Lyallpur Khalsa College principal spends time reading poetry

Life during lockdown

Deepkamal Kaur

Tribune News Service

Jalandhar, April 18

While most of the people have been busy with their family members during the lockdown period, it is a completely different life for Lyallpur Khalsa College principal Dr Gurpinder Singh Samra (50). Since his wife, two daughters and son are in Canada, he has been with his helper at his residence in Golden Avenue here.

“Since my children are studying in Canada, my wife joined them in September. She was to return by March-end and she had even got her flight tickets booked. But I told her to get the tickets cancelled and stay back with the children. Now, we really do not know when the lockdown will end and she will be in a position to return,” he said.

Dr Samra said he had been doing several things which he had never done earlier. “Alone, I have been observing nature so intensely and drawing all happiness from it. I have been sharing some work that my helper used to manage on his own. I have been enjoying gardening and watering the plants. I enjoy seeing each plant growing and flowers blooming all around. I never used to go to the kitchen. I would earlier eat whatever my helper brought and prepared for me. But now I tell him what I want to eat. I keep an eye on grocery items. These days, I even tried my own hand at cooking for the first time in 50 years,” he added.

Being an academician and having studied only mathematics, Dr Samra said it was for the first time in his life that he started reading Punjabi poetry of Bhai Veer Singh. “I especially asked a colleague to mail me the link of his poems. I had read his poems as a student. But watching flowers blooming all around and listening to the melodious sounds of koel each morning, I decided to go through the poems all over again. I have been reading each and every word penned by him and realising how deep were his thoughts on nature at that time,” said the principal.

He added that a poem which has enthralled him the most is ‘Dard Dekh Dukh Aunda, Duniya Da Dukh Dhek Dhek Dil Dabda Dabda Janda, Andarla Panghar Vag Turda, Neino Neer Vasanda’.

“I read this poem in the present context when there are so many people in all over the world battling a disease and dying because of it,” he said. Dr Samra is quite active on social media and remains connected with his college colleagues and students. He has also been regularly monitoring the online teaching pedagogy followed by his staff.