Chachaji

The nearest school from our village was at Behra, a town on the other side of the river Jhelum, just a few miles away from Pind Dadan Khan. It is a town situated on the banks of Jhelum and it is a Tehsil in Jhelum District. Pind means village and Dadan Khan was a faquir, a saint, after whom this village was named. Gradually it developed into a town and a mandi (wholesale market). My father Lala Kahan Chand used to cross this mighty river every week for several years to attend the school till he passed his matriculation from the Punjab University. Afterwards, he became a Girdawar Kanungo in the Punjab Land Settlement Department, getting Rs. 25 or 30 per month in those days. He had to move from village to village every three or four months on account of his official duties in the Department. He was probably the only official who knew good English and hence, most of the Deputy Commissioners who used to come from Britain were put under him for training.

Smt. Bhanya Devi, My Mother

Coming from a well-to-do family, she grew up in an age when milk, honey and pure ghee literally constituted the staple food in the zamindars’ families of Punjab. She was a typical Punjabi woman of her times: sturdy, robust, of noble traditions and tastes, and bubbling with a zest for finer aspects of life. Like the women of her good old days, she considered performance of household work and domestic chores a privilege and did all the work with her own hands, ranging from grinding of flour on the chakki, spinning on charkha and milking the cows, while reciting her prayers and chanting the paath (devotional songs) from Guru Granth Sahib. She was a person endowed with a photographic memory and spontaneous wit and humour. She used to solve arithmetic problems and calculations running into four or five figures, almost instantly and orally. She knew innumerable stories and Punjabi aakhans (idioms) and was resourceful enough to use an apt idiom on each and every occasion. Her store of geets (songs) for all occasions like marriage, birth, death was equally remarkable. The facility and ease with which she remembered the age, addresses and other details of our scores of near and dear relatives was indeed amazing. The dominant feature of her character was her resolute courage and ability to face the worst odds with faith and boldness. In 1916, she was crossing the Sindh river in a huge boat from Ghazighat to Dehra Ghazikhan. The boat carried a load of nearly 200 men, women, children, scores of camels, goats and goods. When the boat was in the middle of the river, it touched a small sandy islet. The sky was overladen with threatening clouds. The crew, apprehending the outbreak of a storm, decided to rest their oars there and not to proceed further towards Dehra Ghazikhan.

Since the next morning was Id, and 99% of the passengers in the boat were Muslims (Dehra Ghazikhan was an overwhelmingly Muslim populated area) they were very keen to reach Dehra Ghazikhan that very night in order to be with their families for Id celebrations. So, they began to press, coerce even threaten the crew to sail on and would not listen to the arguments, apprehensions and wise counsel of the crew.

My mother was hearing all these arguments and counter-arguments. I was then 12 years old and my youngest brother Raj was in her lap. She was wearing purdah (veil) as was in vogue in those days. Sensing the recklessness of the other passengers and impending danger, she appeared on the scene. Standing before the bullying crowd, she removed the veil and thundered like a lioness. “The boat shall not sail. And if you do insist on risking the lives of all passengers, I shall get you all arrested tomorrow at Dehra Ghazikhan. You must know whose wife I am.” The unexpected and forceful intervention had the instantaneous sobering effect. The boat did not sail and the river was indeed engulfed by a fierce and violent storm that night. The lives were saved.

My Early Education

I was six and in class II in our village primary school and my name was Sikandar Lal. The school had only one teacher and the total number of students were about 40 boys, ten of whom used to come from our village while the rest came from adjoining villages, four to five miles away. Girls were not permitted to attend school in those days.

I was living with my grandmother. She would wake me up at 6 a.m. and put me directly under the teats of the goat and thrust them into my mouth and go on squeezing them. The fierce streams of milk would hurt me in my throat but she would keep the whole of my body tight in her legs and my neck in her left hand and would not let me move in spite of my struggle. In any case the milk would go in as ‘forced feeding’, fresh and untouched. The meman (goat’s kid) and I would cry together.

Now after some crying, I was ready for the school. I would take my slate with slate-pencil, takhti and qalam (indigenous pen), my Urdu Primer and an earthen inkpot with black ink soaked in a piece of cloth. All these I had to carry in my left hand and I would pick up the stick in my right hand and my grandmother would untie the goat to be taken by me and left in a herd about a mile and a half up on the other hill.

After leaving the goat I would go for my morning conveniences in the jungle and then come down and have a bath under the cold and heavy shower of the Persian-wheel in the valley and put on my shirt and pyjama, which would first soak the water on my body and then dry up before I reached the school at 7 a.m. Late-comers were punished then and there, no explanations, no arrears!

Round about 11 o’clock my grandmother would bring food for me along with water in an earthen vessel called battakh (duck) which would contain one or two glasses of water. She would make me relish my food under the shade of the tree in the courtyard of the school and would go back humming some folk-song.

In the evening at about five the school would be over, and I would run to the goatherd to bring back the goat. I had to be very careful lest I should spill my ink because there would be no lid over the ink-bottle. Mostly the goat would behave itself and come back home with me, but sometimes it would dodge and run to the jungle and I would have to be after the goat. If I found some help from some passer-by in the jungle, I would succeed in bringing back the goat in the night, otherwise the whole night I would be running after it. In the meantime, my grandmother with one or two of her relatives would come searching for me with a hurricane lamp in the jungle. Mostly she could never trace me on her own and all of us would reach home one after the other by the next morning. That would afford me a holiday from the school and my grandmother would go to school to inform Munshiji about the night’s episode and get my absence excused.

Normally, I would reach home with the goat at about seven in the evening. Luckily there would be no forced feeding with the goat-milk because the milk would be needed for curds, butter, lassi etc. for the next day. In the evening the goat would give milk twice or thrice because it had a nice feeding of the natural herbal plants of the jungle. So no ailment and no application for sick leave from the school.

Nine months of the school would pass easily because we would be reading and writing in the school, sitting on tat-patti shouting and learning our lessons at the top of our voices and writing on the takhti or the slate alternatively, arithmetic on the slate and the language on the takhti. Utmost stress was laid on calligraphy and you could not hope to get good marks without a neat handwriting.

During the day we had a long period of drill (physical exercises) and then we had to rush to the jungle to bring fire-wood, vegetables and fruit for Munshiji. Natural herbal vegetables like saag (jungle spinach), khumb (mushroom), doossan (medicinal vegetable) etc. and fruits like ber, toot and pillu were available in abundance in the jungle and one could have them in any quantity with little effort.

The only difficult period of the year would be the last three months when Munshiji would suddenly become very harsh and severe to make us prepare, not for the University examination but for the 2nd or 3rd class annual examination and would not allow us to be free except to collect firewood for his house. We had to study and work very hard under the threat of caning. Almost every one had his share and chance of being beaten every day for one mistake or the other, may be in mathematics, or in spellings, or geography or calligraphy.

The punishments given for serious mischiefs to the vulgar, unhealthy and undesirable students were very very severe and torturous. For example, one was made to bend down, bring out his arms through the legs and catch his ears and keep the hips up; still harsher, a stone of about 20 kg was placed on his back in the same position.

In these three months the school would not be over in the day. After having our evening meals we would rush to Munshiji’s house, choubara, by 8 o’clock in the night, where my grandmother would leave me with a hurricane lamp and bring me back at night at about 10 o’clock. During these two hours we were made to study oral arithmetic, practically in the dark, as there was only one small earthen oil-light in the corner of the room. Munshiji would go on speaking the figures for addition, substraction, multiplication or division and we had to write the answer individually with our fingers on Munshiji’s palm. Right answers would be applauded by shabash and the wrong with a slap.

The fee for the whole of the year was Rs. 1/- per child for the rich, annas eight for the poor and annas four for the poorest, which had to be offered to Munshiji for promotion to the next class.

The most important and interesting feature of my early education was the visit of the District Inspector of Schools, which was an annual feature. Information was received by Munshiji that the Inspector would be reaching the school for inspection on any day during the week. It could not be fixed because the inspection of the schools from village to village of that district was always uncertain. So, for one week we had to keep on sitting in the school until 10 or 11 o’clock in the night waiting for the caravan of the Inspector. My grandmother was kind enough to bring food for me late in the night, make me eat and go back.

One day a message was received through a passing villager that the Inspector and his party were on the way and would be reaching the school shortly that night; the party reached at midnight.

The whole school premises were profusely decorated by the children with coloured paper flags, jhandian, which fluttered producing sweet music as the party entered the school.

The party consisted of the District Inspector with twelve others, assistants and servants with luggage on three camels, two horses, four mules and the same number of owners of the animals. The food for all these people was ready which was provided by the parents in bits and made into a collection. After the party took their food, our examination started in the early hours of the morning and was over at 7 a.m.

I do not know whether it was a test for Munshiji or for the boys, because poor Munshiji was on his toes all the time showing registers, takhtis, time-tables and what not.

We bade good-bye and farewell to the Inspector and his party who left the school for his next destination at 7.30 a.m., and by the grace of God we had a jolly holiday that day!