At the Lahore High Court continues...

When the High Court closed for the summer vacation in 1919, many members of the Bar started on a trip to Dalhousie and Dharamsala. They got as far as Pathankot by rail but no conveyance was available there to take them to Dalhousie! They returned to Lahore by the next train.

I lived in the Anarkali flat with my mother. wife and our four children for two years. Some students also lived with me including Jagmohan. son of a friend of Gurdaspur days. Towards the close of 1920. I was able to rent one half of a bungalow on Lake Road and left the flat.

Here. my wife unfortunately fell ill and developed low fever. She was under the treatment of a leading Lahore surgeon. Dr. Hira Lal, and a leading physician. Rai Bahadur Dr. Beli Ram. He was an interesting person. clumsy looking. ill-dressed. uncouth in appearance, but with a heart of gold—a man of few words but a physician of great repute and skill. He was a friend of my father and whenever he came to Kangra hills. he would stay at our Dharamsala house. He never wrote a costly prescription and rarely changed it. Another gentleman with whom I came in intimate touch during my wife’s illness was Pandit Sunder Mal, a retired government official who had privately studied medicine. He was a revered old gentleman, sweet tempered, soft spoken, good-hearted, and an excellent physician. He attended on my wife at least once or twice a day. During the hot weather. my wife would live in Upper Dharamsala in a tent, with my father and mother. Colonel Owen. a highly competent English doctor who was in charge of the Civil Hospital at Palampur, took up her treatment. But the fates had decreed otherwise and in July, 1921 my wife died while I was at Lahore. I could not even be present at her funeral.

to be continued

( This account is maintained by Har Anand Publication)