Dear,......,
Hello. Hope you enjoyed the blog post sent yesterday. So much happened in these years in the second half of the sixties that it will take me quite some times to narrate each one of them. Some of these events were very tragic. I will narrate one of those sad events today. I have already mentioned that my mother had a brother. We would call him mama jee. I remember him for a number of special things. He had good looks and he looked very smart. One he had a brand new cycle with lot of colourful accessories. He had to meet someone at the court premises. He put the cycle on the stand and went off for less than a minute. He returned and found the cycle missing. That was the end of it. (It is ironical that most thefts occur around the court and police premises.) Next was his handwriting. It would be very clean and pleasing. He was not educated much and could not stick to one job. He seems to have tried so many avenues but failed every where. For two years he got attached to a Handicraft merchant and would travel to Kanpur with him during two winters. They would hire a place to sell the goods that they had carried from Srinagar. Our mama jee was a salesman with the merchant. One day he received a message that his father was seriously ill in Srinagar. He was asked to return to Srinagar. He took leave from his boss and reached Jammu. Those days, the road between Jammu and Srinagar would remain closed for three months in winter. It was so because the Banihal mountain pass separating Kashmir region from Jammu region would get very heavy snowfall. (Later a tunnel was bored in the mountain to allow one way travel between Srinagar and Jammu. Much later another tunnel called Jawahar tunnel was bored to allow two way simultaneous travel in all seasons.) Only easy way to travel between Srinagar and Jammu would be by air. There would be lot of rush of people for the tickets. People would book well in advance. However the Government would keep a quota of few seats in each flight for enabling seats for high officials to travel between the two cities. There would be occasions when the Government quota seats would get released to the general public when there was no official requirement for the seats.
When our mama jee reached Jammu he arranged to contact the quota office. He was lucky to get a ticket. As per my mama jee, he was seated in the aircraft when the airlines staff told him to deplane because the Director of Education had to travel. He did not have an option. The plane left and crashed in Shopian area of Kashmir in an area called "Hoon Heng.". All the passengers and the crew died. So my mama jee was saved thanks to God. But he had to reach Srinagar. Those days the bus would go from Jammu to Banihal. On the other side of the mountain, the bus service from Qazigund to Srinagar was available. People would walk up the snowy mountain and then would slide down on reaching the top. There would be locals who would assist. It would take a day and night to climb up. Then the locals would help the novices like my mama jee to position himself on a shovel. The local would also stand on the shovel blade and use the handle to slow down the descent. My mama jee travelled this way. The helper took my mama jee to his home and took good care of him. (He was lucky because there would be lot of looting of novices by the locals after they would be helped to descend the slope.) It took my mama jee about a week to travel from Jammu to Srinagar. It took him a lot of time to recover from the tiredness.
Mamajee was again without a job. One day his mother in law sent him a message, asking him to come over on a particular day because a pious man was coming over to her house on that day. She was sure that the pious man would bless him and his bad days would be over. My mama jee was desperate for a job. Therefore he went to the house on the appointed day. When he reached the house, the pious man was already there. My mama jee was taken to the room where the pious man was already seated at the head of the room. As soon as my mama jee entered the room and the pious man looked at him, and then asked mama jee to come and sit besides him. My mama jee immediately recognised the pious man. The pious man was one like him and had also been a salesman at Kanpur the previous season when he was also there. The pious man had also recognised him. The pious man whispered into his ear and requested him not to disclose his real identity. He did not and the pious man spared no efforts to keep my mama jee in good humor. This story was told to me by mama jee himself. My mama jee later got a clerical job in the Arts Emporium a government enterprise.
My mama jee had a stomach ailment. On occasions he would suffer from severe pain in the stomach. It was diagnosed to be duodenal ulcer. He got operated upon and affected portion of duodenal intestine removed. A few years later he suffered from blocked urine channel. The inefficiency of the doctors in the government hospital caused his death. He could have been saved if the doctor could have been a little careful. He had left a vein unstitched inside his body. He was too young to die at that age. His death devastated the family. My mother's condition became miserable she would faint more than ten times a day during the mourning period. The fainting fits continued for my mother for many years later although the frequency came down every year.
It was decided that I would carry his ashes with me to Haridwar and have them immersed there. A day was decided and I booked my tickets for Jammu. It was estimated that I would reach Haridwar next day around noon. I was told that I would be on fast till the ashes get immersed. I was given some "Shakar Paar " (cookies made from singeda ka aata and sugar fried in ghee) which I could consume on the way. I was given strict instructions not to put the container with ashes on the ground at any time. I left early in the morning by bus reaching Jammu at 7 PM. I booked a hotel room at the bus stop itself. I enquired about how to reach Haridwar. I was told to take early morning bus to Saharanpur. From there I would get a number of buses plying every half an hour for Haridwar. Being hungry all day, I could not sleep properly. Early in the morning at 4.30, I heard shouts for passengers wanting to travel to Saharanpur. I came down from the hotel and took the bus. In a few hours the bus reached its destination. This bus would stop at random places to pick up and drop passengers. It stopped in between to allow us to take breakfast. Sad I had to miss it because I was fasting. At destination, I took a bus for Haridwar. This bus was driven by a Sikh gentleman. First time ever I saw him a sardar jee smoking in public. This bus would also stop and start to drop and pickup passengers innumerable times during the journey to Haridwar.
As soon as I reached Haridwar bus station, I hired a cycle rickshaw and asked him to take me to the ghat where I could do the emersion. As soon as I got down from the rickshaw, I was surrounded by about twenty persons each offering to help me with the process for the emersion of the ashes. I asked the amount that I would have to pay them. The first one said Rs. 10,000/- I had a budget of less than Rs. 100/- When I said that I did not have that much money, more amounts were quoted to me. On each occasion, I did not agree because I told them that it was too high. After 15 minutes most went away to hunt for more such people arriving at the ghat. At last one person remained and he offered to do the process for Rs. 100/-. Emboldened by making them climb down from Rs. 10,000/- to Rs. 100/- I told them that I would be immersing the ashes without due process, the person came forward with an amount of Rs. 26/- I agreed. It took him half an hour and the ashes were emersed in a normal way. Having done it, I first had a good lunch. I took a passenger train for Delhi leaving at 1 PM. This train would also stop at almost all stations. At 9 PM the train reached Delhi but I was so tired that I did not have energy to reach the house in New Delhi where I was to stay. Instead I went to an ordinary hotel nearby booked a room and had a good sleep. I got up late in the morning, took a bath and a breakfast outside on the road and left for my destination.
Bye for today.
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