Contents:
Mohalla’s Layout; Mohalla’s Houses: Floor Plans and Functional Features; Mohalla as a Community; Mohalla’s Culture: Customs, Mores and Taboos; Mohalla’s two Joint Families; The Ideal and Reality of the Joint Family Model; Mohalla’s other Families and their Houses; Mohalla as a Market Place for Vendors, Entertainers, and Preachers; Mohalla’s Flora and Fauna; Epilogue: How the Mohalla, its Pre-Partition people and their Customs have changed over Time; Notes.
Most of Bhera’s mohallas (neighbourhoods) were named after Hindu castes, Muslim surnames, and various trades (e.g., SahniaN da mohalla, SethiaN da mohalla, GandhiaN da mohalla: PirachiaN da mohalla, Khawjian da mohalla, Mohalla AnsariaN wala: ThathairaN da mohalla, Mohalla TarkhanaN wala, LoharaN di Mori, etc). The names of Muslim “caste” mohallas got a Persian touch after the partition, e.g., PirachiaN da mohalla became Mohalla Pirachgahn, and Khowgian da mohalla turned into Mohalla Khowigahn.
Mohalla’s Layout
DhoanaN da Garha/Mohalla was a Hindu mohalla until 1947. In some ways, it was similar to other mohallas of Hindus and also quite different from others. For one thing, it did not have any old grand mansions, except for the ruined remains of a large house that was called a Marhi (mansion). Of course, the mohalla had some houses large enough to accommodate big joint families, and also boasted of one new and modern house. Compared with the town’s better known mohallas (such as SahniaN da mohalla), our mohalla was a smaller and gated neighborhood. It had 26 houses in all: 19 houses within its gated area, three houses in the alley that led to the mohalla’s gate, and another four houses that had their front doors opening on the south-north street (galli) that started from the Chowk (see Note 1).
The gated part of the mohalla had a large compound, walled on the four sides by contiguous houses. The houses had their entrance doors and windows opening onto this compound. One house also had a second entrance from the main street, and another two houses on the south side had attached shops with their fronts opening in the Jhuggi Bazaar. A recessed dead-end lane in the mohalla offered secluded access to three houses. The rear-walls of as many as eight houses on the western side segregated the mohalla from the PankhwaraN da mohalla; three other houses in the north had their back-walls in common with the houses behind them in the GandhiaN wala mohalla. There was no way of going from one mohalla to the other without getting out of one’s mohalla and taking the outside streets to enter the other.
The walled and gated compound into which opened the entrance doors and front windows of the mohalla’s most houses, offered daily opportunities for greetings, chats, and
Author’s note:
This article was inspired by the mohalla’s photographs brought back by Mr. Kalim Malik from his visit to Bhera in October 2007 at the author’s request. It was written in April 2008, more than 60 years after the mohalla’s residents, like the town’s other Hindu and Sikh residents, had to say good bye to Bhera for ever in September 1947. The author was about 14 years old at the time of partition. The names of the mohalla elders, their spouses, sons, daughters, daughter-in-laws, and
their grandchildren are based on his recall and were checked for accuracy by his elder brother Prem Sarup.
Socializing for its residents, which strengthened their communal bonds. This inner compound was large enough for young boys to play guli-danda, lukan-chhupan (Hide-and-Seek), and various games with marbles (buntai), and for little girls to play rassi-tappana (skipping rope), totra, and the hopscotch game of staapoo that was played with a small flat disc called dhibbri. An open drain ran from the northern end of the mohalla to the southern end, and the drains from individual houses emptied into this larger drain. Kids had no hesitation in retrieving their wayward marbles, gulis, lattoos (tops) and other playthings from these drains with their hands. Of course, they had to be careful of the wasps that were somehow attracted to these open drains.
Roughly in the middle of the mohalla’s compound, there used to be an unused khooi (water-well) with a pulley strung on two massive pillars for drawing water with buckets. The installation of hand pumps in most houses and open access to two hand pumps in the compound had rendered the well obsolete and essentially useless. A lot of junk as well as stuff like balls and gulis could be seen floating in its stagnant water. A visitor in 2007 found this khooi gone. Apparently, it had been filled up; its twin-pillars as well as the raised-terrace around the well leveled and removed.
Mohalla’s Houses: Floor Plans and Functional Features
In a typical house in the mohalla, the entrance door opened into a deorhi (a kind of entrance chamber) which in turn offered access to: one or more rooms (one of which could be a baithak), a bathroom for showers and laundry-washing, and the staircase from the ground floor to the first floor. Bedooms and a kitchen were located on the first floor. Second floors of the most houses were flat-roofs with waist-high parapets. Some houses had a chabbara (a regular room on the roof; a penthouse) or a barsaati (a shed-like room on the roof to provide protection from rain), occupying part of the second-floor. The flat roof served as an ideal place for summer sleeping on cots under the open skies. Also, kite flying from the flat roofs on the second or third floor was far more fun than doing it from the first floor of a single-storey house.
In some houses, flat roofs had a large opening over the same sized courtyard below on the first floor. In smaller houses with no space for an open courtyard on the first floor, the roof had a small rectangular opening (magh) with a lift-able door made of sturdy wood and iron bars. When the magh-door was raised, the opening allowed the transfer of cots from the top floor to the floor below and vice versa. To protect the lower floor from rain water, a large tarpaal (tarpaulin) or a corrugated metal sheet was often kept handy to cover the magh.
Lavatories (dry-latrines) were located on the flat roofs. These latrines had high walls on their four sides with a door in a side-wall. Since there was no running water in the latrines (and in the houses) and toilet tissue rolls were unknown, one had to carry water in a lota (container) for personal cleansing. Most houses also lacked a roof over their latrines; the open top helped dissipate the foul smells, but created a veritable quandary when it rained. A hard-pressed user had either to wait out the rain or had to carry an umbrella. After the human waste was removed and latrines were washed by the sweeper with a bucket or two of water, it was his/her onerous task to carry away the human waste in a tray or bucket for dumping.
Mohalla as a Community
A neighborhood in Bhera was always more than a collection of houses, it was also a community of people who felt at home and secure in their neighborhood. Its residents had a strong sense of we-
ness that readily translated into mutual concern for each other and a willingness to assist another family in times of need. Our DhoanaN wala Mohalla, showed such a community spirit most abundantly on the occasion of marriage of a daughter of a mohalla family. When the baraat (marriage party) from another town or mohalla arrived in a procession, all the adult men of the mohalla gathered at the mohalla’s gate to welcome the guests and to later serve them the prepared food in the compound. While the guests had the customary license to be “obnoxious” and flippant in their comments on the quality of food served and the people serving the food, the mohalla’s men were supposed to take it in good humor and not to retaliate. In stead, they were supposed to show respect to the in-laws of any daughter of the mohalla. On the other hand, women from the bride’s side had a ritualistic license on the wedding day to tease the women of the bridegroom’s party, especially the bride’s mother-in-law, with their sithniaN. The maanjees (neighbors, relatives, and friends from the bride’s side who received and served the wedding party) did not eat until all the jaanjees (members of the wedding party from the bridegroom’s side) had finished their dinner. The local maanjees would choose not to avail of the food served by the bride’s side; they would go to their homes to eat after they were done with receiving and serving the baraat. A daughter from one’s mohalla was considered like one’s own daughter, and eating from the house of a daughter was against the Hindu customs. Hindu parents used to carry their own food when they visited their daughter’s or her in-laws house in another town. If they had to eat there for some reason, they would give a decent gift of cash to “reimburse” the cost of consumed meals!
Each of the mohalla’s families gave a naindra (cash gift) to the parents of the bride (it helped the family bear the wedding expenses), as did the families belonging to the baradari (a group of related castes) of the bride’s parents. Because there were no hotels in the town where the bride’s family could put up the wedding party for its overnight stay, arrangements were made for the members of the wedding party to stay in a janj-ghar (a community house for the stay of a visiting baraat). The janj-ghars had all the cots for any number of guests, but the beddings had to be supplied by the hosts. To this end, each family of the mohalla kept one or two complete sets of clean beddings ready in its closets to make them available for such occasions. It was also not uncommon for a man from the mohalla, who happened to be in the town where a daughter from the mohalla was married and staying with her in-laws, to pay a courtesy visit to her and her in-laws and give her a cash gift.
There was a strong sense of we-ness in the mohalla, but there were also latent rivalries between a few families, and discernable jealousies over children among women. A certain level of conflict is endemic to any group, regardless of its size and purpose. Most mothers were wary of the “evil eye” as a lurking threat to their children, and took preventive actions by burning harmal (a herb) in a pot of burning coals, waving the smoke in the faces of their children, and reciting incantations something similar to “jal tu jalal tu, aayee balaa tall tu”) to ward off the hovering evil. Occasionally, someone would place a tona (a piece of witchcraft) on the outside wall of a house. A hostile gesture like this created a certain stir and was condemned by all in the mohalla. Not surprisingly, the community’s condemnation of a tona incident ended up strengthening the community’s spirit.
Mohalla’s Culture: Customs, Mores and Taboos
DhoanaN da Mohalla was a microcosm of the Hindu neighborhoods of Bhera, because it partook of, and reflected, the cultural traditions of Bhera and those of the Hindus of the northwestern Punjab. Given the compactness of the mohalla, its residents followed their social customs in a more stringent way. Restrictions on inter-caste marriages were strictly observed. A khatri would not ordinarily marry a non-khatri (e.g., persons of the khatri Malhotra caste and the arora caste of Dhingra could not be married). Also, no marriages could take place within a subcaste (a Kapur could not be married to another Kapur or a Dhingra with a Dhingra). Men and women had to marry into a
caste different from their own, but within the group of castes of their baradari. For instance, Khukrain bradari of khatris was an endogamous group of nine subcastes: Anand, Bhasin, Chaddha, Kohli, Sabharwal, Sahni, Sethi, and Suri. A higher ranking group (dhai-gharais) of khatris consisted of three subcastes: Kapoor, Khanna, and Malhotra. Although Sikhism rejected the caste system, khatri and arora Sikhs retained their subcastes as parts of their names and the prestige of their khatri castes.
All married couples in the mohalla were monogamous; no married man had more than one wife. Love marriages were a big no, and, thus, extremely rare. And, unlike Muslims and Hindus of south India, marriages between cousins were forbidden among Punjabi Hindus. Marriages arranged by the family elders and/or parents were the norm. Girls and boys were not allowed to physically see each other before their marriages (see Note 2). But they were consulted, and their tacit approval was obtained before matrimonial searches were initiated and finalized by their parents.
A widower could remarry even when he had children from his first wife, while widows, even those who were in their teens, were supposed to remain widows for ever. They were essentially condemned to a life of celibacy, destitution, loneliness, and eventual dependence on grown up brothers and their less than sympathetic wives. For women in those days, there were very few paying jobs. Most of them returned with their children to their parents’ house. If her parents were dead and her in-laws did not have the means to support her over her life time, she was likely to end up sweeping floors and cleaning pots and pans in the homes of well-to-do Hindu and Sikh families in town. Very likely, widows’ plight and a heartless culture gave rise to the annual observance of the Karva-Chauth day on which Hindu married women fasted from very early morning until they sighted the rising moon, and gathered and prayed as a group in the mohalla compound for the longevity of their husbands. On this day the presence of a widow in the gathering of married women was considered inauspicious (as if she was responsible for her husband’s death)!
Everyone in the mohalla was a strict vegetarian. We never saw anybody ever preparing or eating a meat dish in the mohalla houses or outside. Vegetarianism was the professed creed. None of its residents were ever spotted outside the butcher shop (near Amin’s soda-water shop in the main bazaar) waiting to buy meat. When one of our brothers-in-law (sisters’ husbands) wanted to eat boiled eggs at our home on his visit to Bhera, we gave him a pan which was reserved for this purpose for him. He also used to bring his kerosene stove with him from Rawalpindi, because our mother could not let him use her chulha (hearth) and kitchen for this purpose. It was rude to ask him to set up his stove on our flat roof, especially when sons-in-law were pampered and indulged as guests in the houses of their in-laws. He respected our religious sensibilities and understood our predicament as a mohalla resident. Not only did our family have our own religious reasons for being vegetarians, we were also afraid of being found out for allowing eggs to be cooked on our family hearth. The mohalla’s reaction to any violation of the taboo against consumption of real meat (e.g., mutton) was much harsher and came close to a feared excommunication. Hindus who are vegetarian out of conviction not only avoid meat but also any physical contact like a hand-shake with those who have not washed their hands after eating meat (see Note 3). Hindu families would not allow their own family members to bring their leather shoes inside the cooking and eating areas. They were compulsive about washing their hands before eating, especially if they happened to have touched their leather shoes or sandals. KharawaN (flat shoes made of wood plates) were considered non-polluting if they were exclusively used indoors. If a Hindu ever came in physical contact with a sweeper (a Hindu or a Muslim), it called for an immediate shower for cleansing.
Another area of behavior that was strictly regulated by rules was that of Hindu-Muslim interactions. There were no restrictions among Hindus on interacting with Muslims in most areas of life other
than eating food cooked by Muslims and inter-marrying with them. It was not their meat-eating that “disqualified” Muslims for cooking food for, and serving it to, Hindus; because there were meat eating and meat-cooking Hindus (preponderantly males) who were not avoided by other Hindus at the dining mats and tables. Perhaps it was Muslims’ consumption of beef that created the most social distance between them and Hindus. Milk, ghee, oils, vegetables, fruits, and grains were produced, handled, and supplied by Muslims for Hindus. Physical contacts from shaking hands to wrestling with Muslims were normal. The barbers who gave us hair-cuts and set our bones straight were Muslims. The doctor who gave us a physical checkup could be a Muslim. It was a privilege for an ordinary Hindu to shake hands with the local Thanedar and Tehsildar who often were Muslims. On the other hand, it was socially and psychologically difficult for a Hindu to invite Muslim guests (or even a Christian Deputy Commissioner) for meals at his home and to serve them food in his family’s dishes and bowls for fear of “pollution” from a beef-eating person (see Note 4).
Mohalla’s two Joint Families
In 1947, DhoanaN da Mohalla had 17 resident families. Though there was only one Dhawan family (Ram Lall and Raj Rani Dhawan) who had a house in it, the mohalla remained named after the caste of Dhawans (see Note 5). Malhotra families were the most numerous; as many as seven families lived in the mohalla. Two Kapur (Kapoor) families as well as two Bahri families were other residents. Also, two Brahmin families owned houses in the mohalla; one lived in another street near a temple, and the heirs of the other family returned from out of town to stay in their ancestral home for short periods. There were a few other khatri and non-khatri families living in the mohalla.
What the mohalla’s Kapur families lacked in their number, they made up by their generational depths, size, prominence, and wealth. These families were archetypical joint-families in the tradition of old-time landed and large-business owning families. Each family owned its property in common; its members lived under the same roof and ate food cooked from the same kitchen. The patriarchs and matriarchs exerted overall influence over the family matters, sometimes running a tight ship. The elder sons and daughters were shown respect by their junior siblings. Married men and women in the family had not only authority over their own children, but their authority also extended over their nephews and nieces. In women’s sphere, there was a separate hierarchy headed by the mother-in-law and the position on this hierarchy of a daughter-in-law depended largely on the seniority (and sometimes on the worldly success) of her husband. Cousins used to band together in defense of each other if one of them ever came under attack from a neighborhood boy or a school bully. At one point in the 1940s, Lala Daya Ram Kapur’s joint-family had as many as 19 resident members, while Lala Anant Ram Kapur’s joint-family had 15 members in their residence. These two Kapur families were the only joint-families in the mohalla, and were considered as the mohalla’s twin anchors.
Lala Daya Ram Kapur’s Joint Family. This extended family was four generations deep until 1942 when his father, Lala Jaamanu Shah, passed away (see Note 6). The family owned a huge house in the mohalla, a katra (a walled compound with a few rooms, sheds, and a big gate) near the town’s police station, several parcels of agricultural lands that were tilled by tenant farmers, and above all about one half of the shops of the rectangular Ganj Mandi. It was in the Ganj mandi grounds that huge piles of harvested wheat from the town’s countryside were auctioned by the family’s commission-sales business. Their katra was used for the upkeep of the family horse (needed for visiting the distant family farms).
Lala Daya Ram Kapur and his wife, Nihal Devi, had four sons and one daughter. Besides the patriarch and matriarch, other members of their resident joint-family were their three married sons and their
families, and at one time their one unmarried daughter. Each subfamily had its separate room(s) within the house. All the daughters-in-laws had to pitch in the cooking and serving of the family food which was supervised by the matriarch, Nihal Devi. Each one of them also had to get their children ready for their schools each morning.
The family had a slightly retarded servant, Toto, who took care of the various chores such as filling buckets and pitchers (ghaddas and gaaggars) from the family’s hand pump and carrying them to the first and second floors, sweeping and mopping the inside of the house, etc. The family had a washer man come to the house to collect and deliver laundry every week.
The eldest son, Krishan Lal, served as Headmaster of schools in Bannu and Mardan. He and his family (his wife, their five daughters and the only son who was the youngest child) stayed in those cities. Every two or three years, the family would come to Bhera to spend their summer vacations and stayed with the joint family in the ancestral home. A year or two before the country’s partition, Mr. Krishan Lall retired and bought a rice mill in Dinga. He and his family moved there, but were displaced as refugees to India in 1947.
The second son, Mr. Harbans Lal Kapur, was a successful advocate in Bhera. He had a well-furnished law office in the rear of the family’s house. The office had a direct entrance from the street outside of the mohalla. He was always impeccably dressed while on his way to the local court or to the tennis court. In the mornings, he had his lawyer’s dress on, and in the evenings he would put on shorts, a T-shirt, and special shoes for his daily game of tennis with similarly dressed friends in the town’s only tennis court near the Government High School. His wife, SheilaN Devi, was from Lahore and appeared to be a more educated and polished lady than the wives of her husband’s brothers. She introduced fine clothing for her sons and daughters and also for the children of her two brother in-laws in the joint family.
Amolak Ram ji was the third son. After his high school, he joined the family business. Along with his father, Amolak Ram ji managed the family business as wholesalers of harvested grains in Ganj Mandi and also looked after the family farms and lands. His wife, Sumitra Devi, was from Bhera, the gentle daughter of Lala Ishar Das MehdiaN wale. One of their sons, Inder Raj Kapoor, was my class fellow
from grade VI to VIII in the Arya School.
Mela Ram was the youngest son of Lala Daya Ram. After graduating from a college in Lahore, he returned to Bhera and lived the life of a carefree bachelor before he got married. He had a BSA or Raleigh bicycle, a radio, and a His Master’s Voice Gramophone on which he played the old style 78- rpm records of Noor Jahan and K.L. Sehgal. His wife, Shanti Devi, was a delicate beauty from Hafizabad – a market town about 70 miles southeast of Bhera across the Chenab River. During the Second World War, when most commodities were rationed due to shortages, Mela Ram got the permit to operate a kerosene ration shop in the town. Kerosene was the essential fuel for lamps (lanterns) in homes and shops that did not have electricity.
Krishna was the only daughter of Lala Daya Ram Kapur. A fair and relatively short lady, she finished her eighth grade in the Girls Middle School, and later passed her Punjab University’s high school examinations as a private student from Bhera. She was married to a Police Inspector who was posted in towns near Peshawar and then in Rawalpindi. Her husband’s father was a daring police officer who had succeeded in arresting a celebrated dacoit, Jagga Dakoo. Early in 1947, Krishna Behnji’s husband single-handedly tackled and disarmed a murderous criminal who, while being interrogated, attacked him with a concealed knife in the Rawalpindi police station. This news
appeared in most of the Urdu newspapers from Lahore, and everyone in the mohalla felt proud of having such a brave damaad (son-in-law) for the mohalla.
Lala Anant Ram Kapur’s Joint Family: In its size and social standing this Kapur family was comparable to Lala Daya Ram’s. The late Lala Panna Mal Kapur, father of Lala Anant Ram Kapur, had inherited the family’s old house in the mohalla. As an act of charity, he got a big tharra (raised terrace) built around a venerable, old banyan tree in the temple-cum-garden grove of Gulab Garh in Bhera. A marble tablet in the terrace commemorated it.
Lala Anant Ram owned the town’s largest fabrics store in Guru Bazaar. He and his wife, Bhag Vanti, had three sons (SomaN Shah, Sant Ram, and Mela Shah) and four daughters (DurgaN Devi, ? ? ? ?, Shanti Devi, and Janaki Devi). The joint family had land holdings near Phullarwan and two houses in the mohalla; an ancestral home which continued t o serve as the family’s main residence, and a sparingly used, newer, modern, and spacious house with a large high-ceiling hall. For the wedding of the younger of our two sisters, Lala Anant Ram Kapur let our family use the magnificent hall of this house for serving dinner to the marriage party (barraat) and its inner courtyard for holding the marriage ceremonies. It was the only house in the mohalla which had glass for window panes. All other houses had windows with wooden shutters that would not let light in when closed.
The family’s eldest daughter-in-law, SheilaN Vanti, was a gracious lady from ChopriaN di Mandi in Bhera; the middle one, Daya Vanti, was a soft-spoken fair lady from Pind-Daddan-Khan; and the youngest one was a quiet lady with a statuesque beauty from Hafizabad.
What a coincidence that the youngest sons of the mohalla’s two Kapur families had the same first names, Mela Ram Kapur and Mela Shah Kapur, both got married to exceptionally pretty women from the same town, Hafizabad! As in all marriages, there was certainly an element of coincidence in these two marriages, but other factors were also at work in the arranged marriages of that era and area. Khatri business families in the pre-partition west Punjab capitalized on their extensive business connections in the surrounding market towns to find matches for their grownup children. Bhera was a mandi (market) town just like Mandi Phullarwan, Mandi Bahauddin, Hafizabad, etc. Mate selection for marriageable children more often involved inter-town rather than intra-town searches for matrimony.
Lala Anant Ram’s eldest daughter, DurgaN Devi, was married to Lala Ram Piyara Mal Malhotra, and their family lived in their own house next to ours in DhoanaN wala mohalla. Lala Anant Ram’s two other daughters (Shanti Devi was one of them) were settled in Rawalpindi with their families, and the youngest one, Janaki Devi, lived with her family in Lahore.
Lala Anant Ram was an extremely religious person. He would not go to his shop without completing his elaborate worship in the morning. In fact, his family used to deliver daily the evening meal in a covered thali (a large and deep, metal plate) for the priest of NangiaN da Mandir in town. His middle son, Sant Ram, was a worshiper of Sun god. Around sunrise time, he would be seen standing on the roof of their house in his worshipful attitude with folded hands.
The Ideal and Reality of the Joint-Family Model
Most families with growing sons cherished the ideal of a joint family like those of the Kapurs in the mohalla, but they had little idea about the tensions and constraints that were endemic to a joint family and its business base. Family businesses were likely to test filial piety and fraternal bonds over time. Family life in joint families was particularly hard for the daughters-in-law. For instance,
none of the daughters-in-law in the two Kapur joint-families visited any other family or made friends with other women of their age in the mohalla. Their entire social life was sunk in the folds of their joint families.
But those who nourished the dreams of seeing their family grow one day into a joint family also realized that their businesses in Bhera were not big enough to need the help of their married sons. In fact, two younger sons of Lala Anant Ram Kapur moved away to other towns in the mid-1940s for gainful work. The town’s economy was in decline, and many families had left their ancestral homes to settle in other towns with greater opportunities for decent livelihood. Our mohalla had as many as eight vacant houses (out of a total of 26 houses) with their owners either working away in other cities or the heirs to these properties not interested in returning to their ancestral homes. In some areas of the town there were rows of empty houses that were in good physical shape (they were not vandalized in those days) but without any sign of life in and around them. The owners would let you live in their houses for a pittance or even free of rent, yet no newcomer to the town took the advantage of literally free accommodation in these neighborhoods. With little or no pedestrian traffic and no neighbours, these streets wore a deserted, eerie look even in day light, and must have been considered unsafe for a new family to move in. Some of us have heard the sad story of an elderly Hindu widow who lived by herself in such a street without neighbors. One day she woke up to discover her marooned as a Hindu in Bhera with all her coreligionists and acquaintances having moved away to another country, never to return. Apparently her isolation in a neighbor-less house stood in the way of hearing about the evacuation train and the earlier developments that led to the end of Hindus’ stay in Bhera.
The economy of old towns like Bhera and Shahpur had been steadily shrinking, while the economy of new towns that had sprung up along the new irrigation canals (like Bhalwal) kept thriving. The scale of an average business in Bhera was generally so small that only one son could profitably run the family business on inheritance. Most sons with their high school and college education looked forward to landing jobs in big towns like Rawalpindi and Lahore or in n the government services like the railways and post offices.
Mohalla’s other Families and their Houses
To make amends for the disproportionately long coverage of the mohalla’s two joint families, the descriptions of the other families (which were not joint-families) have to be relatively short. The two-generation (nuclear) families will be introduced in order of their house numbers as shown in the schematic map of the mohalla in the appendix. This section is a kind of archive of the pre-1947 mohalla and its families for the benefit of those who were not born or raised there but would want to visit the home and mohalla of their ancestors. Professor Kalpana Sahni went all the way to Bhera to see her family’s ancestral home; she did find SahniaN da Mohalla, but could not locate there the house of her ancestors.
House 1: This huge house was the ancestral home of Lala Daya Ram Kapur’s extended family. The ground floor of this house did not have any windows opening on any side, yet the big halls on this level were very cool in summer and the electric ceiling fans made the humidity tolerable for daytime siestas. The first floor had three large areas for common use by all and also four separate rooms for individual sub-family units. The second floor had a large chabaara that served as kind of semi detached apartment for the family of one son.
On the day the Hindu and Sikh inhabitants had to leave their homes and town by a special train to be safely escorted by armed soldiers, a Baloch army man came to our mohalla to ask the families to
hurry up and rush to the railway station for the train. Lala Daya Ram Kapur, the old patriarch of the mohalla’s richest land-owning and business family, did not like this on-the-spot goading to make it quick. He could not help asking the soldier what was the great rush when he was leaving all his properties and business behind in Pakistan. This did not please the soldier who told Lala Daya Ram to carry his home and lands with him “on his head” to India!
Sites No. 2 and 3 were communal properties. No.2 was a raised terrace (thada) with low parapets and a few steps in one corner. It once provided dry ground for pitching large tents for gatherings of guests on special occasions. No. 3 was a large room that was once meant to provide covered space for cooking by bawarchis and halwais (professional cooks) for feasts, but it had remained for long in total disuse and utter neglect. Since the early 1930s and until 1947, the most common use of the rectangular thada was that of a kind of elevated gallery from which the mohalla residents, especially kids and ladies, could watch Ram-Leela processions go by in the street each October/November (see Note 7).
House 4: The house belonged to a retired advocate who once served as the lawyer for the town’s electric power generation board. His only child, Rallo, was married to an army Brigadier, a very high rank for an Indian in those days. Rallo and her husband did not have any children, and when her husband went on active duty, she would come to Bhera to stay with her parents.
House 5: The house often remained vacant. At one point it was occupied by Lala Pars Ram and Budh Vanti Bahri’s family before they moved to House # 26 and finally to House # 12 inside the mohalla. They had two sons; Kasturi Lal and Prem; and four daughters: Sarla, Pushpa, Beecho, and Mimi. They originally hailed from Bathuni. Lala Pars Ram and his eldest son, Kasturi Lall, had worked as contractors for government’s projects in Calcutta. The family’s children were very fair and good looking. Unfortunately, the eldest daughter Sarla was widowed as a young girl; her parents took the brave step against the Hindu orthodoxy to remarry her just before the partition. She was married to a handsome young man from a well-to-do, decent family in Pind-Daddan-Khan. While she was on a post-marriage customary visit to her parents in Bhera, the 1947 killings of Hindus and Sikhs started in the Pind-Daddan-Khan area and in trains. She could not return to her husband there. Meanwhile, Hindus and Sikhs of Pind Dadan Khan had to flee by train to India. Near Kamoke in Pakistan, the train was attacked by Muslim mobs in which almost all Hindu males, including Sarla’s husband, were butchered, and their women and children abducted. Sarla, our younger sister’s friend and one of the most pleasant ladies we have ever known, was rendered widow once again. It is a tragedy that readily comes to our mind whenever someone talks of the Kamoke train massacre.
House 6: Lala Ram Piyara Mal and Smt. DurgaN Devi Malhotra lived in this house with their four sons (Tilak Raj, Inder Raj, Om Prakash, and Ved Prakash) and two daughters (Bimla and Nirmala). Lala Ram Piyara Mal Malhotra ran a general store (close to where the Guru Bazaar took off from the town’s main bazaar) that sold general merchandise from bath soaps, powders, creams, shaving razors, caps, hats, sweaters to electrical fittings and goods. Their eldest son, Tilak Raj, worked in the local branch of Punjab& Sindh Bank near Jai-KrishaniaN da Mandir. After Lala Ram Piyara Mal’s untimely death, Inder Raj, an electrician by training, took over the family shop; the other two sons were still in school.
Their house was next-door to “ours” (No. 7) and also contiguous with it to facilitate the occasional late-evening exchange of khatta across the parapet between our roofs for making yogurt (curds) from milk in summer months. We, the children in our family, used to refer to Durgan Devi as Massi DurgaN (Massi means aunt, but who is one’s mother’s sister). In 1952, our family and the family of Massi DurgaN found ourselves as neighbors again, this time two blocks away from each other’s
house in West Patel Nagar, Delhi! Our mother and Massi DurgaN, uprooted and in their old age, used to get together and comfort each other in a social landscape that was vastly different from that of the close-knit mohalla community of their hometown, Bhera.
House 7: This was the house our family lived in. Our parents, Lala Hori Lall and Bhag Vanti, had moved with our paternal grandmother, Raj Karni, one daughter Janaki Devi, and a young seven-year old son, Tilak Raj, from Haranpur in Jhelum district to Bhera in 1920. Our father moved to Bhera for reasons of greater opportunities for his sarafa business. Our mother welcomed the move, because Bhera town’s water was potable (suitable for drinking) and most houses had hand-pumps. In Haranpur, she had to fetch drinking water for the family in gaggars and waltois on her head from a well in the countryside, at least a mile from their house. The water from the wells and pumps within the town of Haranpur was brackish, not fit for drinking.
First, the family lived in House # 25 outside the gated mohalla. When some thieves attempted two break-ins into this house, our parents decided to move into the vacant house (# 7) for reasons of greater security and wider prospects for social life inside the gated and walled mohalla. The family retained the previous house (# 25), which served as our Radha Swami Sat Sang house for years (see Note 8).
Over the years in Bhera, the family had another daughter (Kunti Devi). Also five more sons were born to them in Bhera, but they also lost three sons: First, Tilak Raj, a fourth grader; second, a baby boy Shanti Sarup in 1931; and a young son, Gur Pratap, an F.Sc. student in D.A.V. College, who died of typhoid in Rawalpindi in 1942. At the time of country’s partition, the family had three sons (Prem Sarup, 19; Gian Sarup, 14; and Rajinder Kumar, 9) and two married daughters, one living with her family in Rawalpindi and the other with her son living with her in-laws in Mianwali.
House 8: This one-story house belonged to a Brahmin widow, Radhika Devi. The house underwent a succession of resident families. I have very faint memories of Radhika Devi living alone in this house by herself. Her son lived in another town for his employment. After Radhika Devi died, the house with its attached shop (its front opened in Jhuggi Bazaar) was rented to a Sikh halwai (maker and seller of confections). His daughter’s name was Gyan Kaur. As young kids, she and I were parts of a play group. Her mother died after a long struggle with tuberculosis. After the tragedy, the family left Bhera and moved to some other town where they had relatives. The house remained vacant for many a year, until it was occupied temporarily by the family of Mr. Roshan Lall and Laj Vanti Malhotra. Mr. Malhotra was a railway guard (conductor) who was mostly posted in Balochistan. In order to avoid frequent disruptions in the schooling of their children because of their father’s transfers from one station to another, the family (children and their mother) moved to Bhera.
When the Malhotra’s family eventually moved to their own home (No.13) in the mohalla, Radhika Devi’s house once again remained vacant, except for a few months stay in 1943-44 by Radhika Devi’s three grand children; an unmarried young granddaughter, Kunti, and two much younger grandsons (their mother had died, and their father was posted in a non-family station). As a sixth grader, my services were sometimes called upon to read the letters in Urdu the mailman delivered for the family. Kunti, like most Hindu women of the time, could read only in Hindi, and her brothers were still in primary school and unable to read the hand-written Urdu. Two young men from the neighboring houses would sometimes quiz me about what the letters said. In retrospect, I guess they were interested in knowing whether the letters she got, came from her father or a boyfriend or from both of them. I do not think they arrived at a clear determination based on the few bits I could recall for them.
House 9: Lala Bhagat Ram and his wife, Bharawan Devi, owned and lived with their only son, Murari Lall, in this house. Lala Bhagat Ram had a thriving jeweler’s shop and the family was sufficiently well to do to indulge their only son’s every whim with luxuries like a film projector, a set of film clips, a box camera, a gramophone, a collection of records, and bus trips to Sargodha and Bhalwal for him to see movies in those towns. Behind these indulgences was a sad story. BharawaN Devi had two daughters born to her (Lachhmi Devi and Vidya), but after that when she was still in her teens she could not bear any more children. A son was a must for a family, especially in old age and, in the event of a spouse’s death, to look after the widowed mother or father. In those days, daughters were viewed as “praya dhan” (others’ wealth). After their marriages, most daughters moved away to other towns with their husbands. Murari Lal was BharanwaN Devi’s grandson (son of her younger daughter, Vidya) whom BharawaN Devi had adopted and raised. Earlier she had also adopted a daughter of her older daughter, Lachhmi Devi, to fill the emptiness of her family life following the marriages of her own two daughters. The adopted daughter’s name was Sarna (see Note 9) who was a sahaili (friend) of our younger sister.
House 10: This vacant house in the southwest corner of the mohalla was owned by Pandit Bal Mukand who lived with his family in NangiaN wala Galli. Pandit Bal Mukand was a Brahmin priest who performed religious ceremonies at his yajmaans’ houses, and his wife included our mohalla houses in her rounds to collect handa (the food given as alms to certain categories of Brahmins). On the occasion of our younger sister’s wedding, our family rented his empty house in our mohalla to use its inner courtyard as an open-air kitchen for a week-long preparation of food and confections by a group of halwais. The food was to be served for the marriage party and other guests, while the vast quantity of sweets (shakar-parai) and namkeen (salty) preparations like mathhiaN for bhaji distribution (see Note 10).
House 11: The name of this house used to be boldly displayed in Urdu above the entrance door: Ram Tikaya Malhotra, Plattier. Plattier was the job title for the inspectors of railway tracks, who carried out their inspection duties seated on a trolley which was pushed by two runners on the two rails (tracks). Before he returned from his postings in Railway towns to Bhera in 1945-46 after his retirement, his widowed sister-in-law (brother’s wife), Shanti Devi Malhotra, had lived in the house with her son, Darshan. She was widowed when Darshan was a little child. Over the years Darshan completed his high school, grew into a tall, confident young man, and landed the cashier job in the newly opened Bhera branch of the Punjab National Bank around 1945 (after the partition, Darshan became an in Excise Inspector and was posted in Meerut). Mr. Ram Tikaya Mahotra virtually rebuilt the house after his post-retirement return to Bhera, and lived in this renovated house with his two daughters: the older one of the two was a heavily set and severely retarded girl; the younger one a slim and bright girl preparing to appear privately for her high school exams. Darshan and his mother, Shanti Devi, continued to stay in this house.
House 12: Hukam Dayee Malhotra and her late husband, a confectioner, lived in this house. The husband had passed away many years before Hukam Dayee died. Their hand-pump for water was outside of their house. The pump broke down quite often and needed repairs because of its heavy use by the families who did not have their own hand-pumps. In her nineties, the widowed Hukam Dayee could not stand the sight of little kids using the pump for fun, and tried to chase them away. The kids were, however, not easily dissuaded and would often get on her nerves.
The couple had only one child, a daughter who was married to a Civil Engineer. He was serving as the Superintendent of the City Water Works in Sargodha. Hukam Dayee was not willing to move away from her home and to stay with her daughter. The daughter and her husband used to visit the old lady as often as they could. After Hukam Dayee’s death, the house remained vacant until the
family of Pars Ram Bahri moved from House # 26 to this house inside the gated mohalla. Sons and daughters generally did not sell their inherited homes; the children who lived in other towns tried to visit their ancestral homes. Finding tenant families who were willing to live in and take care of such houses was the favored option.
House 13: This house and House # 14 comprised a duplex with a single entrance door and a very wide deorhi from which two sets of stairs went to two separate living quarters on the first floors. House 13 had a two-roomed chabbara on the second floor. When this house, which had remained unoccupied for long, was cleaned and fixed up, the family of Mr. Roshan Lall Malhotra (the Railway Guard) moved into this ancestral house of theirs, from their temporary stay in Radhika Devi’s house (# 8). While Mr. Malhotra returned to his railway job in Balochistan, his family (wife, Laj Wanti; two sons, Suraj and Raj; and two daughters, Krishna and Sudesh) stayed back in this house. This arrangement helped provide an opportunity for the uninterrupted schooling of the family’s children. Laj Wanti Malhotra became a close friend of our mother, and their son, Suraj, a class-fellow of our elder brother, Prem Sarup, in the Arya school.
House 14: This was the other house in the duplex, having a common main-entrance and deorhi. Mr. Chaman Lall, who was an Arzi-nawis (a scribe) in the local court, had lived here all along with his family: Shanti Devi (wife), two daughters (Bimla and Krishna), and a very young son, Hari Om. He was the only resident of the mohalla who decided to leave Bhera with his family to Patiala, a town which was certain to fall in India after the partition. He strongly argued in a mohalla meeting for others to leave the town while it was safe to do so, but his words were not taken seriously by the other resident families of the mohalla. When the situation in Bhera became life-threatening and travel utterly unsafe in mid-August, those who had chosen to stay back praised Chaman Lall for his foresight and sound judgment.
House 15: In this house lived Rajo with her unmarried son, Mangal Sain. Mangal Sain was a tinker by trade, and a wrestler (Pehlwaan) by choice. Rajo was an old widow. Their situation of meager means was such that no one would marry their daughter to her son. When Rajo died of old age in
early 1940s, Mangal Sain left this house and went to stay in another neighborhood as a single person. The house remained locked until 1947. Its absentee owner, Bhagwanti Pishoran, did not ever come to live in it or to find another tenant for the house.
House 16: This was the ancestral home of Lala Anant Ram’s joint family, and this was the house in which they lived even when they had built a new spacious mansion (House # 20) across the old one. We have already talked about this family in the previous section on the mohalla’s two joint-families.
House 17: This house had been mostly been vacant and left unused, except for a short period of time when an Inspector of Controls (during the days of Second World War, commodities were rationed and sold at fixed prices) lived here with his family. When he was dismissed from his job for demanding bribes from some dealers, he and his family had to leave the house and Mohalla in disgrace. No one came out of their houses to wish them farewell.
House 18: This house belonged to an old couple, Lala Sant Ram and Bhag Sudhi. The family’s livelihood came from Sant Ram’s stall at the Bhera railway station where he sold fruits to arriving and departing passengers.
House 19: This house was the residence of Lala Ram Lall and Raj Rani Dhawan and their children: a daughter, Pushpa, and three sons: Amar, Ram, and Gulshan. Lala Ram Lall had a jewelry shop in Guru Bazaar. When in 1947 Hindus and Sikhs started having real concerns about their future in Bhera and Pakistan, Ram Lall remained most optimistic about the future and emphatic in his decision to stick it
out in Bhera. In fact, he started the construction of additional rooms in his house in July, 1947. His stance was quite the opposite of Chaman Lal Arzi-nawis who did not see any future and security for Hindus and Sikhs in soon to be formed Pakistan, and left Bhera with his family well in time to make it safely to India. When the special train to evacuate Bhera’s Hindus and Sikhs arrived in Bhera, Lala Ram Lall and his family joined the Hindu and Sikh exodus to India, and eventually settled in Jagadhri.
House 20: This was the new grand house of Lala Anant Ram Kapur’s family. This house, like other houses in the mohalla, was allotted to a Muslim refugee family s from East Punjab in lieu of the property left behind there. Later, a Muslim family of Bhera who had been taking care of the aging Hindu priest of Jhuggi wala Mandir, Bawa ji, bought this house. Bawa ji was one of the very few Hindus who had chosen to stay back in Bhera after the country’s partition. In his gratitude to this Muslim family of Gondals who took care of him in his old age, Bawa ji managed to transfer the Mandir’s extensive property holdings in the name of one of the Gondal family’s sons. The family could then afford to pay the kind of price this house carried. Another member of the family lives in the Jhuggi wala Mandir, now turned into a residence.
House 21: This house mostly remained empty and was used only once by its absentee owners for a family wedding in the mid-1940s.
House 22: This one-storey house had two entrances, one from inside the mohalla and the other from outside in the street from the chowk. It was also one of the two houses that had inner open courtyards. The couple who owned the house had a son, Amar, who had found employment in another town after his high school. His father had been the long-serving Clerk-In charge of the Railway Godown (warehouse) at the railway station.
House 23: This house like houses # 21 and 22 had its front door opening in the mohalla’s recessed lane. The owner of this house was an elderly, childless widow. She lived by herself in the house. She used to serve “doyiaN” (small flat preparations like salted pancakes) to the neighborhood kids on a certain festival day. We children used to call her Dori Massi (deaf auntie). It was in a way good that she could not hear us, for we did not have the manners to address her properly.
House 24: A Bahri family moved from Bathuni to live here. The family had two sons, both students in our high school. One of them, Ved Bahri, was a tough guy and a good wrestler. Their father worked as a munshi (bookkeeper) for Lala Daya Ram Kapur’s shop in Ganj Mandi.
House 25: Our family’s second house, once used for daily Radha Swami Sat-Sang meetings, and later for storage of surplus stuff and pilchhi wood for our tandoor..
House 26: This was a large house of an army doctor (Captain Trehan?). It was once rented by the family of Lala Pars Ram Bahri before they moved to house No.12 inside the gated section of the mohalla.
House 27: It was a house that remained unoccupied for many a year until its ground- floor space was converted and used as the local branch of the Punjab National Bank, and the upper two floors served as the bank manager’s residence.
House 28: This house on the west side of the street from the chowk belonged to Lala Sita Ram and Smt. Raj Rani Malhotra. Besides his land holdings and a bazzaza (cloth, fabrics) shop, Lala ji had the business of commission-based sales of gold to the town’s sarafs (buyers and sellers of gold). When a family came directly to Lala ji’s shop to sell its gold ornaments, he would invite bids from four to five sarafs and then sell the gold to the highest bidder. For this service, he received commission from the family and also a fee for the accurate weighing of the gold on his dharma-kanta (an honest,
calibrated device with accurate weights). His shop was opposite to Lala Ishar Das MehndiaN Wale in Guru Bazaar.
The Malhotras had three sons: one (Amar Nath) from Lala ji’s deceased first wife, and other two (Tirath and Rajinder) from Raj Rani. Jinda died young when he was in his sixth or seventh grade. Shrimati Raj Rani, Jinda’s mother, was the most religious person in the mohalla who used to observe one fast after another and performed most poojas daily, yet death did not spare her young son in his early boyhood. A year or two before the partition, Lala Sita Ram Malhotra, who was much older than his wife Raj Rani ji, also passed away. Raj Rani’s quiet dignity could not conceal her deep pain.
Mohalla as a Market Place for Vendors, Entertainers, and Preachers
Mohalla’s life came alive with the daily arrival of itinerant vendors (chabbri-walas) of prepared snacks who brought their wares at different times by carrying them in big trays on their heads. Most notable among them was Lall (who lived in the neighboring GandhiaN da Mohalla). He brought a large tray of cooked, spicy cholais (garbanzo beans, chick-peas) with pittors (slices of rolled kachalu leaves cooked with a lining of gram-flour paste). One could have an afternoon meal by eating a chapatti or two with Lalls’ cholais. Another visiting vendor was Gopi (Chand) who sold steamed lentil (mungi ki daal) with his customized spices and tamarind chutney. This was a snack in itself. A far lighter snack dispensed by yet another vendor was that of gole-gappas, crisp puffs filled with sour and sweet, spiced water. Gole-gappas were always a favorite draw for the mohalla’s women folks and young girls. A seller of ice cream (kulfi) in summer months was a rage with the mohalla’s boys. Cylindrical containers of frozen kulfi were wrapped in thick woolen blanket-like fabrics to keep it from melting. A mehra used to make his daily round with his venghi (two baskets of wares, each dangling with ropes from each end of a wood shaft carried on his shoulder) to sell pop corns, roasted grams, peanut brittles, rice crispies, murandaas, etc. All these vendors served their stuff in plates made of leaves stitched together with straws. An intriguing practice was that of jhoonga (a free, very small extra serving of the bought stuff demanded by the young buyers and “graciously” granted by the sellers). This free morsel somehow tasted more delectable than the paid portion! Anyway, “Hum ne mana ke kuchh nahin Ghalib, mufat haath aye to bura kaya hai.”
For occasional entertainment, some madaaris (boojo wale) would stage a show of “conjugal” quarrel between a male monkey and a female monkey, the latter adamantly refusing to accompany her “spouse” to her susraaI (in-laws’ house). The male monkey in turn would threaten to beat her up with a stick. Other madaaris (bhalu wale) made their bears dance on two legs. Snake charmers would have their defanged snakes “dance” to the tune (in reality, to the movements) of their biens (a wind instrument). When we grew up, we learned that snakes lack hearing (and musical appreciation) and their dance followed the movements of the snake-charmer’s bein. After a show, audiences threw small coins for these itinerant entertainers.
Once a year in summer, an itinerant troupe of Hindu religious singers from another town would show up in Bhera. Very early one morning, the group would come to our mohalla to sing bhajans with the accompaniment of a harmonium. Such a visit was known as prabhat-pheri (a morning round). The group-singing did wake us up, but their lead bhajan went far beyond that in as much it sought to wean us from a life of sloth and slumber and to attune us to things spiritual:
Utth jaag musafir bhor bhayi, abb ran kahan jo sowat hai
Jo jaagat hai so pawat hai, jo sowat hai so khowat hai
Wake up, O traveler, the dawn has set in; it isn’t night any more for you to slumber
One who is awake, gains; the one who goes on sleeping, loses.
In Urdu and Hindi poetry, the word musafir (traveler) is used as a metaphor for the transient status of a human being, one who is going through the journey of life as a passenger. He has to be watchful. The opening line of another song, “Teri gathari ko laaga chore, musafir jaag zara,” warned the sleeping musafir (traveler) to wake up, because a thief (Time?) was at work to steal from his precious wrapped-bundle of Life.
Mohalla’s Flora and Fauna
The neighborhood’s “flora” was negligible. The mohalla did not have a single tree, not even a peepal tree. The nearest tree was a banyan tree in the Jhuggi Bazaar; some of its branches overhung the back side of Radhika’s one-storey house (House # 8). Some families grew flowering plants of chameli and motia for their fragrance in small planting beds on the roofs of their houses. Most houses also had potted plants of Tulsi and Ni-aaj-bo. The tulsi plant had a sacred status for most Hindus, inclining some of them to worship the plant. It was also considered a panacea for all kinds of ailments. Ni-aaj-bo leaves were believed to possess medicinal properties, but more on the preventive than on the curative side.
When it came to its fauna, there is a lot more to talk about how the mohalla residents treated its animal denizens. There were no adopted cats or dogs as family pets in our neighborhood. Residents’ attitudes toward the stray cats of the mohalla were mixed. In summer, a ubiquitous fixture on the flat-roofs was a piece of furniture called a jaali. It was a small cabinet with wire-mesh sides, a lockable door, and two shelves for overnight storing of pots and pans containing boiled milk and/or yogurt in the making. This cabinet afforded protection from any nocturnal raids by the mohalla’s alley cats who found dairy products hard to resist. Even when a cat was stopped early in its “licking” raid on an unprotected pan of milk, the remaining bulk of the milk was judged as jootha (polluted) and not worthy for human consumption. It was dumped down the drain or poured for a dog. The reason for not letting the cat finish the polluted milk was to avoid reinforcing the animal’s “stealing” behavior. Unlike dogs, cats were shunned as they were considered sneaky and wild. Yet, killing a cat was considered a sin by Hindus; a sin that “required” a dip in Ganga at Hardawar to atone for the transgression (see Note 11). Homeless street animals like cats, monkeys, and cows in big cities are left to fend for themselves, while any attempt to eliminate them by killing is viewed as sinful. Hindu sentiments find the neglect of these animals more benign than the poisoning or butchering them.
The mohalla dogs fared much better. They were offered food leftovers when they called at their patron houses (who can resist their expectant looks). The dogs had little need and skills to sneak into a kitchen to lap up the milk in the family pan. Nursing bitches with puppies were readily shown a special kindness. Most families gave them plenty of food from bread to milk. At the same time, very few parents cared to stop their children from removing the pups from their litters and then abandoning the poor creatures to starve and die.
Four families kept water-buffalos in the mohalla for their milk. Their waste was turned into, and dried as, dung-cakes for cooking fires (surprisingly, making and using dung-cakes with bare hands was not considered a polluting activity!). Each morning a cowherd would take the cattle away to grazing areas outside the town and bring them back in time for the evening milking. Milk was boiled
and served hot in metal glasses to the family members (see Note 12). The last beverage the adults and kids had before going to bed at night was a glass of hot milk. Buttter-milk (lassi) served cold was the favored drink in the mornings.
Epilogue:
Constancy and Change of the Mohalla, its Pre-Partition People and their Customs Sixty years after its Hindu residents had to abandon it, the Mohalla retains its name, DhoanaN da Garha. The retention of original names of the erstwhile Hindu neighborhoods in towns of Bhera’s size is not common in Pakistan. Internet listings of mohalla names for neighboring towns like Miani and Malakwal give no indication of any neighborhoods where Hindus had lived until 1947. Keeping the DhoanaN da mohalla’s original name is all the more impressive when we realize that most of its current residents are the children of the Muslim refugees from the Gurgaon, Rohtak and Karnal side in East Punjab.
In some ways, the neighborhood has kept pace with the times. Most of the occupied houses of the mohalla now have electric and water connections as indicated by the meters installed outside the homes. The mohalla’s entrance galli is paved with asphalt and the open drain that used to run through its middle is gone. Likewise, the central compound is now paved with bricks. A readily noticeable disappearance is that of the khooi (well) that used to be in the center of the mohalla. It has been filled up; its two massive pillars for the bucket-pulley as well as the raised-terrace around the well have been pulled down and levelled. The removal of the khooi has made the compound’s usable area larger and safer for the children to play there. Another missing hallmark is the mohalla’s entrance gate at the end of the galli (see Picture No.1) from the main street to the inner mohalla. Although the big entrance door was seldom locked from inside until the disturbances of 1947, it used to give the mohalla residents the feel and security of a gated neighborhood.
Compared to some of the old neighborhoods of Hindus and Muslims (e.g., LoharaN da mohalla) that are now virtually deserted, the DhoanaN da Garha continues to be a living community. A majority of the houses are occupied and some appear to be well taken care of. Houses # 11 (Ram Tikaya Plattier’s house), #12, # 18, # 19 (Lala Ram Lall Dhawan’s), and #22 have well-maintained exteriors to suggest likely improvements in their interiors as well. However, nine houses out of a total of 28 have fallen into very poor conditions and are no longer inhabitable. Three of these nine houses (# 6, 23 and 24) have totally crumbled into mounds of ruins; another three (# 1, 4, and 5) are in such a bad shape that no one can live in them. Houses #13 and #14 are locked up, and so is the House #28 (Lala Sita Ram Malhotra’s) with its front door half sunk in the silt deposited by a major flood. This account (status-report) is based on the observations and pictures taken by Mr. Kalim Malik who kindly visited the town and DhoanaN da Mohalla (in mid-October, 2007) at my request on his visit to Lahore from New Y
House #7 had lost its second story rooms and kitchen some times before 1978, and now has two ill designed windowless rooms and a kitchen in place of the previous structures on this floor. Picture No. 2 is that of the young owner of the house (# 7), the very house in which we were born and lived. Like us, the gentleman sitting on the front terrace was born and raised in this house. His parents or grandparents had to migrate from the Ambala side. The young owner and his family have furnished the baithak in a good taste (Picture No.3). He was kind enough to let Kalim Malik enter the ground floor and take pictures.
The community of the pre-partition mohalla got widely scattered in India once the train that brought them from Mandi Bahauddin terminated its journey at Amritsar. Many tried to head toward Delhi, others moved to various towns in the East Punjab (then comprised of what are now Punjab, Haryana, and Himachal Pradesh). We know of Lala Daya Ram Kapur’s family settling in Sarsa where his son, Mr. Harbans Lal came to have a successful practice of law. Another advocate from Bhera, Mr. Jodh Singh, also set up his practice there. Lala Anant Ram Kapur family was last known to be staying in a house (evacuee property) in Multani Dhanda in Delhi. His daughter DurgaN Devi’s family and our family were allotted houses in West Patel Nagar in Delhi. BharanwaN Devi and his son Murari Lall once lived in Saharapur for a while. Shanti Devi Malhotra moved from one town to
another with the family of her only child, Darshan, who had become an Inspector of Excise in U.P (then United Provinces, now Uttar Pradesh).
With time, many customs of the West Punjabi Hindus have weakened or disappeared among their new generations. Inter-caste marriages are far more common than what one would expect from the earlier restrictions. Unmarried boys and girls meet openly in Delhi and big towns, and love marriages with parental approval are increasingly common. Now the maanjees eat the wedding dinner (served by bearers and waiters) at the same time with the jaanjees in a rented reception hall (the Hindu janj ghar near the Shish Mahal in Bhera was at one time converted into a police station after the partition). Instead of male baraatees playing the traditional “dandai” on the way to the bride’s mohalla, now both male and female baraatees dance ‘endlessly’ first outside and later inside the reception hall. Most young and middle-aged men in the baraat get drunk. A certain vulgarity is inevitable when the old ways and constraints of yesterday are loosened.
Now, women can and do seek divorce and can realistically hope to get remarried. Sympathetic relatives encourage and help widows to get remarried. Women are gainfully employed and are becoming financially independent. Yet with all these radical changes in the status of Hindu women, the karva choath tradition of fasting and prayers for husband’s longevity remains popular as ever. It must be the existential loneliness of Indian widowhood that sustains the Karva Chauth tradition.
Vegetarianism, too, has lost much of its hold among the younger generations of Punjabi Hindu men. The numbers of restaurants that serve tandoori meats from chickens to shish-kabaabs have multiplied in big Indian cities. In Bhera, the only Hindu restaurant for meals was a vegetarian one. After the partition in Delhi, we saw many Hindus refugees from the NWFP part of Pakistan open non-vegetarian restaurants like Moti Mahal in Darya Ganj and Kaake da Hotel in Connaught Circus.
Outside of India, we have seen the grandsons of Punjabi Hindu refugees taking to hamburgers (with beef patties), because hamburgers are cheaper than fish-burgers at McDonald’s A few Hindu and Sikhs even own franchises of McDonald’s in USA. Centuries old prohibitions and inhibitions against beef have receded significantly. At a free bar in a wedding reception, a young Punjabi Hindu guest asked the bar tender if he had the Beef-Eater Gin to serve him. Noticing an incipient smile on my face, he told me that liquor was liquor, no matter what we choose to call it. He was right, but he had no idea what had prompted me to smile. In the olden days of strict taboo against beef, associating the label of beef with any substance transformed the substance into a veritable beef and rendered it unfit for consumption or even handling by a Hindu. I was reminded of a story that my father once told me. Two Hindu friends bought a goat for its meat. They took the animal to the local butcher, a Muslim, to get it slaughtered. As the butcher was taking the goat to the backroom for slaughtering it, he incidentally asked the Hindu customers as to how much the goat had cost them. The butcher was surprised that they had paid a lot more than a goat would normally cost, and he exclaimed, “Price wise, the animal you have bought is more of cow than a goat!” These words were enough to completely turn off the Hindu customers. They told the butcher that they were no longer prepared to eat the meat of an animal that has been called a cow! In utter disgust, they left the goat with the butcher without asking for any money. After all a God-fearing Hindu would not sell a “cow” for butchering!
Hindu-Muslim inter-dining does not draw any attention any longer. Hindu connoisseurs of fine food had started going to the Jama Masjid area in Delhi in the late 1950s to dine at Karim’s Restaurant for Mughlai meat dishes, and there was no attempt to hide it as used to be the case in earlier times. Muslims are readily invited as guests at one’s home. A few grand-daughters of Punjabi Hindu refugees have married Muslim young men despite their own parents’ hesitation and grandparents’
opposition. Most of these intermarriages lead to girls’ conversion to Islam. There are no longer any communal protests on the part of Hindu community – something that used to be a predictable reaction and deterrent to such marriages until 1960s even in big cities like Delhi
Notes:
- Although these houses on this street were physically outside of the walled mohalla of DhoanaN da Garha, the families living in them were considered part and parcel of the neighbourhood community. The interaction and social bonds between the families inside and outside the mohalla’s gate were no different than those within each set of families. The gate was removed after we left Bhera.
- After his engagement and before his marriage to our sister, our brother-in-law came to meet our family in 1941. Because he was not supposed to see or meet our sister before marriage under the customs then, he could not stay in our house as a guest. There were no hotels in Bhera where we could have put him up. So, our parents arranged a room (with a cot and a chair) in the Gurdawara (the Sikh temple) for his one day stay in Bhera (our family provided his bedding, linen, and towels). We carried his meals in covered thallis (plates) to his room in the Gurdawara from our house.
3: In 2003, my wife and I were invited in New Delhi to join a lunch being given in a fancy Chinese restaurant by the youngest son of a family for his three older brothers and their wives. All brothers including the host were distinguished professionals who had worked and lived abroad. Three brothers were non-vegetarians, and one a strict vegetarian. After the lunch was served and while the host was still eating his chicken, one of the three brothers got up because he had to leave early for another social engagement. His younger brother, the host, got up and extended his hand for a handshake by way of goodbye (the host was to take a return flight home to Dubai later in the evening). To my surprise, the elder brother (who was leaving the lunch before others did) would not extend his hand to shake his host-brother’s hand. The younger brother kept his hand extended for quite some time, but there was no reciprocation. When the elder brother and his wife departed, I asked the present why he did not shake hands with his brother, the host. I was told that the brother who had to leave early was a strict vegetarian who would not touch even his brother’s hand that had held a piece of chicken in it until the hand was washed with soap. Wiping hands with a napkin was not enough.
4: Here is an anecdote I was told by an American sociologist. An English district officer was once visiting a small village in his district in India. He came across a little hut and felt the desire to step in to see what kind of furnishings were inside a hut of that size. The officer’s Indian assistant asked the hut owner for permission for the Sahib to go inside the hut to have a look within. The owner was a poor Brahmin. He was too humble a man to say no to the bada Sahib, and told the assistant that Sahib was most welcome to go in. The Sahib took off his shoes and went barefooted inside the hut. After a few minutes of inspection, the Sahib came out and thanked the owner for letting him in. After the Sahib and his assistant had left, the first thing the poor owner did was to thoroughly mop (pocha) the floor to purify the ground that the meat-eating Sahib had defiled with his feet!
5: After the partition when all of its Hindu residents were gone and replaced by Muslim refugee families from East Punjab, the mohalla retained and continues to keep its original name - Lala Jaamunu Shah must have been in his nineties when he passed away. In summer months, he used to sleep in the open on a cot in front of his house; he could not climb two sets of stairs to get to the top floor where other members of his family slept. In the summer evenings he used to regale his great grandchildren and kids from other families with his spell-binding stories. His grandsons used
to give a ghutaana (gentle-squeeze; massage without oil) session to his limbs with their hands, followed by a session of latardnaN (pressing the legs of the person who is lying flat on bed, with your one foot while standing with the other leg on the bed). - The Ram Leela processions were organized by Bhai Parma Nand. A big house in the vicinity of Chhiti Pulli wala darwaaza was the place where both boys and men dressed up as Ramayana characters from Lord Rama to Ravana, from members of the Hanuman saina (army) to hordes of Rakshashas. The processions started from this house and after a display-march through many a street and bazaar ended at the Ram Leela ground (maidaan) off the circular road near the NangiaN wala Mandir. Here the characters in the procession would stage the day’s episodes of Ramayana. Two processions were special: one was known as Raja Ram Chander ki Baraat which was joined by a large number of horse-riding baraatis; the other was the splendorous procession of Ram Chander, Sita, Lakshman, Bharat, and Shatrugan riding on a horse-driven rath through the town’s main bazaars on the day of the Lord Rama return to Ayodhia. The daily enactments of the Ramayana stories lasted for about two weeks, culminating into the celebration of Dussehra with its explosive burning of the effigies of Ravana, Kumbh-Karan, and Megh Nath. People used to gather on the street sides to watch the daily processions of dancing characters, and thousands of Hindus, and Sikhs from Bhera and its vicinity showed up to celebrate the festival of Dussehra.
On the day of Diwali, which commemorates the return of Lord Rama, Sita, and Lakshman to Ayodhia from their 14-year long exile, rows of earthen lamps were lit in all Hindu houses, shops, and temples. Bhai Parma Nand decorated his shop in Guru Bazaar with myriad electric lights and fancy gadgets like electric toy trains, drawing crowds of viewers to watch the fun spectacles. Unlike in Delhi where individuals explode their fireworks on the day of Diwali, Lohri and Dussehra were the days in Bhera for using firecrackers like pataakha, popats, and golay; missiles such as nadriyaN, machhandars,and hawaiaN in order of increasing power, sparklers like phul-jariaN, annaars, and mehtaabiaN. We used to go the mohalla of darookuts (local manufacturers of fireworks) on the circular road between Ganj wala and Chak wala darwazas to buy our stocks of fireworks (aatish-bazzi) for the occasion. The Punjabi word for firing or igniting an “explosive” was chhodo (which literally means: to leave, release, unleash) as in “pataaka chhodo,” “gola chhodo,” “mehtaabi chhodo,” etc. We used to carry a gul (a kind of wick that burned slowly at one end) to ignite our fire-crackers.
8: Our family did not own either of these two houses. It made no sense for our father to divert the sale proceeds of his house in Haranpur to buy a house which cost a pittance to rent. Because we did not own a house in Pakistan, we did not file any compensation claim with India’s Ministry of Rehabilitation. Refugees who left their properties (lands, houses, and shops) in Pakistan filed claims for the lost properties. They were partially compensated by the government through allotment of Muslim evacuee property or by allowing the approved amount of a claim as payment towards the purchase of newly constructed quarters and houses. The quarters and houses were built by the government on a huge scale in colonies for refugees like Patel Nagar, Rajinder Nagar, Moti Nagar, Lajpat Nagar, Malvia Nagar, etc. in Delhi. Later in the sixties, when the Indian government decided to sell these tenements to the refugee renters, some of them who could not pay the purchase price had their homes auctioned. The most sordid aspect of those auctions was that the auctioneers brought with them a mirasi (drummer) to beat his dhol (drum) at the auction site to draw crowds to the auction. The poor family would lose its face to all before it lost the roof over its head by the auction!
9: Late in 1948, Sarna and our younger sister met in the Sipri Bazaar locality of Jhansi where our eldest brother, Prem Sarup, was living at the time and Sarna’s husband was posted as Sub-Inspector Incharge of the Sipri Bazaar Police Station.
10: Distribution of matthai (sweets and salty matthies) on joyous occasions like a wedding was and remains a social-exchange custom that tends to create and sustain different degrees of bonds between the giving family and receiving families. The amount of matthai gifted to a family indicates the level of relationship desired by the donor family. It also obligates the recipient family to reciprocate when it celebrates a marriage, an engagement, or a birth in its family. It is a universal institution of social integration among Punjabis of all religions. - After the country’s partition when the author went to see the Chandni-Chowk area in Delhi for the first time, he was surprised to find there a street named, Koocha BillimraaN (the street of cat killers). Far more shocking in a different way was the fate of the old haveli of Mirza Ghalib in this street which was being used at that time as a coal and burning-wood depot by a Hindu refugee to cater to his mostly local Muslim customers
- Steaming hot milk was served in metal glasses without handles. Just like the pans in which the milk was boiled, the serving glasses got hot and had to be held with a cloth napkin (pona). Neither the milk pans (pateelai) nor the drinking glasses had insulated handles to save one’s hands from burning. Generations passed but no one thought of giving either utensil an insulated handle. And, no one considered using tea cups (with handles) in place of metal glasses for serving hot milk. Thinking of and adopting a better (safer, more convenient, or efficient) way of doing things was essentially alien to our traditional society