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&\;T Faridabad.
Editor's note: This is the first of several stories related to the life of the Bhatla family before and after the Partition of India in 1947.
In 1930, my father, Sakhir Chand, became the Kar Dar (estate manager) for Ahmadyar Khan. Mr Khan owned more than 500 acres of land in Kot KhanVillage, in District Jhang in West Punjab, which became a part of Pakistan in 1947.
uch of the land was by the side of the river Jhelum. It was fertile land, irrigated by the Persian water wheel, an ancient system of lifting water from open wells. My father's job involved a lot of running around to supervise everything that had happened on the estate. In addition, he had to co-ordinate all court cases related to the land and its owner. My father and his forefathers had earned and lived on this arrangement for more than a hundred years.
