around on the Kurukshetra campus and almost everybody felt that I was leaving, though that was not necessarily going to be the case. The selection committee was to meet on August 27.

On August 27, I met the Selection Committee along with nine or ten other candidates. I was then forty years of age. The general opinion in Delhi was that a principal should be close to 50, at any rate not less than 47 – 48. Dr. Punjab Rao Deshmukh and the Vice Chancellor Dr. C.D. Deshmukh were friends; they had been colleagues in the Ministry. Dr. C.D. Darmukh then was the Finance Minister. Inside things and working affairs are not for the common man’s fare, but I was told later that when Dr. Punjab Rao Deshmukh discussed the candidates informally with Dr.C.D Deshmukh, he (the V.C.) is reported to have said that this man (i.e., I) could wait for seven – eight years more before aspiring for such a job. But he also agreed that if the selection committee, on which two University representatives also were to be members and present, would select one such man unanimously, he would accept. This much all, off the record.

I met the selection committee on 27th August at the residence of Dr. Punjab Rao Deshmukh. Among other things such as my education from school up to Ph.D. and my teaching experience, etc., the one inevitable question of questions came up: “Have you got any administrative experience?” At Hans Raj I had once heard that I was being considered for the job of the Burser (remember the Finance Officer of London’s Queen Mary College). But that was only a report and ended as report. Someone else was appointed. That is the prerogative of the college on the recommendation of the Principal. Even otherwise I don’t like the complaining sort of attitude to life. So in reply to the query of administrative experience, I simply made an observation:

“I knew that this question I’d have to face.”

“How did you know about this question?”

“Because, Sir, that is my weakest point.”

“How is it your weakest point?”

“Because unless I have administrative experience I can’t be appointed, and unless I am appointed I can’t have administrative experience. So I am in a self-revolving circle.”

“All right. Then the circle could be broken right here.”

A few days later I received the appointment letter. The Selection Committee’s decisive resolution was: “The Selection Committee unanimously and enthusiastically recommends the appointment of Dr. Tulsi Ram as Principal of World Agricultural Fair Memorial Shivaji College…” The letter of appointment had one instruction of the force of order: “Dr. Tulsi Ram must join the College by nineth of September.”

I requested the Kurukshetra University to relieve me immediately. They agreed according to rules. I paid three month’s salary in lieu of notice and joined the college on 9th September. Dr. Sarup Singh led me into the Principal’s room. I had kept the Delhi home for me. We went and settled back home.

That year (1964) there were heavy rains. All the roads to Delhi were flooded. I left Ram Kishan, my brother, at Kurukshetra with the request that whichever way a truck was available, take it and come. On September13, Ram Kishan arrived at our Delhi home via Jind at 11:00 PM, the date predicted by the man in yellow robes. Many people tried to trace the man. He was nowhere to be found. Nothing short of a miracle, and that was the truth though anyone could say it was just a chance. Truth is One, as the ancients said, the statements, many.

Shivaji College:

The first problem after Dr. Bhan had left and I joined was settlement. When Dr. Bhan left the College, the teachers close to him had also left. Others not as close stayed on, happy or unhappy or whining, I am not sure. Those who were anti-Bhan were surely satisfied and happy with even a sense of victory, may be, but those who were silent about the change and the change-over did feel that the anti-Bhan staff, elated as they were, needed to be put in their place.

To act that way, for me, in that sort of immediate situation would be to fall a prey to the politics of the moment. I was not a part of that politics. I had come from the outside world, and for me the College was an institutional personality the way Hans Raj or Kurukshetra University were. I would be guided by my own discipline and faith as I had been taught and trained: The entire universe is a Purusha, a living, breathing, intelligent, self-organizing system, a Being, and all units, individual such as you and me, social such as the family, community, nation, the earth, stars and constellations, political and educational, Shivaji and even Delhi University are participative units of the Purusha. So everybody in the College, students, staff including teachers, were units of a larger unit, and my duty was to manage them all as members of the College. My behavior convinced them that I was not an unreasonable person, not a party- man anyway.

So first of all the teachers who had left Shivaji: I wanted them to be free from Shivaji and wanted Shivaji to be free of them. They had left because it was their right to choose to leave. So they had left, but their Provident Fund money had not been released. The rule was that if a person left the College before three years’ service, he or she gets only the amount of his personal subscription, not the College contribution. I made a recommendation to the Governing Body that their P.F. money should be released, both subscription and the contribution. The Governing Body had that discretioery powers. In the Governing Body meeting, one of the University representatives raised an objection to the payment of the College contribution. I defended my recommendation in the interest of an amicablesettlement with the teachers who had left. I said that in the light of their ‘anti-college interest in favor of an individual member (the ex-Principal), I would like then to leave. In the practical language of administration, I would say: “Because I would like to get rid of them even at a price so that they and the college both could settle at peace.” My recommendation was accepted and their P.F. money was released. They all felt happy and the college felt relieved of the continuance of an unpleasant situation. After all, they had been members of our Shivaji community. I retained their good wishes and so did the college.

The next problem was building, and for that purpose, the land. The land in West Delhi area was with the Municipal Corporation of Delhi. For years we continued our discussions and meetings with the MCD officers. I requested one of the teachers for this purpose, Mr. Bhardwaj of the history department. Mr. Bhardwaj too felt tired and disgusted with the kind of efforts he had to make and the treatment he received. One day I too had to wait for hours to meet the officer concerned. And even then if the land was released, it would have been just next to the bank of the Najaf Garh drain (ganda nala). I felt the stench of the very proposal and the official attitude to an educational institution.The ‘prize land’ in the MCD language was reserved for a District Center. The MCD would auction it for money rather than give it to Shivaji College on institutional rates then of Rs. 5000/= per acre.

Tired and frustrated, I felt disheartened sometimes. Then, when the Annual Day celebrations date was close around February or March, we together, all the staff, thought of the chief guest for the day. The name of Shri Mehar Chand Khanna, Minister for Rehabilitation, occurred to us. We decided on Mr. Khanna. Mr. K.L. Rathee was Vice Chairman of the DDA then. We requested Mr. Khanna, he accepted. We requested Mr. Rathee. He accepted too. Thanks to God Almighty, in spite of the angst of the gods of the earth that be.

The Annual Day is a great celebration for the College. The principal reads the report of the year’s achievements of the college in academics, sports and social activities. He also speaks of the institutional requirements of the College. On the Annual Day that year, having covered the achievements, even the failures, in candid spirit, I spoke of the land requirements of the College. The language I used was traditional:  “Sir, it has been an ancient tradition in India that pious people in search of the freedom of moksha have often sought to drown in the holy mother Ganga. This was called ‘Jala Samadhi’. But in our case, we are fighting for freedom through education, the MCD wants us to drown ourselves in the Najaf Garh drain, ‘ganda nala’ in common language of the day. We request you to kindly save this institution from that ignominious fate”. Mr Khanna looked at me and I looked at him with the eyes of an earnest seeker. After the function, Mr. Khanna over a cup of tea in a relaxed mood asked me to explain my request. I explained to him the need of the College for a proper site worthy of a university institution. I also explained how the MCD officers wanted us to accept a low lying unsafe area just by the side of the drain. “Why there?” he asked. “Is there no other land?” I said “there is, but they want that that land should be reserved for commercial purposes.” Mr. Khanna made a mental note of it: commercial versus educational.

Land in Delhi was controlled by DDA and MCD, and both of these were ultimately under the Ministry of Rehabilitation. A few days later, I received a phone call from Mr. Rathee:  “Come to my office immediately, though even without you in attendance the decision has been taken in regard to the land you wanted.” That part of the land was deemed to have been taken over by the DDA or, maybe, by the Ministry. five acres of land was allotted to the college for the building at the rate of Rs 5000/= per acre, and ten acres from the green area was allotted for play grounds on rent at Re.1/= per acre per year. We paid Rs. 25000/= for the land and Rs. 10/= for the play grounds.

Next: The problem of building. Dr. Panjab Rao Deshmukh had started and established many institutions in Maharashtra, specially in Amravati: Having started Shivaji College, he once said, may be casually, but I think more seriously and reflectively  that: “In Amravati, all the institutions are self-supporting.  Not so in Delhi.” To start a college, the management had to show three lakhs of rupees as Endowment Fund. In addition, the government grant was 90% of the deficit of the college expenditure. The 10% was for the Governing Body to meet. This was long back. The Shivaji College had the Endowment, and from the proceeds of the World Agriculture Fair, it had bought a building in New Delhi. From the rental income of that building, the Bharat Krishak Samaj planned to grant the money to meet the 10% deficit of the College. It was discovered that that building had some seepage problem in the basement, and hence its rental income decreased, so that the College was going to become a liability beyond the Governing Body’s potential. Hence probably Dr. Deshmukh’s remark as quoted above.

As time passed, Dr. Deshmukh’s health deteriorated. Once when I met him I saw an ashy shade on his face, and I felt afraid. But while he was in good health, with him I had a chance to meet Mrs Indira Gandhi. Another time I was sent to invite and escort Shastri Ji, P.M., to a function of social importance. Once I had a chance to meet Mr. Lakshmi Mittal and had a chat with him in a friendly mood. But when his health deteriorated, his movement too became restricted. After about two years of that ashy shade, one early morning I received a telephone call from his residence that Dr. Deshmukh had expired. The funeral was on the same day. We offered a wreath of flowers at his feet and bade him the last farewell. His death seemed to foreshadow the closure of the college too. But our faith is that higher than human, there are other powers also which look after the works of man, provided that men too start and do the work in the service of the powers above.

Dr. Deshmukh was a farmer, a great lover of farmers. For that reason he had started the college in Najah Garh, and then moved it to Matiala and, at the most, he wanted it to be in West Delhi in the midst of the villages around. Hence the land close to Raja Garden and Rajouri Garden. The Governing Body now thought about the College and its future on hard realistic grounds. Could we hand it over to the Government?

The Delhi Government was opening colleges in even different and distant parts of Delhi from the University campus. The university itself was changing in its character. From the unitary character, it had become an affiliating university. Around 1969, it had opened a college in West Delhi, in Karampura near Punjabi Bagh and Moti Nagar in a school building. Vijay Kumar ji Malhotra was the Chief Executive Councillor of Delhi Government. He had been our student at Hans Raj College with Om Prakashji Kohli (Governor of Gujarat later). Shri Shanti Narayan, earlier Principal Hans Raj College, was the Dean of Colleges, Dr. Sarup Singh, Prof. and head of the Department of English, was the Pro-Vice Chancellor, and Dr. K.N. Raj was the Vice Chancellor. So the ‘stars’ were all very favorable and I was also close to them, ‘the shining paisa of golden hue’ in Dr. Sarup Singh’s prophetic words. I met all of them, and they assured me too that they were seriously thinking of arranging the takeover of Shivaji if the Governing Body decided and made the request to the University and the Delhi Government.

The Governing Body decided and made the request to the University and the Government to take over the college provided the name of the College was preserved. The University and the Government agreed to keep the name of the college as ‘Shivaji College’. The takeover was complete.

Now, where to find the accommodation to house Shivaji College? The Government College Karampura had made admissions to the first year of different arts courses. Could both the colleges be joined to make the new Shivaji College? One, Dr. Grover, had already been appointed Principal of Government College. What would be his position? Our problem was survival, the problem of Government College and Dr. Grover was continuance. I offered that in that situation, if possible, I would be prepared to continue only as a teacher. But this, they all said, was not proper. So if I became the Principal of the new combined College, then what would be the position of Dr. Grover? Somehow, for some reason best known to Dr. Grover, even the students of Karampura College were opposed to the movement of Shivaji College to Karampura.

In this situation I met Dr. Grover at his residence. He told me that his students were so agitated, and so prepared, that they would burn our furniture and attack us all. He even said that the students had stored even kerosene oil and sticks for this purpose. I tried to convince him that I was prepared to accept any position for myself, that I would be no danger to his position. But as we were then, we had to follow the instructions of the Government and come to Karampura as per orders. Of this position, as reported to me by Dr. Grover, I informed the staff of Shivaji College.  They treated this entire fearsome affair as bluff, and they were prepared to face it even if it was true as fact. We decided the date of our moving and we informed Dr. Grover and the authorities concerned. I do not know whether the authorities instructed Dr. Grover about all this or not, but on the date decided we moved to Krampura. It goes to the credit of all our staff, specially the office staff, that they did their best in this situation. The shift was peaceful, no sticks, no kerosene, no fire,all peace.

A few experiences of Karampura are worth remembering and worth writing for the reader. First, the students who had been admitted at Karampura to first year class, I feel, did retain reservations against the Shivaji staff and students. The students at Karampura had held elections of the Students Union. We did not have any election at Matiala. Nor did we hold any at Karampura. We just accepted things as they were. The school building in which all of us were housed had a hall. We put all our library books and furniture there. I was fond of going to the library just to see whether the students were showing interest in the library. One day as I stood in the doorway to the hall, I happened to touch the plaster. The sand part of it came down with the touch of my fingers. Close by stood the overseer in charge of the building. I called him and said a few words of appreciation: I said I appreciated the quality of the building. His words in response I remember till this day: “Sir, the contractor of this building was blind and he was also without children. So he generally did good and honest work on this building.” I was simply amazed: If a blind and childless man built such buildings as this, what would be the quality of buildings built by family men with all good eyes and all their children?

Another experience about some of the students: the students admitted at Karampura were the last of the flock. The president of the union was one Vijay. He one day was vociferously boasting within my hearing: “One day we shall be standing by their side.” I ignored this. Another day, some students were making noise in the verandah in front of my office. I asked them not to make noise and move away. They moved away, but one did not. I came in, called for his file and found that he had joined college after a gap of three years. I called him and asked him why he joined college so late. Now look his purpose of college education: “Sir, my father and my great uncle murdered a man. He was a ‘badmash’. My uncle was hanged and my father got life imprisonment. I am sure someone will be killed by me too. If I am hanged, ‘Jai Ganga’. If I get life imprisonment and if I am B.A., I shall at least get class B in the jail.”

Another case: a student misbehaved with a teacher, I think he slapped the teacher. That was the extreme. So the staff council held a meeting and decided that he should be rusticated. He was rusticated. He was the nephew of a reputed bad character of Delhi. About 10.00 or 11.00 PM, late evening for me at night, the father and uncle of the boy came to my house. My wife advised me not to see them, but I decided I would see them. I wrapped a blanket on me so that they might feel that I too could carry a weapon underneath, and so behave properly. They spoke to me respectfully and requested me to allow the boy to continue at College. The boy was prepared to feel sorry and ask for forgiveness of the teacher. I said that the decision was not mine alone. It was the unanimous decision of the Staff Council. Then I asked them to come to the College, I would hold a meeting of the Staff Council, and even if one teacher spoke for the boy that he might be pardoned and allowed to continue, I would allow him to stay on. They did not come. The new Shivaji had its own challenges.

The last experience I am narrating can be narrated because now it is more than 40 years old: During university exams, one of the college teachers was appointed superintendent of the examination, and the superintendent then had to arrange for invigilators to assist him in the conduct of the exam. It was experienced sometimes that the teacher-superintendent was not easily able to raise the invigilation force, because he too was just a teacher, an equal. So the Academic Council of the University called a meeting to decide that in every college the Principal should be the Superintendent, because the Principal would be able to ask the teachers to accept invigilation duties. I did not agree to this proposal, I opposed it, saying that the Principal is, otherwise too, all the time present in the college. My suggestion was not accepted and the resolution was passed that the Principal should be the Superintendent.

So in the next examination, I was the superintendent, and a teacher of senior standing was the deputy superintendent. I generally depended on the Deputy for all the work, and I was on the supervision otherwise. The money I got as my fee, I generally spent on tea and snacks for the staff. I was there, of course, otherwise also, all the time. One day the Deputy said that he would be a little late for the next day, therefore I should start the process and he would join me soon after.

I used to take a taxi around 8:15 AM, reach the college in 15 or 20 minutes and supervise the whole process. That day I started by taxi a little bit earlier. Close to my starting point, there was a railway level crossing, which was closed. A late train was to come. I thought it would take only a few minutes and then the crossing would be open. It was 8:30, then on and on, and 8:50, even 8.55. I was absolutely confused and hopelessly lost. Then I thought of the result: no exam in that course that day. The University would ask me why. I would explain the inordinate railway crossing delay, but whatever would happen I would face. Once I was ready to face the worst, my mind began to work: Just as I was this side of the crossing in a taxi, so there could be someone else on the other side. I left the taxi, walked across the crossing on foot, got a taxi, reached the college at 9:15. The whole college was looking at the gate for me, thanks for their faith in me. I first gave the question papers in the rooms at 9:20. Then I said to all: it is now 9:00 o’clock, not 9:20. As you have been disturbed and worried, I would give you extra time to make up for your loss because of worry.  Everything passed off smoothly as ever. Once you are prepared to face the worst of your action’s consequence, in a critical situation, in that state of freedom, you reclaim your strength and win. This is what I learnt that day, thanks to my students’ faith in me, and the teachers’ faith in me, and thank God for the timely reclamation of strength and the mind at the railway level crossing.

After the college was taken over by the Government, we were still temporarily housed in a school building. So we thought of having our own building on the new site. First the idea was that the CPWD would take up the project, the College being a Government institution. This idea did not mature. The University structure did not permit anything more than the position that the Government was just another ‘trust’ to govern the College in the way other Colleges were being run and governed, by their own respective trusts. The Government had the power, like a trust’s, to appoint the Governing Body according to the statutes and ordinances of the university act, with representatives of the university and the staff, with the Principal as the Secretary. So the Government appointed the Governing Body with the approval of the University and this Governing Body took the building project in hand. Tenders were floated for the contractor and for the architect. Messrs Amar Nath Chiranji Lal were accepted and appointed as contractors for civil work and Messrs Suresh Goel and Associates were appointed architects. If I remember correctly, the cost of civil work was going to be forty five lakh rupees. The architect’s fee was four percent of the building cost at the most. Mr. Goel was a young man trying to establish himself in the field. So he offered to work for a much lower fee. The work was started in right earnest.

In the mean time something happened at Swami Shraddhanand Government College, Narela. Dr. Govind Rai Chaudhry was the Principal there. The College was temporarily housed in the Khadi Gramodyog building. Just across the road was the Higher Secondary School where I had been a high school student in 1939-43. There in the College something had happened between the students and the Principal which grew so serious that when the Principal went to meet the Vice Chancellor, Dr. Ganguli, the students ‘gheraoed’ him there and the ‘gherao’ grew to a dirty unmentionable form. Dr. Chaudhry later described the dirty details personally to me. Because of that unacceptable experience, Dr. Chaudhry resigned his job there and then. The College was left without the Principal. After he had resigned then, I think, the students went home.

At 11:00 O’clock at night that day, Dr. Sarup Singh, who was the Pro-Vice Chancellor then, telephoned me at my home in Shakti Nagar. He asked me to come to the University Vice-Chancellor’s office immediately. Immediately I took a taxi and reached the Vice-Chancellor’s office. The Vice-Chancellor, Pro-Vice Chancellor, Dean of Colleges, Shri Shanti Narain, the Dean of Students Welfare, all were there. They had all decided, with complete confidence in me I am sure, that I shall be given additional charge as Principal Shraddhanand College with effect from the next morning. This decision was just like the decision they had taken, in 1964, that Dr. Sarup Singh be given additional charge as Principal Shivaji College.

Dr. Sarup Singh spoke to me in the same mood in which he had earlier spoken to me, ‘the copper paisa boy’, suggesting that I must go to Britain and shine myself. He said: “Tomorrow morning you are going to Shraddhanand College, Narela, and take over additional charge as Principal till a regular Principal is appointed.” I looked at Dr. Ganguli in the same mood with the same expression as I used to look at him when my classmate of Jakholi Middle School, Ram Chander, was his student at Hindu College, where he had been a teacher then. I looked at him, “Sir, I shall go to Narela right in the morning. Thank you for the trust and confidence you have reposed in me.” Dr. Sarup Singh, in a mood half jocular and half serious, but informal all the same, said to me, “You might as well be prepared for a beating.” I replied, “Across the road at the high school I suffered that so many times, nothing new.” The condition was that I will have my usual salary at Shivaji, and for Narela, I would be paid taxi fare. I would keep residence at Shakti Nagar as usual.

Next morning I went to Narela as decided. It seems the students knew all that had happened. They welcomed me, happy that what they wanted they had achieved. I wanted to hold a meeting of all the students and to speak to them. They felt that it would not be possible, arrangements would have to be made and that would take time. I spoke of holding the meeting on the grassy lawn, no chairs needed for any one including me. I would speak standing. The meeting was held on the lawn. I addressed the students to say that agitation for anything was not welcome to any educational institution, how I would work with them and how I expected they would behave. The next day I invited some of my old school mates from Narela. They came, they were happy to see me there in the College and promised to help in every way.

The friends I called that day were Laiq Ram and Zile Singh. Laiq Ram was one year my senior and Zile Singh was my classmate. Laiq Ram’s daughter was a student of the College and an important member of the Students Union. When they were gone I called her to the office and advised her to contribute to the discipline of the College. She promised that I would receive no complaint against her or her friends.  Thus I tried to inculcate some relations with the students outside of the official college relations between the teacher and the students.

I used to go to Shraddhanand College in the morning by taxi. The taxi including waiting time used to cost me thirty rupees both ways. Once I called a meeting of the staff and students and the parents, whoever were able to come, on a Sunday, for the reason that many of the parents were Government servants working in Delhi. The College used to pay me the taxi fare. So on that day also I had to pay for the taxi. At the time of the audit toward the end of the year, there was an objection raised by the auditors that payment of thirty rupees for Sunday taxi was not correct because on Sundays the College is closed and therefore the payment was not approved. The objection was referred to me at Shivaji even after I had left the college. However hard I tried to justify the Sunday meeting and the taxi fare, even at the cost of my official convenience, the objection chased me year after year. Ultimately tired of the chase, in spite of the assertion of the Principal’s direction to hold a meeting or even classes for special reasons, I paid thirty rupees to the College from my own pocket.

This official (i.e., Government) ‘inviolability’ of rules reminds me of another experience narrated to me by Mr. Puri who was the treasurer of Shivaji College before it was handed over to the Government. Mr. Puri was a very senior man, far senior to me, may be in his sixty’s. Before he came over to Delhi from Lahore in 1947, he was working in a senior position in a public transport company, like GNIT in Delhi. It was a British company and the Managing Director was an English man. That was the time of what we call ‘Babu Raj’. They needed Government permission even to buy a new fan belt. Slowly, for want of the ‘inevitable’ Govt. sanction, by and by, ten buses went off the road for want of the fan belt. Each bus used to bring in for the company two hundred and fifty rupees per day. So the company was losing two thousand five hundred rupees every day. Mr. Puri reported this loss to the Director. Fan belts were available for eight rupees, that was the controlled rate. But in the open market, called ‘black market’ even though it is more than shining and self-proclaiming, fan belts were available for twenty five rupees (as against eight). So Mr. Puri’s problem was whether to wait for the permit and earn nothing and suffer a loss of twenty five hundred every day, or spend 25x 10, i.e. two hundred fifty and earn twenty five hundred. The Director allowed him to buy the belts at twenty five rupees each. The buses were on the road the same day.

Now come the auditors. There was an objection written in bold. There was a violation of the rules and the wasteful expense of two hundred and fifty against the controlled price of Rs. 80/=. Mr. Puri showed the objection to the Director. The objection had to be replied and duly met. What to do? The Director advised Mr. Puri to say: ‘Noted’. Mr. Puri replied to the auditors: “Objection noted.” The Director asked Mr. Puri: “Do you understand the meaning of ‘Objection noted?” Mr Puri said that ‘noted’ meant ‘noted’. “No”, explained the Director in his language of practical business-like language of self-confidence: “Noted means ‘bako mut,’” meaning: No non-sense.

Any way, the additional charge lasted for about four months. The Principal of Shraddhanand had to be appointed. The Narela people , the president and members of the Governing Body, all wanted me to continue as the regular Principal. But at that stage of Shivaji, I was not prepared to leave. To the disappointment of all of them I declined, and the new Principal was appointed. I knew that the person selected would not stay at Narela, but having declined the offer, I was nobody to express my opinion either way.

When I left Narela and joined back at Shivaji, I felt some sort of undefinable but perceptible change in the administrative air. It appeared there was something uncomfortable somewhere. The College was settled once again after the amalgamation of Government College and WAFM Shivaji College as Shivaji College. The building work was going on. I had instructed the staff that the bills of the contractor, after scrutiny by the architect, must not be delayed for payment. This way the contractor was happy. In fact he appreciated the way his bills were cleared and paid. Sometimes he felt very personal in his conversation with me. One, Mr. Madanlal, was the on-site manager of the work. Like the money lender (financier in fact) of my Shakti Nagar house, he insisted that I should complete the first and second floors of my house. I did not accept his suggestion saying that I was not interested in building anything beyond my need. He even suggested that I would have nothing to do with the building work because he would give me a contractor to do the job. Still I said I was not interested. Who would manage the tenant and the rent affairs? That was not my way of living. But still that was not the end of the conversation:

One day Madanlal and I were going to the Civil Supplies Officer for cement—cement sales were controlled in those days. We were going by his car because I had none, and for the Officer, he being the consumer, he had to get the permit. He also knew and felt convinced I was not going to add a single brick to the house I owned as mine. His bills too were being paid on time. Impressed as if by all this Shivaji culture of business, he said to me in the car itself, “Dr.Saheb, because of you and the College we have earned two lakh and twenty thousand rupees extra (additional), more than our usual profit.” I did not understand this. He explained, “Our civil work tender was forty five lakhs. When we send in the tender, we keep four percent of the tender money for the Saheb. At 45, we have saved two lacs and twenty thousand.” This is one example from 1970’s of what the Indian PM now in two thousand –teens is trying to fight against in spite of the gusts and storms raised by the powers and people entrenched in their position.

I continued to feel the change of air. There was no Vice-Principal in the College since I joined the College in 1964. Even before, there was none. The Bursar had been the same one since the time of Dr. Sarup Singh. I recommended the appointment of a Vice-Principal, one very senior man, and gave him relief from a lot of teaching work he was doing, in the hope that he would relieve me of a lot of routine work I was otherwise doing. I recommended the appointment of a new man as Bursar, a teacher who was very close to me personally as well as a dedicated teacher. But the air change did not take place. I continued to feel a new kind of strain.

I spoke to Dr. Sarup Singh that I needed rest away from the College for some time. For me that would be the beginning of change, or say the beginning of a desire for change, far different from the earlier change from teaching to administration. I was feeling the demanding pressure of administration in the settled state.

Dr. Sarup Singh suggested that I could make an application for a Ford Foundation grant for University teachers to go abroad and pursue their own programme of study, training and research at a university of their own choice.  I made an application for the study of Linguistics at the University of Leeds. I got the grant and, with the help of the British Council, got a place in the School of English at Leeds where Mr. John Spenser was the Director. The grant was for nine months originally but extendable by three months for one year. I left for Leeds on study leave for one year, I think at the end of September 1971. Dr. Paul of Rajdhani College also was with me under the same programme. We reached Leeds late in the evening, got a room in Boundary Hotel at the rate of two pounds per night. The next morning reported our presence at the School of English.

My programme of study was my own in the field of Theoretical and Applied Linguistics, specially Phonetics, psycho-linguistics and Socio-Linguistics. For research, I selected and took up my own project of English in India. I wanted to study the basic purposes for which the British Government had introduced the study of English, Language and Literature, in India. This programme in fact was the practical and academic extension of what we had heard in India, after the “Quit India Resolution” of the Indian National Congress on August 9, 1942.

During my stay in Leeds, I lived in 2, Walmsley Road. This was the house of one Mr. Thakur who had his business in Bradford. The Thakur family was a small Gujarati family. I had one room there on the first floor at 2.00 pounds per week. Before I left for Leeds, one of the Shivaji lecturers, Mr. B.S. Sidhu of the Department of Economics, had left for Leeds on study leave for Ph.D. and he was living in ‘Mary Morris Residence’, a University hostel. I had written to Mr. Sidhu to have one room reserved for me in the Residence, but I could not leave Delhi-according as I had planned. Hence the room was given to some other student. I had to take some private residence and that was at the Thankurs’ at their Walmsley Road house.

I continued my study and research in the university. In those days there was a coalmen’s strike in Britain. For that reason, due to restricted coal supply, the supply of electricity had to be reduced. On January 26, 1972, there was blackout in the Walmsley area from 4.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m. But there was light in the Mary Morris Residence area. So for those four hours I went to Mr. Siddhu. From 8.00 p.m. to 12.00 there was to be black out in that area. So after 8.00 p.m., I started to come back to my residence where, at that time, the lights had been restored. I was walking that distance. On the way there was a youth club meant for young people of all sorts. When I joined the main road, there was a heavy blow on my right shoulder from behind as if with a wooden hammer of big size. I immediately fell and became half conscious, then whatever followed I felt as if it happened in a dream. A police car too passed by but it did not stop. My spectacles were broken and lying on the pavement, and my bag in which there was only a small towel was by my side. When I recovered full consciousness, I collected my spects and my bag and started walking, almost limping. I was not able to hold my bag by the right hand. I felt as if my arm would fall off from my shoulder. I reached my room and called for Mr. Thakur.

Mr. Thakur came in immediately and took me to the hospital by his car. At the hospital they took an X-ray picture of the arm. It was cracked through and through but not yet separated. For treatment they gave me some relaxant, put my arm in the sling and asked me to come every day for about half an hour for treatment. I continued going to the hospital for about six weeks. They gave some vibrations to my arm for healing. But some doctors said it was right, others said it was wrong. For a few days the ‘Sick Bay’ of the University kept me as indoor patient.The police also came and questioned me. The British Council representative also came. Mr Spenser too came and expressed sympathy for me. I simply said that it had to happen as it did happen, and if it did not happen with me it would have happened with some one else because the perpetrators wanted a victim whosoever it could be. After the treatment for about six weeks the hospital put my arm in sling for three months. After that I was to report back at the hospital.

During all these months from the beginning I was in touch with my friend Dr. J.C. Sharma in London. He called me to London where he and his family nursed me so well that I almost forgot the pain of the unhappy incident. After three months I went back to Leeds and reported at the hospital. They put my arm again in the sling but not as tightly as before. Dr. Sharma continued to be in touch with me. During all this period I was thinking of my family back home. So around March-April I decided that I should call my wife for the last about six months of my planned stay at Leeds.

I wrote to my wife that she should prepare to come to England for about six months. She started preparing her papers for the travel. She had her passport and she only needed the visa.

Here I wish to take some time to pay a tribute to the British Posts. Earlier, in 1960, when I was staying in the Indian Students Hostel, Guilford St., close to Russel Square in London, I received a letter from a friend in Delhi. Can you imagine the address he had written on the envelope: “Mr. Tulsi Ram, London.” Would you feel surprised if I tell you I got the letter!

In Leeds also I got a letter from the British Posts which I would explain: When I wrote to my wife that she should prepare to come to England, and when she had got the passport, I knew she would need the visa. So when I thought of her visa, I wrote to the British Council in Delhi that, if need be, they should help her get the visa. They did help and she got the visa. But when I got the letter from the British Posts and opened the envelope, their letter said: “We received a letter from you addressed to the British Council in India, but it was without nine pence postage stamps on the envelope. However, we felt that as it was addressed to the British Council, it must be an important letter, and we allowed it to go. So you please affix nine pence postage stamps on the card enclosed and post it back to our office.” Thanks to the British postal system and their courtesy. The required visa had been issued.

That was a difficult time with me. I was normally with Dr. Sharma in London, except when I had to be in the hospital. My wife arrived in London sometimes in the beginning of summer. I was there specially to receive her. Jagdish and I received her at the airport, and when we reached home, then she came to know of the accident and the trauma I had passed through and was passing through even then. Half my upper body on the right side was still blue. But I had got rid of the sling. That gave me some relief.

We continued to live in the same one room in Leeds. Mrs. Thakur, Lakshmiben, was specially very kind and cooperative with my wife. After my wife joined me there we had regular Indian meals. Otherwise I had been living my earlier London way by myself. Once we invited Mr. George of the Lloyds Bank in Leeds where I had my account. My maintenance allowance from Ford Foundation was four hundred dollars for which I received two hundred and fifty pounds at the rate of exchange then.

The story now moves to Gian, my son. He had done his High School from the DAV School, Chandigarh. After that he moved to Kurukshetra University with me in 1963. At Kurukshetra, he joined B. Sc. which he pursued as long as I was there up to 1964. When I came back to Delhi he joined Kirori Mal College. He tried on with B.Sc., he also tried the Honors course in English. But somehow he was not feeling settled. Then after some time I asked him if he still felt interested in Engineering. He immediately said ‘yes’ to the suggestive question. I think by that time the admissions to the degree courses in engineering had been over. So we decided that he should seek admission to whatever course was available at that time. He got admission to the Diploma course, Mechanical, at the Government Polytechnic College at Sarsa. He joined the course, and fortunately after some time got migration to Government Polytechnic College, Jhajjar, a town 35 miles from Delhi. He completed the course in 1969. After that he joined Guru Nanak Engineering College, Ludhiana for the post-diploma course in Automobile engineering and completed that additional course in 1970.

Gian’s ambition was to go abroad for further studies. In the early 70s, while I was in Leeds, there was a friend of mine and a colleague at Shivaji, Ved Prakash Adhlakha, who was then at Lakehead University, Thunderbay. Ved suggested to Gian he should try admission to Lakehead in some engineering course. Gian made the application, Ved pursued it, and Gian got admission to Lakehead University. Gian’s next course of action now was ‘to Lakehead’. He decided upon this course. He wrote to me that he had got the admission letter from the Lakehead University and he was arranging his flight to Thunderbay. He had written to Ved, I also had written to Ved, and Ved had assured us of all cooperation and help.

Gian had been married in 1970, and he had a baby daughter Shalini, in 1971. In the meantime, my daughter Indira had completed her M.A. (English) from Delhi University and we were thinking of her marriage also.

In August 1972, we were with Dr. J.C. Sharma in London. There we received two good news from Delhi: one was in relation to Indira’s marriage and the other was about Gian’s flight to Canada.

Indira’s marriage: A respectable and prestigious family of Indore, Bhagirath and Brothers, were on a social tour of Rajasthan, Haryana and Delhi in search for a suitable bride for their youngest brother, Gulab, who had done Science and Engineering degrees from BITS Pilani and M.Sc. from America. They were guided to our house by our senior friend, Shri Puran Chand of 1C/4 WEA, Rohtak Road, Delhi. The eldest brother, Bhagirath ji, and the youngest, Gulab, then employed with Phillips (Canada) based in Toronto, together with two ladies, came to our Shakti Nagar home and rang the bell. Indira opened the door, and at first sight the search for the bride was over, successfully, if the girl that opened the door was the girl they sought for. We were away and the ladies in the home were Sheela, wife of my brother Ramkishan, and Pushpa, wife of Gian. After a short conversation and the meeting of the boy and the girl, they decided that the match was fine, acceptable to both parties, subject to our approval. We received the call at Dr. Sharma’s in London and we approved of whatever the younger folk had decided and recommended for our approval.

The other news was from Gian. He said his admission to Lakehead University was complete and he was only waiting for the air ticket. His problem was that a sum of 750 pounds was to be paid to a Canadian firm, Canadian Pacific Airlines, the next morning. I had the money but that was in Leeds. On August 10, or so, as soon as the Llyods Bank in Leeds opened, I phoned George, the officer who was handling my account, and requested him to transfer 750 pounds to Canadian Pacific. He did it immediately and asked me to write an authority letter to the bank confirming my request by telephone. The money was transferred to Canadian Pacific, Gian got the ticket, he boarded the flight and reached London on August 12, 1972. On 13th night, he reached Thunderbay.

Gulab too reached London after having decided at his family level that Indira was the right girl for that family. He phoned me from the London airport that he had arrived. I offered to go to the airport and escort him to Dr. Sharma’s home, but he insisted he would reach by himself once he knew the address. He reached in a short while, stayed with us for a day and flew to Toronto the next day. At the Croydon station where I saw him off, he said to me that from his family side everything was fine, and what ever our decision, yes or no, would be acceptable to them. Those who know the Indian community know that in matrimonial affairs, the boy’s side normally is reticent, not as free and courteous and spontaneous. When Gulab said so at the station we also said: It is done.

Our being in London, Gian’s phone at Dr. Sharma’s house, the Indore family’s visit with Puran Chandji, all these things make me feel that, apart from our will, effort and action, there is some higher power that looks after us. On such occasions I remember Shakespeare:

There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio,

Than are dreamt of in your philosophy.

 And also that:

There is a power that shapes our ends, rough hew them how we will.

I say so and bow my head in submission and gratitude.

My work in the University of Leeds continued up to September. I completed my research work and spoke to John Spenser about its publication. He was clear in his view, every Englishman is, normally: If you are saying something for English, it can be considered for publication here, if anything against, No. My approach was straight: For the gift of modern science and reason against superstition, yes, something good; the society cut off from its age-old roots, a culture uprooted, transplanted, No. My book was not to be considered for publication. I kept the material collected, came back and rejoined Shivaji.

Sometime in October 1972, four of us went to Indore to complete the formalities of Indira’s engagement: my wife and I, Ram Kishan, and a friend of Bhagirath ji’s and Puran Chand ji’s son. The engagement was a very simple affair, no fanfare with ostentatious gifts and cash. It was with a silver coin only and a gift of Rs.101/=.

Before the formal ceremony we had stayed with Bhagirathji’s family. But after the ceremony, we said we would leave, because according to the Haryana custom, the parents of the girl did not visit, nor did they stay, nor ate at the daughter’s house. They agreed and said okay. But after some time they called us to the ground floor hall. We went there and we saw thirty-five dinner plates laid out before thirty five people, and, in addition, four more for us. It was a celebration.

The problem of inter ‘lokachar’ (inter-cultural or inter-community values and behaviour) came up. They said: “Our custom is that the parents do visit the house and home of the girl without any reservation. You are now a member of our family. These thirty-five people will not eat unless you join them.” We relented, we had to. Since then they have been coming to us and we have been going to Indore or to Indira and Gulab in California but not as visitors, we meet as members of one family. I have noticed that things have changed or are changing in Haryana too as a result of the intermixing of inter regional communities.

Back to Shivaji:

Now the College was settled, yet there was something restive, itching for something. There was a student’s strike, hunger strike it was, for no reason. I feel that quite often strikes are staged for public opinion and as food for the media which lap it up and play on. I said to myself: These city boys have three or four times tea and snacks, hence the demand for canteen and at lower rates. And then hunger strike? I put two class-four staff to ‘look after their health’, and they must watch them for food or drink. Soon after this deployment, the students ended the strike.

But another time, the students’ agitation became funny for them and painful for me and for the teachers. A certain minivan on Najaf Garh Road happened to ‘touch’ or may have‘brushed’ against a student of the College. The boys dragged it to the College. They wanted to bring it in, but I somehow physically stopped them. Soon it became a crowd, shouting, joking, cracking and all the pranks of the crowd. Then somebody set a rubber tyre on fire and slowly the minivan was reduced to an ashy skeleton. It was, as if, a painful ‘holi’ for the crowd. From the adjoining police station, the police came and chased the crowd of boys away. The college boys ran into the College and the police too followed in. I started getting phone calls whether I called in the police. I did not, I said, but I did feel that in such a situation the police would certainly have to move. Thus, sometimes I, and sometimes the police had to be on fire. The owner of the van too stood apart, a piteous, helpless figure. The news reached up to the University. The Dean of Colleges and with him some other staff came in and I had to cut a sorry figure. The words that came to my mind but not to my tongue in that frustrating mood were:

Events in and around the College convince me that I must walk out.

To do what? Walk out where? Not yet clear, but somewhere deep in the psyche it was clear that the words were the voice of my soul. On the whole, things went on slowly, silently, indifferently. The Principal was the center of the college but the circle was growing eccentric.

Outside the college I was regarded as a very successful intelligent and reasonable Principal, inside I was not all happy with myself. Probably the purpose for which I had been called in was over. Probably Narela, which was then in an earlier ‘Shivaji’ condition, could have been the right though difficult choice for a man like me, but, may be, Narela too after settlement would have moved on along the same lines as Shivaji.

In that state of heart searching situation, one day a class-four member of the staff came in to me, raised his foot and showed me the sole of his shoe. He complained: “Sir, the accountant does not give me money to replace my shoes.” Shoes were a part of his uniform. But the class four staff did not actually want to wear the uniform. They, instead, wanted special kind of wear fit for special occasions and wanted that the special wear of their choice be subsidized at the rate of the uniform price. I was told some colleges allowed that sort of practice, but I did not approve of it that way.

But now, on a light note, let me narrate another experience: When I was reading for Ph.D. in the British Museum Library, I came across a writing of John Wesley’s: John Wesley wrote that when the Museum was in the process of completion, he happened to visit the Natural History section. And there he saw the wings and skeletons of various birds and insects. Then he thought of himself and of his purpose on earth: If I were the man collecting all these skeletons, then, whenever I die and face God, God would ask me: “Did I send you on earth to collect these skeletons?” What would I answer?

When the class IV man showed me the sole of his shoe, then I too said to myself, “Did I too come on the earth to watch and replace the soles of shoes?” Words such as these show that I was not the man to face situations like these all my life.

To begin with, Shivaji was fine. As principal I became, ‘ex-officio’, a member of the University Academic Council. In the meeting of the Council, I was perhaps the only village man. Other members were sons and daughters of famous men in high places. But in me the village man was always nearest at hand. So for some time I simply watched how the others, men of high places, thought and spoke and behaved. Having seen them and their performance for a few months I came to this conclusion: “All these people are either wise and intelligent, or they are foolish. If they are wise and intelligent, they are not wiser and more intelligent than I, and if they are foolish, they are not less foolish than me.” That gave me confidence, and I started taking part in the meetings, always keeping in mind that in those meetings my duty was to the University as an institution. In fact, in the meetings and elsewhere, all my colleagues of different colleges held me in high regard, but I never let go my native virtue of self-examination, respect for the seniors and love and courtesy for all.

In the college also I always respected the place, position and rights of every member without fail. One example of this is important. The college rules had been amended at the University level. Every year, the head of a college department would be changed in order of seniority. Once it so happened that two teachers had equal seniority in the college though in age and all-told experience one was very senior. The new ‘head’ would take over when the new session started after summer vacation. During summer vacation I wrote to both that on May 10, according to the rules, I would decide by the draw of lots who would be the ‘head’ next year. I sent letters to both on the address given by both. On May 10, the senior man came, the other did not. To the man present I said that, according to the rule and practice, he could be given charge of the department but, if he agreed, the younger man could be given another chance. The teacher agreed. I thanked him and gave another date for the selection. Letters were sent to both, to the man present on the spot, and to the other on his address. The younger man did not come on the new date also, nor did he reply. Nor had he given his holiday address. In this situation the other person was appointed the ‘head’, and he did a lot of work in the vacation, sorting out applications of new candidates for teaching posts, making time table for classes, and framing time table for each member of the department also. When the college reopened, the younger man refused to receive his time table from the new ‘head’ in charge. I co-signed the time table. The younger man had to receive the timetable now, but protested that he had been insulted. In consequence he requisitioned a meeting of the college Staff Council. According to the rules 10 teachers could requisition a meeting. The meeting was notified.

On the appointed date, the meeting began at 4 PM. Forty-one teachers attended it. The meeting lasted up to 8:30 PM. I presided over the meeting as ex-offico president of the Staff Council. At the end votes were taken. I had to decide and define the subject of the meeting which truly was against me: “Whether in the appointment of the ‘head’ of this department, the Principal has violated the rules.” Three were ‘Yes’ including the requisitioner, thirty eight were for the Principal, saying ‘No’. The requisitioner lost his point.

The next morning I called in the requisitioner to say that I was sorry he had lost his point. He felt sorry and said: “Sir, how could I win against you?” I expressed my view that if he knew that the principal was right in that particular situation, why did he make a fuss for nothing? Still I assured him that whatever he had done, he had his right to do that and I did not mind at all. A couple of his friends also said that they appreciated with surprise how I kept smiling, and against me, for four hours and a half.

Time thus went on smooth and slow. Once there was no money for the payment of staff salary. The grant also was not received. The reason was that the College did not send in to the University and the University Grants Commission reports of the College accounts for the previous term. The accounts were not ready in the Accounts Branch of the college. So I had to arrange for overdraft from the bank on personal security which, the bank explained to me, was a risky affair. I wanted to take action against the accounts branch staff. But the karamchari staff union told me plainly they would protest and even go on strike if I did. Things such as this continued to convince me that perhaps I was not yet in the right place. If I had done some good to Shivaji in terms of service, so be it. I would continue to do it, what else I could or would I do? During all this period, which could be called a period of self-imposed strain, there were certain people whose love and regard I remember with all gratitude without naming them all. Officially, of course, Dr. Rana as Bursar, Dr. Siddhu as ex-Bursar, Tyagi as librarian, Randhir as accounts officer, Harbans Singh as office superintendent, Jatashankar as my P.A., Tekchand as my office boy and many others were always a source of strength.

I have a special word for Dr. Rana on a personal basis. His mother, a very noble lady, was from Jasrana. She reminded me of the wife of my great uncle next door in my village, my ‘Tai’, who also was from Jasrana. Dr. Rana, then Mr. Rana, had finished and submitted his Ph.D. thesis which had been examined and accepted, subject to the Viva-voce examination. The viva was important for Mr. Rana not only for the degree but also for the higher post for which he had been waiting for want of the higher degree.The examiner was not giving the date for the exam because of reasons best known to him. I spoke to Dr. Sarup Singh who was then the Pro-Vice-Chancellor. Dr. Sarup Singh said that according to the rules of examination the person who examines the thesis holds the Viva also, not any other examiner. I, most respectfully, spoke of a possible case not yet seen: “Suppose the examiner of the thesis dies after his examination of the thesis. You can’t appoint another examiner for the thesis already examined and recommended. Then what do we do?” Dr. Sarup Singh understood the point. The University wrote to the examiner that he should urgently give a date for the viva, otherwise the University would have to arrange for another examiner. At present I feel that, because the new examiner has not examined the thesis because it had already been examined, nor can he be asked to examine the thesis already approved, the University can and should refer to him the thesis for facilitation of the viva by him. The viva was thus arranged and Dr. Rana got the degree. God bless him and his family. He also got the higher post.

Time went on slowly, smoothly, sometimes non-smoothly too, but I was getting sure and certain that I would bide my time and ultimately quit. Indira’s wedding came in December, 1973. Everybody from college, the Samaj and from the neighborhood was helpful. Gian was at Thunderbay. He assured me he was coming for the wedding and he would also have the immigration of his wife and daughter finalized with the Canadian High Commission. The wedding went off very well. The wedding party stayed for two days. They left with Indira on December 15, 1973. On December 31, Gian, Pushpa and little Shalini (Shaloo) also left for Thunderbay in the morning. Gulab and Indira left for Toronto in the evening. With the end of ’73, we two were left with Ram Kishan and Sheela who also left for Ludhiana sometime in the following day. We were and we are all in the queue, moving on one by one, one by one, which at some point in time, may be, turns into a circle.

Pilani Holiday:

That was the most difficult time for my wife. I saw her opening the wardrobe sometimes like the mother preparing her children for school. However much I tried to convince her of the new facts of life as they were unfolding, she would not feel convinced. I then realized how my mother too must have suffered after we had left for Delhi. I now knew we shall have to change, willingly or unwillingly. Better prepare.

I had spoken to friends of my desire to go back to teaching from administration. In administration, life and relationships were going to be more and more legal rather than human and dharmic. In legal relations you give the minimum and try to take the maximum. In the human and specially in dharmic relationships, you give the maximum and take the minimum. Teaching could be easily human and dharmic, while in administration you had to face the legal at every step. I had spoken of all this to Dr. R.C. Sharma, my teacher at Ramjas and Mamaji of my classmate Jai Dev Sharma. He was then Dean Faculty of Languages, BITS, Pilani. Dr. Sharma, because of my qualifications and my studies in Linguistics and applied Linguistics at Leeds, was able to secure a visiting position for me as Professor at BITS, Pilani. I received a letter of invitation from Pilani for a year’s visiting professorship, and we left for Pilani on leave for a year, probably on 3^rd September, 1973.

When I reached Pilani I found that the students were on strike. The strike was so well organized that no student from the outside could enter or leave the campus. There were three entries into Pilani, from Delhi, from Hissar and from Sikar. All three were blocked by student volunteers. The volunteers were well looked after by the Students Union. Their demands were academic, one of which was permission for repetition and improvement of ‘D’ grade. The student members of the Academic Council were academically sound and responsible. Their ideals were, as I later found, sound and latest modern courses, challenging examinations and correct assessment. Both teaching and examinations were internal. As a professor, I also was a member of the Academic Council. The examination results were not division based, they were grade based. The value of A was 10, B-8, C-6, D-4. If the student’s CGPA was 6, he or she got C grade, with 8, B, with 10, A. If CGPA was less than four and a half, he /she had to leave the institute. Students with C and B grades were allowed to repeat their courses for improvement. But if somebody got D in a course, then not allowed to repeat. The students’ demand was that a student be allowed to repeat the course in which he/she got D.

As a member of the Academic Council I got a chance to speak on the problem. I thought in my mind like this: The students CGPA is like a bank account. The amount is 6 or 8 or 10. In place of 6, he can make it 8, even 10 by repeated effort. But if he has only 4 in his account, he cannot raise it to 6 or 8, instead he has to draw from 8 or 10 to make it 6. In this way the D grade needs something like deficit financing, and if the students want to raise the 4 itself to 6, they should be allowed. 6 is self-sustaining and self-improving. So is 8. But 4 has to draw upon 8 or 10, this is something negative and the students want to make it positive and self-sufficient. I spoke this way. My use of the term ‘deficit financing’ made an appeal to the Council. The demand was accepted. Dr. Sharma later told me that that day itself they thought of me as a positive and constructive academic thinker, and that paved the way for me to be a regular member of the Institute. I do not remember the date on which I joined the Institute, but like a village man, I remember that in Indira Ghandhi’s time when in the evening the Emergency was declared, I heard the news at Dr. Sharma’s residence on June 26, 1974. That day I was at Pilani.

The Institute had reserved for me a professor’s house, F category, a big double storeyed house. I did not want one so big, I wanted a small one. I was advised to close down half of it. I said I did not want to live on one lung, I wanted to breathe in full. There was one D type lecturer’s house which had been reconditioned and upgraded with certain additional facilities in which the Director was living alone then before his family joined him. That house was allotted to me. I had to pay rent for the house and the furniture. Ram Kishan was back in Delhi. In half the portion he lived, and the other half was given on rent to a friend.

Pilani was a peaceful place. It was self-contained and clean, quiet and serene. The Institute had a dairy on the campus where cow’s milk and ghee was available. I had a room for myself in the Languages Department. There was an attendant who used to clean the chairs and tables in our rooms. One day as I reached my room in the morning, I found that the man, Jamna was his name, years my senior in age, had not dusted the table and chair. I took out my hand-kerchief from my pocket, wiped the chair and table clean and started my work. Jamna came in a few minutes later and he saw what I had done for myself. He assessed me according to his senior man’s sense of humanity and said in a quiet personal tone: “Sir, I hear that you are here only for a year, why don’t you stay on for all time?” I took those words as a senior man’s good wishes for me. I believe that whatever we have in life, we have by the Grace of God and the Blessings and good wishes of our parents, teachers, seniors and friends. And my reason is this: If a person for any reason abuses us, curses us, wishes us ill, we mind, which means that there is an effect on our chemistry of body and mind. Similarly when somebody wishes us well, is there no effect on our chemistry? There is, whether we are conscious of it or not. I thanked Jamna for his words. We used to address him as Panditji because he was born of a traditional Brahman family. And since he was the senior-most man in age in the entire staff, once we had the National Flag unfurled by him on January 26. That was Pilani. Similarly, once we had the National Flag unfurled by the youngest student of the Institute on the Republic Day, a token of respect and recognition for continuity.

I remember Jamna in another context, call it tradition, science (psychology), or just superstition: When the ‘pitripaksha’ (Shraddha fortnight) starts, we offer something to the temple or to a deserving Brahman family. Once my wife had to go to Delhi for that day. On the previous day she asked me that since she would be away, I should give some money to Jamna so that they can have some sweets and other things in the family. On that day in the morning I completely forgot. But when I saw Jamna in the Department, I remembered what my wife had asked me to do. I gave some money to Jamna, got him two hours leave, and requested him to eat and pray in his family. When my wife came back some time in the evening, she said the first words to me: “You forgot.” “Sorry I did, but how did you know?” And what she said surprised me. She said, “I saw Mummy in dream. She was cooking. I said Mummy, why are you cooking? I could and I would have cooked for you. Mummy replied, “You did not, so I thought I would cook for myself’.” What it all is, I know not. Call it whatever you will. But I respect tradition and I respect the mind and its working, because there must be a reason for whatever the mind thinks and does.

Pilani was a time for ‘chintan’, introspection, clean, quiet, self-contained, and undisturbed. The Institute was a reorganized, reintegration of three Birla institutions: Birla College of Arts, Birla College of Science, and Birla College of Engineering. It was recognized and approved by the University Grants Commission as a ‘Deemed University’. It is now a full-fledged university. The three colleges were integrated as three Faculties of the University: Faculty of Arts, Faculty of Science, and Faculty of Engineering. Dr. R.C. Sharma, earlier my teacher at Ramjas College Delhi, was Dean of the Faculty of Arts. There was a local shopping centre on the campus, it was named ‘Canal place’ because of a circular canal round the ‘canal kothi’ at the centre of a square forest called “Madhuban”. There were many peacocks in the Madhuban, and we on the campus would enjoy the morning and evening music along with devotional songs and ‘arti‘ in the Saraswati temple on one side of the forest. The temple was a marble structure with religious carvings and emblems of all religions on the walls around. From the University blocks, we could see the temple as if it was situated and designed for our homage to Mother Knowledge before we started the day’s work.

There were two courses in English across the Institute. Every entrant had to do these courses. There were, also, higher courses for those who wanted to specialize in English up to M.A. Even after M.A., provision was made for M.Phil. and even Ph.D. The emphasis in the Institite, of course, was on Engineering with permission for double degree also in an allied subject or branch. The real value was the course content of a degree rather than the time duration. A student could do the degree in a shorter time than usual by choosing more courses than the normal six in a semester, or one could take more time if his speed of learning was limited. In any course, there was full freedom for the examinee to discuss with the examiner his achievement result. If there was difference between the examiner and the examinee, the matter was taken up by a committee of teachers before which both the examinee and the examiner could present their views freely and frankly. A lot of experimentation was thus available in teaching and examination both. Every teacher was the examiner for the course or courses he or she taught. The results were finalized by a committee of teachers.

In this free atmosphere, there was time for me to think and decide whether to continue in administration or change over to academics. My thesis had been published in 1971 under the title The Neo-Classical Epic with Special Reference to Ethical Interpretation.The preparation of that thesis during my study in 1960-62, and the finalization of it as a book with acknowledgements of all my teachers and advisors had been a personal discipline for myself. The nearly ten years administrative experience of an institution from the state of division and disturbance to settlement and then internal ambitions up and down had given me  periods of positive satisfaction and moments of questioning and even frustration at times. Whether life was meant for a series of petty self-contained eddies of self-interest and power; or a sustained process of self-growth as an individual, through the membership of a family, an institution, or University; and the University, working and growing for the life and education of every individual, nation and humanity: this was the question for me.

My individual discipline was conditioned by Rigveda (5, 51, 15): “Swasti panthaam anucharema…”. And my social discipline was coditioned by Rigveda (10, 191, 2): “Samgacchadhwam, Samvadad-dhwam, sam vo manaansi jaanataam..”. That discipline I must keep. Each one member of the human nation is just a cell in a sub system of the cosmic Purusha. Work in your place as a dynamic positive cell, otherwise you will be thrown out by the Universal Law of the System. In ancient language the name of that law is Dharma. My problem was Swadharma, my nature and culture, and the practical persuit of that personal culture.

So in the peace of Pilani I did a lot of self-examination. In Delhi, the teachers were going the political way, the movement was called ‘democratization’! Nothing was accepted as sacred. Among the teachers there were leftists, rightists, and centrists, i.e., teachers dedicated to the Congress, Jana Sangh, or the Congress party. Among the students too there was Students Federation, Akhil Bharatiya Vidyarthi Parishad, and, I think, the Congress wing too. Among the teachers, there were those who were vociferously working for Democratization. Later, when one of them became a university officer, he said, confessed in fact, that Democratisation had destroyed the University discipline. When Dr. K. N. Raj was made Vice Chancellor, a high official asked me about my opinion. I said I was happy, but the University structure of power equations should be maintained in the interest of discipline. I feel that I was not correctly understood, may be I was even misinterpreted.

When the Staff Councils and staff subcommittees were formed in the colleges, one of those committee was the Purchase Committee, with a teacher convenor and the principal as chairman, ex-offico, of all committees. There was the admissions committee also. The purpose was that teachers should not only teach, they should also share power. So once at Shivaji we had to buy some furniture, perhaps chairs for the reading room. The Purchase Committee called for tenders, minimum three, prepared the order for purchase, and the convenor brought the order for my signatures. I found that the rates were much higher than I expected according to my knowledge and experience. So I added a note instead of merely signing the order form: I said, “The rates appear to be on the higher side, referred back to the Purchase Committee.” The convenor came back to me and protested that I, as Principal, insulted the committee, as if I was subordinate to the committee, which, as he felt, was all powerful in matters of purchase. I said to him, “If there is an audit objection to the rates paid, or even if the treasurer of the college objected to the rates, would you answer?” He said promptly that answering the objections was the Principal’s responsibility. I had to say: Dear convenor, here you are really wonderful, the power is yours and the responsibility is mine.

Such situations, if you are not objective and clear, create new personal equations which vitiate the institutional atmosphere. I wanted to keep out of this sort of equations. I did keep my cool even in relation to the young man who had forced a requisitioned staff meeting on me. Those who signed for him, ten they were, signed without thought as if to exercise the power they had. They did not realise that when they were signing the requisition paper, they were signing not only against the principal, they were signing even against their own fellow member, the senior teacher whom I had appointed as ‘head’ of their department.

The same young man came to me some time in August or September. He said he had got a scholarship for higher studies from a French university, Sorbonne as far as I now remember, a real prestigious offer. He was asked to join in about three days or so. Had I borne a personal grudge against him for his requisition of the Staff Council meeting, I could hit him, may be for a life time. He was a confirmed teacher and to leave the college he was to give three month’s notice. Had I insisted on the notice, I would have done it without violating the law. But I know and I believe that the human law is the lowest standard of human living. There is a higher law also which, if you hit somebody according to the human law for a personal reason, will never forgive you. So I asked him to write a letter for relief from his service, informed the Chairman of the Governing Body, and relieved him there and then. The Chairman did express some worry for a substitute, I assured him that I would manage that just the next morning in consultation with the University Head of the Department. The Chairman accepted and confirmed my recommendation and action. That trust of the Chairman and the Governing Body, I enjoyed till the last day of my service at Shivaji.

All this mental exercise I was doing at Pilani during that one year of my stay as visiting professor.

Introspection:

This thinking at this level had continued with me ever since my first day in the service, in fact, even before I joined Hans Raj. Mr. R.P. Chopra, my teacher at Ramjas, and Guruji, Hari Ramji, teacher of English at DAV School, Chitra Gupta Road, Pahar Ganj, Delhi, had advised me to meet, Dr. G.L. Datta, Principal, Hans Raj College. I had made an application for a lectureship there earlier. So I met Dr. Datta. The college then was at Chitra Gupta Road in a wing of the DAV school. So when I met Dr. Datta, I referred to Mr. Chopra and to Hari Ram Ji since I had been a student of both. Dr. Datta offered me a seat saying that he was proud of both Mr. Chopra and Hari Ram Ji. These words gave me the confidence for the meeting.

Dr. Datta put one question to me: “Do you have passion for teaching?” I replied, “Sir, I like teaching!” He listened to me and again put this same question. I only explained what I meant by liking: I said, “Sir, what you call passion, the same I mean by liking.” He felt satisfied, and then put another question; “Are you an introvert or an extrovert?” Again I was in a difficulty to choose, but I was able to reply, I think, the way he wanted: I said: “Sir, when I am alone, I am an introvert, when I am in company, I am an extrovert.” He was, I am sure, happy because he said, “So you are an ambivert.” I just smiled to mean that I was for sure an ambivert.

I have referred to Dr. Datta because I was passing through a phase of life in which what Dr. Datta had said was intensely relevant. One question for me was: Is your passion, your profession? I was trying to answer that. Secondly, in administration you have to be more an extrovert than an introvert. In fact, in administration, being an introvert could present all kinds of difficulty. At Maharshi Dayananda University, Rohtak, from where I retired, the Vice Chancellor used to say and emphatically too that whenever he came across somebody who was a trouble maker, he would straight away dismiss him even though he knew he might be wrong. Even if the dismissed person sued him he would have his knees shattered before he won. I could not be that extrovert. I also tried to raise the question whether my decision would be right or wrong, and to find an answer to that question would surely depend on my own inward thinking.

Then another question was before me, and more than me, Dr. Sharma made me face that question directly. That was my study of the motives and purpose of the British Government’s introduction of English into India. I had collected the material, I had got it typed and had it bound in the form of a book. But I was not, till then, able to give it a unified logical structure. I had had time to revise my thesis for publication because at that time Shivaji itself was passing through the phase of settlement. After settlement it was passing through the phase of democratization which, in actuality, meant the phase of politicisation.

I understood the meaning of that phase after a university committee meeting. Once during that process, when the leftists were in power in the DUTA, the Vice Chancellor had appointed a committee of eight: four teachers and four principals, of which I was one. In one of those meetings I realized that what the teachers said and insisted upon meant nothing much to me. After the meeting, I said to one of them why they said and insisted upon something which really meant nothing. His reply was: our purpose is first that the present structure must break down, then things would take their own course. At Pilani I was deeply in the process of that oncoming phase. My mind was faced with the question: Is your passion your profession, or, is your profession your passion. Dr. Sharma had warned me about my work on ‘English in India’: “Some one will steal away your idea, and then you will regret.” My problem was: Will Shivaji give me time to think and work as I had worked on the thesis? The question, in other words, was: Will, or can, administration and academics go together? The answer at Pilani was not possible, it would be possible only at Shivaji. So back to Shivaji I must go, and after my one year visiting assignment was over, I went back to Delhi and rejoined Shivaji

There is a  picture in my Shivaji collection, I remember the mood and moment of it, and the locale of it sums up one of my favorite Vedic themes: “You are Sanatan yet modern, changing every moment, you come to go, up and onwards, never downwards, invited, assured and reassured all the time.” It was clicked at the behest of a friend, one of my closest. Therein I am standing in the doorway, absolutely myself by myself, in one of my best suits, got of Burtons of London, one that forced even an Englishman on the Strand to compliment me. The door is half open, opened as if by the invisible, to come in or go out. That sums up my state of mind at that moment. Every moment of our life is iconic, so is that picture. Cross the bridges the way they come or take everyone as the cross roads

Around that time, or may be a little before or after, there was the news report of a High Court judgment in which the court had allowed the writ petition of a teacher ‘on probation’ whom  the College had terminated, without a due notice within eleven months of his appointment. This petition had been filed on the basis of another High Court judgment which had said that according to the rules of Delhi University the mode of termination of the services of a probationer was the same as that of a confirmed teacher. Shivaji also had terminated a teacher on probation but with due notice within eleven months of his service. As I read the report of that judgment in the newspaper, I felt sure that a similar petition would be filed against Shivaji also by the teacher. The petition came. I had to face another side of the Principal’s job which required that the Principal must be not only an administrator managing self-conscious assorted human material in the age of human rights without the Charter of duties in a democracy, but he should also be a lawyer with adequate knowledge of University law and an equal strength of will with a taste for conflictive pleasure.

We had to engage a lawyer.  In my view, the earlier judgment had missed an important point of University law and thereby had evaded the real and important problem involved in the status of the petitioner teacher. So I telephoned that very lawyer who had won the earlier judgment in favor of the teacher. He was surprised at my phone. He said: “Guruji, why did you think of me to get you a judgement against myself. The University teachers are thinking of a tribute to me, even raising a statute.” I said to him, “No statue during one’s life time. I know the judgement is wrong, and where it is wrong, only you know. If your opposite knew this, he would not have let you get that judgement. Hence this telephone.” He had to think on what I had said and wanted time to decide.  After due thought he accepted.

Unfortunately for us, our case was referred to the same judge who had delivered the earlier judgement. His was a single bench judgement. After that judgement it had been upheld by a double bench also. So our lawyer (now) had to fight a double case, one, to take it to the full bench, and second, to fight the specific case there. Therefore he demanded double fee. The College agreed to the double fee.

The earlier case was heard by the same judge who had delivered the first judgement. The judge now saw our lawyer and in his personal style observed: “Mr… earlier you fought for the teacher, now you are fighting for the college… because the College can pay….” Our lawyer presented certain cases and judgements which required, in our situation, that after the single and double bench judgements, this case should be referred to a full bench. The judge accepted his submissions and recommended that the case be referred to a full bench. The full bench was formed and the same judge was one of the three. I was present at all the hearings, and in all the discussions with the lawyer.

During my discussions with the lawyer I learnt two things:

1. In all practical matters, specially in legal matters, do not use a single word more than the minimum required.

2. Word your write ups in such a manner that you make your opponent say all that which, otherwise, you would have to prove. I was a man of literature and the lawyer was a man of Philosophy which means words, logic, and law. After all the discussions and submissions, came the date of arguments:

The petitioner’s lawyer was known to me, his home was just opposite to Hans Raj College across the road. One day, while sitting in the sun on the lawns of the High Court premises, he asked me one question informally, “Dr. Saheb, why did you terminate the teacher?” My response was: “We have said it all in our submissions to the Court.”

On the day of the arguments, the petitioner’s lawyer started presenting his case: “My Lord, I was a teacher at Shivaji College…” The chairman of the bench shot back a question: “What is a College?” That one question revealed to me in a single flash my understanding and structure of the whole argument for the defence:

1. A College is an institution admitted to the privileges of the University.
2. The privileges are the powers and duties of the College according to the act, statutes, ordinances and resolutions of the different bodies of the University and the Government.
3. The powers of the College are, in our situation, the power to appoint and terminate the teachers and other staff.
4. There is a rule under the University law to terminate the services of a probationer (Ordinance 18, 7).And there is the power to terminate a confirmed teacher (Ordinance 18,12).
5. We terminated the petitioner who was a probationer, under our power in terms of Ordinance 18, 7, not under Ordinance 18, 12 which applies in the case of confirmed teachers, and which does not apply in the case of a probationer.

I am writing only as I remember. The details are subject to confirmation with the record and the rules of law.

The arguments lasted for about three days. The judgement was: Petition dismissed.

After the judgement there were demands from different institutions for a copy. I remember we got two hundred and fifty copies cyclostyled for meeting the demand. The judgement exercised all teachers and other staff. Later I was told that this judgement was unanimous and written by the same judge who had written the first judgement and delivered it. If my memory serves me right it was in the case of a teacher, Chetan Mohan of Bhagat Singh College, Kalkaji, Delhi.

In that earlier moment at the door half open, things like this were all concentrated in silence at the cross-roads and I had to take the decision. There were appointees selected on merit, and yet there were wranglings at high level too. Further, the loyalties of the members of an institute in those days of democratization and politicization were getting divided between the institution and the ideology-call it ‘party’. The position of the Principal was somewhere in between, undefined but real. Earlier, once when I was sitting with Dr. Datta in his office, he had described the position of the Principal: “When I am with the Governing Body, I stand for the teachers, and when I am with the teachers, I stand for the Governing Body.” Another day, I happened to be with Guptaji, then Principal Ramjas College. During discussion on college matters on the Principal’s position, I happened to quote Dr. Datta’s words. Guptaji responded the same way as he used to do when I was his student at College. His words were: “The Principal, remember, stands neither for the Governing Body nor for the teachers. In all situations, he stands for the College.” I digested each word of his and, for myself, I understood it clearly, and I did abide by my own discipline that I stand for the institute, the institute stands for the University, and the University stands for the nation and humanity.

My position was tested in different situations. Most of these situations were situations of teacher selections. The selection committee for the selection of a teacher consisted of five members: the Chairman of the Governing Body, the Principal (Secretary), the local ‘head’ of the College department, one University representative out of the two on the Governing Body, and one expert of the subject concerned, normally the Head of the University Department or his nominee. We called about ten candidates for one post for the interview. In one particular department, we had advertised one position. We called ten candidates or so for the post. Four members of the selection committee, including the University representative, agreed on one candidate, (he was from outside Delhi). The Head of the University Department differed and proposed another candidate. The other four did not rank him as high as the Head of the Department did. I proposed that in that situation, because the selection committee could not come to a unanimous decision, the post should be re-advertised. The committee agreed and the post was advertised again.

I felt that since the majority of members did not agree with the University expert, he might discuss the matter with the Vice-Chancellor. So I wrote to the Registrar for the V.C. that we readvertised the post in the absence of a unanimus decision, and we did not make the selection by majority because we did not want to embarrass the University or the University Head of the Department and, further, for the reason that the selection by majority could create a legal precedent for the University in a difficult situation. But I did say assertively that in the presence of the University expert, it does not mean that the other four members of the selection committee “suspend their judgement”. In those days the popular gossip was that certain Heads of Department brought their favourites for appointment as if ‘in their pocket’. In fact the V.C. too, a little later, said to me that we could, in fact we should, have made the selection by majority. But I submitted that we respected the Head and we would not violate our own respect for the prestige of the university. The Selection Committee met again after the re-advertisement, this time with a different university expert, and a candidate was selected and appointed by unanimous agreement. Strangely enough, it was the same candidate who was the majority choice selection earlier.

There was another such situation in another department. There were three posts. This time also there were candidates mostly from Delhi University and a few from others. The interview went on well. The members were all unanimous on all selected candidates including one from some other university, say University “X”, because I don’t want to name the University. But, when we came to record our decision, four members agreed on the candidates but not the Head, on that one particular candidate. I said “What about him?” He agreed on his merit and he said that he could be selected and appointed “but not as lecturer.” In those days there was a post of ‘assistant lecturer’ for two years. In that meeting, when the expert said that he could be selected ‘but not as lecturer’, I failed to say: “Okay, take him as assistant lecturer.” I did realize that day that in administration you have to be on the alert on as well as against every moment. Could I be that alert in all situations? That was my question. I confess I failed in that situation. I was uncomfortable for days on end.

About six months later, there was again one post fell vacant in that department. We advertised the post. Almost the same candidates applied. The young man from University “X” also applied. The interview was held. The expert and all others made a unanimous selection. The candidate happened to be the same as before. The expert’s assessment of the “X” candidate was good but he could not be selected for appointment, he said, because he was from university “X”. I agreed for the time being and called the steno to record the minutes: “So many posts, so  many called for interview, so many interviewed, so many selected, but so and so was not recommended for the appointment because, in the opinion of the University expert, he was from University “X”. The expert was surprised at this, but I asserted “that his merit being acceptable, didn’t you say that he cannot be selected for appointment because he is from such and such university?” This time the expert relented and okayed the selection for the appointment of the candidate.

These occasions were not many, still they were there and the possibility was open-ended.

Wanted: Peace or Power:

The Shivaji settlement continued to show signs of restiveness which could neither be mistaken, nor ignored nor suppressed. Suppression in the present state of democracy and expression of opinion through dissent and even through conflict is unthinkable, and it has to be faced the way you can possibly devise for yourself. But every man may not be capable of direct conflict. A situation unforeseen and unnecessary arose exactly in front of the half open door. The Karamchari union of the College went on hunger strike at the entry gate of my office, four of them sat there. I simply could not understand that, much less accept. You can say I was utterly confused. I was not made for that. Nor was there any tangible reason for the strike.

The only thing I could think of was Kathopanishad: the little Nachiketa at Yama’s door keen to meet his fate, without food and drink, because Yama was then away. When I was away in Pilani, I am told, when the Karamcharis moved to the University to join the University Karamchari Union for some administrative facility or some improvement in their service conditions and passed through Shakti Nagar close to my house, they had raised slogans such as “Dr. Tulsi Ram, come back.” When I had come back, they presented me with that bouquet of a distasteful situation. So I remembered what Yama on his return said for Nachiketa: “Hope and expectation, honor and fame, even your own family, kith and kin, everything, gets lost when a Brahmana sits and waits at your door without food and drink.” Here were four of my own people sitting at my door without food and drink. I too had no right to eat or drink. I decided to stay in my office without food or drink. I sent a word to my family that for some unavoidable reasons I would stay on in the college for the night.

Some of the Karamcharis requested me to eat. I listened, but I did not agree. There was one in class IV, a chaprasi, when I joined college in 1964, who, I learnt, was a matriculate and trained as Junior primary school teacher. He was posted at the staff room as attndant when the college was at Matiala. When the time came and I could do something for him, he was promoted to class three as ‘caretaker’. He was, at the time of the hunger strike, the president of the college Karamchari Union. At 11 o’clock late in the night he came in to me with a potful of tea and biscuits and, with tearful eyes, requested me to eat and have tea. I said: “Will you have tea with me?” I knew he would refuse. He did, saying he could not do that. I said that “unless the hunger strikers at my door eat, there is no justification for me to eat either.” I also faced him with a direct question: “Are they right?” He candidly replied, “No”. Then I said, “You are their president. Why don’t you say so to them?” His reply was: “Sir, I cannot say so. They will beat me up (wo mujhe marenge)”. If that be the state of affairs, what can you do? Call the police and have them chased away? No, that’s not the way, neither human nor legal. You have to suffer because they too are suffering, with reason or without reason. Slowly it was morning.

Word went round what was happening at Shivaji. The University was moved. The University Karamchari Union moved. The Dean of Colleges came. With him came other officials and the president of the University Karamchari Union who was a member of the Parliament, Mr. S.M. Bannerji perhaps. With me, there was a discussion. I don’t remember the details, but I remember one thing: I said I could leave the decision to the president of the University Union if the strikers could have that much faith in me and in him. This attitude was taken as exceptional. The whole affair, however, was settled. I forget the details, but it was all over. For me too, I now remember, all was over. I needed a life of which I was the master with my own thought and karma. Even God gave us life with that much of freedom. How can any man then condition that freedom of mine? My mind was on way to the decision I would have to make. Life is choice. You are at the cross-roads every moment.

I went back to my earliest days. I was good at studies. If I was shining somewhere, it was in studies or in the strength of character. Even my thesis had suggested a new way of approaching the epic poems of Greece, Rome and England from a new philosophical angle leading to cultural revitalization of the self, i.e., atman. I had suggested that the function of poetry, generally known as delight, instruction and admiration, actually meant a reintegration of the self. I had worked on the introduction of English language and European studies in India for the transplantation of Western culture by uprooting the original seed and root of the Indian culture and India’s ancient psyche. The new language, culture and education was some sort of a replacement of the ‘Hiranyagarbha’ of the ancient Vedic culture with Abraham and Jesus, though both Abraham and Jesus were branch extensions of the Vedic message in terms of Gita, chapter 15. Was I then more, and essentially, a Brahmana or a Kshatriya? The answer from within was: Brahmana. Changing to teaching exclusively from academic administration was then only a change of the lane rather than changing the road, or the direction, and the goal. I remembered Lord Krishna on the question of swadharma: “Prakritim yanti bhutani.” What was my Prakriti: Nature in terms of nature against discipline (Gita. 3, 33), or Nature after sojourn into the higher vision of life in terms of Gita. 11, 51, after the Cosmic Revelation: ‘Samvritta, Sacheta, Prakritim gata, settled mind, settled consciousness, back to the Original?’ Where should I be? Administration had been reconditioned into sectional conflict far from the joint pursuit of knowledge and the dharmic fight against ignorance through your choice of karma.

My mind went back to Dr. Sarup Singh, then Vice Chancellor, University of Delhi. Four boys were on hunger strike for days on end. Dr. Sarup Singh, as I knew from his own words, had met the boys alone. The boys had prayed to him: “Sir, please save us.” Something then started brewing up. Some solution was coming. I was at Shivaji College when I received a call from the University to come immediately. I rushed to the University. When I reached there, I was surrounded by a host of journalists. They asked me what solution I had brought. I had no solution. There was a meeting of students and teachers from the Students Union and DUTA going to be held. I was to attend that meeting. The purpose was to form a committee of students and teachers to suggest a via-media with some suggestion which the VC would ‘consider or accept’. The DUTA was in the hands of the leftists, if I remember correctly. The University insisted that the VC would consider those recommendations, DUTA and students, that he must accept.

The meeting started at 6 PM and lasted up to up to 3:00 a.m. At last the agreement was, or seemed to be, on consideration for acceptance. The agreement was formulated and typed by one of the teachers. Every body was dead tired, so everybody signed the paper, no one read. I signed it too. I read it too before I signed: The typed version was significantly different from what the agreement was or seemed to be. But nobody noticed. I took the paper to Dr. Sarup Singh’s residence at 3.30 a.m.. He rose up from his bed. What he appeared to be at that moment, what he had suffered all through, I can describe but in an uncanny language. Still I would do it to express what I felt about academic administration:

My father had died in 1951. He died in the evening when the moon was full. My Mamaji and I laid him down on the ground as the custom was. In the morning, we prepared the body for the cremation ground. His body was stiff and cracking when we prepared it for the funeral. When I met Dr. Sarup Singh at 3:30 a.m. that morning, with the typed paper for his signatures, he had to get up from his bed, my mind went back to 1951, the body stiff and cracking, because he had to get up any way.

Is this the force and the power and the fate of academic administration? I asked myself. Dr. Sarup Singh was very close to me. His father, Tauji, I called him, used to say when I was principal Shivaji and  Dr. Sarup Singh, principal K.M. He said: “I have two sons, one has K.M., and the other has Shivaji.” When I built my house in Shakti Nagar in 1954, Dr. Sarup Singh, earlier Guptaji’s student at Ramjas, had got his London Ph.D. Guptaji had said to me in a fatherly tone: “Sarup Singh has built his house in London, you have built one in Delhi.” Dr. Sarup Singh once said to me: “Even if you have to walk to London, you must go.” All these thoughts, memories and relations welled up in my mind from 1951 to the 70’s when I met him at 3:30 a.m. When I went back to the meeting with the VCs signatures, someone said: Would any restaurant be open at this time? A student’s voice came up from a corner: “Yes, at G.B. road, possibly.” What a fall, my country men, if fall it could be!

This meeting was the aftermath of the students’ gherao of V.C. office. I had gone to the V.C., Dr. Sarup Singh one morning when the gherao was forming. I met him in the office and removed all the paper weights from his table. He said to me only one sentence: “Why did you undertake this risk?” He sent me out of his office where on the lawn I met Mr. J.D. Khatri, my colleague earlier at Hans Raj. When the gherao looked to be rising to violence, the police had to be called. They dispersed the crowd. One of the policemen with his lathi moved towards me and Khatri Saheb, who waved his hand whereby the policeman spared us.

All these memories, for me, are simultaneous. The end result then was: What next? Fighter, doer, knower, teacher? My mind was made up. Many people now ask me: “You retired as professor, you should have retired as Vice Chancellor.” I only say: “Thanks for your good wishes.” When Indira Gandhi was P.M. she had called Dr. Sarup Singh and she said to him: “I hear that you are soft to the ABVP/Jana Sangh…” This also the administrator has to face. Whom would you fight ultimately? The administrator can’t know in the age of politics.

Pilani Settlement:

Ultimately, my mind was made up. I decided I would be where I can feel at home by myself. Gian was in Canada, well-established. Indira was married and settled well in Canada. We two were in Delhi in our own home but not as settled as we did feel when I was at Hans Raj. I wrote to Dr. Sharma at Pilani that I was ready for the change. Shivaji people also wanted that the state of uncertainty should end. They wanted that once again a settlement like that of 1964 should repeat though differently with a different centre. I knew that many of them would be sorry, but they were not able to do what they could have done otherwise. Nobody can fight somebody else’s battle. They probably would have been happy if I had stayed on at Narela. But all that now was a past story. Dr. Sharma had an appointment letter sent to me. I wrote to the Governing Body that I wanted to leave. They accepted my request and I left Shivaji for Pilani. My wife and I settled in house number C-117 at one corner of the Madhuban, close to the house of Dr. Sharma, Dean Murti and Dr. Tiwari. After a few months, Prof. Bimbraw retired from Delhi College of Engineering and joined the Department of Engineering– we had been neighbors in Delhi.

After Shivaji, Pilani was great relief, full of peace with the morning music of temple songs and peacock dance, evening serenity and Saraswati Arti. There was a small Arya Samaj temple also in the forest area close to the village. It was donated to the Samaj by the Birla family. On Sundays, Pilani Arya Samaj used to hold havan and satsang there which we too joined. Mr. Chaudhry, retired from BITS, was the president, a very fine gentleman. There were two employees of CEERI, Kalyan and Om Prakash who treated us as senior members of their family. In the English department the atmosphere was very friendly with Dean Sharma, Dr. Chaturvedi, Krishna Mohan, Mr. Mehra-later Dr. Mehra with BITS doctorate under Dr. Sharma. Gurudev Tripathi of the Hindi department was a very jovial man. Dr. Pathak of the English department was a very decent person. In his courtyard there was an amla tree, the fruit of which we used to make our own chyavan prash. There was Dr. Sharma of the Department of history who visited every temple in Pilani every morning, his daughter Vrinda was our M.Phil. student. Dr. Prasad of History Department was also a palmist and an astrologer. He had two twin sons, Govind and Gopal. There was the younger Dr. Tiwari of Physics Department who, by virtue of his hair style, was known as the Sain Baba of BITS. Dr. Gupta of the Maths department was our next door neighbor at the back. He was known as ‘Dhoti Gupta’ because of his dhoti-kurta sartorical culture. We used to get a frequent share of his Basmati rice pulao, as Mrs. Gupta said, because of the sensitivity of my nose and generosity of praise and appreciation every time they cooked. In short, BITS was a small self-contained community. The director, Dr. C.R. Mitra lived on the campus.

Opposite to my room in the Department of languages was the room of Dr. Subramaniam, professor of Sanskrit. Once when I was sitting with him in his room-he was a very senior teacher-he paid a very generous compliment to me for my pronunciation of Hindi and Sanskrit words. He offered to teach me Sanskrit as long as I could sit with him. I had not much opportunity to study with him because, shortly after, he retired and left. So I requested another teacher of Sanskrit, then retired, to teach me. He taught me Panini Ashtadhyayi, one vritti, complete, one study. In fact in the light of my linguistics studies at Leeds, I once felt that after some studies further, I would write a book, Panini Praveshaaya, for a path finder and a beginner in Panini studies. But after another few months he took up the Pujari (priest’s) place in a temple and that was the end of Ashtadhyayi for me with a teacher. Later on I continued self-study of Panini with the help of Brahma Datta Jijnasu, Yudishthira Mimamsaka and Prajnadevi, and later with Sirish Chandra Vasu, through their books.

Dr. Sharma had earlier warned me of the stealth of my ideas expressed in my material on “English in India.” Of all that material, I was searching for the central idea, of which the whole material could be shown as a logical growth. The material was ready in typed form and on my tips as well. I have the habit of waking up around 2:30 a.m. in the morning once and then sometimes I go into deep thought. One such morning I got the idea I wanted, in a flash. I woke up my wife, requested her for a hot cup of tea and started writing. She was ever prompt as long as she could be with me by the grace of God. I sipped the tea and worked upto five or six in the morning. The whole plan of the work was worked out that morning.

In the department, I informed Dr. Sharma that I was on the job, in consequence and in pursuance of his strongly worded advice and apprehension, and as I prepared the manuscript I would need to have it typed. He arranged for the typing job by one, Mr. Mishra. Since all my quotable material was ready, typed on one side of the paper, I needed to write only the argument and paste the evidence material as it was, ready on paper. Mr. Mishra got so deeply involved with the subject that every time he type-exhausted the write up he asked for more. Jamna Pandit who had earlier offered me his good wishes was our messenger between the composer and the writer. The process became a mini-repetition of Vyasa and Ganesha. Once Mr. Mishra sent Jamna to my residence. Jamna brought the news that Mishra ji wanted me to come and see him in his office immediately. I picked up my cycle, went to Mishra ji and asked for the urgent purpose he wanted me for. He showed me one compound sentence with the word and between the two clauses. I changed the word and into but, and Mishra ji heaved a sigh of relief and joy. Such was Mishra ji, the master’s master.

My writing continued, Mishra ji’s typing continued, and then I thought I needed two chapters more in relation to India’s problem of the medium of instruction and the national language. I had to write these, one in relation to England, and the other in relation to Russia. I wrote these two chapters and finished the whole manuscript ready for the press in 45 days. It was a surprising finish and a joyful process of excitement.

In the Department we were from 9.00 AM to 1.00 PM and then from 3:00 p.m. to 5.00 PM normally. Whenever we had to be away or wanted to be away we could be away. There were two courses in English for all entrants across the Institute. Students came in groups according to their courses in the semesters. In addition, there was a course in ‘Human Communication’, of which professional communication was a part. It was for me to develop that course. It was a new experience to develop and teach that course. Higher courses in English language and literature were available for those students who wanted a degree up to graduation and after that for postgraduate studies. The management of teaching and examination was done by all the members of the department under the guidance of Dr. Sharma and Dr. Chaturvedi. The students of English could take Human Communication also as a course. For one semester, students were required to go for practical training and experience of the line of study they had chosen and for specialization. The students of English normally went in to the newspapers, Hindustan Times and others.

For the generality of students we prepared our own books for grammar and science oriented text material. The books were published by a reputed New Delhi firm.

We also prepared a respectable volume to be presented to Shri G.D. Birla on his 80th birthday. My contribution therein was “G.D. Birla: Gandhi’s Child.” Therein I wrote that if Gandhi ji rejected everybody’s suggestion in relation to himself, he never rejected GD’s suggestion, feeling it was his child’s suggestion. And it was GD Birla who once frankly told Gandhiji that he (Gandhiji) did not realize the consequences of his satyagraha and ‘Civil Disobedience’ movement in free India. We presented this volume, Modern India, at the Birla House in New Delhi.

At the Birla residence, I understood the practice and meaning of one item of Rajasthan manners and decorum: Whenever Jamna came to my residence, he put off his shoes outside, even though I was sitting with my shoes on in the room. There in the Birla residence, when we entered K.K. Birla’s room, the Director Dr. Mitra put off his shoes and so did we all. We presented the volume with a rose garland and by way of thanks and appreciation we were offered lunch. It was in a big impressive dining room, and at the service there were no servants. The members of the family served the guests.Later, I learnt that that was the manner of Birla hospitality during G.D.’s life time.

We prepared a similar volume for presentation to Dr. Mitra, the Director. There my contribution was: “Search for a Medium of Education in India”. The argument was that for want of common agreement of the states and the regions on the medium, and in spite of Hindi having been accepted as the ultimate national language, English continues as the medium of higher education as that was the plan of the British Government.

Dr. Sharma’s manuscript on Shakespeare’s King Lear was ready. He asked me to read it, first for some errors if any and secondly for opinion. I had read his PhD thesis also earlier. He wrote very logically, and, because of his handwriting, he also wrote very legibly. Having read a few pages of his book on King Lear, I felt it was an excellent study. I told him so. He valued my opinion because he had earlier valued me as his student also, and since then, he trusted my word. When his book was published, it got excellent reviews. One senior British reviewer wrote in a prestigious journal ‘that this book deserved to be placed by the side of any Shakespeare critic on any library shelf.’

At Pilani I got an unusual assignment which I regarded as a compliment to me for my approach to human differences and even conflicts. I was appointed chairman of the committee called, I don’t know for what reason, the ‘watchdog committee’. Its function was to study and resolve student teachers differences in the matters of evaluation of the students performance in the examination. We worked on the committee, both members and the parties concerned, with great deal of success and mutual recognition and respect. The Director, in fact, was too busy with academic and administrative matters. The Institute was working in collaboration with MIT, and the Director’s knowledge of every course, all told about 450 – 500, was not only full but also highly critical and advanced. Therefore, the commmittees were generally independent and free. So was our committee. Once I wanted to meet the Director to report the committee’s success in complicated matters. It took me three days to meet him.

The atmosphere in the intstitute was peaceful and a good deal religious also. We had ‘satsanga’ in the Arya Samaj where often I used to speak on Vedic and Sanatan subjects. We had a series of lectures by Swami Chinmayananda on ‘Bhaja Govindam’. We had Ramayana Katha, by pandit Ram Kinkar. We had Ram Charit Manas ‘Sundar Kanda’ recital at different homes. I used to request the Katha party to sing ‘Vijaya Rath’ from Lanka Kanda, and Navadha Bhakti from Kishkindha Kanda.

On 30th January we had to prepare a wall paper under the auspices of Vivekananda Society. Once I was asked to write on Swami Vivekananda. I wrote a paper on ‘Swami Vivekananda’s Vision of Man’. The paper was not put up on the wall, but as I kept it with me, the Swami from Ramakrishna Mission, Khetri happened to come. An Arya Samaj friend interested in Vedanta philosophy brought him to our residence. I showed that paper to him. He read through it with great care. I had prepared that paper after a good deal of research and study of Swamiji’s works. And my conclusion was that “If we keep in mind Swami Vivekananda’s views as expressed in these writings, we shall have to conclude that Swami Vivekananda’s view of man and Swami Dayananda’s view of man, both are identical.” This conclusion was rare, because ordinarily the two views are regarded as completely different, even opposite. The Swami advised me to send the paper to Calcutta for publication in the Prabuddha Bharat,a journal founded by Swami Vivekananda. I sent the paper. In a few days I received a letter from Swami Bhajanananda, the editor. He wrote–and I have preserved that letter–saying: “This is a rare article which I have received, and though I have material for the next two years, I’m going to publish it in the next issue.” The article was published, in the October issue of 1981 Pages 428 to 432. I take this publication as a great compliment, because, normally, people dedicated to any particular school of thought do not break through their boundaries to appreciate the unity of diversity in thought and belief.

Now something light, interesting and self elevating: On Tuesdays, Mrs. Sharma, Mrs.  Murti and my wife used to go to a simple Hanuman temple on top of a hill. Even the moorti of Hanumanji there was carved on the wall in cement plaster. One day as they came back, Mrs Sharma said to me, “Do you know what your wife prayed for to Hanumanji?” I said “No, how could I know?” She said “She prayed for a grand son.” Gian had a daughter, so she wanted a grandson to complete the family. In the afternoon I received a letter from Gian saying that in October or November Pushpa, his wife, would need Mummy to be in Canada. This is the Indian way of announcement. She had also prayed and promised that she would perform one hundred and one ‘parikramas’ of the temple when the prayer was granted. Deepak was born on Deewali, November 13, 1974. The grandmother and I went to the temple, offered and got ‘Prasad’, and I shared the ‘parikramas’ with her up to hundred, fifty-fifty, and the hundred and first she performed by herself. These are matters of faith, logic has no entry there.

Around that time, Kalyan invited us to a typical Rajasthani dinner. We accepted the invitation happily. You know how they prepared the dinner? They broke a clay pitcher to make a clay ‘tawa’, and on that and on open fire they prepared ‘missi roti and daal urad’ with lots of ghee and ‘boora’ too. That by chance happened to be the celebration of Diwali too. On the Diwali evening, Kalyan, Om Prakash and Devendra, a pharmacy student from Delhi (village Mitraon), helped us to light the house.

Where things are settled and peaceful, there not much is to report. So we enjoyed ourselves. Dr. Sharma used to say that, away from noisy Delhi, Pilani gave us a bonus of 10 years more of healthy living. We had one movie every week in the Institute Hall for which the tickets could be had in advance. Every week, Saturday or Sunday, teachers and their wives and children in their best used to repair to the hall. In addition we had musical performances. We had Hemant Kumar once, then Jagmohan, dance performances, sitar and sarod celebrities who were also our visiting faculty, and whenever it was too hot for a couple of days, Bhagawan Indra was kind with relief and rain.

Rohtak: Nearer Home:

Towards the end of 1980, or may be in the beginning of 1981, I received a letter from Shri Hardwari Lal, then Vice Chancellor, Maharshi Dayanand  University, Rohtak. I had met him once when he was principal K.M. College, Delhi. At that time Dr. Sarup Singh was senior lecturer at K.M. College after his London Ph.D. Another time I met him at the city bus stand at Panipat in a spotless kurta dhoti. He knew about me. In fact once I was asked to join K.M. College from Hansraj. I did not join K.M. When Shri Hardwari Lal was VC KUK, Dr. Sarup Singh was professor at Krukshetra University. At that time Dr. Sarup Singh had written to me in London that after Ph.D. he would have me as a Reader at Kurukshetra. So Hardwari Lal ji knew about me, and he wrote to me at Pilani that I should meet him at Rohtak. I spoke to Dr. Sharma. He said this letter was something like Dr. Sarup Singh’s earlier telephone for me at Kurukshetra. In fact he said to me: “You are now gone.”

I met Hardwari Lal ji in his office at Rohtak. He said that he would like me to join M.D. University. Two old friends of mine, Dr. Bhim Singh Dahya and Dr. O.P. Grewal were already professors there. He said: “Bhim Singh has already gone and Grewal would go.” I thought their departure from M.D. was in the ordinary course of things as things happen. Later on, after my journey to Rohtak, I learnt that there had been trouble in the Department of English in the University and there had been some conflict between the senior staff and the VC. Hence, Bhim Singh’s departure and Grewal’s anticipated departure. It was a situation like that at Shivaji in which I was wanted. But with this simple meaning of ‘gone’ and  ‘would go’, I said I could think of joining M.D. Rohtak, since it is closer to Delhi than Pilani and the change would suit us in many ways.

In the month of March, I received a letter from Shri J.D. Gupta, then Secretary, Department of Education, Government of Haryana, and V.C. MD University, which means that after my meeting, Hardwari Lal ji had left. Mr. Gupta positively wanted me to join. He gave me a date on which I should meet him at Chandigarh, probably March 26, 1981. On that date, early morning I started from Pilani for Chandigarh. At the bus stand the conductor of the bus told me that the bus would go only upto Loharu, because thereafter in Haryana there was a ‘bandha’. I decided to go up to Loharu in the first instance. I prayed to my ‘Ishtadeva’ to help. When I reached Loharu I saw more than a dozen buses all standing safely parked. I called out to all bus staff: “No one has the courage to move, none of so many?” One of them agreed provided one more was ready to move with him. Another conductor agreed. The two buses started, the first one empty, the following, with me and one or two more passengers. On the way in the Haryana area, we saw people standing in a crowd on the road but no one disturbed the buses. Early in the afternoon I reached Chandigarh and straight went to the secretariat to see Mr. Gupta. Mr. Gupta was very happy and insisted that I must join MD and every thing would be done according to what I would have in the matter of salary, residence, etc.

I wrote and sent in the application as a formality, with a request for salary and residence. The selection committee met at Delhi. I got selected duly. Along with me another teacher, Dr. D.S. Dalal was selected for a lecturer’s post. And see: who was the chairman of the selection committee? Hardwari Lal ji, back at M.D. For the lecturer’s selection, I was asked to join the selection committee. Hardwari Lal ji was back  as VC. I got the letter of appointment.

I sent in the required notice to BITS, and I wrote the letter of acceptance to MD with the request that my salary be fixed as demanded. The registrar replied that the salary would be fixed after I joined. I took his word in good faith. Later when I joined, I found that he had no love lost for me, possibly because, earlier, he had been one of the applicants with me for the principal’s post at Shivaji. That’s how people convert organizational equations into interpersonal relationships, and further, start nursing self-inflictive grievences.

I spoke to the VC that during the summer vacation at Pilani I could come to MD which was then in session. He agreed and I joined the department at Rohtak. I stayed with my wife at the University guest house. There I met Dr. Jai Dev Vedalankar, professor of Sanskrit, whose office was just opposite to mine. We had a good time together in the department. I came to know all my colleagues. At the selection committee Dr. Subramaniam had been a candidate for readership. He too joined the department.

After the notice period, I left Pilani and joined MD. House No. UH-9 was allotted to me on the campus, but at that time one of the University offices was working there. Moving the office and preparing it for residence would take time. So for about six weeks we stayed in the town with our friend and nephew Dr. Nityanand and his wife Manju, our niece, my daughter-in-law Pushpa’s younger sister. When the house was ready, we moved in house No. UH-9 on the campus

For salary I had asked for Rs 2250/= pm in the professor’s scale. The decision regarding fixation had yet to be taken. The registrar proposed: Shall we fix your salary at 1800/=? I knew the meaning intended. Sometimes officers’ secretaries assume powers higher than the powers of the boss. The registrar was behaving like a VC. I said, then tentatively, you fix it at 1500/= the basic salary of the professor’s scale, so that the question of fixation remains open. I got the salary at the rate of 1500/=. The department moved on well.

After about a year, I raised the question of salary fixation. My application kept lying in the Registrar’s table drawer. No movement. I spoke to the VC. He demanded that the application be placed before him. The Registrar sent it up with his remarks. The file was brought up in my presence. The Registrar’s note was some thing like this: “We had, earlier, Dr. Taneja from Pilani, we gave him one additional increment over his Pilani salary. So in this case also we may give one increment additional to his Pilani salary.” The VC dictated his order some thing like this: “We gave one increment additional to Dr. Taneja because Dr. Tanjea needed a job here. In the case of Dr. Tulsi Ram, he came because we needed him.” My salary was fixed at my figure of Rs. 2250/= pm.

I have mentioned this all not for the value of money, nor for the value of ego in conflictive situations. I have mentioned it because we create conflictive situations in an organization not for the organization but as food for our ego. Imagine 1964 (when he was a co-contender with me at Shivaji) and then 1982-3 (when he was writing his note on my file). We carry burdens of the past for nothing. At Rohtak, attitudes were normally personal, less organizational. Even in matters of admission.

In our department, the number of students admissible as fixed by the Academic Council was 50 in MA previous, plus ten for later migrations. We admitted students purely on merit and put up the list on the notice board. There were more than 60 applicants. We prepared the list of all the applicants in order of merit and admitted 60 (50+10). A girl came for admission, her name was not one of the sixty, it was at No. 74. She came in with a sense of power. I explained the position, she wouldn’t take it. “I shall have it done by the Vice Chancellor”, she asserted. Here was a situation for me in the matter of attitude and language. One way would be, and quite possible at Rohtak: “Who is the Vice Chancellor? I am the head of the department.” This would be reported with some ‘masala’, and the situation would be not only ‘conflictive’, it could be ‘explosive’, if native culture were raised to University level. I avoided that. I said: “Okay sonny, the Vice Chancellor is the head of the University, our department included. Have his orders and bring it to me.”

The girl made an application to the VC with whatever report she might have given him about her meeting with me. The VC referred it to me for comments. I explained the position: She was number 74 on the merit list. We either admit 14 more or admit her out of turn and face the other thirteen, may be more of other students too involved. The VC ordered: file.

I was very careful. I would never opine on the powers and actions of the supervisors or superiors. By implication the superiors too would never encroach on my boundary. There never was a conflict between the VC and me. Once a situation arose and therein I was able to protect myself. We had a student, ward of an officer. She had barely pass marks in one paper. She made an application for re-valuation of the paper. The VC wanted me to revaluate and raise it to first class. I said: The internal man cannot revaluate according to rules. Secondly, on revaluation, if the marks increase by more than 10%, the answer book goes to a third examiner. And if all this, possibly, happens, the candidate would need more than 80% on revaluation. There had been a scandal earlier. We must not repeat that: He felt hurt, but that was inevitable.

I never met the VC even for a courtesy call, he did not like unnecessary visits and meetings. But he did call me sometimes, whenever he felt. Once he wrote a very angry letter to Mr. M.M. Jain, Education Commissioner, Haryana Government and a member of the University Executive Council. But, having written the letter, he realized that he had overdone it. He called me at 6.00 PM. He put the letter before me, saying: “This man is good for nothing (nalaique hai), he deserves this, but you just see.” It was a three page letter. I took off the anger content, kept in the firmness of it without discourtesy, and showed it back to him. It was just three fourths of a page. “Yes”, he said, “now it is right, he will understand.”

On such occasions, I think, the VC recognized my sense of judgment. He had seen my performance and my approach to persons and problems. Once, when I was at Pilani, he had referred certain examination scripts to me for revaluation. I examined those scripts and in some cases my revaluation differed from the earlier examiner’s by more than 10%. So the entire lot was sent to a third examiner. The third examiner’s evaluation, as I found out when later I was at Rohtak, agreed with mine. I feel that, on such occasions, he suspected something more, or less, than purely academic. He had, I can say now, some allergy to academics turning political, and hence the equation between him and me was cordial and trustful.

Once, I think, he felt angry with me too. I refused to revaluate a script on his behest. After all the rule was that an internal man of the University could not revaluate. The revaluation must be done by an outsider. He did not like my response to his wish, and he said: “It hurts,” and to this I reacted, “Yes Sir, it does and it hurts me too. If I do it in spite of the rule and against my conscience, another VC after you will ‘give me hell’.’

Normally, I used to go to my room at 9.00 AM. But one day I got a little late because I was busy elsewhere. On that day he happened to go round the departments. The next day, I received a letter that I was found absent from duty. I did not mind that freak of the ‘master’s mode’, and did not reply to the letter. I feel he too understood my ‘no response’. He was a senior man, loved conflicts, and more than conflict he enjoyed ‘submission’. Some times silence works even better than submission.

I was due to retire sometime in May 1984. The University had power to extend the retiree’s services by two or three years twice, i.e., all told for five years. I did not want to apply for extension, because long before, earlier, I had self-resolved that if I have to go, I would go where I am asked to come, invited. So six months before retirement I wrote to the University, not personally but as Head of the Department, that in anticipation of my retirement they would have to take the decision whether they would like to make a new appointment, or, as was also the rule, they would ask the man in position to continue. The first alternative was for the University to advertise the post, shortlist the applicants, hold the selection committee, and give the new appointee time to join. The second alternative was for me to plan my future as I had an offer from another university to join after retirement from Rohtak.

The VC took the decision: he prepared an item for the Executive Council that the man in position should be given an extended appointment for five years. One or two members of the EC, though they happened to be my friends, opposed this proposal saying that the UGC rules allowed extension for two or three years in the first instance, and then, if necessary, another extension for three or two years. The VC, as I learnt later, opined that I would not accept that. The Council then decided that I should be given extension for full five years on a fixed salary equal to my salary on the last day of my service. I received the letter of extened appointment for five years.

Rohtak Strains:

Some time after Hardwari Lal ji had left the University, Dr. Ram Gopal, then Professor of Sanskrit, Punjab University, Chandigarh, was appointed Vice Chancellor. Dr. Ram Gopal was one year my senior at Ramjas College Delhi.

At Ramjas College Dr. Ram Gopal and I lived in the same hostel for two years. He was in the Sanskrit Department and I was in the English Department. I was happy on his appointment as VC. He too acknowledged me at Rohtak. In fact he left his chair in his Welcome meeting at the University and came along to shake hands with me. But a few weeks later, I was surprised to receive a letter from the University saying that the House Allotment Committee had decided that my house No. UH-9 be withdrawn and I should vacate it. A messenger came to deliver the letter to me at my residence. I felt sad at it. I had given to Dr. Ram Gopal no reason to do that sort of discourtesy to me. We were not only together at Ramjas, we were also colleagues at Hans Raj. And yet this letter. This time I wrote back to the VC: “I learn that this University was built on a cremation ground, and it seems to me that someone of the dislodged spirits has taken hold of you.” I received no response, probably because, he understood, a friend was writing to a friend either way. In fact, to see me back to my real peaceable self, a close neighbor on the campus assured me this way: “Doctor Saheb, don’t worry.  If the bad comes to the worst, we’ll go to the court, get a stay order, and that order will not be vacated for five years. And then you will be back to your own house in Delhi.” This was not my way. Nothing happened, and then Dr. Ram Gopal too had to go soon enough. Mr. P.P. Caprihan, a very senior I.A.S. Officer, then Chief Secretary of the Haryana Government, was appointed Vice-Chancellor.

On the eve of his joining the University, Mr. Caprihan came to Rohtak and stayed at the Govt. guest house. Soon after his arrival, he sent a message to me that the VC would have tea with me at my residence. Sooner than anything else, the ‘news’ spread around that the ‘VC was in my pocket’, this was the Rohtak style. We got ready to receive him. He had been advised/informed by some reasonable friends that to know the general atmosphere at MDU, if he wanted to see things for himself or see any one, he should see me. I took it as a great compliment and, in my position then, a token of God’s Grace.

The VC arrived and both of us sat at the table in a relaxed mood. To convince him, and to describe the situation clearly as I saw it or felt it was, I used symbolic language. Those who are close to me know that without my pen in the pocket I feel uncomfortable. I took out my pen, the same I am writing with now, held it from the clip top with the thumb and the index finger of the right hand, used my index finger of the right hand to tilt the pen from one side to the other: I said: “This was Hardwari Lal’s time of the University.” Then I tilted the pen from that side to the opposite: I said: “This was Ram Gopal’s Time.” Then I removed my index finger of the right hand and let the pen stay vertical as nature would have it and I said: “This should be your time. The VC should not, need not, ‘carry’ the University, he has to let it be and work in its own natural course.” Mr. Caprihan liked this symbolism, in fact, admired it, and followed the way. He let the University work in its own intelligent way, and watch it that it does not go astray. A university is a universal institution which belongs to all and to itself.

If I can speak of Mr. Caprihan and define his personality in a single word, the word is compassionate. Our basic need in India is Education and employment, and the basic proof of that need and weakness is reservation. Once an old but well known acquaintance brought a young man to me. Under the rule of reservation he had been admitted to the Medical College. He, the young man, had taken four chances to clear the first exam. He had taken even the last chance specially allowed by the VC on compassionate grounds. I spoke to the VC for him, but the VC could not allow him any more chance. Still Mr. Caprihan referred his case to the Academic Council. The A.C. did not allow him because it felt convinced that if the candidate could not clear the first exam in five chances, he would not be able to cope with the subject.

A girl with her baby daughter in her lap came to Mr. Caprihan with the prayer that she was helpless, alone and unemployed, and she had been refused admission to the B.Ed. Course, because there were no seats available at a particular college. Colleges had admitted more than their sanctioned strength, still how far could they go on? There were many more candidates waiting for admission. Earlier too the AC had relaxed the strength of admissions normally allowed, still the demand was for more. Mr. Caprihan then proposed to the AC that in the university, a correspondence B.Ed. course be instituted. The proposal was placed in the AC meeting for approval. The AC was not visibly favourable. The University Education Dept. also was not favourably disposed toward this proposal. Still, after a long discussion, the proposal was on way to acceptance provided a man of professorial rank was able and agreeable to organize this programme. Mr. Caprihan waited for a positive response, and after considerable wait looked towards me. I immediately understood and decided that he wanted me to take up this responsibility. I offered to take up the job as a challenge. I am a man of literature, not a man of education professionally. Still the responsibility was given to me as Director of B.Ed. (Correspondence). The fees, courses and other conditions also were thought over, discussed and defined. The process of admission was started. We admitted thousands of candidates. Quite often the University was criticized that it had taken that step for the sake of money. It was true the university needed money to build up the campus, and the correspondence course did bring money to the university, but the criticism was not wholly justified. The real reason and justification was the social and academic need, and in addition, an attitude of compassion.

The University earlier too had needed money when Mr. Hardwari Lal was VC. Once it was also thought that a part of the University land along the Delhi road be sold for commercial purposes, for shops, and that way the university could raise money. I was a member of the Executive Council then. To my mind, this proposal was not right. Land is allotted to a university for institutional purposes, not as a corporate property. I was face to face with a problem: If I did not conscientiously agree to a proposal, I would have to oppose the proposal, and to oppose Hardwari Lal ji meant nothing short of asking for trouble. Once I thought I would avoid the meeting, but that was no solution for my disagreement. Had the proposal gone through, even at the initial stage of the advertisement that university land was being sold, there would be a scandalous row all round. So I gave up that idea and thought of a positive alternative, realistic, unpracticable, and probably non-scandalous alternative. When the item came up before the EC some members agreed, some opposed, but the proposal was for sure to go through in spite of opposition. Hardwari Lal ji loved opposition, and more than that, he loved to crush it down to naught. So I proposed an alternative but under the garb of supporting the proposal. I said that the idea of raising money for the university was positive. But instead of selling the land, the university should itself build shops, raising the money from the prospective users and giving them the shops they pay for at the university’s own terms. Thus the university would be able to raise ‘capital money’ as well as have the advantage of recurring income. The proposal was appreciated and accepted. I knew it was not any way going to be as it was proposed. The university was saved of a possible and even a sure scandal. The record of it surely is lying asleep somewhere in the minutes files of the EC meetings.

At Rohtak I heard three extension lectures which had a special meaning and experience of life for me. One was by Dr. Ram Prakash, then professor of Chemistry, Panjab University, Chandigarh. He spoke on Swami Dayananada, the lecture elicited standing applause which reminded me of Pandit Buddha Dev Vidyalankar’s lectures on Varnashrama Dharma and Diksha, Vaishnava Shaiva and Shakta Sampradayas of the Vedic tradition turned Pauranik, and the Vedic content of Ramayana and Gita. The other lecture was on the Theory of Symmmetries by Professor Ashok Mitra of Delhi University, earlier my class-mate at Ramjas. In my comments after the lecture, I spoke of the human content of his scientific message: “As the symmetry of an objective situation changes the moment an item from the outside world is added, so the human symmetry changes when an addition is made from the outside, and then the individual equations also must change. Similarly though science describes the objective world as accurately as possible, it keeps the values out, that being outside of its scope. I quoted a sutra from the Yoga philosophy: “Prakasha kriya sthiti sheelam, bhutendriya-atmakam, bhoga-apavarga-artham drishyam (2, 18).” Ashok appreciated the comments and the addition of value to science.  Mr. Caprihan later opined: “You should have gone for Sanskrit and philosophy, but you got entangled in English.” I explained the greatness of English literature also as Vritti Sahitya, then Yoga philosophy across the vrittis. The third lecture was by a scholar of philosophy, both Indian and European, who had been my colleague at Hans Raj. His subject was ‘Swami Dayananda’. When he was at Hans Raj long back, he had seen a picture of Swami Dayananda in the hall and proclaimed aloud: “Here is the greatest fool the world has ever produced.” Others had responded: “Okay dear, wait and see.” At Rohtak, about 30-35 years later, in an extension lecture, he admitted that, “Swami Dayananda was the greatest scholar of Sanskrit and Philosophy after Shankaracharya.”  Thus do over-enthusiasts wait and see. They have to.

At Rohtak, Swami Omananda, Acharya Gurukul Jhajjar, earlier Brahmachari Bhagwan Dev of my Narela days, asked me to write an interpretation of the Yoga-sutras of Patanjali, with commentary in English. I agreed but I said that I would not translate any commentary but I would write the commentary according to my own understanding of the sutras, though I would do so after reading and understanding of the others’ commentaries also. “Right,” said Swamiji. I spent more than two years and a half on understanding the one hundred and ninety-five sutras including the commentaries of Vyasa, Bhoja, Taimani, Swami Vivekananda’s Raj-yoga, Vachaspati Mishra and others and then I wrote what I understood of yoga philosophy. I did not claim anything more than what I understood, but I assured the reader that what I did understand, I would clearly communicate.

Patanjali Yoga Darshana was published by Haryana Sahitya Samsthan, Gurukul Jhajjar (Rohtak) in 1989 under the title The Original Philosophy of Yoga. It was published in my absence because at that time of the publication I was with my son Gian in Canada. I was on leave in 1988-89 for six months.  The manuscript was prepared by Mr. J.K. Jain, then secretary, Department of English and later lecturer in History at Hindu College, Rohtak. The proof reading in respect of correction at the printing stage was done by Dr. Bhatnagar, lecturer in English in the university. I thank both Mr. Jain and Dr. Bhatnagar.

Two other books of mine had earlier been published: My thesis, updated and prepared in book form was published by National Publishing House, Delhi in 1971 under the title The Neo classical Epic (1650-1720): An Ethical and Historical Interpretation. It covered three well defined phases of heroism in terms of individual, national, and universal moral and spiritual heroism which was an extension of the Book of Genesis of the Bible. The Patanjali Yoga Darshana extended the practical dimension of the individual potential and the social elevation of the human to the divine in terms of Yajurveda (20, 25-26 and 32, 10). The other book was The Story of English in India published by GDK Publications, Delhi (1983). It was based on the material collected at Leeds in 1971-72. It was, in fact, an extension of a sentence heard at Narela on August 10, 1942 in the Arya Samaj temple: The purpose of English was not to educate but to produce clerks.

During my service at Rohtak I had some assignments which were difficult, but because of my basic attitude to the institution they were manageable and well-managed. I was appointed university representative on the College Governing Body, or election observer, or an enquiry officer in situations where other university teachers were unwilling to involve themselves. One such situation was at Vaish College, Rohtak where I was a university representative on the Governing Body. On account of the increase of the number of students, the College had to appoint teachers urgently. The teachers were appointed ‘on probation’. The Haryana Government objected to their appointment without prior permission of the Government Education Department. As a result of this objection, the Government refused to recognize the teachers and, I think, refused to release the grant also for want of prior approval. The College proposed that the teachers’ services be terminated. The proposal was to be approved by the Governing Body. The GB meeting was held. I was present on time. The item came up. It was to be passed. The Chairman was Shri Ram Dass, a reputed lawyer and a very respectable citizen of the town. I asked for time to speak and make a suggestion against the proposal. The Chairman spontaneously observed: “I know you will oppose the proposal, you are the University representative and I know you will favour the teachers.” I took these words carefully, after all he was the president. But I made a cool submission: “Chairman Saheb, the university is my constituency, but of this G.B. I am only a member where you are the Chairman. The moment I enter the boundary of this College I have to think and work under your discipline and for the college as an institution.” He felt satisfied with my words.”

I continued, “Here I am a Vaish College man and I shall speak for the College, not against the College.” He felt happy, gave me time. I made these observations: “Under the urgency of the admission situation, you had to make the appointments. You could not foresee the situation. Had you written to the government for approval in that state of urgency that would have taken time and the college would have had to face a discipline problem, admission or no admission, either way. The want of prior government permission is neither the fault of the students nor of the teachers. Whose fault is it then? Governing Body’s or the Government’s or of the situation? If it is a fault of the Governing Body, you cannot punish the Governing Body. Can you punish the government? Can you punish the situation? But the teachers, you can terminate for no fault of theirs, while you needed and need them still. So let us go, meet the Commissioner of Education, explain the situation and the urgency of it and till then let us suspend the item.” The proposal was dropped. We met the Commissioner, Mr. M.M. Jain, explained the situation, everything was okay, the appointments were approved, and the grant was released.

The Jat College election was another problem. It was being held on the representation of a group of important lawyers of Rohtak. The Jat College Society had a very large number of members. The date was fixed, the election was notified, I was appointed university observer. I reached the college at 8.00 a.m. to see that everything including voters list, the ballot boxes, the voting booth, all was in order. It was summer time and the usual clear day was sunny and hot. There was a long queue of voters, senior people sweating in the sun. I suggested they could at least sit and be comfortable as much as possible. The voting continued the whole day, then counting and preparation of the result. The whole process was complete late in the evening. I came back home at midnight. A few days later, I received a letter of thanks and appreciation from Mr. Balsara, convener of the lawyer’s committee, on whose initiative the election was held.

Sometime later there was a problem with the Jat College Principal. In that, there was an enquiry to be conducted ‘against’ the Principal. I think it was under the court orders. I was appointed the enquiry officer, I don’t remember whether it was by the Governing Body or the University or the District Magistrate, but I had to go through a lot of papers and then come to the conclusion. But in every case, as in this also, I made it a point to hold the institution as sacred, an organization, and for me, on way to an organism greater than the sum total of all its member parts.Similarly I had to conduct an enquiry ‘against’ the University Examination Controller. In all cases the report was accepted and appreciated.

The election of Agarwal College, Ballab Garh was interesting from a different point of view. It was held on a Sunday.I was appointed University observer. In the morning, the driver of the University van, Jabbar Singh I think, reported at my residence. When I approached the van I heard him muttering words of protest against the Registrar for assigning him official duty on a holiday: “I was sitting doing prayers to Mata Rani, and during my ‘path’ he disturbed me.” In fact, I myself could protest and say similar words in protest, but I kept quiet and cool. When I reached the college at Ballab Garh, I said to the staff taking care of refreshments: “Please take care of the driver. Make him feel all happy.” They did as I asked them to do. The election was over peacefully after all the usual noise, differences and protestations. On such occasions, the University representative enjoyed the respect of all if he was reasonable in the conduct of the election, objective and interested in the college rather than in a particular party or person. So everybody was happy with me and the driver was more than happy. He had been well entertained throughout the day.

On the way back, finding the driver in good humor, I asked him how he felt in the day. “Happy, Sir, very happy.” Then finding him reconciled and happy all round, I put another question to him: “Jabbar, who is the greatest power in the world?” He immediately answered: “Mata Rani, Saheb.” I said: “I agree. I too regard Mata Rani as the Supreme Power, but then in the morning today I had a doubt. I think there is a greater power than Mata Rani!” “How can that be, Sir?” Jabbar protested. I said: “You were praying to Mata Rani in the morning, but then came the order of the Registrar. You had to leave Mata Rani and obey the Registrar. So the Registrar is a higher power, no?” He saw the point: “No, Sir, the Registrar could not order me without the will and order of Mata Rani. I am sorry, I was wrong.” As long as we submit to Mata Rani and feel that everything happens according to the will and order of Mata Rani, we hold the key to happiness in life. The key is in our hand, for ourselves, not for all. We cannot take over the rule of Mata Rani. The Supreme is Supreme, all else is subordinate, everyone in one’s own sphere. This is what I meant in the tea talk with Mr. Caprihan, when I removed my index finger and let the pen be in the vertical position according to the higher law, in relation to Hardwari Lal ji, Dr.Ram Gopal and all prospective VCs.

There were fearsome moments at Rohtak and earlier too, but none resulted in any negativity, for me fortunately. Mr. P.D.Gupta, Controller Examinations, and earlier my teacher at Ramjas, lived in U.H-7 and I was in UH-9. These homes were back to back. So Mr. Gupta had a small door made through his back garden wall so that we could meet and spend family time together. One day, late in the evening, about 9 o’clock, he came, in fact rushed into our house, panting out of breath, terrorized. His wife followed, her elbow bruised. I held him in body and asked him what had happened. He said that four or five young men of about twenty years of age broke open his front door, rushed in and made a menacing move towards him as if they would pounce upon him. He rushed towards our house, his wife followed, and while crossing through the back door in panic, she hurt herself. I held him for a while till he recovered his breath, my wife helped Mrs. Gupta. For some time they were with us, then rested, they went back. Neighbors and staff members came to his house and somehow the situation was controlled. Next day Mr. Gupta resigned and went back home to Delhi. I too did feel for some time that the same thing could happen with anybody on the campus but, thank God, nothing untoward happened like that.

I was Chairman of a committee called Unfair Means Committee, which dealt with students who had been caught using unfair means in the exam. At that time Mr. P.D. Gupta, as Controller of Exams, used to present the cases before the committee. The punishment for the use of unfair means ranged from cancellation of the paper concerned up to expulsion from the University for three years, though this extreme penalty was seldom awarded. We found that this scale of punishment was too much not only for the examinee but also for the society. If a student is out for three years, what would he or she do except wasting time or doing mischief or self-cursing. So we suggested to the VC that the order of punishment should be reduced. It was done.

Our meeting was held well after the exams, may be in November or so. There was one case of a girl whose exam had been cancelled, and under the new rules she could appear in the next exam. She was the daughter of an important political man. The father met me, I think in January or so, and the next exam was to be held in April. He pleaded for the cancellation of the punishment. I was nobody to do that. I told him that the girl would appear in April, the exam was near at hand, and by God’s grace she would do well. But he did not listen. I was polite with him. But he was right in one thing: a girl, caught using unfair means in the exam, becomes ‘less qualified’ in matrimonial considerations. The father went away dissatisfied. When I retired in 1989, I requested the Registrar for the payment of my Provident Fund money. In that connection, I was sitting with the Registrar, a young I.A.S. officer. The registrar received a phone call asking for ‘Stop payment.’ It was just by chance that I was there. I learnt it from the recipient of the phone that it was the same ‘father’ who was dissatisfied and disgruntled against me. He wanted me to be punished for not agreeing with his request for the cancellation of the penalty. My money was not withheld; the payment was made on time.

 During my stay at MDU one thing good was done to the Gurukul institutions run by the Arya Samaj and other Sanatan Dharma organizations. The Sanskrit exams were recognized as equivalent to the University degrees for a long time before in the united Punjab. Shastri was equal to BA and Acharya was equal to MA. One condition of this equivalence was some proficiency in English. Further, the Sanskrit exams were recognized only by the provincial/state governments and for a fixed period of time. After Shastri, a candidate was able to get admission to MA in a university. So I suggested to Swami Omananda, earlier Brahmachari Bhagwan Dev of Narela and then Acharya Gurukul Jhajjar, to make an application to Maharshi Dayanand University, Rohtak for University recognition and equivalence of Sanskrit certificates to University degrees. The application was made.

MD University had three kinds of institutions: constituent college such as University College, Rohtak; affiliated colleges such as Government Colleges and others run by Government approved Governing Bodies; and Associate Institutes such as Gurukuls and Sanskrit Pathshalas. Different conditions of affiliation and associate status applied to different institutions. For affiliation, among others, one condition was that the college must be situated in the area under the jurisdiction of the University. For associate status this condition did not apply. The fee for the associate status was nominal, not much.

Gurukul Jhajjar had the land much more than required. It had the money too, and in addition it was situated within the teritorial jurisdiction of the MD University.  When the application was made, the VC appointed a sub committee to inspect the Gurukul and make recommendations. The committee recommended that Gurukul Jhajjar be granted the Associate status but laid down the condition that the salaries of teachers be the same as that of University teachers. The Vice Chancellor advised the committee to show the report to me for consultation. The convener brought the report to me for consultation. I saw the report and read the condition. My opinion was: “Brother, the teachers and managers of Gurukuls have to even beg for food, how can they pay salaries as recommended by the committee?” What is the via media? That was the question. I suggested that with the salary condition a proviso may be added: The proviso was that “If the teachers of the Gurukul are volunteers, sanyasis or retired teachers, this condition would not apply to them”. The provisio was added. The report was accepted by the University. Everybody was happy, the committee as well as the Gurukul. Gurukul Jhajjar was awarded the Associate status.

Then arose another problem: The Gurukul teaches Sanskrit. But it has to teach English too. All the courses are subject to the approval of the Academic Council. However, it is a convention with MDU that whatever course content is prepared by the Gurukul, it would be acceptable to the AC. English, however, is a problem. For the English courses of the Gurukul exams, a selected part of the University courses is prescribed. It is common knowledge that the University course content in English is not in keeping with the Gurukul culture. So Swami Pranavananda and I with Dr. Balbir Acharya, professor of Sanskrit, met the VC, Shri R.P. Hooda. We presented an application to him and he suggested that a course prepared for different exams of the Gurukul by a courses committee would be acceptable to the University. The VC agreed. Now the state of English courses stands there.

All these are my reminiscences of MD University. I retired in 1989, but all these memories are with me as if, in Haryana native idiom, it was just yesterday.

Retirement:

The day I retired was bright, in May 1989. I bade goodbye to the University as the temple of learning, a monument to Saraswati. The next morning I sat in the verandah of my house I was going to leave. The sun was mellow and pleasant, and the cup of morning tea in front. Words came to my lips spontaneously:

“I have paid my debts” and something from within added the words:

“And played my games.”

A little later, in Delhi, in my own home in the verandah, facing the park, sitting on the ‘takhat’ whereon I had updated my thesis in the 70’s, I completed  those two lines into something like this song of the life present and future:

I have paid my debts

And played my games,

And the keepers of the scoreboard

Are other men,

They make no mistakes,

Neither do they sleep.

Relax:

Sip your coffee at leisure

And do what you will for pleasure,

And peace of the soul in ample measure.

Meditate:

Empty the time, of history,

The mind, of memory,

Watch the void,

Real, beautiful, living, sweet, eternal.

Be there, your self entire,

And take the shower

Of bliss, pure, immaculate, free.

Pure, immaculate, free,

Wrapped in golden hue,

That’s what you are.

Be that.

Relax.

Life became a long leisure time for Swadhdyaya, ‘chintan‘, and meditation. English had been my language of profession, now it became the language of my mission, self-chosen, in fact continued since my childhood when, sleeping in the court yard or on the roof of our house in the village, I used to watch the galaxy and wonder what it was. Sometimes I was disturbed by a shooting star. Now, after sixtyfive years I yearned to be the voice of silence or hear the village girls and women singing early morning songs of Raja Bhartri. A friend, Gopal by name, gave me a book of translation of Bhartri Hari’s Shatakas in ‘doha’ form, all three, Shringaara, Neeti and Vairagya. It was a beautiful translation in Hindi.

Then came Dev Narain ji Arya with a proposal for English translation of Swami Dayananda’s Sanskaara Vidhi, and translation of nine Upanishads from Isha up to Shvetaashvatara. Dev Narain ji had collected some commentaries in Hindi, but as in the case of Yogasutras, I consulted the commentaries and completed the translation in about two years or more as I felt it should be for the modern reader.

Dev Narainji also proposed that a selection of 500 Veda mantras be made with English translation of their ‘bhavartha’ (intended meaning), to be done for the common reader. But on the translation of ‘intended meaning’ only, I did not agree. My commitment and devotion insists on the mantra first, therefore the intended meaning alone, without the mantra in original, I felt, would not serve the purpose. So I did not accept his proposal.

Some time after the publication of my book on English in India, I read a review of the book in the Statesman by Surender Suri. Mr. Suri described that book as an expression of the voice of Indian culture as reflected through the life and hard work of the Indian people struggling for education and employment. I also read a review of it in a ‘Jaipur Hindi Patrika’ in which it was suggested that this book should be written in Hindi also so that its message could be communicated to the ordinary people also. There is no doubt English has divided the Indian people into some kind of two ‘nations’, the English elite, and the non-English ‘Natives’. The idea appealed to me. I was with Gian in Canada in 1988-89, I had started writing the book in Hindi a long time earlier. At Maharshi Dayanand University we had tried to get it translated by four students of the Hindi department. It was given as a practical project for the students of the Diploma course in Translation. The students could not cope with the task. So, I myself undertook it. And if I was to write it, why translate? Why not write anew? I took it up and started writing: “English in India: Loss and Gain (Bharat mein angrezi: kya khoya kya paya)”.I completed two thirds of the book at Gian’s place in Toronto.

Around 1990, it so happened that there was a meeting of the Nagari Lipi Parishad at Rajghatin Delhi in Gandhi Smarak Nidhi. Nagari Lipi Parishad was an NGO founded by Acharya Vinoba Bhave. Its aim and purpose was that all books published in India in different regional languages should be published in Nagari script also on a voluntary basis. Regional languages have so many words in common from the basic common stock of language and culture consciousness in India. Most of all they differ in the script. So if the books are available in Nagari script, then through this common script, the Indian languages would come closer.

I was invited to the meeting of the Parishad. I was given time to speak on the need for a common language for India possibly through a common script. I spoke on English in India also. I also spoke on the struggle of the English people for their own language against a foreign official language, which was French after 1066, imposed by the Norman conqueror.

Dr. Ganga Prasad Vimal was the chairman of the meeting. He was then Director, Rashtriya Hindi Samsthan. Earlier he had been professor of Hindi at Delhi University and I had known him since then. He suggested that whatever I had spoken should be available to Indian readers in Hindi. I presented to him a copy of my English book Trading in Language: The Story of English in India, published in 1983 by GDK publications, Delhi. I told him that I had completed two thirds of my book in Hindi, only one third remained, the material was ready, the book was to be completed shortly. But my problem was publication. Dr. Vimal’s response was: “Leave that to me.”

I completed the Hindi book, Bharat mein Angrezi, kya khoya kya paya.I got four typed copies, three for the Rashtriya Hindi Samsthan submitted to Dr. Vimal, and one for me. The manuscript was referred to three specialists: one historian, one professor of Hindi, one professor of English. The specialist’s comments were very positive. The book was accepted and published with Government grant received from the Samsthan by Kitab Ghar, Delhi in 1997.

Here I must share one experience of mine with everyone, specially Indians, and the Englishman who knows about the English man’s struggle for English in his own country: When I was writing on the subject in English, in 1971-72 and later I feel that my intellect was at work with all force of reason and argument. But when I wrote in Hindi, I felt that my very soul and conscience was speaking in the form and medium of my native voice. Here in Canada I have been speaking in the Arya Samaj and at other temples in English on Indian culture, Vedic tradition and Dharma, but I know that with all the competence I have to communicate the Indian consciousness in English, whatever I say, it is only a translation. But when I speak in Hindi, it is the thing itself. For this very personal experience I feel that those Indians who, whether for the love of English, or for professional reasons, have disconnected themselves from Hindi do not know what they have lost and what they are still losing.

For some time around 1990, I was on the managing committee of Rukmini Devi Public School, Pitampura; Mr. K.C. Garg was the manager of the school. This school, in my view, is one of the best schools in Delhi, situated on a neat plot of land, in a well-planned building. For a few years I used to go to the school frequently, sit in my room, or go round the classes. It is a well-maintained school, clean and efficient with good results. There were government representatives on the managing committee who attended all the meetings, specially the annual budget meetings. Once, I remember, two principals of government schools were nominees of the government on the managing committee. They raised some serious objections on the expenditure and income items. The average expenditure per child came to be about Rs 800/= plus, say Rs 850/= per child per month. One of them from West Delhi objected strongly to this figure. I asked him about the expenditure figure of his government school. I was surprised to learn that the government expenditure per child was more than Rs 1200/= while the building maintenance and gardening etc. was done by the PWD. How does government expenditure on government schools exceed the public schools’ expence. Is it all a question of management and care?

The Rukmini Devi management was also building a School of Management affiliated to the Delhi State University. I was a member of that committee also. We had a plot of land in Rohini, Sector 9, a plot measuring about 1400 sq. metres. There was another institutional plot, the same size, adjacent to it. We wanted to have that plot also to build the management school with better facilities and a larger variety of courses. This sort of management was not my subject, but through Mr. Garg, I learnt the various bureaucratic difficulties faced by private parties. Ultimately we had to meet the Lieutenant Governor of Delhi to explain our needs and related difficulties. It was by virtue of his good offices that we got the adjacent plot. My association with the Rukmini Devi institutions was a good chapter of my retired life. After that I decided to spend more time with Gian in Canada. I donated my books related to English language and literature to Hans Raj College Library, and my books related to my Swadhyaya studies and Vedic themes I donated to Rukmini Devi Public School.

One of my Swadhyaya activities was associated with Darbari Lal ji, then President DAV College Managing Committee. At that time Shri Gian Prakash Chopra was Principal Hans Raj College. Darbari Lal ji asked me to edit the Dharma Shiksha books meant for DAV schools all over the country. With the retired professor of Sanskrit at one of DAV colleges, I did that work, suggesting that we should have a graded regular Dharma Shiksha course for all the classes from first to twelfth. That was not possible, I was told, because the next session was going to start shortly. So we, the professor and I, did the editing work. Gian Prakash Ji was kind enough to allot a room for our work at Hans Raj College. The books were published, but the problem of a graded Dharma Shiksha Course from class I to XII still remains.

Canada:

Canada, it seems to me, is my last destination. Here I have done what I regard as the best work of my life. Here I have also enriched, in a way completed, my experience of life in general. Earlier in life when I was in my village, I saw parents and children, brothers, sisters, cousins, relatives, three generations, even four, living together for a life time, irrespective of poverty or prosperity. Here I have seen generosity at the heart of poverty and poverty at the heart of prosperity: wife doing double job to support her ailing husband, and husband deserting his ailing wife, children loved, cared for and settled on the one hand, deserted and alienated on the other, seniors loved, respected, ensured and elevated on the one hand, ignored, rejected and thrown out on the other. Here is individuality, society, organization, peace, freedom and security, and at the same time, fear, worry and uncertainty for some unknown reason. There is education for all, and still there is something missing at the heart-core of education. Long back, Plato said that the perfect world is the world of ideas. If the idea is given a medium, the perfection is bound to be short of the ideal. We in the Vedic tradition say that, ideally speaking, Brahma alone is perfect, man in the natural medium of the body is bound to be short somewhere. Hence the Smritis, time and again, after Shruti.Everyone for sure at my age has seen and experienced this vast variety of life’s panorama with all its contradictions and complementarities. Everyone for sure has enjoyed and suffered the variety of life’s seasons. Passing through all the seasons I too have grown to be what I am and what I see. I look around and I see: Care for life.

When I was doing English language and literature as major for graduation and later for M.A., we had to discuss Romanticism and Classicism. We read various definitions of these two terms, but we always loved to recite lines of poems and plays such as: “If music be the food of love play on,” or of Keat’s Ode to the Nightingale: “The Weariness, the fever and the fret, Of here where men sit and hear each other groan”, or Shelly’s “Our sweetest songs are those which tell of saddest thought.” But that was mere information, not real knowledge. Later, through Swadhyaya, I realized that there are two approaches to life and literature: romantic and classic. Romantic literature is, in terms of yoga psychology, vritti literature in which the poet identifies with the vrittis, emotions of pleasure or pain. Classical literature is that in which the poet watches thevrittis without identifying his spirit with the pleasure or the pain. Classical literature thus is Sakshi literature.So in life also, if you identify yourself with the pleasure or pain of the experience, you end up with blessing or cursing the cause or agent of the experience. You start judging people and, concentrating on them, you lose yourself in the maze. You don’t grow.

For growth you have to watch your experience, you don’t suffer it. It is a difficult exercise, but rising above sufferance is the real road to divinity. You have to know, and I have tried to know that everybody that is born here comes here with the balance sheet of his or her Karma and additionally, with the freedom of choice to continue the active life account of karma. You don’t spend your bank balance without adding something to it. So whether somebody praises you or criticizes and condemns you, he or she does it as his or her karma, of which you are not the judge. The judge is some other power. I got this message at school from Satyarth Prakash, and the author of Satyarth Prakash, Swami Dayananda, got, through his guru, Swami Virajananda, who got it from the Vedas. I had heard of the four Vedas in 1935, in my first history class on the sources of Indian History.Thence onward, consciously or unconsciously, I was on the way to the Vedas.

I have earlier spoken of my search for Yajnopavita, the sacred thread. I have also described how I was refused the sacred thread. At the high school, Narela, 105 students were given the sacred thread by Pandit Tilak Ram, our Sanskrit teacher. Then at Delhi, when I came in contact with the Akhil Bharatiya Jangid Brahman Mahasabha, I came to know of the court case against an orthodox Brahman in which the judgement was that the Jangids are Brahmans. The judgment was on the authority of Atharva Veda (19.34, 1 and 6) in which it is said that Jangid was the sage Angira who had received the Atharva-veda directly from Lord Brahma, the Omniscient God. Since then, and in fact in my thoughts which went back to 1935, I had been actively thinking of the Vedas on the basis of Satyarth Prakash, the Arya Samaj and Swami Dayananda. I had got a full set of Vedic Samhitas from Arya Samaj Narela in 1941. So besides my studies, I continued these readings of Scriptural literature: Gita, Upanishads, Satyarth Prakash, Ramayana. Mahabharata, three volumes of Dharma ki Khoj, three volumes of Pandit Sunder Lal’s Bharat mein Angrezi Raj, etc. At school and at college I used t to attend the Arya Samaj weekly Sunday meetings at Narela and at Arya Samaj Diwan Hall. During all my forty years of teaching, my approach to education and literature was inspired, in fact conditioned, by my Vedic thought. It is my faith that once you think freely as a human being without any preconditions, you are on the Vedic path.

So after retirement, at Gian’s place, I first concentrated on Satyarth Prakash again. Pandit Guru Dutta Vidyarthi is said to have read it eighteen times, and every time he read it, he discovered something new. I had translated the short writings of Swami Dayananda from the Dayananda Grantha Mala for the Paropakarini Sabha, Ajmer. So I read carefully and criticality both Satyarth Prakash and Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika again to write a short analytical study of Satyarth Prakash in English for the average reader in India and in the Western world. I took one year to write the book. The title was Swami Dayananda’s Vision of Truth. It was published by Swami Dikshananda of Samarpana Shodha Samsthan in 2002. I had earlier translated Samskara Vidhi in 1990’s. Then in 2015 my book on the model of Rigvedadi Bhasya Bhumika, was published by Govind Ram Hasananda of Delhi. The title is What is Veda. Thus Swami Dayananda’s Grantha Mala was completely presented in English, from Aryabhivinaya to the Bhumika.

The challenge of the pandit who had refused the sacred thread to me, the sacred thread received at Narela, always lived in my memory. In addition there was the assertion that if you are a Brahmana, how do you justify that you are a Brahmana? Not only by birth, but also by karma? Therefore it was an ambition with me that, in addition to the books I had read, including the Avesta, the Bible and the Quran, I must read the complete Veda at least once in my present life. At college I had seen a complete translation of the Vedas by Pandit Jai Dev Sharma at the house of my classmate Jai Dev Sharma. I saw and read a few volumes of it from Pandit Krishna Chandra Vidyalankar of Arya Samaj, Shakti Nagar, Delhi. I myself had bought Swami Dayananda’s Hindi Bhashya of the Yajurveda from Govind Ram Hasanand. Later I got a complete set of the Vedas with the translation and commentary of Pandit Satavalekara from Lal Bahadur Shastri Vidyapeeth, New Delhi, through the courtesy of its Vice Chancellor, Prof. Vachaspati Upadhyaya. Swami Dayananda’s Hindi Bhashya of Yajurveda, we used to chant at the annual Veda Yajna at Shakti Nagar.

So after retiring from MD University Rohtak, having moved to our Shakti Nagar home, in 1989, sitting on the roof in the mild sun, to the rustle and flutter of the peepal and pilkan leaves and the chant of birds, I started a study of Yajurveda, Hindi Bhashya by Swami Dayananda. The minimum programme was at least one reading of all the ‘four Vedas’, I had heard of in 1935. Of these, the door was closed in 1939 at the temple in Sonipat and reopened for me and all at the weekly Havan at Hailey High School Narela one Thursday, Guruvar in the Vedic tradition. All that was rejuvenated now by Swami Dayananda.

 I opened Swamiji’s Yajurveda Bhashya, Hindi translation, Volume 1 and started reading: “Ishe tvorjje tva vayava stha…”, the opening mantra which I had recited many many times as part of Swasti Vachanam at the weekly satsangs of the Arya Samaj. But recitation was one thing, after all I remembered the mantra, but reading it as a lifetime message and mission was another. I must understand the meaning, the Devata (subject) and the exponent Rishi, the context, and the version in continuous Hindi, or in continuous English.

Swami Dayananda’s first language was Gujarati; his second language was Sanskrit, which in due course became his first language of discourse. While explaining a mantra first in Sanskrit and then render it into Hindi presented a problem, at least for me, because a Hindi version, in respect of vocabulary, and secondly in respect of continuity, was almost over-influenced by Sanskrit and the Sanskrit technique of explanation. Swamiji had to follow that technique because he was writing for two orders of readers: the pandits, and the general readers. The pandits around him were dedicated to the interpreters such as Sayana. The western interpreters followed Sayana and, in addition, applied their own theories of historical comparative interpretation and, further, in relation to the Bible. And while writing for the general readers too, he could not take the pandits for granted, because his interpretation was in direct clash with their faith in moorti pooja and in the pauaranic myths and legends. Therefore, while interpreting the Vedas, he had to fight at more fronts than one: Sayana and company, the Westerners, and the believers in moortis, avataras and the Puranas. There was only one way of fighting on all these fronts: going back to the original interpreters who were closer to the spirit and content of the Vedas, interpreters and interpretations such as the Brahmana Granthas, Nirukta and Nighantu, Yaska, Panini and Patanjali. So Swamiji adopted the method  of the Samskarana (synthesis) and Vyakarana (analysis) for the interpretation of Vedic words. Thereby he traced a word down to the root and then followed its growth upward by the addition of prefixes and suffixes added for the required meaning, and this too in the context of the mantra itself and also the Sukta context in which the mantra occurs. This process followed in Sanskrit for the pundits’ persuasion and the westerner’s correction had to be followed in Hindi too for the general reader’s information and enlightenment. Understanding all these choices and exigencies of Swami Dayananda, I went back to the opening mantra of Yajurveda:  “Ishe tvorjje tva…”

I understood the meaning of every word of the mantra as explained by Swami Dayananda. But I stopped at Swamiji’s explanation of ‘Savita’. In Hindi, it says:  “Savita deva means creator of the entire universe, all glorious, giver of all forms of happiness, the one who makes all knowledge prasiddha”. Prasiddha in current Hindi normally means well-known, someone reputed. In English it makes no sense in relation to knowledge. In Hindi also it sounds strange. It is now well-known that the Hindi version of Swamiji’s Sanskrit commentary is not all his own, it is also someone else’s. But the difficulty of Sanskrit translated into Hindi is that it accepts many words as they are in Sanskrit. Such words are called ‘Tatsam’ exactly the same in formas in Hindi.But in Hindi their meaning now has changed over time. In my situation, the ‘tatsam’, Hindi version of such words is not acceptable. So I translated the mantra, taking Swami Dayananda’s word interpretation in Sanskrit as a basis including ‘Bhavartha’ (intended meaning), which runs  as follows:

“Be vibrant as the winds and thank the Lord Creator, Savita, for the gifts of food and energy, light and life for the body, mind and soul. Pray that you dedicate yourself to the noblest action, yajna, and play your part in the service of the Lord. Be blest with best of health and wealth and plenty, cows, healthy, strong and fertile, sacred, not to be killed. No thief to rule over you, no sinner to boss over you! Growing in power and prosperity, be firm and loyal to this Lord of the nation and protect and honour the Yajamana.”

I chose to translate Veda into English for two reasons. First, self-discipline, because I shall be forced to find English equivalents for Sanskrit words in terms of real life. I could not accept the Sanskrit words as they are accepted in Hindi in the ‘tatsam‘ form. Secondly, Hindi translations are already available, done by the followers of the Dayananda School, (a term coined as homage to Swamiji at the time when the ancient Rishi’s tradition has been forgotten). One such translation is Pandit Jaya Deva Sharma’s. I had seen this translation at the house of Dr. R.C. Sharma, my teacher at Ramjas, where Pandit Ram Ji Dass Sharma had been a teacher earlier. The translation was Panditji’s favorite book. My English translation was to reach a wider readership especially in the west where normally they are not familiar with the original Indian tradition.

Here memory has taken a leap forward. To begin with, my exercise was for ‘personal swadhyaya’, at least one reading, possibly of all the four Vedas. There was no idea of writing or publication. So I noted my translation for my personal reference in the margin of Swamiji’s  ‘Bhasha Bhasaya’ of Yajurveda. I translated three chapters like that, feeling that my copy of Swamiji’s Hindi commentary will remain in the family library for the next generation.

The story then moved to Canada exclusively. At Gian’s house in Scarborough I first read Satyarth Prakash for a revised reading. I read Swamiji’s Introduction to his commentary on the Vedas (Rivedadi Bhashya Bhumika) too, and decided to prepare a simple version of Satyarth Prakash for the English knowing readers. Having prepared the manuscript, I offered it to Swami Dikshananda for publication. He gave me 300 copies of the 1000 which he published for Samarpan Shodha Samsthan. I got another 1000 printed for Gian and for myself. Of the 1300 copies, 500 were donated to Arya Samaj Markham, and the rest were given away mostly as gifts, some were sold too for the price the reader offered.

I went back to the Veda. To devote my time exclusively to the Veda, I wanted to be all by myself. Gian got me a separate residence close to his house. It was a place just fit for meditation where I was often self-reminded of Plato’s cave: There light descended as if from heaven only ‘through a single hole’. No writing on the margin of the book. Instead of writing on the margin, why not write on a notebook? With this change came a further change: Complete the translation of Yajurveda, for the family if not for publication. Love and faith grows with love and faith. Three chapters of the Yajurveda had been translated and recorded on the margin. I rewrote those three chapters on separate sheets and began with the fourth: “Here we come to this holy place of Yajna for the ‘gods’, powers of health, where the noblest of the world collect and feel delighted in their sacred enterprise…” The place was quiet except for the children of the land-lord who sometimes reminded us that there was life around. Sometimes I toyed with the idea that if my work was published, I would write a preface and the title would be: “From the Cave”.

I began my study at six in the morning and continued up to nine in the evening. Except for demands of the body, the entire time of the day was dedicated to the Veda. My wife, a simple, faithful lady as she was, with deep faith in the Veda and in me, she sat quiet through the day as if in deep thought except for making tea or cooking a simple mono-vegetarian meal. She had only one ambition: completion of the translation work I was doing. Her faith in God, faith in Swami Dayananda’s straight and simple approach to Dharma and Veda, and faith in me and my resolve to accomplish as much of the translation as possible, this faith was complete, unquestionable, and pure. Now that she is no more after 2009, I realize that her contribution to the translation in terms of time and silent will was invaluable. When we moved to Gian’s apartment in 88 Alton Towers, Mr. Rawat was our next-door neighbor. Whenever I speak of my work of translation he watches me intently to confirm that I recognize her contribution as invaluable. Mrs. Rawat, her close friend, used to ask her daily about the progress of the work, and she used to answer: “Moving on, by God’s grace.”

You can never too soon, nor too late, never even too often, reach Swami Dayananda for guidance for the basics you need, which can be summarized as:

1. Intellectual equipment in terms of faithful readings, of the preliminaries such as Shiksha (articulation, pronunciation, accent), Kalpa (application of knowledge to action, research and investigation), Chhanda (prosody), jyotish (astronomy) , Grammar (vyakarana) and Nirukta (science of word structure, what Monier Williams calls analysis and synthesis of Vedic words and phrases).
2. Intellectual equipment in terms of logic and communication in the light of the intramantric relationship of words and intermantric relationship of mantras with reference to the subject (devata) of a sukta.
3. Mental discipline, that is, freedom of mind (mana) and intelligence (budddhi) from prejudice and preconditions, scriptural or otherwise.
4. Purity of atma and the atmic vision.
5. Faith (Shraddha) in the Rishis who have translated and explained Vedic words and texts.
6. Faith (Shraddha) in the universal God (Parameshvara) and dedication to the Guru (the Ultimate Guru in terms of Yogasutras, 1, 26, and Shvetashvatara Upanishad, 6.22-23, and the guru who gives you the knowledge of life).

Such a person of pure heart and soul can experience the presence of God within, and to such a person the Veda mantras reveal the light they hold. Both the Vedas and the Upanishads reveal this mystery of interpretation without justifying idiosyncracies and arbitrariness of motivated minds. In addition to these preliminaries, a person should also study certain auxiliaries such as the Brahmana Granthas, Upanishads and Darshan philosophy. These auxiliaries create the contexts within which the Veda mantras should be interpreted.

For a person like me the context was created by works such as Satyarth Prakash and Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika, Shatapatha Brahmana, the writings of Shri Aurobindo and Ravindra Nath Tagore. Shri Aurobindo said that, in the modern times, Swami Dayananda was the one visionary scholar who possessed the key to Vedic interpretation. Tagore described Swamiji as a great path maker, who through bewildering tangles of creeds and practices—the dense undergrowth of the degenerate days of our country–cleared a straight path for the Indians. Swamiji had a clear-sighted vision of truth and the courage of conviction and determination to state it without fear or favor or prejudice.  We may sum up Swamiji’s position in brief:

The world is real, no dream, no illusion, no delusion. It is governed by the laws of nature. Those laws are the world’s Constitution. That Constitution is Dharma. We are all participant actors in the world. We are participant actors in Dharma as well. So we have our Dharma too and we must observe that. The Creator and Law-giver of the World is Ishwara—call it God, or Allah or whatever you will as long as by that name you mean the One Lord of the World, not of any one community. His laws are eternal and universal. So Dharma too is eternal and universal. That is ‘Sanatan’ in Vedic language. From this, we come to the following position:-

1. If there is God, as we believe there is, It is One. It cannot be two, three or more. It is, It has to be, logically speaking, Omnipresent, immanent and transcendent, Omniscient, and Omnipotent. It is Nirakara, i.e., formless, because it cannot be contained in any form. It is Infinite.
2. If God is one, His creation is one. The Law of creation is One. Hence Dharma is One, universal for all.
3. Humanity as a creation of God is one. The Dharma of humanity is one in the essence and in the essentials. Human Dharma too is universal.
4. As God’s children we are one family. All racial and religious divisions of humanity are in violation of the laws of God.
5. The earth is our home.  Nature is our mother. The world is given to us as our bigger home. But we have no right or reason to own, exploit or pollute it. Pollution is a sin equal to matricide.
6. We are all active participants in the world. Nature gives us the means of living, so we must help nature in the renewal of her resources. Our living must be creative, cooperative, positive, productive and contributive. Creative living of this order, in Vedic language, is Yajna.
7. As members of one family with a positive outlook, we have the duty to help and support all living beings.

In short, the world is a real, living, breathing, self-organizing, organismic, sovereign system, the soul and governor of which is God who operates through His Universal Laws of Nature. If we participate and observe the laws in our life and conduct, good. If we violate, or rebel, we suffer. That is the law of Karma. The choice is ours, that is our freedom subject to the law of Dharma/Karma.

• God is Omniscient. Humanity is intelligent, but our intelligence and knowledge is limited. Hence God reveals the knowledge of existence for mankind at the dawn of human creation through Shruti, divine articulation received through the mind and consciousness of clairvoyant sages.
• That articulation of Shruti is Veda, which literally means ‘Knowledge’. There are four Vedas: Rigveda, Yajurveda, Samaveda and Atharvaveda.
• As divine articulation, Vedic knowledge is impersonal, for all time true, full and complete in the essence. It is also knowledge pure and absolute. There is no history in the Vedas because at the time of the articulation, history had not even begun in its particularities. Like the self-existent divine consciousness, the language of articulation too is self-existent and concomitant with divine consciousness. The Vedic language is thus universal, impersonal, non-historical, wholly objective and purely scientific.

This characterization of Vedic language is important  specially in the context of translation specially in the tradition of the Rishis from Brahma to Jaimini and from Jaimini to Dayananda and with reference to Yaska, Panini and Patanjali.

1. This knowledge is for all mankind without any discrimination whatsoever, open to anyone who cares to receive it.

But history is a reality too. The world is no dream, no illusion, no delusion. We cannot deny it. It is true in its own way, in its own right, and in its own terms.

Thus we have two aspects of reality and truth, one is constant, the other is variable. The constant is absolute (Sanatan), the variable is relative (Nitya Nutan). The former is eternal, the latter is temporal, historical. The constant is changing forms of manifestation under the laws of mutability (Ritam) and yet it remains the same all through the changing forms. Gold is gold, whether it is in the form of a necklace, a pair of bangles or a jewel box. Similarly you are you, your self, whether you are a child or a teenager or a young man or an old person. Gold is gold; you are you, only the forms change. The gold remains constant through the changing forms. You remain constant through your changing stages of life. The soul (atma) remains, the bodies change.

The same is true of the reality of the world and of Dharma (Law). The world is an evolute of three basic, eternal and organismic entities in one (Swadhaya tadekam): Prakriti (Nature), individual Jivatmas (souls), and Ishwara (God). Prakriti is real (Sat), Jivatma is real and intelligent (Sat and Chit), and Ishwara is real, intelligent and blissful (Sat-chid-ananda) infinitely. Prakriti is the constant in variable forms like gold in variable forms. Jivatma gets involved with various forms of Prakriti according to its will to live, and assumes body forms such as human, animal or others under the karmic laws of existence. Ishwara is the omnipresent un-involved power and presence that creates, sustains, and at the end completes and withdraws each round of the cycle of creative evolution. This threefold unity is eternal and it is constant at the heart of this variety of the changing world which is governed by the cosmic laws of creation, the universal Dharma. During the state of creation, this constant reality of the triad organism is dynamic. At the completion (end) of creation it recedes into a static state in the Divine presence wherein nothing but Ishwara is wakeful, because the Lord never goes to sleep.

Dharma (Law) too is eternal and universal. It comes into operation with the first vibration of the Divine Intention (Samkalpa) to create, when the infinite potential state of Satyam implodes into the state of Ritam, and it remains in operation up to the end of the existential cycle. It operates in all the various modes and forms of existence. There are laws, for example, of the physical world, there are laws of the biological world, and there are laws of the world of the mind and the spirit. There are laws of the individual mind and laws of the collective mind. The Law is operative in everything from the smallest particle of matter, every wave of energy, and every vibration of thought, up to the largest galaxy and the entire dynamics of the expanding universe.

Lost in the depth and vastness of this mighty maze of thought and introversion, Ritam and Satyam, I burst into a spontaneous outpour of ambition beyond my limitations:

 If the laws of nature were suspended,

        And I were free,

 I’d jump the life and time to come,

And be at the center of the universe,

To watch the dance of the stars

And hear the music of the spheres

Until

The vibrations were absorbed in the soul

To the point of zero,

     Back into the song of silence….

     And then, with a bang, I’d explode,

     And fly to the bounds of this expanding universe,

     And there at the borders, within,

     I’d hear the voice of God:

     Thou art a child of Immortality,

     Thy roots  go deep to Eternity,

     Thy   reach is unto Infinity!

     Aum…

The word ‘AUM’ brought me back to my sole self onto Vedic Consciouness:

Aum Iti etad aksharam. Idam sarvam tasyopakhyanam.

AUM is the Word, It is the Imperishable. The entire universe is the prakritic articulation of Aum. The world, past, present and future, even beyond, is Eternal articulation and the story of the Divine Play of Aum. All is Aum.

Veda is Aum, the knowledge of constancy (Para Vidya), and the knowledge of Mutability (Apara Vidya), past, present and future, all. The translation, any translation any time, must remain within the context of Aum and Its articulation. It must not violate the borders of the Rishis in spite of the pressures and temptations of the ‘moderns’, because Veda too, like Reality, is both Sanatan and Nitya Nutan,eternal as well as self-regenerative, any time, any moment (Atharvaveda, 10,8,23), specially with reference to the world of reality and the position of man therein, inclusive of man’s consciousness. Aum became, for me, the centre-hold of everything, subjective, objective, and self-existent. It became the master key of Vedic interpretation also. One version of the technique of interpretation has been studied and published in my book entitled, What is Veda? (Govind Ram Hasanad, (2015)). Here the perspective is different: AUM.

Aum is a single integrated sound of three including the sonal termination in silence. The three is One and the One is Three. Similarly, the world is an integration of three: Ishwara, jivatma and Prakriti. The three is One and the One is Three: It is a real, breathing, living, Self-organizing Sovereign System, a Purusha, the Soul of which is Paramatma. Just as Aum originates with A, continues through A plus U as O, and terminates in M, so does the world of existence originate with the Big Bang, (the Divine Samkalpa and Tapas), continues through the state of evolution, and terminates through devolution until the final withdrawal (Pralaya). The Purusha creates and the Purusha withdraws, the Purusha Remains.

Further, the sages tell us: “Yatha pinde tatha Brahmande”, that is, ‘as in the microcosm, so in the macrocosm, which also implies: ‘as in the Macrocosm, so in the Microcosm.’ Therefore, as is the Cosmic Purusha, so is the individual unit, the individual human being, a mini purusha.

Let us work it out a little further: Just as the universe is a Purusha, so is man a little universe, the miniature unit, the individual prurusha, an integration of jivatma, the body (Prakriti), and Paramatma at the heart core. The human being is just like a cell in the Cosmic Purusha, but with a special distinction: man is endowed with mind and consciousness. Wherever there is consciousness, there is memory, and where there is memory, there is the content of memory. The content of human memory is the print of experience on the mind, whether it is the experience of a few years or of a hundred years. Further, experience is linear and cumulative, but the content of memory is simultenous, instant and present. The hundred years of experience in the memory is just a moment and that one moment is ever present. Thus while experience time is linear, memory time is instant and constant.

In continuation of the analogy of the microcosm (individual human purusha) and the macrocosm (the Cosmic Purusha), let us now move on to the Veda:  Where there is consciousness (chetana), there is the content of consciousness. In the human individual, there is the memory of experience. In the Cosmic Consciousness, there is knowledge of the world of existence, with this difference that whereas human memory is constant as long as it is active in time, the Cosmic Knowledge is constant eternally because, unlike human memory, it never goes to sleep nor is it subject to birth and death. The content of the Cosmic Consciousness is the knowledge of the world of existence irrespective of the passage and the process of whatever happens in time. Further, if there is knowledge, there is the language of knowledge as well. That knowledge content of Cosmic Consciousness is Veda. Thus Veda too is eternal as the Cosmic Purusha is Eternal, ever vibrating with the created world through the medium of Cosmic Mind (the Mahat version of Prakriti). Just as the Cosmic Purusha is self-existent, just as the Cosmic Consciousness is Self-existent, so is the language of the Veda Self-existent, i.e., co-existent with Cosmic Consciousness, vibrating with every heart-beat of nature, receivable by anyone whose mind frequency is identical with the frequency of the Cosmic Mind. In the beginning of human creation, it is received (‘heard’ as Shruti) by four sages, come back from the state of Moksha, wherein they had been in direct and constant presence of Divinity and Divine Consciousness. They passed this knowledge to Brahma, the original teacher, who passed it on to other dedicated seers who then interpreted the mantras for all of us.

The language of the Vedas, self-existent as it is, sums up the language of nature in respect of the material developments of origination, evolution and devolution, up to the pralaya stage. It is independent of historical language. The historical language, in fact, is a development of the original Vedic language in respect of the specifics and particulars of time and place, and all other developments of history whichever way they evolved. Monier Williams studies this evolutionary character of Sanskrit tracing it back, as scholars say, to 2400 or 1700 or 120 roots. I have elsewhere suggested that it may be possible some day to trace the entire Vedic Sanskrit to three roots: “A, U, and M,” the way the entire world of existence evolves as and from AUM. The evolution and analysis of Vedic words, then, should be traced and explained according to the self-existing laws of Sanskrit itself. Otherwise we might end up with myths and stories of particular events of history, even contradictions, and miss the wealth of the knowledge of mysteries and laws of natural evolution, social development and spiritual elevation enshrined in the Vedas.

From the language and interpretation of the Veda as articulation of Divine Consciousness, I came to the knowledge content of the Veda: Refer again to the analogy of the Cosmic Purusha and the individual purusha. The individual purusha is an organismic integration of body, mind and atma (soul) with Paramatma at the heart core. The Cosmic Purusha is an organismic integration of Paramatma, jivatma and Prakriti. There is nothing contradictory or mutually conflictive in the individual purusha. If there be anything such, it must be thrown out.  Similarly in the knowledge of the cosmos as of the human personality, there is nothing purely, wholly and exclusively negative or contradictory.

Veda is universal knowledge of the world from the particle up to the totality. So in that knowledge too there is nothing, there cannot be anything, mutually conflictive or contradictory. If something appears to be such, it must be rejected or reinterpreted in search of the truth and the correct knowledge of the truth.

In the light of this basic approach, I came across some very conscientious problems. One such problem I had to face for days, it was a Yajurveda mantra repeated thrice in 35, 12; 36, 23; and 38, 23. The subject is herbs (oshadhis) and apah (liquids, tonics). The mantra is the same, the Rishis, exponents, are different, the context is different. The exponents are Aditya, Dhadyang, and Dirghatama. Each exponent sees something different, though the things seen and prayed for are consistent and harmonious. Translated simply, in fact literally for today, the meaning would be: “May the herbs and waters be good friends to us and may they be enemies to those who hate us and whom we hate.” Sounds non-sense in our age of science and reason. How can herbs and tonics distinguish between friends and enemies? Medicine is medicine after all. It acts the same natural way on the body system whether the patient is your friend or your enemy. And this version is excellent stuff for a translator who believes that Vedic poetry is nothing but the voice of a tribal society in the barbaric, uncivilized state of primitive times.

I continued to think for two or three days and got the light around 2:30 after midnight: What is the context? In that context, who are our friends? Who are our enemies? Who are those that injure us? What are those we hate and want to injure and destroy? I got the answer: The context is good health. In the context of health, who or what are our friends? Who are our enemies? Our friends are our immunity, our powers to resist the onslaughts of the external and internal ailments and negativities. All germs, bacteria, viruses, toxins, even the side-effects of medicines also, all these are our enemies. So the correct and scientific interpretation of the mantra would be: “May waters, tonics, pranic energies and medicinal herbs be good friends of our health and immunity system, and let the same waters, tonics, pranic energies and herbal medicines act against those ailments, diseases and negativities which injure us, which we hate to suffer and which we love to destroy. Moreover, let them have no side effects because side effects too aggravate the negativities and injure us.” This is the reasonable prayer and health programme of an advanced society. And then, logically, in the next mantra follow prayers for the vital heat of life to carry on the burdens of life, prayer for a full hundred years of healthy and independent life, and prayers for freedom from darkness and rise to the light of the sun.

Having paused and waited for days for the light of a single verse of the Veda, I felt I should, for a change, read something on the light side. Just by chance I happened to get an article, Richard Burton describes Elizebeth Taylor as a mysterious creation of Nature: “an inscrutable, apocalyptic, mysterious poem written in flesh and blood.” Immediately I went into deep thought: I realized in human terms: If an earthly celebrity (such as Richard Burton), in human language, could admire another human figure, just one creation of Mother Nature, a mere female figure (such as Elizabeth Taylor), as an “inscrutable, apolcalyptic, mysterious poem written in flesh and blood,” how much more—infinitely more—mysterious, inscrutable, apocalyptic would be the Cosmic Poem, ‘Devasya Kavyam’ (Atharvaveda, 10.8, 32),, created in the Self-existent Ultimate Language of the Ultimate Vision! I wished and still do wish I could stand before the Veda, every verse of it in fact, as Arjun stood before the Cosmic Krishna, waiting and watching intently, for the burst of a thousand suns, for the Dawn on top of the Earth, for the Revelation. I wish every one of us could wait and watch to see if one can.

Lord Krishna says in the Gita (4, 34): “Tad Viddhi Pranipatena Pariprashnena Sevaya”, “Know That with surrender, ask questions with honesty, with commitment to follow and serve.” That is the technique of the interpretation of any scripture. That is the way of learning for self-realization up to the stage of God-realization. If you approach a scripture with a skeptical mind or judgemental attitude, or pre-conceived notions, with a motive, you would not understand the meaning and the message of the scripture.  The scripture should be approached with reverence, an open mind, and a desire to seek, for an honest purpose. If you do so, the scripture would reveal itself to you in all its openness. Read the scripture on its own terms, insistently, not on yours.

In Sanskrit almost every word is a phrase in a sentence. So the word order is free. In a modern language such as English or Hindi, the word order is important on logical grounds. “Rama goes to school” is an understandable sentence. But you can’t change the order of words. In Sanskrit the sentence would be “Ramah pathashalam gacchati”. In this sentence put any word in any position, the meaning would not change. Still the logical relationship of the words (phrases) should be observed in the interpretation of compound and complex sentences. A reader with reverence for the Veda would keep the logical relationship of the words in mind, but a reader who regards the Veda as primitive would not do so. For example, Rigveda, 10, 169, 1, is a prayer for good food for men and animals, for “padvate, for those who move on feet.” The same prayer is in Yajurveda, 11, 83, food for all those who move on two feet or on four.  But Griffith interprets the Rigveda, 10, 169, 1, as prayer to God for good air, water and grass: be kind and provide these “for food that moves on feet” — Here Kindness and slaughter (of animals for food) go together as in the Bible (Genesis, 8, 21 to 9, 3). There is nothing illogical for him between graciousness and killing. In the Veda, there is nothing, nothing can be illogical or mutually contradictory.

In the Vedic technique of statement and interpretation one should be careful about the purpose and intention of the creator, speaker or writer, i.e. , the maker of the statement, the statement’s internal logical requirement or consistency, in relation to the syntactic and semantic requirement, and the potentiality and propriety of the words used in the statement. In view of these, the interpreter may be sometimes required to supply the words needed to complete the sense. For example, in Yajurveda, 26, 2: “As I speak these words of auspicious meaning and content…. so should you.” Without the last three words supplied by the reader, the statement remains incomplete for us. In Rigveda, 10, 169, 1, the statement of ‘graciousness’ does not logically go with “food that walks on feet.” In Yajurveda, 1. 1, Yajna is described as the highest and best form of action. It is, described as ‘adhvara’, free from violence (Monier Williams). How can there be ‘sacrifice of animals’ for yajna then? All these principles of interpretation, then, the translator must keep in mind. How can the ‘adhvaryu’, the yajna organizer, be interpreted as the “the person who immolates the animal?” (Monier Williams). This care, the translator must keep in mind. The translation of the Veda for me became a long session of self-education and meditation, a protracted act of yajna in which, in moments of critical difficulty, I prayed and waited for guidance, and I felt blessed when the Grace descended on me.

In this protracted yajna, which was a twelve year session for translation, interpretation, computerization and almost completion, my wife, Maya Devi— I love to remember her as Maya Jyoti— was always with me, an icon of patience in silence, from morning till evening. After she left in 2009, I realized, more than ever before, how much she contributed in terms of time and energy and moral strength, especially in moments whenever I neglected food or felt tired, even exhausted. In such moments her words were words of faith, hope and determined expectation. She was always sure the work would be completed.

The first draft of the translation was complete in 2009, when, on information that it was complete, she asked me to call 911. I did, and she was in hospital for a week or two. She had had heart surgery in 2000. She struggled on for years after that, but that time was the last hour of her life’s evening. My son, all through in spite of his long hours of duty at Ontario Hydro, was extremely helpful, an icon of dedication as he is. But in view of the call, nothing avails.  On 11th February, she was removed from the upper floor to a single room on the ground floor. That room, I now know, is something like a waiting room. At about 4:00 PM in the afternoon she asked me and Gian to go and have coffee and something to eat. We continued to be with her. Gian in fact had a small vial of Gangajal (water) in his pocket. I knew that. In fact, both Gian and I had for months known that she was on the last leg of her earthly journey. At about 5:00 pm, Mr. Rawat came in to see her. She was in full consciousness of her condition. Mr. Rawat offered to bring some food and about 5:15 he left. Around 5:20 her blood pressure started declining. She was fully conscious. She asked for a sip of water. Gian gave her the Ganga water. I was on her left side, my left hand on her heart, my right on her forehead. Gian was at her feet, holding both the feet in his hands. She was constantly looking at me with open but farewell eyes. At 5:30 she breathed her last.

She is gone, I said, self-absented, standing alone in wilderness except that Gian, still at her feet, was with me. When we came to ourselves, we realized what to do next. In critical situations such as this was, Gian is stronger than me. So we called for the doctor. She came and confirmed she was gone. A few hours before, the same doctor had told us that she would be with us only for three-four hours more. The body was then taken to a room next to the mortuary. We were allowed to be there till the members of the family were assembled for the last farewell. Gian informed Shalini, Deepak and Alok. He informed Gulab also who informed Indira that Mummy was ‘gravely serious’ and they would have to come to Toronto. Shalini took the next flight from Texas and joined us around 11:00 p.m. It was strange that the body was warm till then. We were allowed to be with the body till that time but then we had to leave because the staff had to take over the body for treatment further.

After a short while we left the hospital, Gian offered to stay with me for the night, it was good of him, but I wanted he should be home, that would be better. To be alone, by myself, that was now the course for me. When father died in 1951, my mother was with me. When mother died in 1959, my wife was with me. Now that she too left 50 years later, I must take to the course open for everyone. That is the course for man in spite of the dearest and the closest, otherwise. You come alone, you go alone, the wise have said. Between coming and going, the Wonderland is there, not any more. Live that and be prepared at the crossroads. Life is wonderful if you can live it that way.

Indira came in a day or two later. Gulab knew what had happened, but Indira did not, though she did tell me that Gulab’s words to her could mean that Mummy was no more. So when they arrived we had some tea and then we prepared to ‘visit’: Indira felt we were going to visit Mummy in the hospital, and all others knew where we were going. Indira was slowly told that Mummy was no more. This came as a bomb-shell to her. She almost fainted except for the cry that came of its own force. When she came back to her proper self, we visited the funeral home wherein she lay in the casket, all alone in perfect calm beyond all ups and downs of life. A couple of days later, the last Samskar (antyeshti) was done. We carried the ashes to India and consigned the last remains into Mother Ganga and got the death recorded with the family priest, Pandit Babu Ram at Garh-Mukteshwar. We had a Shanti Yajna at our residence, 28/15 Shakti Nagar, Delhi. We had a Shanti Yajna at Arya Samaj Markham also at the Vedic Cultural Center on the 14th Ave. At these meetings I did not, I could not, speak a word. Gian paid the tributes to the departed soul. I prayed as I still pray in all silence.

It is a beautiful world, says the Veda, darling of the gods, wherein man is born but destined to die, with the assurance that man would, for sure, complete the mission for which he or she came in. So people are born here, some to give, some to take, according to the balance sheet and the freedom they bring with themselves. She came to give, thus we were all blest in her. If you come with a bank balance, you have the freedom either to live it out or to add to it. If you come with an overdraft, you either pay back and go, or add to the overdraft, or payback the overdraft and add something to your account. The choice is yours. She came, I think, with a bank balance and she added a lot to it. And she had a lot to do for me. I am sure of one thing: She was to cooperate with me in my Vedic studies, and when the translation was complete, she was called back. She did not live to see it in print. That was   the Will of the Supreme.

The computer moved on, as in Heaven so on earth, and the same way in the human mind. Akshar Computers were looking after the typing work. Gian was looking after that part of it. For the computer world I am an illiterate man. Gian was still working in Ontario Hydro. So he had to be in his office for twelve hours, and, in addition, on the computerization of my Vedic translation. In the meantime I heard from Govind Ram Hasanand, Delhi. They were ready to take over the publication work. Earlier I had talked to Ajay Kumar Ji, but at that time he was busy extending his business commercially. Now he was prepared to take up the publication of the translation of the Veda. I had known this firm since 1943: When, after high school, I had joined Ramjas College in Darya Ganj, Delhi, I had been buying my Swadhyaya books from them. I gave the offer a serious thought and decided to give over the publication to them.

The manuscript of Yajurveda was ready. I gave it to them some time in 2010. They got it type-set and sent me by mail at Toronto. Later when we were in Delhi on our winter visit, I discussed the matter with Ajay Kumar Ji. The printer too came in to discuss the matter. I was surprised   to hear that the printer would not give me the soft copy, he would give me only the PDF copy. I said that since the copyright was mine, why should I not have and control the soft copy?

Gian was with me during this discussion. I did not much understand the implications of the printer’s insistence on keeping the soft copy. We were not able to decide anything finally, but I continued worrying about the author’s right to the soft copy along with the copyright. We got one instalment of the PDF copy and faced the problem of proof reading, etc. Having faced the problem of the risk of copyright, mailing, time delay and all other practical difficulties, we decided that we must have the soft copy and control the publication, current as well as future. We said this to the publisher, publication or no publication. I had done the translation as the extension of my Vedic Swadhyaya, as a justification for my human birth, not for money, not for reputation, but only as my human obligation for Brahma yajna. We said all this to the publisher and to the printer both. At last both the publisher and the printer agreed. The first edition of Yajurveda was published in 2011.

The work of the computerization of the other Vedas continued. Having completed the Yajurveda, I felt a lot more confident than before. Therefore I decided to translate the Rigveda. Here I am going back earlier than 2009, but just to work out the expression of all that had been going on in my mind. Rigveda for me was like the bow of Ulysses, but it was worth trying. I tried and I did succeed.

 Earlier I had decided to publish only the English version as Voice  of the Vedas, the way of Max Müeller and Griffith. But those people were established personalities. How could I justify my English version as authentic without the mantras. So the decision was taken to publish the original mantra text as well. And if mantras were published, they should be published in deva-nagari script for Indians and the Roman international script for the Western readers. This way Yajurveda had been published. The reader was free to check up the authenticity for himself or herself with reference to the Original.

The question has been asked of me why I have chosen to translate the Veda into English. I choose English for two reasons: One: I have translated the Vedas into English for the Western readers mainly, and secondly for those Indian readers whose discipline is chiefly English because of their educational exposure to English more than to any Indian language specially at the University stage. Moreover, there is another reason: Those who translated the Vedas, in fact any Sanskrit work, into Hindi for example, accept Sanskrit words as “tatsam” words of Hindi as well. The reader’s problem in the study of Sanskrit is not to find a Hindi equivalent in language, but the meaning of the Sanskrit word in terms of life, in actuality. If the Sanskrit word itself is accepted in Hindi as Hindi word of the “tatsam” variety, the reader’s problem remains the same as in Sanskrit. If the translation is done in English, you are forced to find an English equivalent in terms of life and actuality.

Compare, for example, the use of the words ‘paryapta’ and ‘aparyapta’ in Gita, 1, 10. The Hindi meaning of these two words by now is completely changed, though both, the words survive in Hindi in their “tatsam” form.  In the Gita, ‘aparyapta” means unbounded, unlimited’, the Gita press edition translates it as” unconquerable.” In modern Hindi it means ‘insufficient’. In modern Hindi, ‘paryapta’ means ‘sufficient, enough’, in the Gita, it means ‘insufficient, bounded’. Radhakrishnan thus translates the verse:  “Unlimited (aparyaptam) is this army of ours which is guarded by Bhishma, while that army of theirs which is guarded by Bhim is limited (paryaptam). And yet in a footnote, he explains the word “aparyaptam” as ‘insufficient’ according to Shridhar. All this means that when you are translating an ancient text you have to keep in mind the context, the age, the history of language development, and much more so in relation to Veda.

What is that ’much more’ in relation to Veda? Veda stands by Itself in the world literature: If you call it a book— which it is not— then it is the first ‘book’ of the world that deserves to be placed in any world library. So said Max Müeller. If you call it knowledge, it was revealed before the history of man on earth began. So said even the Christian scholar and missionary Pincot. Revelation must be one “once for all delivered to the saints”, said Jude, the brother of James. So says Yajurveda (26, 2). So Says Rigveda (10, 90, 5). So says Atharvaveda (10, 7, 20). So say the Upanishads, and so says the Gita. Veda stands by Itself, because it is the articulation of the DivineConsciousness of existence, which never goes to sleep nor does it grow old. It comes into being with the first generation of sages, received by them and articulated by them by direct experience, and so does it continue through thee Smritis of the world.

Once you are committed to the divinity of the Veda, other details follow: If there is Divine Consciousness, there is a language of consciousness. If there is language, there is a content of the language. Since Divine Consciousness is self-existent, the language of that Consciousness also is self-existent. The content of Divine language is the knowledge of existence, and just as existence evolves from a single seed of no dimensions, from Hiranyagarba, similarly the Vedic language too evolves from a single sound Aum. Aum has Its own laws of evolution, so Vedic language too has its own laws of evolution, well noted by Vedic rishis and described by Western writers also. Just as the existential seed of no-dimensions has infinite possibilities of evolution, so the Vedic language too has infinite possibilities of meaning in our worldly language in terms of the expansive universe. Any translator, then, must have absolute faith in Divinity and total commitment to the Divine nature of the self-existent Vedic language. Without faith and commitment, without Nishtha, it is not possible to reach close to the meaning content of the Veda.

Swami Dayananda studies and explains the nature, character and structure of the Vedic language on the principles which were self-realized and formulated by Vedic Rishis from Brahma to Jaimini. He suggests the way of avoiding the pitfalls of earlier scholars both Indian and Western. Those very principles, the translator, whether in Hindi or in English, should follow. In Swamiji’s line, based on the model of his Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika, Introduction to the commentary of the Vedas, I tried to write my Introduction to the Vedas including one chapter on the technique of Vedic interpretation. The book was published by Govind Ram Hasanand of Delhi in 2015, under the simple title, What is Veda? with the subtitle: Sanatan Foundation of Universal Dharma.

‘The Technique of interpretation’ was republished in 2016 in Arya Samaj and the Vedic View, ed., Ram Prakash and Jitendra Ram Prakash, Vol. 11, of part 12, of History of Science, Philosophy and Culture and Indian Civilization. Ed. D.P. Chatopaddhyaya, Centre for Studies in Civilization. In this article, the Western self-creation of an arbitrary Vedic context has been challenged. And in that context, the motivated implantation of a historical language over and into the self-existent and self-sustained prehistoric language also is challenged on the basis of the evidence of the Western interpreters themselves.

After the publication of Yajurveda in 2011, I happened to attend the Rishibodh Utsava of the Arya Pratinidhi Sabha, Delhi, at the Ramlila Grounds. There I met Dharam Pal ji, President, Arsh Sahitya Prachar Trust, and a prominent member, now President, of Delhi Arya Pratinidhi Sabha. He suggested that my full Veda translation could be published by the Delhi Arya Pratinidhi Sabha. As my first response I felt that an Arya Pratinidhi organization publication could be better than the publication by an individual publishing firm. But I had great respect for Govid Ram Hasanand as well and for Ajay Kumar ji also. I had also signed an agreement with Ajay Kumar ji for the publication. So I said to Dharam Pal Ji that I would agree to the publication by the Delhi Arya Pratinidhi Sabha if Ajay Kumar Ji would agree. We had a meeting at Hanuman Road Arya Samaj where, among others, Dharam Pal Ji, Ajay Kumar Ji, and Vinay Kumar Ji were present. Ajay Kumar Ji agreed to the proposal made by Dharam Pal Ji, saying that originally he had planned to have only 600 sets of the translation published. So if the Pratinidhi Sabha published the translation, he would share the cost for 600 sets and the Sabha could publish as many sets as they liked. This was the mutual agreement between me, Dharam Pal Ji, Ajay Kumar Ji and Vinay Kumar Ji. Nothing in writing, the word was enough.  In the year 2013 the full set was published in eight volumes.

The translation:

The transaltion of more than twenty thousand mantras of the Vedas was a long time act of meditation through the medium of words, thoughts, introspection and silence, even self- questioning and inevitable articulation. Some time earlier I had written:

          There was a time when time was not,

          There was thought when thought was not,

          Thence a vibration rolled out

          Rumbling from the silence of the dark

          Unfathomable depths of nowhere—-

          No time, no space, no thought—-

Zero and Infinity rolled in one

Without name or number.

And the vibration went out in dance,

A whirlpool of patterns forms and figures,

Ragas of its own music

Self-pleasing, self-sustained

For you and me.

The moment became a story,

History, Eternity in motion.

We are atoms of the dust of Eternity

Raised, sustained and then absorbed

At the end of time into the timeless,

The thoughtless, the dark unfathomable,

Zero and Infinity

Rolled in One, without name or number:

Svadhaya-Tadekam, Beyond Sat or asat

A verse in Yoga-vasishta says: “An instant vibration in the heart of Eternity sums up the story of creation from the beginning till the end.” That is Niyati, Destiny of the Universe, self-caused, self-directed and self-controlled by the immanent Lord of Time.

And the translation—any translation—seeks to be an articulation of that divine articulation, at the human level in a human language. In my case, English, to the extent that it can be: It was an act of meditation, a yajna, a continuous karma inspired by Savita.

Can one do it? Everyone has the right to try, to understand and articulate. Alongwith the right attitude is important. Lord Krishna says in the Gita: Know That with surrender, enquiry and with total commitment (sewa). The Upanishad also says: To the seeker who, like a child to parent, or like a pupil to the teacher, has unconditional faith in God and in the Guru, to such a seeker the words of the Veda shine forth and reveal their sense. Thus it is that everyone such has a right to try and seek.

Earlier I had asked one question, of myself: Why this translation when so many others are available? And I replied to myself: “Because the last and final is not possible.”

Veda is Knowledge, the story of Creation. In addition, it is a complete document of our search for human destiny through in-vestiture of self in the spirit and for di-vestiture of the ego, with continuity and mutual cooperation in place of conflict between freedom and conformity, and between tradition and modernity. This continuity and cooperation would lead us to a resolution of the distance between the ideal and the actual, the possible and the probable, and our aspiration and action. And whatever we are able to achieve in this struggle defies our understanding of the Veda and our commitment to it in faith and belief, with action. But any short-fall, or even failure in the attempt to achieve the Vedic ideal in action—or translation—does not falsify the Veda and the values enshrined therein because the responsibility for action and the consequence rests with us. Nor does the short-fall denigrate the assertion of our will with its limitations against the Unknown and the unfinished, because the struggle is a positive search for the new destination prompted by what we have Heard or even half-Heard from the Unknown Infinity to reach from where we had started. Hence, with all faith and humility, try we can. That is what I do and what I have done.

What is important then is the attitude to the Veda and the Vedic language. Veda is not a book, it is Sanatana Vidya, Eternal knowledge, complete in the essence, universal, divine. It is not even a ‘Hindu’ Scripture. It is for all mankind, no matter whether a person is high or low, rich or poor, man or woman. It is called a ‘Hindu Scripture’ because the Indians subscribe to it and hold it as a sacred charge, what the Upanishad calls ADESH, and it was received as Shruti (Heard in the atma) by the Original Rishis at the dawn of creation. Says Mr. Pincott, once missionary in India: “The term Veda applies only to that portion of Sanskrit literature (i.e., the Samhitas) which existed before the history of mankind began.” The Vedas are pre-historic and the language of the Veda too is pre-historic. This way the Vedas are self-existent and their language too is self-existent.

How can knowledge be self-existent and how can the language of –knowledge be self-existent?

Veda answers the question: “Purusha eva Idam Sarvam”, all this world of existence that is, is Purusha, a living self-conscious cosmic entity, the Living God Eternal that holds and sustains it. Knowledge is Its consciousness, instant, constant and Eternal. And when there is consciousness, there is its language too. You can say that the universe is the ‘body’ of Param-Atman and Veda is the articulation of Its consciousness. Because the universe with its Atma and Atmic consciousness is one, integrated and organismic, therefore in this system, in its consciousness, in the content of that consciousness, and in the language of that consciousness, there cannot be anything self-contradictory or purely negative. Therefore our attitude to the Veda also has to be positive, acceptive and faithful. It cannot be otherwise. Unless we accept this self-existent nature of the world, its knowledge and the language of that knowledge, we cannot do justice to that knowledge (Veda). We cannot study, much less translate, the Veda as a relative dependent body of knowledge, nor can we study it either historically or comparatively. We must follow the method of those ancient Sages who studied and interpreted the Veda as it is, not with reference to some other scripture which claims to be divine. We have to follow the sages from Brahma to Panini and scholars such as Swami Dayananda who followed the ancient sages. This is what I tried to do throughout the translation.

After the publication of the Vedas translation, Gian and I tried to prepare all the previous publications from the Neo-Classical Epic (1971) onwards upto the Story of English in India (1983) and the translations of the Upanishads and Swami Dayananda’s Vision of truth which was a Thematic study of Swami Dayananda’s Satyarth Prakash for the internet. That took time. Normally it was Gian who was busy with that work. I had earlier translated the shorter writings of Swami Dayananda as published in the Granth Mala a set of which I had purchased while I was at school. I had done this work for the Paropkarini Sabha, Ajmer, Rajasthan. Only Rigvedadi Bhumika had remained untranslated. So Gian and I both took up that work specially for those readers who had limited time for Vedic studies. Guided by Swami Dayananda’s Rigvedadi Bhashya Bhumika, and in the light of my translation of the Vedas in the Arsh tradition followed by Swami Dayananda, I worked out my own scheme of a detailed introduction to the Vedas. One chapter on the Technique of translation was written only by me, which was also sent to Dr. Ram Prakash ji for publication in the Arya Samaj and the Vedic World View. The title of this new work was simple: What is Veda. It was published by Givind Ram Hasanand in 2015.

While the manuscript of What is Veda was being prepared and Gian had prepared all the publications, all corrected wherever necessary, he suggested that the children in Canada and U.S.A., Shalini, Deepak and Alok, Rishi, and Richa had no idea how and through what ordeals the family had to pass in order that they be here in the Western world, educated, settled and living in a comfortable state of life. They did not know what contribution I had made to their life. He was modest enough not to say what contribution he himself had made or what contribution Indira had made to the children’s life and education after both of them had moved to Canada, Gian in 1972, and Indira in 1973. I took a mental note of his modesty and went over the record of memory as far as I could go over: Anubhuta-vishaya-asampramoshah smritih-the record of experience on the mind, unerazed, that is memory, says Patanjali, author of Yoga philosophy, “Why not write about yourself and your struggle for education and your settlement in India and abroad”, Gian said. The idea appealed to me. Indeed my life and work, every step of it, was the cross-road for the family history: the movement from the village, Badha Malik to the town and the city, Delhi, and from the city to the super-city, London, England and Toronto and then to San-Francisco.

Our movement as far as I could learn from the record of family priests collected first by my cousin late Kehar Singh could be traced upto twentyone generations as given in this book. We (our ancestoers) started moving, from Rajasthan, from village Mandri which is close to Jhunjhanu. From Mandri we moved to village Sundana, close to Rohtak. From Sundana we moved to Badha Malik which is close to Delhi on highway no.1 but we have no certain details of who moved when from where and to which place. What I do remember is that an elderly lady in about 1936-37 came to Badha Malik from Sundana and asked someone to move back from Badha Malik to Sundana and manage the family lands there.But no one was prepared to move and no one did.

Another fact of family history is that upto 1950, a priest, ‘Guruji’ he was called, came from Mandri to visit families at Badha Malik every two or three years for about a week or two. The last visit of his I remember was in the marriage of Panna Lal, son of my elder cousin Sher Singh. Guruji used to stay with one family every day and have his meals with that family each day. He used to cook his own meals for himself with a lot of ‘ghee and boora’, that is refined butter and sugar. Sometimes I used to wonder why he insisted on cooking his own meals and why he did not eat the food as cooked in the home every day. But that was the time when such questions were not asked the way they are asked today. Further, this too is possible that by now the priests have changed over their profession for other lines. The Indian society is changing fast under the pressure of science and reason and the politics of vote.

In those days, there was priest hierarchy. First, there was the high priest, ‘Guruji’ from Mandri. Then there was a priest from a neighbouring village, Nangal, which was the head-village of a group of three villages, which was called ‘tigama’, i.e., a unit of three villages. Then there was a group of twelve villages which was called a ‘Barha’, meaning a twelve-village unit. Then there was a unit of twenty four villages called ‘chobisi’. There are some ‘chobisi’ even now which, if they decide to vote for a particular political party, all the twentyfour villages are expected to support that party.

In certain villages, for example in our village, at the time of common feasts, such as at the time of weddings, the Brahmans were invited to participate. But the non-Brahmans were not supposed to take food at a Brahman’s wedding unless you put one rupee or more on the ‘pattal’ (the plate of leaves). Then the Brahmans of our village decided that this practice must be changed. They decided that as they were supposed to join a common feast without any offer of payment, so should the non-Brahmans join the feast at a Brahman’s wedding without the offer of payment. If the others disagreed, the Brahmans too would not join the feast. Thus did all the people of the village became one common community.

Except the castes known as Scheduled castes in the British times, ‘Harijans’ according to Gandhi ji, and ‘Dalits’ now, all the communities were one. However, when the vote became equal and a value after freedom, I saw the scheduled caste and the cast Hindus taking tea together at a bus stand at the tea stall. Something really interesting happened in 1951 at our house too. When my father died, my mother wanted to organise a seventeenth day known as ‘Satarveen’, for the village. We sent out an invitation to every family including the Harijans. Some families did not like to join the feast because they did not like that they and the Harijans should be treated as equals. They did not join. But, by the evening, good sense prevailed and they too joined the feast. Thus it is that things are changing, though a practice that has taken roots for centuries is slow to change. Quite often, inter-caste marriages take place especially among modern educated couples and there is hardly any denial or dis-acceptance of the new trends.

The Strain:

I have talked of 2013 and 2015 as important dates because in 2013, the translation of the Vedas was published, and in 2015, What is Veda was published. The period after 2013, still, has been strenuous for various reasons which, by now, are over by God’s grace. That strain, I pray, no one may ever have to bear: When the home becomes property and the inmates turn into partners, the result is strain. Law comes in and, as the ancients have said, law is blind. Law is far short of Dharma: in Dharma, you give more than you take; in Law you take more than you give, Dharma is divine, law is human. Law, may be, a choice at the best, at the worst, it may be a necessity, the choice is yours. We are humans, after all. This has been the strain. It is over I hope. I wish I could say I am sure, because I also believe that Grace is never denied—whenever it is prayed for.

When we settled in Delhi in a rented home, in Karol Bagh in 1949, soon after we concluded that we must have our own house. Gian was about eight and Indira was about two. The landlord Late Shri Ram Chander Gupta, was very friendly and kind. According to his advice, we got a plot of land in Shakti Nagar, 28/15 Nangia Park since it was close to Hans Raj College where I was a lecturer. We raised the money for the house. From day one we moved to the new site in a brick hut with tin roof. We worked very hard for the building, my mother, my wife, I myself, many of my relatives. One of my cousins, then a builder, asked me to lend the money I had saved for the land, saying that the prices of land were still going down. But I replied that I was not going to build a property, I was building a home and it will be always valuable as home for me whatever the price I paid. The house came up, the home of our dreams for the family. Many things were yet to be completed. But the home was home.

Ram Kishan, my younger brother-in-law came to us in early fifty’s when he was a school boy. We were then in a rented house with Shri Ram Chander Gupta in the Western Extension Area, New Rohtak Road. I never called him or described him as my ‘brother-in-law’, I always called him or described him or introduced him as my ‘brother’. I do still. When he came, I got him admitted to Ramjas School No.2 in Anand Parbat where Shri R.S.Gupta, a senior friend of mine, was the principal. After school, he was admitted to Hans Raj College when I was a lecturer. He did his graduation from Hans Raj and M.A. from Kirori Mal in the early sixty’s. After M.A. for some time he worked with Soi Brothers whose owner was Sardar Ram Singh, another senior friend of our family. Then he got a job in the Planning Commission of India and he retired from there at the age of sixty five.

I have given this record of Ram Kishan’s education only to show that since he joined us in the fifty’s when he was only a school boy till now when he is a senior he has been accepted as a member of our family. Throughout his education he lived with us and even after, normally, he lived with us except when he lived in the school hostel or the college hostel. I remember that when I was in London doing Ph.D. he was in Shakti Nagar with the family just like the head of the family. When he was married in 1966, he was living with us except when the Planning Commission transferred him to Ludhiana. After the completion of his Ludhiana assignment he continued to live with us. During all this time, whether I was in Delhi or away, he and his family lived with us. There was no accounting of anything from the fifty’s upto 1978 either way because the family, whether one or extended, was one and not two.

In 1978 Ram Kishan started building his own house in his village, Naweada, Delhi, on a plot of land which he had purchased from a neighbour. I helped him whenever he needed help though it was not much. There they lived upto 2003. I used to phone him almost every week. My wife actually missed him all the time in Canada till the last day of her life in 2009. Gian, my son, infact sponsored Manu, Ram Kishan’s son, for immigration to Canada. He got the assistance of a professional legal advisor also. After three years Manu was accepted for immigration subject to the payment of additional fees for his wife. Later I learnt that he did not pay the additional fees and therefore the case for immigration was rejected. His wife I am sure, felt sorry for having missed that chance.

In 2003, when I phoned Ram Kishan one day, he informed me that since it was the rainy season, the street was flooded with rain water and therefore he fell down and hurt himself. I suggested that he could move to Shakti Nagar. My wife in fact insisted that he should. Whether we were in Delhi or away they had access to the house. They moved to Shakti Nagar. What we actually meant was that they could move to their own home after the rains when the streets in Nawada were safe for movement. What they did instead was that they stayed on in the Shakti Nagar house, rented out their own, and since that meant additional money, they welcomed the new living arrangement. Manu was married in that house. He begot his daughter there. Ruby moved in with them after her degree in Ayurvedic medicine. Everything was fine. We all the time felt that the home was home. But in actuality it was on way to becoming a property.

In 1984 I had given to Gian the general power of Attorney for the Shakti Nagar house. If he wanted to sell that house then or dispose it of any other way, he could, but he did not, nor could anyone stop him from doing that. And Ram Kishan in 1984 was away, he could not do anything else also. So when he moved to Shakti Nagar in 2003, then, I suspect, he had something in his mind which he did not disclose then. He need not. But it did reveal itself, for sure, in 2011.

In 2011, I wanted to transfer the Shakti Nagar house to Gian as a gift. I had already given the general power of Attorney to him in 1984. I had also then signed a will in his favour. Indira too knew all of this. So we went to Delhi for the transfer in 2011. I wanted to be free of everything. Once the house was transferred to Gian, he could do whatever he wanted to do in relation to the house.

We got the transfer papers prepared through a lawyer. A transfer of property is a transfer, whether it is by sale or as a gift. I paid the stamp duty because if the transfer is a gift, it should be gift in full. The date of the transfer was fixed. We had to appear in person before the Registrar of properties. We had to be photographed in the Registrar’s office with proper identification by an independent person. We felt Ram Kishan would be the right person to identify us in the Registrar’s office. On the day of transfer registration we requested Ram Kishan to go with us to the Registrar’s office. He refused. His wife too asked him to go along with us, but he said he would not. Any way we went to the Registrar’s office. The transfer was registered. Gian paid the Municipal taxes. Everything in relation to the transfer was complete.Since it was a transfer by gift there was no money transaction involved except the stamp duty and the transfer fees with the Municipal taxes. Gian was now the new owner.

Ram Kishan’s refusal to go the Registrar’s office and identify us as the ‘donor’ and the ‘donee’ in legal terms was the first NO between him and me ever since the fifty’s. Since then he had grown with us as a graduate, a married man with children, and now a senior. This ‘No’ could even be the last, though I am not sure. But this ‘No’ meant many more things than a single, self-contained inability. It meant that the single, harmonious, organismic character of the family was changing if not already changed, that Ram Kishan had at least felt self-alienated, that Gian was not his own man who was his own sister’s son but a rival, that he was not his father’s natural successor and the next and second birth of his own parents. The house was the home but, at best, the property of his brother-in-law which he was guarding against all possible odds. I did not feel all this at first hand but Gian, I think, perceived all this silently. At last when the transfer was complete in September 2011, we came back to Canada. It was now Gian’s responsibility to look after his property. I can say I am free, yet not, because I cannot feel self-alienated as some people can. Even a sanyasi cannot feel self-alienated because, beyond the confines of his personal house, he is a universal citizen.

Gian now had to think of how to reorganise his interests in India. He was settled in Canada. His children were also settled in Canada. None of them was prepared to go back to India. The house in Delhi was not safe because Ram Kishan did not recognise him as the owner. Gian decided to sell away the house. That was practically the only course open to him. In August 2012 we went to Delhi for this purpose.

When we reached Delhi we found that Ram Kishan and family had taken over the entire house. Our furniture was removed and sold or thrown away. Our kitchen was taken over. A small room the ‘miani’, where my father-in-law (Ram Kishan’s father), whom I respected as my own father, stayed, was converted into a store room. Even a bathroom in the courtyard, where I enjoyed an open air bath was stuffed with junk materials that belonged to them. Still, all this we did not mind for the time being, after all they lived there and were maintaining our house for us. But there was a change of attitude we could perceive. Even though Gian looked after the groceries and other bills then and earlier, they felt the strain of our presence. I felt that we were not wanted. That is normally the attitude of the local people to the NRI’s. But since the house was safe as long as they looked after it, we did not mind it at all. But this time this change of attitude made us feel apprehensive. We felt that they were looking after the house not for us but for themselves.

I spoke to Ram Kishan that Gian was going to sell the house and he should speak to him about vacating the house. He did not take it kindly this time for me. In fact this time I learnt why he had refused to go to the Registrar’s office to identify us. He said that had I given even ten percent share of the house to his wife Sheela, he would not have minded the transfer of the house to Gian. I told him that I had given to Gian the general power of Attorney in 1984 when he, i.e., Ram Kishan, was living in his own house in the village, so how could I take away even ten percent of the house from him? I could not. But he would not take this argument. My difficulty, further, was that even with ten percent part of the ownership of the house, the partner for all time could stop the sale of the house. The result would have been that the entire house would have gone to him for all time. He spoke to me about vacating the house referring to the vacation of another house by the tenant in the same block. The landlord of that house had to pay his tenant lakhs of rupees in addition to giving him a place of residence for him. Which means he (Ram Kishan) wanted money and an apartment with four bedrooms for himself.

Ultimately Gian had to speak to Ram Kishan about his vacating the house. He made him two offers, the choice was Ram Kishan’s:

1. He should vacate the house and when the house is sold he would pay him ten percent of the sale price.
2. He should find a builder who would make a four storeyed house with his own money. The builder will retain one storey for himself and will give the other three storeys to the owner of the plot (Gian). Ram Kishan should supervise the work. He should vacate the house, take a house on rent. Gian would pay the rent for him. When the new house is ready, Gian and Ram Kishan would keep one apartment, a full storey, half and half, after Gian, his share of the apartment would pass on to Ram Kishan or his successor.

Ram Kishan did not agree. It became a stand-still situation. Any way, we lived on, Gian doing the groceries for all, Sheela and Sushma, Manu’s wife, keeping the house. The home reduced to a house, the house reduced to a property, members of the family reduced to partners of property, disputed or undisputed as anyone pleases to think.

A few months passed on. Gian perceived some activity going on. Manu normally was at home always. But a few months later Gian saw that though Manu still had no job, he was going in the morning and returning in the evening. Sometime Sheela’s sister Nirmal too came in, stayed for a short while and went away without meeting us. What was Manu doing? What could Nirmal be doing? She was so social and so jovial. Why all this way? Something brewing silently.

Early in February 2013, the cat was out of the bag. We received summons from the court of the senior civil judge. Ram Kishan was the complainant, I was respondent No.1, Gian was respondent No. 2. The case in brief was that Ram Kishan was a tenant in our house since early sixty’s, the rent being Rs. 250/= raised to Rs. 500/= and then to Rs. 1500/= per month, all paid upto December 2012 without receipt because of close relationship. The prayer was for a decree for permanent injunction in favour of the plaintiff against the defendants, restraining the defendants form dispossessing the plaintiff from the ‘tenanted premises’. We appreared in the court of senior civil judge (Ms. Shama Gupta), on the date given. Next date was February 18, 2013.

On February18, 2013, we attended the court with our counsel. Manu, Ram Kishan’s son, was already present with their counsel. We could have taken the plea that first of all the plaintiff’s status in the house, tenant or otherwise, should be determined. But we had no time for that much long legal process. So as advised by our counsel, we gave the undertaking that we would not dispossess the plaintiff without the due process of law. The plaintiff’s counsel also made the statement that he had his client’s permission to withdraw the suit. So in the light of our undertaking, he wanted to withdraw the suit. In view of our undertaking and the statement of the plaintiff’s counsel, the court decided that since the defendants had given the statement that they would not dispossess the plaintiff without the process of law and the plaintiff’s counsel had given the statement on behalf of the plaintiff that he wanted to withdraw the suit, so in view of the statement made by the defendants as well as the counsel for the plaintiff, the suit was disposed of as satisfied as withdrawn.

The news of this case reached Ram Kishan’s extended family, a community of more than a dozen families. In fact it spread over the whole village, Nawada. They all knew our mutual closeness, what we had done for him and what he had done for us over the years. They felt this case had violated the family tradition: a daughter of the village, whether she is young or old, is and remains a daughter. For them, our home was a daughter’s home and to grab it or a part of it was a sin. And Gian was a Nawada daughter’s son. Some relatives from Nawada had come and talked to Ram Kishan and he had agreed to vacate the house soon. Inspite of this development Ram kishan filed a case mentioned before. So the relatives held a meeting early in March, 2013. Infact the meeting was called by Ram Kishan himself for some other problem also. They persuaded Ram Kishan to recognise and to desist from what he was doing and what he intended to do further. For that family consideration and of his free will he promised in writing that he would vacate the house by May 31, 2013, even before, May 15, 2013 So he took a house on rent in early April and moved in it by April 10,  2013. He removed all his furniture and everything else. I was not in Delhi then, I had to come back to Canada. He vacated the house but for some reason best known to him he locked his part of the house. At last on May 15 he gave possession of his portion to the family members and they passed it on to Gian.

All this I learnt while I was in Canada from Gian who was in India with Pushpa. I did feel somewhat relaxed, but still I had to learn that something had to be done about the house. My relaxation lasted but for a short while only. Ram Kishan came in again:

Gian tells me that when in 2011 Ram Kishan refused to go to the Registrar’s office his reason in his own words was ‘conscience’. He had said that unless his conscience approved of something as right he would not do the thing. In this particular case, that is, transfer of the house to Gian, his conscience did not agree. So he refused to be a party in any way to the transfer. That is why he had demanded ten percent of the house for himself as he had told me. With that ten percent share as partner in the ownership he could stop the transfer, and, further, any transfer either by sale or tenancy. In short, he wanted the entire house for himself for any length of time. I believe, and that is a question of conscience for me too, that when a child is born in your family, the child’s rights accure to him/her at birth because the gift of a child is God’s reward for your karma. Ram Kishan probably did not think that way. In fact when in 1984 I had given to Gian the general power of Attorney and also signed a will in his favour, I had already done what I was going to do then. I was only changing the inheritance into a gift. For that reason when I wanted to withdraw money from the bank to pay for the stamp duty, the bank manager advised me not to spend the money. He said that after all the house was going to Gian after me. I said NO because a gift is a gift, it is not conditional. I would not like Gian to spend seven or eight lakhs of rupees for a gift. That was my conscientious way of thinking, and in life nobody else can be your conscience keeper.

That conflict of conscience, I feel, stayed on with Ram Kishan and it did not show soon after he had vacated the house. Locking the house after April 10 upto May 15was an act of ‘conscience keeping’. In other words, the acceptance of the family view that a daughter’s house is sacred, and his promise in March, 2013 that he would do nothing further in respect of court or police, was still hanging heavy on him. He disburdened himself in June.

Ram Kishan made a report to the local Roop Nagar police station that in spite of our undertaking given in the court that we shall not dispossess him except through the due process of law, Gian broke open the locks and misappropriated his goods worth 4-5 lakhs of rupees. His request was to restore his possession of the house, ‘tenanted premises’ in his terms, recover the goods, and confiscate Gian’s passport. The report was registered on  July 8, 2013.

So I had to rush back to Delhi. In the earlier case, I was the first defendant. Even otherwise I could not leave Gian alone, and specially because this was a criminal case complaint. The local police had earlier sought the advice of their crime branch and the crime branch had opined that prima facie there was a case. I was surprised. Ram Kishan had given his residential address as 14/6 Shakti Nagar where he had moved in on April, 10. How could then Gian force him and dispossess him in June or July? But the property laws in India continue to be the same as long before they had been. In fact the crime branch should have compared his residential address with ours and should have opined that prima facie there was no case. A lawyer friend showed me two court judgements: One judgement says that if a person has no tangible proof of the ownership of the property, he had no right to a property and has to vacate the property. The other judgement says that if a person no right to a property and has encroached upon a property you cannot oust him except through the court. In one case it took thirty years to oust an encroacher through court, appeal after appeal, depending on the value of the property.

I rushed back to Delhi, I had to. When I saw the F.I.R., I felt that it should not have been entertained, because the complainant had himself accepted that he was residing at a different address and if Gian had applied any force, the complaint should have been made then in April. But this is a common sense view. Therefore we concluded that things were not as they should or could have been. In view of this judgement of the situation and report, Gian and his wife had already met a high law and order officer of the police and while they were narrating the process of Ram Kishan’s leaving our house and moving to 14/6 Shakti Nagar, the officer himself completed the sentence : “…. and he locked the house”. Which means that the police officer knew how things happen in Delhi. Therefore Gian and I met the Joint Commissioner of police.

When we went to the Joint Commissioner’s office, we found at least a dozen people waiting to see him. Everybody’s problem was the same as ours. When we met him, he received us very courteously, listened to us sympathetically, and referred to the F.I.R. the D.I.U. (Delhi Investigation Unit). He assured us that the investigation would be factual and if we are found guilty we would have to be tried by the court. We just wanted that. The F.I.R. was transferred to the D.I.U. in our presence.

The D.I.U. appointed an Investigation Officer. He visited the premises, examined the house carefully, collected the evidence from all the concerned parties, Gian, Ram Kishan, members of Nawada family who were party to the March meeting attended by Ram Kishan and his son Manu, and the landlord of the house where Ram Kishan had moved in April. While the investigation was on, Gian had dates from the court to decide whether the F.I.R. was correct or not. So we requested a lawyer friend to be present on each date and Gian got busy with the disposal of the house. Fortunately he got a good and reasonable builder who bought the house and in December 2013 we came back to Canada.

The D.I.U. completed the investigation and submitted the report to the court in December, 2015recommending that it deserved to be rejected. Ram Kishan too, thank God, stated that he was not interested in pursuing the case further. The story of the home, the house and the property then came to a close.

When the investigation was on, we involved a senior very respectable friend proposing that we would pay him a sizable amount of money from the proceeds of the sale of house. We agreed even on the amount payable provided that Ram Kishan withdrew the F.I.R. just to cut the matter short. First he did not agree. But then he agreed but not to withdraw the FIR. However on the intervention of the friend we even agreed on those terms as well. However when it came to writing the terms of agreement Ram Kishan prepared the draft. But he described Gian as the ‘supposed owner’ of the house and not as the owner. We did not accept this because we could not see the further implications of ‘supposed owner’, having once put our signatures on that term. So the sort of compromise mutually suggested and agreed upon fell through. We were prepared to bear the consequences as a result of the DIU investigation. Fortunately the investigation ended as it did and the case was closed and put on record in the Record Room in December, 2015

Friends around have often asked me whether I feel disappointed or angry with Ram Kishan whom, as they think, I helped so much since the fifties. When they ask me, I first think and tell them that Ram Kishan’s friends too might be asking him the same question. I do not know whether Ram Kishan feels disappointed or angry with me whom, as they think, Ram Kishan helped all these years. But on my own, I am very sure that I am neither disappointed nor angry with him. First of all I cannot deny the relationship he has with me. Gian too feels the same way. My wife loved him very deeply and I respect and honour that too. It was her wish to see him before she departed but that was not possible according to the dictates of Destiny. If I now meet him I would meet him with the same warmth as before. In fact once I met him in the Arya Samaj temple at Shakti Nagar sometime in 2013. He was going to sit down on the floor beside me, but I got a chair for him because I too was sitting on the chair. He did not take the chair and sat on the floor. That was his choice. I am told that whenever he meets his Nawada members of the family and they wish him, he does not respond to their greetings, that too is his choice. So they do not mind, I also do not mind because that is his choice.

Indeed when man was born on the earth, God gave him the freedom of choice and action subject, of course, to the laws of nature, which means that laws of Karma, that is, the laws of cause and consequence. So whoever is born as a human being, he is free to choose and act, but he is not free in the matter of consequence. Ram Kishan too was and is free to choose and act. He was free to file a case in the court against me and against Gian. He was also free to pursue the case against us, and he was also free not to persist in the pursuit of the case. In December 2015 he stated in the court that he did not want to pursue the case any further, the court accepted his choice and the case was closed. This way he protected himself against any retaliatory action by Gian. So the whole affair was a game of free choice and all of us concerned were free to play our part, Ram Kishan to act, we to respond, and all of us subject to the laws of the land. Of the higher and the ultimate law, nobody can be sure. Therefore I am neither disappointed, nor despaired, nor angry. Nor is Gian, as far as I know him, disappointed or angry with him. In fact I learn that he knew what Ram Kishan planned he would do. He perceived it all when Manu did not pay the immigration application fees for his wife and daughter, and his sure immigration visa to Canada was rejected for this reason. Even the immigration officer wrote this in his comments for rejection. The action plan Gian feels was prepared then. Some friends tell me that it was so planned at the time when they moved to Shakti Nagar in 2003. But all that is gone now as a thing of the past and the clean slate of the mind should not be strained with junk.

The period of 2013 has still been strenuous though. In fact it has been very stressful after 2011. When I went to Delhi in 2011 and stayed there for a few months, I realised that I was not welcome in my own home. I had been there earlier also but that time I perceived that in little details of work and behaviour. That happens, I learn in India, with any NRI who goes to India from abroad and stays in his own home managed by a close relative. Here in Canada there is a company of lawyers who claim to look after and manage NRI properties in India. One of their representatives from India was in Canada for some time. He was interviewed on the TV for half an hour. After the interview he was asked to give a message for the NRI viewers. What he said in the message appealed to me because that was the conclusion of my experience also. The message was: If you have a property in India, do not give the property to any close relative to look after. I feel that unless you yourself look after your property with your presence on the spot, you become an alien in your own home, and if you need help, no one is prepared to help you from your neighbours. And they have their own point of view: The visitor goes away, but the neighbours continue to live on with the neighbours. Hence the present day attitude as it is. Therefore what is required is change in the property laws so that the property of the legitimate owner, whether local or NRI, is safely guarded by the law. In our case, it was the family of Ram Kishan himself and of his native village Nawada that came in and Ram Kishan had to say in court that since the relationship between him and Gian was so close, he did not want to pursue the case any further. Ultimately thanks and thanks again to our Nawada relatives and others.

From 2012 to December 2013, we were in Delhi and that was the period of the highest worry for us because of the difficulties created by the circumstances. Our problem was to have the house vacated and sell it off. Even after Ram Kishan had vacated the house in April, 2013, there were people around waiting to get in and have possession of the house. In India possession is recognised in law as possession unless it is proved as unlawful through the court, and to prove that it takes its own time (thirty to forty years). Hence Ram Kishan too had our assurance in court that we would not dispossess him unless through the law. So we had to be present in the same house all the twenty-four hours, as if under house arrest.Indira had to come to help us. Jagdish had to come from Sonipat to help us. No one offered to certify that Ram Kishan had left in April, 2013 with all his belongings and he had left of his own accord. Indira’s son was getting married in Indore. Gian was not able to join the wedding, only I joined the wedding. Even Pushpa had to come from Canada to help us and guard the house. Gian suffered from chickungunia from which even now in 2018 he has not yet recovered fully. In short, when we returned to Canada in December, 2013, we were totally exhausted, and even today we feel that loss of energy which, at this age we are not sure, may or may not be recouped.

After 2013, we wanted, in fact needed, to rest a while. For quite some time we were not able to do any work except updating earlier work for record on the computer. The first edition of What is Veda was prepared and published in 2015, and the third edition of The Original Philosophy of Yoga, Patanjali’s yoga sutras, was updated and published in 2018. Both tese works were published by Govindram Hasanand of Nai Sarak, Delhi.

The most important event of 2013-14 was change of residence. My residence was moved from 88 Alton Towers Circle to 350 Alton Towers Circle. That suited me because Gian’s house became closer to me; a few minutes walk from me. But Gian moved from Scarborough to Markham, a distance of about 20 minutes drive from me. He moved for reasons of his own but it did not suit me because the distance between him and me increased far more than before, and though he helps me–God bless him—the time and energy he has to spend is much more than before. But this is as it is and both of us accept it as a fact of life anywhere. Those who know us bless him and congratulate me on the gifts of life I have. My daughter comes whenever she can from India or from USA. She was with me for a month, my son-in-law too was here, and they are again coming for a month. They insist that I should go with them to India, but situated as I am, that is not possible. I am what I am, and I am where I am. I am happy with Gian here. I am greatful to God for my children and all else I have and I am more happy with his grace.

2016 was important from health point of view. In May I had a class with the Swadhyaya group of Arya Samaj Markham at the temple for an hour and a half from 1.30 to 3.00. The subject was Gita. I missed lunch at home feeling that I could have it after the Toronto Samaj meeting. The Samaj had one item lunch that day. That was ‘khichari’, a mix of rice and lentils boiled together. And that too was over when I reached there at the temple at 1.30. One of the class members was able to scrape about one or two ladlefuls of khichari and offered it to me, but I did not accept it because his need was greater than mine.So in spite of hunger I met the class and then I attended the Markham Arya Samaj meet from 3.30 to 6.00. Then I had to speak for about 30 to 35 minutes. Then I had a chance to eat something after about twelve hours starvation. I could not eat well because the sense of hunger had been denied and blunted. When I came back home, I tried to sleep. I could not. That night I did not have even a minute of sleep. I had shortness of breath for the whole night. I had to go to the doctor in the morning. The doctor referred me to a cardiologist. The cardiologist examined me and told me that what I felt was shortness of breath was in fact a heart problem. He recommended that I should have a thorough heart check up and if needed, some minor surgery. I was past ninety then. I had lived a simple, normal, vegetarian life far from tobacco or alcohol. I opted to leave everything to nature. But still I continued to have the problem. So I was strongly advised that after all medication and every treatment minor or major was a part of nature and to refrain from treatment was a denial, even violation of nature. I accepted the cardiologist’s advice, and whatever treatment was suggested was completed by February, 2018. I am now past 94, and for my age I am every way healthy and fit for the work I am doing. I am grateful to Mother Nature, to God, to my doctors, to my children and to my friends for their advice, good wishes and their help and cooperation. The question is: What next? The answer: Whatever the Will Divine.