Lahore, Simla & sabziwala

My father, V Sankar Aiyar, was born in 1907 on the banks of the Cauvery in Kargudi village, Tanjore district of the Madras Presidency. Twenty years later, in 1927, he graduated with a BA in Physics from Pachaiyappa’s College, Madras. His ambition for himself was a government job; if possible, a clerical position in the Railways. But he was denied even this as he had been born into the Brahmin caste. A strong anti-Brahmin movement was sweeping through the Presidency, triggered by the electoral success of the Justice Party and soon to be overtaken by Periyar EV Ramaswamy Naicker’s Dravidar Kazhagam. Infuriated at being denied an opportunity for advancement because of his caste origins, Appa (as we children called him) took off by train to move as far from his home as possible. That is how he arrived in Lahore, where he was to reside and make his very successful career as a chartered accountant and income-tax adviser over the next two decades.

My mother (Amma), orphaned at the age of 10, was educated on scholarships at Sister Subbalakshmi’s school for child widows before taking her BA in Chemistry from Queen Mary’s, Madras University, a few years after Appa. She joined the Madras Education Service and after postings in Visakhapatnam and Nellore, she succeeded in raising a loan to go to England for a proper teaching degree. Adolf Hitler, however, had other ideas. When her ship docked at Suez, the passengers on the Italian liner learned that Britain had declared war on Germany. As Italy was aligned to Germany, rather than run the danger of being interned in an enemies’ camp for the duration of the war, Amma quit the vessel at Port Said and, after a series of misadventures, eventually landed back in Madras, robbed of all her possessions, stranded in the sari she was wearing, jobless and deep in debt.

In despair, she got through to her sister, who had joined the Medical Service. She advised Amma to come to her in Delhi but to first get off at Agra and see the Taj Mahal. At Agra, she was met by a slim, short (5 feet, 2 inches) man to whom she was married a few months later. She never vouchsafed to me the inside story of her whirlwind romance.

I was thus born in Lahore 80 years ago. My three siblings followed in short order. Amma was determined that at least one of her children should be born in Madras — so we travelled there in the summer of 1945, little realising that this was farewell to Lahore for us, although Appa stayed on. His extraordinarily lucrative income-tax practice frequently brought him to Simla (Shimla), where the Appellate Tribunal moved in summer. So, Amma set up home in Simla and Appa visited us when he came, as he frequently did, for his work.

That is how, mid-August 1947 found Appa in Lahore, Pakistan, and Amma and the four children in Simla, India!

Appa considered taking up Pakistani citizenship as his practice had largely been in that part of the country, which stretched from Lahore to Peshawar to Karachi. He was advised by his grocer (sabziwala) on Beedon Road to put a large padlock on the outer door of his flat at 44 Lakshmi Mansions and stay indoors. The grocer said he would knock on the rear door of the aangan (courtyard) in the early hours before dawn to supply Appa with his requirements for the day. The grocer further assured Appa that he would tell everyone, “Sankar sahib Hindustan chale gaye hain”, adding comfortingly, “Yeh janoon hai, sahib; kuchch din mein sab theek ho jayega.”

But a few days later, after it had become clear that Radcliffe had awarded the city to Pakistan, the grocer pulled a knife on Appa. In retrospect, I think he did not plunge the dagger into my father’s heart because he was only showing whoever had spotted him delivering groceries in the dead of night that he had acted as instructed. Next day, Appa rang his clients and secured a truck that drove him across the border. It was a miraculous escape because those were the precise days when it was most dangerous to be on the road between Lahore and Wagah.

As for us in Simla, what follows is so close to the climax of Bapsi Sidhwa’s ‘Ice Candy Man’ that I run the risk of being accused of plagiarism. A jatha of Sikhs banged on our door at Three Bridges on Jacko Hill about eight in the evening, demanding to know where the Muslims were. As the six-year-old boy in the Muslim family who lived on the ground floor was my favourite playmate, when Amma replied, “Pakistan chale gaye hain”, I opened my mouth to contradict her. But something in Amma’s eye stopped me in my tracks from saying anything. The jatha broke the kitchen that, as was the practice in those days, was built outside the main building and a body was later discovered brutally murdered on the hillside nearby. Seventy-five years later, the junoon has not ended. What beasts we are.

— The writer served as a career diplomat and

Union Minister