Another of Chachaji’s ventures, a small poultry farm, meant that more structures were built a few feet from the three-room building. Eventually, the chicken moved into the original structure’s big room. The stench was terrible, and the work of feeding and watering the chickens and cleaning the big room fell to Bhaji and me. Some days he bicycled to the nearby town of Kultham to hand the eggs over to someone to market. I wasn’t allowed to go, since the one time I had, I’d lost control of the bike, and the eggs fell off and broke. After a couple of years, it became obvious that for the amount of energy and resources invested in the poultry, the return was minimal at best. Thankfully, the stench cleared upon the farm’s closure.
CHACHAJI’S EXAMPLE made my later transition into British and Canadian life easier. His legacy, along with Nanaji’s, helped me a great deal in politics as well. I inherited from them the art of being able to differ on important issues with someone and still remain friends.
My father and grandfather were always courteous and friendly with each other. They would sit up late into the night to discuss the state of the world as they saw it. Following Independence, they belonged to different parties, though their common enemy, the British, were gone. Once, just as a public meeting in Dosanjh organized by Chachaji and his Congress party was ending, Nanaji showed up with a friend. Both were members of the Communist Party of India. A few members of the audience were still milling around when Nanaji and his companion took the stage to expound the virtues of a socialist society and the ills of the Congress rule. Chachaji had already left the venue, but I caught most of their speeches as I was returning from school. That night Nanaji and his friend stayed with us. I wondered whether angry arguments would ensue, but Chachaji simply registered an objection about what had happened, and a friendly discussion followed as usual.
Dosanjh Kalan had strong contingents of Congress supporters, Communists, and members of the anti-colonialist Akali Dal. From time to time, the panchayat (village council) was controlled by one or the other of them. The area produced men such as Bhagwan Singh Dosanjh of Jaito Morcha fame, who led a group of Indians from Canada into the freedom movement; the Jaito Morcha was aimed at the restoration to power of the raja of Nabha, a state seen as anti-British. Amar Singh Dosanjh was another well-known figure of his time. A one-time MLA in Punjab, legendary orator and prominent Akali leader, he co-founded and edited for many years the leading Punjabi daily, Akali Patrika. Coming from such a politically active place, it was natural for Dosanjhes to hold strong opinions.
Poetry readings, mainly in Punjabi with an occasional Urdu intervention, were held in our village several times a year, with poets from around the region — the great majority of them, at that time, male — invited to participate. The writer could either sing his poetry or read it. The two best-known poets of Dosanjh, Nazar Singh Taras and Kashmira Singh Mahee, always participated. They wrote about the lives of the common people in simple language. I started writing verse myself, and by the time Chachaji discovered my secret, I had two mid-sized notebooks filled with poetry. My father thought pursuing poetry as a lifelong passion would keep me poor — even the vaunted Taras and Mahee had to earn their livings as a carpenter and the village postman respectively. So Chachaji took my poetry and burned it, and I can still see my words and emotions going up in flames. Ironically, even such a lover of language as Chachaji could not bear to see his son become a poet, such was his fear of poverty. Over the years, haltingly, I have tried to reconnect with the poet in me. Perhaps Chachaji was right, and the world is better off without long torrents of words from me.
Naqlaan — travelling performances by comedians, mimics, singers and dancers — also kept us entertained. In the villages of India at that time, there were only male performers in any naqlaan . Rural humour and folk songs would fill the air. Quite often, however, petty but violent scuffles between drunks in the village would spoil the show, and when that happened, no one was safe in the dark: you could be a mistaken target. There were no street lights; normally, as people came upon each other, they would identify themselves. We always told the truth about who we were; the political differences between fathers were not yet reason for violence to be visited upon sons.
A few young Dosanjh men once organized an evening play in the village. Ten minutes into it, the hanging kerosene lamps on stage were smashed with iron-bound lathis , and a fight in the dark ensued. I ran home and told Chachaji what was happening. Flashlight in hand, we returned to the scene. The actors, all from our village, had locked themselves in a room, and the attackers were challenging them to come out. A crowd of onlookers stood at a distance. With the nearest police post about five miles away and without any way of contacting it, Chachaji identified himself and told the attackers to go home. In the morning, he promised, he would be happy to talk to them about the issue that had generated such anger. Chachaji had no special powers, just physical courage and a belief that the young attackers would have respect for the schoolmaster. It could have gone wrong, but the attackers left, and the actors were escorted to their homes by Chachaji and a few other men. We never did learn the reason for the violent disruption. Some said it was because the play challenged gender and caste taboos. Others put it down to personal animosities.
Each political party had drama troupes that made the rounds as well, touring plays that were totally partisan. News about the upcoming performances travelled by word of mouth. The Communist Party of India had the best shows. Two great actors and singers, Joginder Bahrla and Narinder Dosanjh, were particularly devastating in their mockery of the ruling Congress party and its crony subservience. At the time, the Congress party controlled the government of India. It had such a monopoly and grip on power that it and the Indian government were barely distinguishable. The Congress troupes, for their part, traded on the still-fresh victory of the independence struggle.
8
THE YEAR WAS 1962; I was sixteen years old. My mat-riculation examinations were followed by two months of khooh work and visits to the school library to read up on everything I could find about medical education. Chachaji, like most educated parents of the time, wanted me to become a doctor. He took me to Phagwara to buy me an Atlas bicycle and had it assembled while we waited at the bike shop. Suddenly, I had entered adulthood.
Meeto Bhenji, my cousin and a classmate of the college principal’s wife, agreed to accompany me to Phagwara so I could enrol at Ramgarhia College. I had not been out of the villages much, and the family felt I needed my hand held on my first real outing into the larger world. But as Bhenji and I wheeled our bicycles out to the road, we saw Chachaji running along behind us, motioning for us to wait. He had been talking to some friends in the village who warned him that a doctor could be woken up in the middle of the night and asked to travel to all sorts of places at the most ungodly hours. No son of his would have a life like that, he said. His new goal for me was a degree in engineering.
I enrolled in the college’s non-medical science courses, but this sudden change in direction had a domino effect: I began to lose my interest in sciences and math, and I became a mediocre student. Newspapers and the world of politics had held an attraction for me since my days of reading aloud for Nanaji and listening to his stories of the freedom movement, and my interest in them grew. As time went on, I paid less and less attention to my textbooks.
Still, I rode to Phagwara and back every day to attend the college. Bhaji was taking an auto mechanics course at Jullundur, and he made the daily return trip by bike and train, so on weekdays Chachaji and Tayaji were on their own at the khooh . Occasionally I returned later than usual because of a trip to Paradise, the movie theatre in Phagwara. Out of my one-rupee-a-day allowance, I had to buy the Tribune for Chachaji. The newspaper cost twenty-five paisa, and the cheapest cinema ticket was fifty paisa, leaving me with twenty-five paisa for a cup of tea. Yet Chachaji thought anything more than an occasional trip to the cinema meant you were wasteful and spoiled, so added to the interest of the movies themselves was the allure of youthful rebellion.
One afternoon I was on my way home from Phagwara with my friend Verinder Sharma when two men on bikes passed us, riding quickly. As they caught up with the gudda on the road ahead of us, one of them reached