By Anju Kaur - Ajeet Singh has led many lives. In this, his last life, he spends long hours challenging his mind. The challenges are not as awesome or as tragic as they used to be, but they keep him going.

He spent his entire life in the design and engineering management of great structures on two continents. Those who worked with him recognized the brilliance of his mind.

At 80, his mind is still as sharp as ever. It remembers the past vividly, it recalls measurements with accuracy and it learns new things quickly. But it is a rare mind that also has a conscience.

Ajeet now lives in a modest townhouse and takes care of his beloved wife of 50 years, Joginder. Love and responsibility have always been inseparable for him. But the mundane activities of hospice-like care-giving and the rut of retirement becomes too much for his mind to bear. Sometimes he feels that if the mind stopped creating, the body would fall apart.

That is why he spends every free moment in his basement office. It is his favorite place – everything is there. All of his records, documents, drawings, books, music and photographs are there, safely kept in protective files, carefully placed in boxes and neatly stacked on shelves.

On the wall are his prized possessions – all the degrees and certificates he had earned during decades of learning. For what use was a brilliant mind if it didn’t learn?

But now, as his life is nearing the end, his mind has become restless. It dreams of things it hadn’t thought of for a long time. It had experienced so much horror. It had created so much beauty. There was one last thing it needed to experience before the end.

Ironically, it will take him to the beginning one more time.

LAHORE CANTONMENT

His first life, his childhood, was a good life. It was the era of the British Raj. He was brought up in a well-to-do family in the Lahore Cantonment, the nicest area in Lahore where the locals lived and worked alongside British army personnel.

The family owned 32 houses and shops. The properties had belonged to his mother’s family. She, Ram Piari, was the only one left to inherit it when her mother died. Ajeet’s parents moved to the Lahore estate from Kashmir to help her manage the properties.

In Kashmir, his father, Harnam Singh, had been the secretary of the Jammu and Kashmir municipalities. His grandfather had been the accountant of Maharaja Pratap Singh of Kashmir. Five of Ajeet’s brothers and sisters were born there.

Life was full of pomp and show, but family responsibility had brought them to Lahore. It was 1905.

Ajeet’s father became a contractor and supplied fodder to the military. Money was good but happiness eluded them. His father went to fight under the British army in World War I, only to come home and lose both his sons, 9 and 13, to an epidemic. His two older daughters died shortly after, during childbirth, leaving behind four baby girls.

Ajeet never knew those brothers or sisters. He was not born yet.

His parents had two more boys and four more girls. Ajeet was the last of 11 children. It was 1927.

A PRIVILEDGED CHILDHOOD

As a child, Ajeet barely knew his parents. They were very busy. His sisters took care of him and he became especially attached to the youngest sister, also named Joginder, who was two-and-a-half years older than him.

“We were the rebels,” he said. They were the only two kids who wanted a higher education and eventually married outside their cast - Sood.

Through fourth grade, Ajeet had a tutor who taught him everything. He would take young Ajeet to the local mosque to learn Urdu. His father taught him Punjabi and instilled in him the teachings of his faith.

Lahore was a central location to many historical gurdwaras (Sikh place of worship). And Ajeet visited all of them – except Nankana Sahib – with his family.

The only brother Ajeet had known was Mohinder, who was fifteen years older. Education was not his thing. But Mohinder’s athletic abilities got him recruited into the British army during World War II. He barely survived.

When Mohinder returned home, a British colonel set him up with a job for life. He was made secretary of the Lawrence Royal Military School in Sanawar. It was located on top of its own hill among the Simla Hills.

“All the royal-family Britishers, not the Tommys, were studying there while their parents were serving the British government to rule India,” Ajeet remembers.

At the end of the long and winding road leading to the school was a sign that read: “Not a thoroughfare. Indians and dogs not allowed.”

“It was such an insult, I tell you. And that’s where my brother lived,” Ajeet said. Still, he has some very fond memories of his brother. He often stayed in his brother’s bungalow during summer vacations, a break from the hazards of attending school in Lahore.

Ajeet was always sick during the school year. A bout of malaria in high school left his parents thinking that he going to die. But his doctor, Raghbir Singh, saved his life.

Ajeet had always been impressed by the way Singh cured people. But this particular time was somewhat of turning point in his life.

“It was beautiful how he would wash his hands, look at you, look at your eyes, feel your pulse, give you medicine and you would get alright,” Ajeet remembers.

“I thought that when I grow up, I would be a doctor. It was my life ambition.”

Ajeet had missed an entire year of school. But he was able to pass a comprehensive exam so he would not have to be held back. He went on to graduate with his class, with honors in the first division. He was 16. It was 1943.

When it came time for college, Ajeet’s father told him there was no need to study further. Sending children to college was a big concern for his parents. Their experience was that kids who go to school get sick and die.

Ajeet had already spent much of his adolescent years being sick. He had jaundice, dysentery, typhoid – and the malaria. His sisters were always praying for him.

Besides, the family was well off and Ajeet would have a share in the properties some day.

But Ajeet did not understand. Both his father and his grandfather had diplomas from Punjab University, back when a college education was rare. They were known to be well-learned men in their community. The need for education was in Ajeet’s blood.

Desperate, Ajeet went to ask his pooji (father’s cousin) for help. She was a headstrong woman and a teacher.

“Education is my life - I can’t live without it,” he told her. She was furious. She got on a horse and buggy and went to talk to her brother. And he listened. She always had a way with words.

Ajeet and his sister went to college, separate colleges. Education was not co-ed back then. Joginder stayed healthy and went on to get a degree in art and music. Ajeet stayed sick and enrolled in the Sikh National College, three miles from home. He nearly lost an arm to gangrene in the second year.

College campuses were growing tense in those days. There was much protest against the British. Students would raise the national flag and march for India’s independence. Many were arrested.

But Ajeet’s education was off to a great start. He was on the medical track.

That would all change three months later. His advisor, Jagit Singh, a professor of mathematics, liked to quiz his students. On one such occasion, he wrote a math problem on the chalkboard and asked each student to come solve it. Ajeet was the only one who figured it out.

“How come I have not seen you in any of the mathematics classes?” Ajeet recalls Prof. Singh asking. He replied: “Because, sir, I am a medical student.”

That astonished his advisor. He slapped his hand on his forehead and though out loud, “Such a brilliant mathematics student, and he is in the medical line? Says who?”

A couple of days later, Prof. Singh showed up at Ajeet’s house. That astonished Ajeet. His advisor had come to talk his father into changing Ajeet's line of study - from medicine to engineering. Ajeet’s father agreed to everything. And just like that, his life ambition was gone.

Ajeet didn’t question his father. It had only been a few months since his pooji went to fight the education battle for him. He was now on the engineering track and Prof. Singh was his teacher. He paid special attention to Ajeet. He taught the old-fashioned way – tough.

“You will shine as an engineer,” he told Ajeet.

Two years later, the job market became grim.

“I had to think of the best, but prepare for the worst,” Ajeet recalls. The Punjab government was looking to recruit 100 overseers to manage engineering projects for the state. It was an open competition that required passing several tests. If accepted, he would have to give up his bachelor’s program. It was the summer of 1946.

Ajeet learned how to type and worked as a clerk. He attended test preparatory classes in the morning, worked in the afternoon and studied in the evening. He earned money to pay for the classes and gave the rest to his parents. They were doing fine, but extra cash always helped.

All his studying paid off. He passed the tests and was given a two-year engineering scholarship to study at the Punjab Government Engineering School in Rasool, about 180 miles northwest of Lahore.

His parents realized how important education was to their son. They didn’t try to stop him anymore. His mother, who was recovering from a serious head injury, went to see him off at the railway station on a cold December day. That meant the world to Ajeet. At 19, he was going to study away from home for the first time.

PARTITION

India was becoming restless. Indian soldiers began turning against the British in the front lines of WWII. Subash Chandra Bose formed the Indian National Army and promoted violence in the fight for independence. Mohandas Karamchand Gandhi was drawing world attention with his massive non-violent protests.

Political and military pressures reached critical mass and the British got the message that it was the time to leave. Word spread that they would divide the country on the basis of religion.

When Ajeet came home during a break in April, he saw his city falling apart. Perhaps the cantonment was a bit safer because some British army people were still there. But a civil war was underway in much of Punjab.

Fires were burning at night and random gunshots were heard everywhere. Preparations were underway for Partition, four months away. Ajeet saw how the people of Lahore were setting up collections in the streets for knives, blades and hatchets. In other places there were collections for sticks, poles and wooden handles. This was all happening in broad daylight, for everyone to see.

The British would divide the northwest part of the country. The Ravi River would be the line of demarcation and divide the state of Punjab, which had been a Sikh kingdom until the death of Maharaja Ranjit Singh in 1839, when the British snatched it. The east bank would become India, a Hindu country. The west bank would become Pakistan, a Muslim country. The Sikhs were caught in the middle.

During negotiations between the British Raj, Jawaharlal Nehru, a Hindu, Mohammed Ali Jinnah, a Muslim, and Baldev Singh, a Sikh, Nehru and Jinnah would not agree to a united country. So the British gave them what they wanted. Nehru promised Singh autonomy for Punjab if it became a part of India. He agreed, against the wishes of most of the Sikhs. The plan did not take into account the fate of a large Sikh population living in Punjab.

Lahore was east of the Ravi River and would be in India. Ajeet and his family thought they were safe. Duty-bound and dedicated to education, Ajeet went back to Rasool.

As the months went by, the atmosphere became more and more charged. The principal of the college, a British man named Blake, thought he could keep his students safe. But they were very afraid, sleeping in their clothes, ready to flee. Unable to get police protection, Blake dismissed the college. It was June 1947.

The situation was now openly dangerous. Ajeet and two of his classmates sneaked onto railway cars carrying livestock to Lahore. At his stop in Lahore, the violence was palpable.

“If I hadn’t run into a friend of mine, a Muslim hockey player from the Sikh National College, I don’t know what would have happened to me,” he recalls. He helped Ajeet get a horse and buggy and escorted him home.

Ajeet’s parents were waiting for him. Two of his sisters, who still lived at home, were sent away earlier to live with his brother in Sanawar, still in India. The other sisters, who were married, had moved safely to India.

For two weeks he spent restless nights listening to the sounds of bullets whirling like a hailstorm from the sky. Then his father told him, “My heart is not happy. Please take us away from here.” His mother did not want to leave. This was her parent’s home.

They packed seven suitcases, everything they thought they might need for a temporary departure – clothes, important papers and documents. A Muslim friend had offered money for their properties, but they refused. They were sure they would be back.

One of their Muslim tenants and friend, Nazir Ahmed, hired a large horse and buggy, loaded their suitcases and escorted them to the railway station. There were hoards of people there on that hot summer’s day.

Ajeet managed to get his parents into the train, but he was pushed away. As it started to move, he managed to hang on to a handle and footboard on the outside, many cars back. Nazir waived to him from the crowd and gestured that all seven suitcases were in the baggage car.

Once the train crossed the imaginary border and stopped in Amritsar, 30 miles east, Ajeet found his parents and brought them some water. They sat together on their way to Sanawar to stay with his brother. It was July 1947.

A couple of days before Partition, Nehru, who wanted Kashmir, a wealthy region and his birth place, bargained to move the border east of the Ravi River. All of Lahore was now in Pakistan and many of the unsuspecting people, who stayed behind thinking they would be in India, were slaughtered. It was August 17, 1947.

The next day, when Ajeet and his father went into town, they saw the headlines in the newspaper. Ajeet thought of all the family pictures they left hanging on the walls. Everything they had left behind was now lost.

“So we said goodbye to that big property we used to boast about,” he says.

More than 10 million Hindus, Muslims and Sikhs fled their homes for the opposite side of the border. About a million people died in the ensuing communal violence, with the brunt of the massacre faced by the Sikhs of Punjab.

The violence was still intense. He saw how horrific humankind could be. Trainloads of Hindus and Sikhs would come in from Pakistan with everyone on board slaughtered. Similarly, Muslims fleeing by train to Pakistan were hacked to pieces. There were bodies everywhere. The rivers, streams and canals of Punjab were red with blood. It was an unimaginable horror.

“You could not comprehend where you were or what was happening,” Ajeet remembers. His first life was over. This was a period when time stood still and nothing seemed real. It was like a living death.

Ajeet provided aid in the refugee camps. There were many, sprawling camps, and they were easy to find. Just follow the stench.

He gathered rotis and bread from nearby villages and loaded them onto a large truck. He drove to the camp, stopped the truck and, in a military style, he blew a whistle for everyone to line up.

The next thing he remembers was the gigantic mob that attacked the truck. Everyone was fighting for the food. When it was all over, his clothes were tattered and his turban was gone.

Still in a daze, he watched as a father and his son picked up the crumbs on the ground and fought with each other to eat them. Ajeet could not stop his tears.

When a newspaper photographer asked for a picture of Ajeet with his truck, he punched him in the face.

Note: anjukaur@sikhnn.com