Those were the days

VK Anand

MY father, who worked for Panjab University in Lahore, had to shift to Solan (Himachal Pradesh) in October 1947 after Partition. I was born in 1948. I am one of those lucky survivors who were witness to India immediately after Independence, and also the ups and downs in the social set-up, economy and politics during the past 70 years.

Before shifting to Chandigarh, from 1947 to 1956, the university’s administrative offices and staff were accommodated in barracks got vacated from the ‘Mule Military Regiment’. At a height of 5,000 ft above sea level, in the lap of nature, the staff quarters lay amidst lush-green pines, wild apricots and pears.

The beauty of the residential barracks was that there were neither window grills nor mesh doors, the simple reason being that there were neither mosquitoes/flies nor thieves/thefts. At that time, we were not qualified to appreciate the pollution-free environment because nobody had ever heard or read about pollution.  

Most of the university employees were refugees without even essential household belongings. A meagre income, coupled with large families, did not deter anyone from expressing one’s contentment through routine gestures. While strolling with empty pockets, one could find a majority of the youngsters whistling or crooning film songs like ‘Man dole mera tan dole’ (Naagin) or other popular numbers from films like Jagriti, Boot Polish and Awara. Such masti (there is no equivalent word in English) has become extinct in the present era.  

Simple people with a natural smile, a carefree life and pious, selfless human relations were supplemented by a societal purity in administration. It sounds strange, but the truth is that nobody was aware of the word ‘corruption’, because there was none at the bureaucratic or political levels. In an absolutely crime-free society, no one ever heard about stalking, what to talk of gangrape.

Entertaining relatives or visiting them was a routine affair in every family. Children of every mohalla played guli-danda, hide-and-seek, pithu and kanche (marbles), while the women, sitting on cots, did knitting, along with gossiping.

Decades have passed. People of my age feel cheated. The industrial and technological revolutions have snatched our masti, our carefree life, close family ties, a pollution-free environment and riddled our society with corruption, rapes, lynchings, hatred, degradation of human values and what not. This is indeed ‘ghaate ka sauda’.