gruelling labour the land required. It was back-breaking work — under the scorching tropical sun in May, June and July, and in the dead cold of winter mornings.
In summer, I would sleep outside, either in the yard on the farm or on top of the roof at home. The stars and the moon entertained me. I marvelled at the wonders of the universe. On the moon we saw a shadow the elders told us was an old woman with a charkha , the traditional spinning wheel. She looked distinctly Indian, sitting motionless with both her hands in spinning mode, connecting us to the moon. In the world of my childhood, the moon and the earth were siblings, as they have been to Indians from time immemorial. The earth was our mother and the moon our Chandamama, or maternal uncle.
3
ONE MORNING BEFORE DAYBREAK , my mother woke me up. It was a cold winter morning, and still dark out. She dressed me up in warm clothes. The milk that had been cultured overnight was ready for churning. Biji placed the madhani , a churning rod with a lid, in the chaati , the baked clay pot containing the cultured milk, and spun the madhani repeatedly with a rope, stopping periodically to check whether the cream had risen to the top. The room was dim, lit only by the oil and cotton wick in a diva .
My mother was beautiful and still very young. She had given birth to five children in a short span of time. One child, Hartirath, died within six months, a brother I never had the opportunity to know. Chachaji and Biji missed him so much that they named their next-born child, my sister, Hartirath as well, though we called her Tirath for short.
My Biji was the eldest child of my Nanaji and my Naniji (maternal grandmother), Raj Kaur, whom we affectionately called Jajo. My mother had grown up with two sisters, Gurmit and Harjit, and a baby brother, Inderjit. Because Nanaji spent most of his adult life fighting for India’s freedom — nine of those years in British Indian jails and the rest organizing and agitating, often while in hiding — Naniji and Biji, unlike other women from the jat (agriculturalist) caste, had to work the land in his absence. Fending for themselves was a necessity for the Bains women, not an option; either they worked the land or they went hungry.
Now Nanaji was back in Bahowal with Jajo, where they lived with my aunts. But unlike on our family farm in Dosanjh, there were no little children to care for and delight in. And so a decision had been made to send me to Bahowal to live with my grandparents, for my primary education.
That morning of my departure, Biji fed me freshly churned makhni (butter) with behi roti (stale chapati). It is the ultimate expression of the legendary Punjabi / Indian motherly love to be fed makhni with behi roti in the dark of an early morning, and it is done before mothers send their sons away. But I was too young to be sad that I was leaving home; my excitement was boundless.
A new wooden gudda , a cart on two wheels, had been built by our family tarkhan at Dosanjh for Nanaji. Sawing, planing and joining the wood had all been done by hand. Chachaji had also helped Nanaji purchase a chaff cutter to prepare green cattle feed, something that all farmers needed. The new chaff cutter was loaded on the gudda and the oxen were harnessed at the front, ready to pull it away the moment their master, Nanaji, ordered.
Biji hugged me, and Chachaji and Bhaji walked me out. Tayaji stood waiting near the gudda too. An extra jhull — a blanket for cattle, made of discarded human clothing — had been placed on the gudda for me to sit or sleep on, and a homemade cotton khais , or blanket, was wrapped around me. The sun was still not up when the gudda started moving. Gradually, my home and the Goraywala became but points in the distance. Nanaji and the gudda were taking me to another world, though it was only twenty miles away. The hooves of the oxen and the creaking of the wheels made music on that still morning. The singing birds greeted us as they awoke.
We stopped several times on the way to Bahowal to feed ourselves and the oxen. We had brought along some fresh green cattle food for the journey. At our first stop, we fed the oxen and gave them some water before eating our pranthas , the tasty rotis skillet-fried in butter that Biji had made for us. We washed them down with tea from a tea shop. As we rode, Nanaji told me stories about his life to entertain me. They sounded like fairy tales, but they were nothing of the kind, as I would discover later on. I eventually dozed off, but Nanaji woke me up for more tea and delicious burfi he had ordered from another shop after feeding the oxen once again. Even today, my mouth waters thinking about the dense sweetness of that burfi .
The kuchi sarak , or dirt road, we travelled was punctuated by asphalt for a few short stretches. From Mahilpur to Bahowal, trees lined the pucki sarak , the asphalted road, on either side, forming a beautiful canopy that protected travellers from the hot summer sun.
The crimson rays of evening greeted us as we reached Bahowal, a village smaller than Dosanjh. Most homes here were either pucka (of brick) or kucha (of mud); pucka denoted affluence, and kucha spoke of poverty. Nanaji’s home was a mix of both. Like Nanaji’s family itself, it straddled the divide, betraying the relative poverty into which the once-prosperous family had slipped. Nanaji had been either imprisoned or in hiding for three decades; in his absence, it had been difficult for Naniji and her children to make a go of their lives. Next door, however, stood a grand pucka home, built by Nanaji’s older brother, Beant, for his wife upon his return from Canada, where he had emigrated. It was a daily reminder of how different a path my grandfather had chosen.
In fact, Nanaji had nearly followed his brother to Canada himself. He had been working in Shanghai for four years when, in 1919, Beant invited him to join him on Vancouver Island. Nanaji returned to India to say goodbye to his mother — his passport had been obtained, and he had arranged to accompany his sister-in-law, Beant’s wife, to British Columbia. Instead, he jumped headlong into the Indian independence movement; Beant’s wife never made it to Canada.
In February 1921, close to a hundred Sikhs were killed by the mahant who controlled the gurdwara built at Guru Nanak’s birthplace, Nankana Sahib (now in Pakistan). The unarmed Sikhs sought to wrest control of the temple from the mahant because of the sexual abuse and debauchery that he allowed there. Nanaji led a group of volunteers to Nankana Sahib to help in the aftermath of the massacre, which became known as Saka Nankana Sahib.
In the following month, a conference was organized at Nankana Sahib. Nanaji was asked by the Shiromani Gurdwara Parbandhak Committee to be responsible for the security of the venue, as many stalwarts of the freedom movement, including Mahatma Gandhi, Pandit Madan Mohan Malviya, and Dr. Saifuddin Kitchlew, would be present. From his district, Nanaji led a jatha (group) of seventy-five men. As part of his duties, he also arranged the safe passage of Gurdit Singh, the hero of the Komagata Maru incident, to the conference.
Gandhi told those assembled that he had come to share their anguish and grief. He stated that the non-violence of the Sikhs had “greatly added to the prestige and glory of India.” The “cruel and barbaric action” at Nankana Sahib, Gandhi said, was “more evil and more invidious than even Jallianwala.” He was referring to the notorious incident at the Jallianwala Bagh (public gardens) on April 13, 1919, where several hundred unarmed Indians were gunned down by the British, led by General Reginald Dyer, while attending a peaceful assembly.
Nanaji’s uncle, Bir Singh, who had returned from Canada to India as a member of the Ghadar Party and who fought for independence under the Ghadar banner, had been sent to the gallows by the British in 1916. Young Moola was deeply touched by his uncle’s bravery. After Saka Nankana drew him in, there was no turning back. My grandfather’s passport was confiscated by the government, and he gave himself entirely to the freedom movement. When the other of his two older brothers died, leaving a widow behind, Nanaji’s progressive spiritual friend Jianwaley Sant urged him to marry the woman. He did, and she became our Jajo.
The Gurdwara
