Life Back Then

R P Bhatla is an AMIE (India) Engineer in Civil Engineering. He retired in 1994 as Deputy General Manager from Engineers India Ltd. He continued to work as General Manager, Triune Projects Ltd., General Manager Enron India, General Manager, PLL/Simon Carves India Ltd, and Advisor L&amp\;T Faridabad.

Editor’s note: This is the third of several stories related to the life of the Bhatla family before and after the Partition of India in 1947. The first story is available here.

When India became independent in August 1947, the lives of the entire Bhatla brotherhood of about 25 families at Kot Khan Village in Jhang district, Pakistan were destroyed. All of us were forced to move and become refugees in India, where we became scattered in different places. 

Editor's note: The story of the family's move is available here.

R P Bhatla is an AMIE (India) Engineer n Civil Engineering. He retired in 1994 as Deputy General Manager from Engineers India Ltd. He continued to work as General Manager, Triune Projects Ltd., General Manager Enron India, General Manager, PLL/Simon Carves India Ltd, and Advisor L&amp\;T Faridabad.

Editor’s note:This is the last of four stories related to the life of the Bhatla family before and after the Partition of India in 1947. The first story, about life in pre-Partition Pakistan, is available here. The story of the family's forced move from Pakistan to India is available here. The third story, about the family's struggle to recover from Partition is available here .

I passed my matriculation examination in 1954 from K R S D B High School, Rae Kote. I stood first in school. The students were informed that some professors from Khalsa College Gurusar Sudhar would be visiting the school soon after the results were announced to meet students interested in higher education.

Editor's note: This story describes India's first commercial train journey. However, according to http://www.irfca.org/docs/history/india-first-railways.html trains were used prior to this for hauling cargo.

The Indian Government has released two postage stamps that commemorate this event.

The above stamp was issued in 1953. It purports to show the engine used in 1853, but this contested here http://webspace.webring.com/people/md/dakshina_kan_pa/art15/railstamp.htm

The above stamp was issued in 1976. The term GIP refers to the Great Indian Peninsular Railway Company, which owned and operated the train. The postage stamp shows the engine used in 1853.

The following report is from an Australian newspaper, apparently relying on a newspaper published from Mumbai called Bombay Gazette. A detailed search failed to find a news report in the Times, London, and the New York Times.

A.H. Somjee received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the London School of Economics. He is a charter member of the Simon Fraser University, Canada, where he is also an Emeritus Professor of Political Science. He has taught at the University of Baroda, the London School of Economics, University of Durham, and the National University of Singapore. He was also appointed as an Associate Fellow at the Queen Elizabeth House, Oxford University, and was invited to Harvard University, several times, as a Visiting Scholar.

India’s Princely States are all but forgotten. But some of us still remember them for the simple reason that they did try to make life different for their inhabitants. I had the privilege to live in three different Princely States, all in the northwest of India.

They were the Holkar State of Indore, Udaipur State of Rajasthan, and Baroda State of Gujarat. My entire life in India was spent in these three states. I took my graduate education in the U.K., and migrated to Canada at a mature age of forty years.

Bapu Satyanarayana, born 1932 in Bangalore, retired as Chief Engineer, Ministry of Surface Transport. At present, he is the presiding arbitrator of the Dispute Adjudication Board appointed by the National Highway Authority of India. He lives in Mysore, and enjoys writing for various newspapers and magazines on a variety of subjects, including political and civic issues.

T. Narasipur

In 1939, when I was around seven years old, my father was the manager of Mysore Silk Filatures, and posted at T. Narasipur, a small town in what was then the Princely State of Mysore. I was studying in a primary school.

T. Narasipur was a place where the rivers Cauvery and Kapila joined. It was considered as the Sangam (confluence) of three rivers including the legendary invisible Spatica Sarovara, just like the Triveni Sangam of three rivers Ganga, Yamuna and underground stream Saraswathi at Allahabad. At Allahabad, the Kumbh mela festival is observed once in 12 years, with lakhs of people taking a ceremonial bath on the auspicious day. No such ritual was observed at Sangam in T. Narasipur till recently. What I remember about two rivers is that while the Cauvery was sparkling, at the place where Kapila joined we could see a clear line of demarcation and, in comparison, the Kapila's waters were darkish.

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's second not-for-sale book of his memories, Self-Portrait: The Story of My life, 2012. This website has several excerpts from his first not-for-sale book A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.This story is the first of three sequential stories about his early years.

Preface

I was born before penicillin, television, Xerox and contact lenses. There were no credit cards, laser beams or ball-point pens. We had never heard of FM radios, tape decks and electric typewriters.

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's second not-for-sale book of his memories, Self-Portrait: The Story of My life, 2012. This website has several excerpts from his first not-for-sale book A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.This is the second of three sequential stories about his early years. The first story is available here.

My father had to move again from Mysore to Doddaballapur, near Bangalore. He decided to leave the family behind in Mysore so that the children's education was not disturbed and preferred to take me with him. I was waiting to join the high school. In Doddaballapur, my father arranged with a local ‘mess' run by a Palaghat Iyer for our meals. He was an old man with a flowing beard.

T.S. Nagarajan (b.1932) is a noted photojournalist whose works have been exhibited and published widely in India and abroad. After a stint with the Government of India as Director of the Photo Division in the Ministry of Information, for well over a decade Nagarajan devoted his life to photographing interiors of century-old homes in India, a self-funded project. This foray into what constitutes the Indianness of homes is, perhaps, his major work as a photojournalist.

Editor's note: This story is reproduced, with permission, from Mr. Nagarajan's second not-for-sale book of his memories, Self-Portrait: The Story of My life, 2012. This website has several excerpts from his first not-for-sale book A Pearl of Water on a Lotus Leaf &amp\; Other Memories, 2010.

This is the third of three sequential stories about his early years. The first story is available here and the second story is available here.

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