Mangoes were a source of income for some families, since contractors bought their fruit to take to market. The government owned the mango trees on either side of the Garhshankar–Hoshiarpur road. One day, as Jasso and I were returning from Mahilpur on foot, a ripe mango dropped onto the road in front of me. Without Jasso noticing, I picked up the mango and started sucking on it. Suddenly, someone ran up from behind, catching hold of my neck and hurling abuse at me. I thought I was going to die. Jasso screamed at the man. It turned out he was guarding the mangoes for a contractor who had bought the season’s crop from the government. I put the mango back on the road, tears rolling down my cheeks. Hunger or no hunger, I’d learned that the mangoes on the public road did not belong to the public.
MY MATERNAL UNCLE, who was a good student in grade ten at Mahilpur, started missing class and staying away from home for days at a time. Mamaji had been showing signs of opiate addiction, and it turned out his absences from school were spent learning to drive a truck and indulging in drinking, smoking and taking either opium or doday , ground poppy husk. One evening Mamaji came home drunk and started arguing with Nanaji. Holding an unsheathed sword in his hand, he threatened to behead himself. Nanaji demanded the sword, promising to do the deed himself if Mamaji really wanted to die. Mamaji quickly dropped both the sword and the argument and ran for his life.
Jasso, Jajo, Nanaji, Tirath and I had been eating our evening meal of saag (mustard leaves boiled, ground and spiced with homemade butter) and makki (corn roti, my favourite winter staple). We were traumatized by the incident. Jajo comforted us, assuring us no harm would come to Mamaji or anybody else, but Mamaji went away after that and did not come back for a long time. Nanaji heard from acquaintances that he had become a long-distance trucker. Jajo missed him very much, though she rarely said anything about him. Occasionally, she would ask me whether I missed my Mamaji. Of course, I would say. With a smile that betrayed her sadness, she would reassure me he was safe and would come back one day. It must have helped her to voice that hope aloud, stilling her turbulent mind.
A few days after Biji’s death, Mamaji arrived home in his truck in the middle of the night. In those days, very few trucks came to the villages. Most of what the villagers needed came on the guddas . Bahowal had no electricity or street lighting, and the truck woke up half the village. Many people came out of their homes in the dark as they heard first the truck and then Mamaji crying, overcome by grief at the loss of his older sister. As he hugged and kissed each family member, his cries became louder. Nanaji sat him down, and Jajo gave him a glass of water. When he spotted Tirath and me, tears rolled down his cheeks again. He covered his face with his huge hands and cried uncontrollably. He was a tall, strong man, but at that moment he was a child who had just lost his bibi .
The next time I saw Mamaji was under much happier circumstances: Bhaji and I were the best men at his wedding. Mamaji beamed with pride and happiness, and his bride, Jagtar (now my Mamiji, or aunt), looked stunning. Mamiji and I became fast friends. For the rest of my time in Bahowal, the responsibility for my care fell on her. One of her chores, an activity I didn’t relish, was the washing of my long hair. It was difficult to wash and even more difficult to comb. But Mamiji was patient. She seemed a perfect match for my impetuous, but loving, uncle.
Soon after their wedding, my four years at the Bahowal primary school were complete. With my shirts, shorts and turban neatly packed into a cloth bag hanging from the handlebars, Chachaji and I travelled on his bicycle to Dosanjh Kalan. From now on I would be attending the Dosanjh School along with Bhaji, who had already been enrolled there for two years and was entering grade seven. My father would now have two sons among his pupils.
Our ancestral village had changed while I was gone. Around the circular path the oxen travelled to power the Persian wheel, the trees had grown taller, providing more shade from the sun. We called Goraywala well, the land irrigated by it, and the small building on the land close to the well the khooh . The khooh was now more inviting, since it had more vegetation. The five acres of land we owned lay in a jagged row, with Baba Budh Singh’s portion contiguous to ours. In the middle, as if to demarcate the division, ran an aard , a channel constructed of mud that carried water from the well to the fields.
At home Bhaji and I shared a portion of one room. In the other portion were two sandooks , traditional wooden cabinets carved and decorated with brass. These had been part of Biji and Aunt Taeeji’s dowries. Our two-storey home, with its several small rooms, now housed at least eleven of us, including our older cousin Biraji’s wife and children. My uncle Tayaji slept at the khooh . That brought the family to twelve. According to the seasons and special holidays, the number could swell to nineteen or twenty. Gurmit Bhenji would come back from school; Siso Bhenji would bring her children to visit. Silence was hard to come by. Some people can read or study even with the radios blaring, but I had a hard time concentrating if someone so much as whispered close by.
The search for silence led me out of the house to the khooh . It offered more possibilities for quiet, but not always. If the Persian wheel was running, there was the constant noise made by the kutta , the iron brake lever that fell on each cog of the wheel as the oxen walked the circle. But the kutta was not as disruptive as human activity or speech. In the wee hours before daybreak, the hooves and bells of oxen being taken to plough the fields, the clanging of the kutta and the occasional crowing of a rooster were the only sounds. At that time of day, there was enough peace to study for our annual examinations.
When the khooh didn’t provide enough refuge from the bustle of the village, I sought out tall crops so I could hide in their insulation. That worked only in the early spring and fall. At other times it was too cold, too hot or too wet to be outside. And even sitting in the tall plants, I couldn’t escape the human presence completely; some people would be working in the fields, others were on their way there, and still others were looking for cover to satisfy the call of nature. The farther I went from the village, the better my chances of finding a clean, secluded spot. It was heavenly to hit one. Hiding in the crops, I felt like a rebel, a giant defying his pursuers by cleverly hiding.
The Dosanjh School was just under a mile away, across the canal. It was a large, E -shaped building, welcoming students east and west. There were grounds for soccer, field hockey, volleyball and basketball. Many rooms had wooden desks and benches, and all of them had blackboards. It was a definite and welcome improvement over the school in Bahowal.
Seeing the respect paid to Chachaji as, not just a master at the school, but one of its founders, made me see my father in a new light. It was the first time I realized that Chachaji was a builder of communities and institutions.
In 1923, shortly after matriculating from grade ten at J.J. Gov-ernment High School in Phagwara, Chachaji had gone to Calcutta. There he obtained a driver’s licence, in the process being photographed for the first time in his life. In Calcutta, he earned his living driving a truck. He did not last too long as a trucker and took off for Assam, where he became a contractor supplying labour to big and small employers. The details are sketchy, but this much is known: the employers did not pay Chachaji all of the money they owed him. He used his savings to pay the labourers who were due their wages and was about to set off for home when he received a letter from his friend Maula Singh, who asked Chachaji to help him establish a school in Dosanjh. Chachaji jumped headlong into the process, personally borrowing some money for it. Some land was donated by the villagers, but the rest had to be bought. Until the school building was complete, classes were housed in the village diwankhana , or communal hall. Chachaji went door to door in Dosanjh and other villages, encouraging parents to enrol their children in the new school. He also set about persuading the parents of those enrolled at places such as Phagwara to educate their children closer to home. Dr. Bikkar Lalli, a retired Canadian professor of mathematics who now lives in Surrey, British Columbia, remembers Chachaji approaching his father in