VA YA CON DIOS!

AuthorHouse

Chapter One

I was born on July 1st. 1926 in India's Northwest, in the Punjab (The land of Panch = five +AB = Rivers), in the village of Badhni "Kalan" (Out of interest, The present Queen Elizabeth of the United Kingdom was born same year, in April 1926.)

There were no hospitals within 20 miles. The midwife would travel to the expectant mother's house, to help with the delivery using any timely transportation available. In emergency a messenger had to search and fetch any available midwife, if at all possible.

However in case of a rush delivery the expectant mother would be taken to the facility of the midwife, as and when possible. Following modes of transport were available in those days,

I) Bullock cart - a crawling and rocking contraption pulled by a bull or buffalo! or

II) A bone-shaker "Tonga" -a Horse Cart

Both of which were unsuitable for transporting a lady, ready to deliver a child.

Actually what happened was that with the jerks and heavy shake- ups of the rickety horse cart on the rough and uneven and unpaved dirt road to the hospital, I was born en-route in a nearby bush.

So as usual I came into this world unassisted, and continued to face unusual incidents throughout my life as a self-starter, self made man had to!

In many ways I learnt the Life's Lessons through the Lens of Time, and because of it, I think I am a lucky guy.

FUNNY STORY OF MY REAL BIRTHDAY

I used July 1st 1926 as my birthday for the next 52 years.

In the year 1965 I had reached the top of my career with Burmah Shell Oil Company. There were rumors of layoffs. I applied for a Green Card to migrate to USA, and White Cards to 4 provinces of Canada. I was awarded all of them in a short order.

However on the eve of the dinner given by my Shell Boss to celebrate my being selected to head the BURMAH OIL COMPANY I met a beautiful girl outside the Taj Mahal Hotel in Bombay. She was offering her body for ten rupees ($0.25). I paid her just to listen to her life story. She was the only child of a multimillionaire American, and was under the influence of Hippies. She was convinced that she would get happiness through Transcendental Meditation in India. That plus the advice from the Counsel General of USA, who was my close friend and co-director on the Board of the Breach candy Hospital, dissuaded me from going to USA, especially when my daughters were at the impressionable ages of 7 and 9 years. I probably became the only Indian who had the guts to turn down the Green Card as well as all the White cards for Canada. Twelve years later in 1977 when Indira Gandhi was taking the country to Totalitarianism, my friend, the Counsel General of USA prompted me, to migrate. He arranged all my papers fast and got my actual Green Card delivered to me at the entry point. The application needed the official translation of my birth certificate from Urdu to English. The Official Municipal document showed the date of filing as July 2nd, 1926, but the translator made a mistake and recorded July 3rd, 1926. Since 1977 I have used that as my birthday.

All my friends tease me saying that I gave BIRTH TO THIS NATION ON JULY FOURTH.

"IT TAKES A VILLAGE TO RAISE A CHILD."

I remember my grand uncle taking me out for walks (while I was perched up on his shoulders), enjoying plucking wild berries from treetops. I did try to avoid finger-pricking thorns sometimes- learning nature's lesson in self-preservation! Earlier, however I braved these pricks at the tender age of 4 years, but my grandma thrashed my grand uncle for being so irresponsible.

Here I would like to clarify that my real grandparents died when my mother was few years old and she was brought up by one of her aunts.

This lady was a spinster, and she adopted me the day I was born. So far as I am concerned she was always my, Canny Nanni, very smart Grand Ma! As to my grand uncle he was married to my grand mother's other sister, who had passed away. They were seven of them, bless them!

Next day my Grand uncle took me to a local garden full of rose bushes and sat me down where he could see me.

He taught me to differentiate the good from the dangerous. He told me where there are roses there are thorns. This has stuck in my mind and I am always analytical-not to judge a book by its cover, a rose by its delicate frontal beauty or Houdini's super-speedy shuffle-"Now you see! Now you don't." He taught me to handle those beauties with care, so that I do not get pricked by the thorns that guard the delicate petals of the roses from intruders like me.

He told me to use similar precautions when plucking sweet berries, while riding atop his shoulders, where he could not see my mistakes! Boy did I learn fast!

"In Nature, actions and reactions are continuous.

Everything is connected with everything else.

Not one part, nothing, is isolated.

Everything is linked, and interdependent."

I used to love the clean open air, green fields and the Mother Nature opening her arms and the little snippets of the village history taught by my grand uncle!

I learned that:

"Greed is evil. Happiness and contentment with what you have, obtained through your own hard work and intellect, is the joy of your Life, and above all there is the Almighty guiding you."

I was always happy and grateful for my little possessions and stayed away from habit-forming distractions. Kabir the poet wrote in Hindi which when translated means "Be satisfied with a piece of dry bread and a fresh water from the well, than be jealous of the neighbor's Parathas (buttered, creamy tortillas) and their rich and luxurious life style."

These crude but great principles came in handy and helped me ride over the rough waves dealt to me as I passed through the rough seas of my life.

One beautiful morning we went for a walk in the small track full of a variety of trees.

He stopped under a Neem (Azadirachta indica) tree whose trunk exudes a tenacious gum and has a bitter bark used as a tonic and whose fruit and seeds yield medicinal aromatic oil.

By then I was almost old enough to learn to brush my teeth. I was trained to break a small 6-inch long twig of the Neem tree, wash and chew thus the liquid I swallowed exuded chemicals as well as formed a small toothbrush at its end. This was called Dattun, which is derived from the Urdu word Daant, meaning teeth!

The beauty of this process was that I got the natures best toothbrush and toothpaste all built-in one and available in abundance.

Brushing teeth inhaling fresh air and walking which I did a lot as I grew up were good for the teeth, lungs and health all around!

When I became older we used to go out with a gang of friends and pull out the fresh gum from several tree barks and learnt to use it in many ways. We experimented in making little toys! We also developed the art of making Indian Ink, from gum collected from special trees. Long walks, hard work, chores of farming, ploughing were some of the things, which helped, build close friendship between a few of us kids.

One day our long walks ended up in a small field of sugar canes. This was a hardy crop of thick shell, heavily knotted &fra34; to 1-inch diameter, and 4 to 6 ft. long.

You really needed very strong sharp teeth to peel off these shells and further bite a piece of the super tasty sugary cane. Well at our age it was not easy but we soon developed very clean and strong teeth!

To this day at age of over 84, I am blessed by perfect set of white teeth without any fillings the like of which my grand kids have! I must admit that part of this is also due to not smoking, or chewing tobacco! We used to compare serious findings from each other's elders.

We also learnt that the sugar extracted from these canes (GUUNAAS!) is not harmful like the manufactured sugar cubes you buy in the stores.

The main reason is the whitening process involves using bones in the centrifuges and an element of hydrogen is removed thus changing the organic chemistry chain from Fructose to Glucose. Also some preservatives can damage the natural organic chemistry.

We actually saw how the juice extracted from tons of GUUNAAS was put in a huge elephant size caldron atop a mighty flame generated by burning dried wood!

Four strong women did the stirring continuously! After several hours the juice was set into smooth paste like consistency and on solidifying they made up hundreds of small cakes of this natural organic brown sugar large chunks! What a Joy! Called Gurrd!

Our small group of young kids had inquiring minds and our conversations were never argumentative but always full of intelligent questions, demanding answers for the unknown like scientist do! In my mother's case, she had seven sisters just like in my grandmother's family. Amongst my aunts they had no male offspring's.

So that made me the most desired kid amongst two generations of female relatives.

My grand aunt insisted and successfully maneuvered bringing me up in her small village in the Punjab, in northwest India.

She was uneducated but street smart, had a sharp wit and lots of practical experience.

She basically used her facial expressions and eye language to pass on a bit of wisdom to me and I have never forgotten those teachings.

She once asked me by sign language as to the number of ears I have and I promptly replied two.

She then asked me how many mouths I had and I said one.

After a pause she told me to use them as such because after all that is the very reason God created these ratios.

She used to really love me! Sit me down on her lap. Her considerations and affections had a deep-rooted effect on my mind.

Once she raised two fingers on her hand and asked me, "How many do you see?"

I responded to her dismay – Two!

She rejected my response and taught me that it signifies eleven. One to the left and one to it's right (in parallel). She said that unity has eleven times the strength and the two fingers are jointed in synergy at the bottom.

What she meant was if a couple does things in great harmony (like protons and electrons form a powerful atom), they are joined in every respect.

This thus has the compounded synergistic value of eleven "11"

Since the days of my rides, on my uncle's shoulders, till the time I left for the big city of Lahore, I have kept the motto of those stories uppermost in my mind.

This helped me come out of several hardships and terrible times doled out to me during my teenage years, and the risky ventures through India's partition days. The sufferance of refugee camps by my family while I had already left for England in 1946!

They say the best way to test gold is to bite it and pass it through fire and beat it to form decorative ornamental jewelry.

Through those roughest times in my life, Idealt with each situation with my heart and open mind and several times succeeded in spite of the near-impossible tasks, on the way to achieve my goals.

I do reminisce that the economic situation in 1930 was very bad, in my own village.

A case in point is the street salesman's CRIES similar to the cries of London where they sold their product by shouting advertisements in the neighborhood streets. In this instance the salesman of a unique product made of silver plated thin aluminum plate which had a kind of toothpick on one end and a cup shaped ear wax remover on the other was being sold for a paisa!

He shouted "kuun khurchuni dand khoolel iko paisa dono mail!" in Punjabi poetry.

(Almost like cries of London in old days)

Coming back to values it was sold for $0.00025. In comparison today you will pay $2 for such a piece, notwithstanding the ever- varying currency exchanges my Granny used to tell us that the cost of consumables had shot up 40 times during her 80 years. And today I can pass, similar statement, of course, the rate of inflation should be more like 70 times.

Thus the un-predictable economic cycles remain as the most debated to-date, and will continue so in future!

What I am writing in this autobiography at age 84, is entirely about the memories I retained, of my first birthday and through the rest of my life. I must confess that some times I forget the names or fine details of the incidents involved! I leave them till I try to recollect them in my quiet sleep and dreams! That keeps me awake all nights and when I get it I jump with joy and the great feeling of invigorating jubilation makes me the happiest bloke for those precious moments. However my granddaughter recently alluded me to the art of Googling. Sometimes I do try to follow that, but there is the draw back of tons of time lost in research and sorting out the exact information from bags full of possible options! What I really want to do is to recollect my thoughts, desires, and blow up the picture of my wee little mind at that moment in time and describe all that in "First Person," assuming of course that I was a miracle child of the century! I will therefore get off the dream train and pretend and describe in the next few paragraphs, only what I would have been thinking as a kid! My Nanny was watching me when I was in a sorrowful mood, and asked me what was the matter, my child? What would you like to do? I blurted out

"Why can I not get boys and girls to play with and discuss what I want to do when I grow up?"

She responded. Honey! Please, tell me and we will let you do just what you want! We love you.

I replied I want to play with other kids in the good old dirt, Gullie- Danda! This is a game using an inch long ½ inch diameter, wooden piece sharply tapered on both ends. -"The Gullie" and a 16-inch long rod called "Danda."

Each player has a chance-in turn to strike the Gullie at its edge to cleverly lift it as high it would jump, and while still in flight, strike it hard quickly on the side to send it as far as he can in the direction of the finish line. The closer each player gets the higher the points he gets! My granny quickly agreed and kissed me on the cheek and lifted and hugged me and said that she loved me ever so dearly!

That gave me the feeling of being a born negotiator! So I quickly added "Grandma I also want to play till the cows come home."

She said "tell me little joy of my life what else would you like to do"? and I promptly added Grandma I want to play "Hop Scotch!" "Skip Rope," and "Marbles."

As most of you already know these common games but briefly, boys and girls play hopscotch (you must have guessed what I am about to ask Granny next)! You jump on one leg and miss the alternate squares marked with crosses and circles, and try to reach the finish line on one-leg, and faster than your competition!

Skip rope is an art form in exercise to say the least. An individual can play it at home or with a team of three or four simultaneously in the open. The speed, rhythm, and height jumped vary with individual's capabilities and years of practice.

Now "Marbles." are played in dirt and where friends hang out in a quiet, traffic-free, street corner. Usually the players roll off their marbles, preferably of different and distinguishable colors, at random, as far as they go. The first player, uses a striking marble of a neutral color, and attempts to strike, the opposite party's marble, by catapulting it from his long finger stretched backwards like a bow, does for an arrow.

The obvious question which did in fact make my crafty, smart and canny nanny, speechless and dumbfounded, when I asked her help to get me the playmates, necessary for the above, activities.

(Continues...)

Excerpted from VA YA CON DIOS!by Go Pal Copyright © 2011 by Go Pal. Excerpted by permission of AuthorHouse. All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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