Life Back Then

Anand has been a print and broadcast journalist in Canada. His translations of Hindi fiction into English have been published by Penguin India and Rupa Books. He has also translated Canadian fiction writers, including the 2013 Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro into Hindi. He divides his time between Montreal, Canada and Lucknow, India.

The King of Rock n Roll was a swarthy teenager who couldn’t have been over 5 feet 6 inches tall.

His claim to fame was a crest on his blue blazer that showed a guitar and curlicues that said, "King of Rock n Roll."

If you went to an English-medium (or convent) school in India in 1950s and 1960s, you'd know what kind of blazer I am talking about. These blazers with crests of schools have now become very common in India. Every school with the name of a saint (sometimes, imaginary saint) attached to it has a school dress with a blazer and a tie. The blazer is worn only in the winter, but the tie, sometimes looking like a twisted rope, is de rigueur.

No one had heard the King sing, or seen him play the guitar. No one knew if he could even play the instrument. In 1960, rock n roll had caught the fancy of teenagers in India as mainly dance music\; it was its nascent stage and the genre that we know today as rock music was yet to come.

Harish Malhotra, MD, is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. He is the past chair of department of psychiatry of Overlook hospital, Summit. He has been practicing psychiatry since 1977. His book Metaphors of Healing is available from Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, including Kindle and Nook\; see below for an excerpt from this book.

Between 1953 and 1956, I lived in Aligarh, a town in Uttar Pradesh, India. My father was a manager in the Central Bank of India. As he moved to different towns in India, so did his family. It exposed me to different cultures.

As we landed in Aligarh, we heard the locals jokingly say that four things made Aligarh a remarkable place - miyan, machhar, mitti, makkhi.

Anand has been a print and broadcast journalist in Canada. His translations of Hindi fiction into English have been published by Penguin India and Rupa Books. He has also translated Canadian fiction writers, including the 2013 Nobel Prize winner Alice Munro into Hindi. He divides his time between Montreal, Canada and Lucknow, India.

Not many people listened to western pop music in the 950s and 60s in Lucknow. Those who did were either Anglo-Indians and Indian Christians, or students of the schools run by the missionaries. I was in the latter group.

I have a very clear memory as to what got me interested in western pop. It was the song Bernadine from the 1957 movie with the same name. By this time, I and some other teenagers in Lucknow had also discovered rock and roll through the hit song Rock Around the Clock by Bill Haley. Its copy Lal lal gaal jaan pai he lagoo in the 1957 Hindi movie Mr. X was probably the first desi rock n roll song.

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 third, and final, part of a three-part story. The first part of the story is available here, and the third part is available here. Part 1 ended with the Sethis leaving Cochin (now Kochi) on a ship for Europe. Part 2 ended with Mr. Sethi getting a job.

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.

My wife gets a job

Harish Malhotra, MD, is a diplomat of the American Board of Psychiatry and Neurology, a Distinguished Life Fellow of the American Psychiatric Association, and a clinical associate professor of psychiatry at Rutgers Medical School in Newark, New Jersey. He is the past chair of department of psychiatry of Overlook hospital, Summit. He has been practicing psychiatry since 1977. His book Metaphors of Healing is available from Amazon and Barnes and Nobles, including Kindle and Nook\; see below for an excerpt from this book.

My father always brought his family with him to whichever city he was assigned by his employer, Central Bank of India. When we moved from Patiala to Meerut, I was admitted in the Government High School there.

As I stepped into sixth grade, the class teacher, Mr. Mathura Prasad, took an instant liking on this "transferee." He made me the class monitor .As I was thinking about the "leadership status" that Mr. Prasad tossed me into, I think that he liked me because I was one of the better-dressed students. My father was a bank manager, and I belonged to the upper-middle class. My classmates were children of labourers, peons, or clerks. There was noticeable contrast between the quality of their clothing between mine.

Dr. Juginder Luthra completed his MBBS from Medical College, Amritsar in 1966, and his MS in Ophthalmology from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI), Chandigarh in 1970. He moved to Nottingham, UK along with his wife, Dolly — a dentist from the Amritsar Dental College — and a daughter, Namita. They were blessed with twin daughters, Rohini and Rashmi, in May 1975. The family moved to Weirton, West Virginia in June 1975. Now their three loving daughters are married to wonderful sons-in-law, and Dolly and Juginder are blessed with six grandchildren.

There was a flurry of activities all over the house.

"Is the suitcase ready, did you pack enough mango pickle and praanthe with cooked dry potatoes placed between them? Are your shoes polished, do you have enough money for the journey? Do you have Dr. Chitkara's (Pitaji's cousin) address, at whose house you will be staying for the first 3 or 4 days?"

The last one was planned to avoid the notorious, scary ritual of ragging which every new student received from the seniors.

"Make sure your shoes match\; one black and one brown will look really funny. Don't stick your head out of the moving train, you will get a coal particle fly into your eye. Above all, no more mischief\; you are a big boy now."

Dr. Juginder Luthra completed his MBBS from Medical College, Amritsar in 1966, and his MS in Ophthalmology from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI), Chandigarh in 1970. He moved to Nottingham, UK along with his wife, Dolly — a dentist from the Amritsar Dental College — and a daughter, Namita. They were blessed with twin daughters, Rohini and Rashmi, in May 1975. The family moved to Weirton, West Virginia in June 1975. Now their three loving daughters are married to wonderful sons-in-law, and Dolly and Juginder are blessed with six grandchildren.

When I was growing up, in the 1950s, summers were extremely hot in Panipat.

At that time, Panipat was a Tehsil in district Karnal, Punjab, and is now a district by itself in Haryana, India. The deep chill in December and January made us all pray for warmer weather. Be careful what you ask for! It would start warming up in February\; by May and June, the temperature would reach 100 degrees F and stay there, with bright sunshine glaring down every day.

Dr. Juginder Luthra completed his MBBS from Medical College, Amritsar in 1966, and his MS in Ophthalmology from the Post Graduate Institute of Medical Education and Research (PGI), Chandigarh in 1970. He moved to Nottingham, UK along with his wife, Dolly — a dentist from the Amritsar Dental College — and a daughter, Namita. They were blessed with twin daughters, Rohini and Rashmi, in May 1975. The family moved to Weirton, West Virginia in June 1975. Now their three loving daughters are married to wonderful sons-in-law, and Dolly and Juginder are blessed with six grandchildren.

I grew up surrounded by sights, smells, and sounds of Panipat from 1947 to 1959, when pursuit of higher education took me to Government College, Rupar, Punjab.

Partition and its aftermath

"Khuda ka vaasta tumhen. Aap ko apne bachchon ki kasam. (For God's sake. Swear upon your children). Please put your sword back. I have two wives and five small children to take care of," stuttered the man, wearing a round white cap, pleading for his life. His trembling body, the betrayed fear of imminent death in his eyes, the hands clinging to the feet of a man with three white lines painted across his forehead, begging for mercy.

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.

Apology- I wish I could apologize to him! How to apologize for something that happened sixty five years ago?.

That means I was not more than eight or nine years old when I committed a horrible act of extortion. But the fact that I think about it and have thought about it for years – that has to mean something, right? And I seem to remember most of the events related to the incident as if they were happening on a television screen now. Let it be known that there is no way for me to apologize to the person who would be now my age, and unknown to me for the last sixty five years.