Delhi

Mahen Das studied mechanical engineering at IIT BHU. He retired from Shell International, in 2002, after 43 years of work in their petroleum refineries and gas plants. He practiced as an independent consultant until 2009. His learning and experience has been acquired from hands-on work, at all levels of asset management, at 40 sites in 22 countries. This includes Process Management, Maintenance Management, Engineering Management and Optimisation of reliability, Integrity and availability of plants. Mahen is a co-author of Case Studies in Maintenance & Reliability. He plays golf and bridge.

Editor’s note: The author’s memories of Lahore 1937-1945 are available here. http://www.indiaofthepast.org/mahen-das/life-back-then/my-memories-lahore-1937-1945

Our home and daily life

In 1946 Papaji was transferred to his company, The Delhi Cloth and General Mills (DCM), headquarters, Delhi. We moved there in April of that year. We were given accommodation in the company officer’s housing compound at Rohtak Road, Karol Bagh.

Mahatma Gandhi's Asthi, (the Indian name for the ashes removed from the funeral pyre), was conveyed by a special train from Delhi to Allahabad for immersion at the Sangam, the confluence of the Ganges, Jamna, and the mythical Saraswati rivers. The train left Delhi at 6.30 a.m. on February 11 (Editor's note: the year is 1948), and reached Allahabad the next day at 9 a.m. The rake of the special consisted of five freshly-painted third class bogies, of which the centre coach had been modified suitably to carry the copper urn containing the Mahatma's ashes.

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 life after he left Mysore in 1956.

Jatinder Sethi was born in Lyallpur, now Faislabad, in pre-Independence India. He finished his M.A. (English) from Delhi University in 1956, and went off to London to study Advertising in 1958. He passed his Membership Exam of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (M.I.P.A) in1965, and joined Rallis India in Bombay. Later, for over 20 years, he worked for the advertising agency Ogilvy &amp\; Mather. Now retired, he helps his son in his ad agency in Delhi.

Editor's note: Another version of this article first appeared at http://www.apnaorg.com/articles/sethi-2/

Recently, I bumped into some very old college friends while roaming in the inner circle of Connaught Place (CP), New Delhi. More than 50 years ago, we used to stroll around CP after spending hours in the India Coffee House discussing everything under the sun. I had left Delhi in 1958, and had recently relocated myself in nearby Gurgaon after about 50 years. We decided to have dinner together in Delhi ‘O' Delhi restaurant in the Habitat Centre.

Jatinder Sethi was born in Lyallpur, now Faislabad, in pre-Independence India. He finished his M.A. (English) from Delhi University in 1956, and went off to London to study Advertising in 1958. He passed his Membership Exam of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (M.I.P.A) in1965, and joined Rallis India in Bombay. Later, for over 20 years, he worked for the advertising agency Ogilvy &amp\; Mather. Now retired, he helps his son in his ad agency in Delhi.

Editor’s note: This is the first part of a three-part story. The second part of the story is available here (under preparation), and the third part is available here Under preparation).

Preface

This is a story of a part of our journey through life. It is a journey of a couple, from student days through five decades of life together and work, and finally a retired life.

This part will only highlight the adventure of a young, newly married couple, who travelled with hardly any money in the pocket. And landing in London without knowing a soul in that foreign land. It is more a journey through life of two people, who fell in love, without realizing or knowing what the future will unfold. Or hold. Well, "Love is blind", and we were blind. But we will not do it again.

Jatinder Sethi was born in Lyallpur, now Faislabad, in pre-Independence India. He finished his M.A. (English) from Delhi University in 1956, and went off to London to study Advertising in 1958. He passed his Membership Exam of The Institute of Practitioners in Advertising (M.I.P.A) in1965, and joined Rallis India in Bombay. Later, for over 20 years, he worked for the advertising agency Ogilvy &amp\; Mather. Now retired, he helps his son in his ad agency in Delhi.

Editor's note: This is the second part of a three-part story. The first part of the story is available here, and the third part is available here Under preparation). Part 1 ended with the Sethis leaving Cochin (now Kochi) on a ship for Europe.

Preface

This is a story of a part of our journey through life. It is a journey of a couple, from student days through five decades of life together and work, and finally a retired life.

The sea voyage in a lower deck

Born in 1941, Vinod was brought up and educated in Amritsar. He attended Government Medical College, and subsequently trained as a surgeon at PGI, Chandigarh. He left for USA in 1969, and retired in 2003 as Director of Critical Care Services at a teaching hospital in Michigan. Married with two grown sons, he continues to visit India at least once a year.

In 1955, as a fourteen-year old, I was thrilled at the prospect of going to Bombay (now Mumbai) on a school-sponsored trip.

I was excited by the prospect of travelling almost a thousand miles from Amritsar, a small town in north India, to the glamour of Bombay, the movie capital of India. There were legions of stories of how actors and actresses had been discovered after arriving penniless in Bombay.

So it was natural for me to brag about it to my friends and other people in the neighbourhood.

Chaman Lal's mother heard about my planned trip. She talked to my mother because she had an interest in Delhi, which was on the route to Bombay.

Kanwarjit Singh Malik was born in Rawalpindi in 1930. His family moved to India at the time of Partition in 1947. He joined the Flying Club in Jalandhar, and was later selected by the Indian Air Force. After the retirement from the Air Force, he served as a senior captain in Air India and Air Lanka. He got married in 1961, and now lives in Mumbai with his wife.

Pre-Partition life

My family had lived in Rawalpindi since the time of my great-grandfather, Malik Khazan Singh, who passed away in 1899 after amassing a large amount of property.

My father, Malik Mukhbain Singh, was a barrister, who had studied Law in the UK. He suffered from polio when he was 2 or 3 years old. He was treated in the UK while he was studying Law, but his condition did not improve. He was fitted with a brace, which he used to wear while going outside, and always walked with a stick.

My father and his younger brother Sardar Jaswant Singh Malik were the sons of my grandfather's first wife. My grandfather had two sons who were 17 and 12 years old when my grandmother passed away. Then, my grandfather remarried, and had three sons from my step grandmother, who passed away after Partition.