Chapter 1 - I am Rejected at Birth...

THOSE were the days of the reign of great Queen Victoria, days of peace and quiet, contentment and plenty, but also of slavery and dependence.

They were the days when “dogs and Indians” were not admitted to the Mussoorie Library or the Yacht Club, days when Indians could not walk on the Mall Road at Simla or at other hill stations and were expected not to open an umbrella in the presence of a Britisher.

It was an age when the highest ambition of the Indian people was to live under the perpetual domination of the British, though now and then clamouring for small crumbs of political power or office.

In those distant days, it is said, people were truthful and God-fearing. Butter, milk, ghee and honey were available in abundance. Laws were scarce. The struggle for existence was unknown and problems of unem- ployment, family planning and the like, unheard of. Tilak, Surendra- nath Bannerji, Dadabhai Nowrojee and Hume dominated the political scene. Gandhi, as the world was to know him, was yet in the making and Nehru was an infant one month old.

It was during such times, in the year of grace 1889, that I was born in a family of Mahajan Sahukars residing in a tiny village, Tika Nagrota (District Kangra, Punjab), far away from the reach of modern civilization. My grandfather, Chhajju Shah, was a well-known man of means, respected, pious, God-fearing. He had believed that wealth earned by dishonest means would not last long, but when earned honestly it would last for generations. He was the head of a joint Hindu family consisting of six brothers, five sons and their numerous children and enjoyed all the powers of a Roman pater-familias.


A number of stories about his life are preserved in the village folklore and the family archives. Three of these furnish an index to the life of the people of those days and their character.

To be continued.....

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