The yard around the school had several mango and tahli trees, which provided shade. In winter, classes were held in the unshaded compound; in summer we sat under the trees. On cold or wet days, our classes moved indoors. Our teachers perched on a chair at the front of the class, and we students sat on mats that were rolled up at the end of each day and stored away for the next morning. When we reached grade two, the school asked each of us to buy a two-inch-high pine pedestal to sit on. The smooth, unvarnished pine looked so clean and beautiful compared to our mats and the teachers’ old chairs and tables. During recess there was time to run home, have a bite, then run back and play in the yard before classes resumed.
Masiji Heeti taught us for a few months. Mamaji (as we called him maternal uncle) Sohan Sangha also did so for a while. His father, Makhan Singh, and Nanaji were comrades in India’s independence movement, and the best of friends; like brothers, in fact. Makhan Singh had stood in for Nanaji at Biji’s wedding. Ours was a government school, and both teachers and funds were in short supply in a colony recently turned independent. At first, Urdu was taught along with Punjabi, so I learned the Urdu alphabet. Each letter seemed a work of art. To my dismay, schools in Punjab stopped teaching Urdu at the end of my first grade.
After a while, an older teacher named Husan (meaning “beauty”) arrived at our school. Clean-shaven Husan dressed in sleeveless shirts and pants, his feet in sandals. The traditional turban he wore in spring made it seem as if he had just returned from a royal soirée. Smoking incessantly on his chair as we sat cross-legged on our mats, he looked like a Mogul emperor holding court. His word was law on the school premises. Corporal punishment was common at the time, and parents expected teachers not to spare the rod. All of us dreaded being caned on our knuckles or bums in front of the class; it was considered weak and cowardly to wince. With Husan on the throne, his subjects usually behaved.
When Husan retired from teaching, he was replaced by two beautiful women, both recent graduates. Kamala Bhenji hailed from Hoshiarpur; Kaushalya Bhenji belonged to the village Bombeli, a mile and a half away. Both had attended a training school, and the urban influence set them apart from most of the village folk of Bahowal. Our new Bhenjis, as we called our female teachers, descended upon us like the fairies in magical tales. Kaushalya rode a bicycle to school from Bombeli every day. Kamala now lived in Bahowal, boarding with Beant’s wife at her palatial house next door to us. Almost everyone considered Nanaji the village elder. In that small world, as his dohta (daughter’s son), I could do no wrong.
I had always looked forward to school, and after Kamala and Kaushalya arrived, it became even more thrilling. When Kamala spoke to me, I felt special. I looked for any opportunity to be physically close to her, and since she lived next door, I got to be with her often. She would hug me often as I played with her younger brother, who also attended our school. My childhood crush remained a concealed embarrassment until I discovered how common such childhood crushes were. My fixation ended when Kamala transferred to another school.
The school was a microcosm of Nanaji’s village: rich and poor, big landholders and peasants, untouchables and Brahmins all enrolled their children. Private schools for the wealthy and the upper middle class had not yet sucked the life out of primary education. The egalitarian élan of the freedom movement was still alive. My classmates Seeto, Sutto and Mindo — bright young girls ready to challenge the world — came from the so-called lower castes. There was Gholi, the son of a relatively affluent family, and Jinder, who loved singing along with the toomba , a single-stringed instrument popular in the folk music of the time, which was dominated by artists like Ramta and Yamala. Bakhshish, the tallest and oldest boy at school, was my best friend. We spent a lot of time together. He was a harijan , Gandhi’s word for untouchables — the Dalits of today. Luckily, because Bahowal was home to many independence activists, nobody worried about caste in my home or at school. Bakhshish helped Nanaji and me tend to the cattle, and occasionally slept over. I went to his home too, sharing food with him and his family and spending the night.
Bakhshish told me stories about Indian history and mythology. Lord Krishna was warrior Arjuna’s guide and teacher in the grand Indian epic The Mahabharata . Lord Krishna and Lord Rama, of the epic The Ramayana , were an integral part of the Indian story, evident from the fact that there were several thousand references to them in the Guru Granth Sahib, the Sikh holy scriptures.
Bakhshish, more mature than I, may have been more aware of caste and class divisions in India. He wanted our friendship to be like that of Krishna and Sudama — Krishna being from royalty and Sudama a poor kid. Their friendship was tested when the pauper Sudama took simple beaten rice, Krishna’s childhood favourite, to the adult king Krishna to seek material help. He was greeted by the king with love and affection, despite the distance of years, caste and class. Since I was not from an affluent family, Bakhshish may have had caste in his mind when talking about our friendship, which continues to this day.
Life at Bahowal revolved around school and helping Nanaji on the few acres of land he owned. He would take me with him to the fields to keep a watch on the family cattle. Often the animals, unimpressed by my tiny stature and the big stick I carried with difficulty, would wade into forbidden fields, crops or water. In Nanaji’s presence, however, they never failed to behave. When he ploughed a field, readying it for the next crop, I followed the plough and picked up weed roots to be dried and used as household fuel.
The older folk could tell time by looking at the position of the sun. Time for them wasn’t about what the clock struck. When I took the cattle out to graze, crossing a dry, sandy rivulet that flowed swiftly during the monsoons, I often ended up back at home too soon. Quickly, though, I developed my own way of telling time. I would stand under the sun out in the pasture, and if my shadow was almost nonexistent, it was time to go home for the noon meal. In the evening, I knew it wasn’t time to leave until my shadow was at its longest. The cattle no longer returned with stomachs half-empty.
The sandy rivulet was beautiful, with trees and other vegetation on both sides. About a mile away, a gurdwara stood on the edge of the rivulet, surrounded by trees and plants of different varieties. The bunhianwala , literally “of the forest,” was peaceful except on special days, when people flocked to it for praying and celebrations. On rainy days, the runoff in the rivulet prevented people from crossing over to the gurdwara, adding a certain mystique to the bunhianwala for me. When taking cattle to the pasture, I was ever afraid of being alone in the jungle. Jajo, my grandmother, told me to invoke the bunhianwala and my fear would vanish; it never completely did, but the invocation fortified me.
In Bahowal, a religious man distributed Sikh gutkas , booklets with excerpts from the scriptures, free of charge. The only conditions were that you demonstrate fluency in Punjabi, promise to treat the gutka with respect and cover your head when reading it. Fluency proven and promises made, I was a proud recipient of my own gutka , which I read several times. I only partially understood the words, but the poetry was mesmerizing. The new-book smell of the gutka rushed like a storm at my nostrils. Nostrils do not discriminate between the sacred and the profane.
Reading was something I was good at. Nanaji would get me to read the Punjabi newspaper of the Communist Party of India, Nawan Zamana (New Age) , to his many visitors. He took great pride in having this “reading machine” read (or broadcast) the news while he and his guests had lunch or tea. The two guests who came most often were Dr. Bhag Singh and Darshan Singh Canadian (he had adopted that surname after returning to India from Canada). In time, they were both elected to the Punjab legislature, representing the Communist Party of India ( CPI ); both were spellbinding orators. Dr. Bhag Singh had gone as a student to the U.S., completing his PhD there before returning to India. While in the U.S., he was influenced by the secular Ghadarites of the West Coast of North America and joined the CPI . Darshan, on the other hand, was an immigrant to Canada who returned to India shortly after Independence. In Canada, he had been a member of the Communist League and was one of the founders of the International Woodworkers of America. In India, Darshan was assassinated by Khalistani extremists in 1986.
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