Quite like a zen master

Sarvjit Singh

MY father’s friend and colleague at Malerkotla, Prof HS Gill, MA (psychology), was the only one who could share gleefully his revelation with us, ‘Buffaloes are intelligent creatures.’ Then add, ‘All three of them recognise my knock at the door. They know the moment I enter the house and do not stop bellowing till I have patted their foreheads.

‘We, six-seven year olds were supposed to give bath to the buffaloes with a bucket and mug in the evenings and chop fodder, after which we were made to sit in a line and served hot milk in steel tumblers. ‘Tiger’, the half German, half local dog, would often shepherd the buffaloes through the town single-handedly. Two rabbits with reddish eyes would always be nibbling something. Then, there was a score of hens, perched on window shades or jumping up or down the narrow stairs in the courtyard of the house. On the roof lived a dozen pigeons in a birdhouse. The pet cat was not allowed to eat them.’ 

An integral part of the household were a handful of psychology stu-dents whose faces kept changing as years rolled by. They were made to tend and milk the buffaloes as fee, or as psychology practicals, God knows. He would then translate Freud and Jung into vernacular for boys from the countryside, who seemed to glow in their guru’s company.

My father, having lost his father when he was seven, all three siblings, one by one, by the time he was 13; and friends, home and farmland to the Partition when he was 19, was distant. Events of his life had etched inside him the thought: ‘You lose whoever you love much.’ He would not let an emotion escape.

Immersed in the thrill of gushing air and the rushing canopy of trees, atop a truck’s cabin when we shifted to Patiala, I — 10 then —  was unable to see how I would miss the paradise and live by handwritten inland letters of Professor Gill; read, preserve, re-read, count and recount them and learn letter writing in the process.

He personified divine purposelessness, an identification with no-thingness, the egoless joy of just being in the present moment, a love without an end. It was this that made his wife live with a smile despite asthma all these years and pulled his sons through, who throng to him as naturally as camels to an oasis.

When I met him recently on his visit from California, he sprung beyond his 5’5” with a joy that his eyes beamed. Then, as always sensing my need, like a zen master, he remarked to my wife, ‘Jeet has been and will always be a son to me’, and started narrating with undiminished gusto for an 81-year-old, with what difficulty he lifted the 21 kg pumpkin grown in the backyard of his son’s house and how they took it in a car’s boot to gurdwara for langar.