Ek Hamara Bhi Sundar Thikana Tha

[We too had a beautiful homestead once]

My new release in Hindi with lyrics written by Ardamanjit Singh Sandhu

http://open.spotify.com/album/6fquMPzbow3edMNoK23Vvu

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_B9iEXEGPmA

https://music.amazon.in/albums/B09TWK3PWN?marketplaceId=A3K6Y

https://music.apple.com/in/album/ek-hamara-bhi-sundar-thikana-tha-single/1612680695

Ardamanjit Singh Sandhu’s masterly and beautiful poem Ek Hamara Bhi Sundar Thikana Tha [We Too Had A Beautiful Homestead Once], is especially poignant with the memories of a happy mixed coexistence before the burden and weight of history ended it with a hastily drawn line on a map where there had not been one before. WWII-battered British imperial colonialists confronting a powerful independence movement in India, used the line to artificially carve out two countries based on religion from the territory of British India, an experiment that failed in 1971.

Vivid reminiscences of those good days and times invoke the beautiful homestead that Ardamanjit Singh’s family once had in a little village in Sialkot District, the verdure of the fields and the fresh rippling breeze, the frequent warm and affectionate interaction with friends and neighbours—"a story in its own right.”

The disruption of a virtual idyll of harmony is reflected in a changed status-quo, brought on by the suddenly sprung traumatic Partition of India by the British in 1947, begging the question: “Where was God, when people were killing each other?” Growing, deepening tensions with the sectarian communal and religious violence stoked for political ends by religious hardliners, were a rude awakening. “Someone considered a friend metamorphosed from a human being into a monster” overnight, as it were, “a flaming torch in hand and an ultimatum on the lips” for a gruesome ethnic cleansing in the offing: “Get out from here, leave this village! The days of carnage are here!”

Reduced brusquely from compatriot to alien-status, “overwhelmed by a peculiar edginess, frightened at heart” and fearing for their lives, the horrifying experience of being forced to flee, leaving behind ancestral homes and properties as minority refugees never to return, finds stark, minimalist expression:

Chappals on the feet, and a bundle on the head,

The body was walking, but the soul had been left behind at the old homestead.

For the columns of displaced refugees on foot and riding truck and train “convoys that started, the journey was long”, frightening “drums sounding”, “heavy rain clouds thundering”, armed mobs clamouring for blood en route to another country over the new borders drawn up by the British.

Reaching their destination in India to be housed in Refugee Camps, separated here and there from friends and family, the refugees started life over, missing the ambient idiosyncratic “mahaul” of the native village left behind: “it was just not the same anymore”. Annual Independence celebrations invariably evoked memories of the community of old. The wounds and pain of Partition still cut deep with a tormented, imploring lamentation to God:

What fault was it of mine that I was punished like this?

Whatever did I do for such disaster to strike?

Decades later, with life at its last round, those bygone days still stir a yearning to go back there one day, if ever God grants this wish. The reader’s empathy with the poet nevertheless wrestles with the fact that it would mean going across the militarized frontier, each side still deeply suspicious of one another, with a nuclear arsenal and military forces arrayed against each other, separated by decades of political strife and wars.

And the Poem’s closing refrain has an elegiac cadence as it reiterates:

What days those were, what times they were,

We too had a beautiful homestead once.

No illusion but an experienced, cherished reality of a simple, good life without conflict.

As Ardamanjit Singh writes:

LEST WE FORGET

While we celebrate our Independence Day each year, let's also spare a thought for the millions of people who suffered due to the Partition of Undivided India. This Partition triggered the biggest mass migration of populations in modern history – estimates have put the count at over 10 million, who crossed to ‘either side’ of the Radcliffe Line. To make matters worse, they underwent untold miseries and tragedies along the way - attacks, killings, kidnappings, rape etc.

The hapless people travelled by road, rail, on foot and even on ships (between Bombay and Karachi). These displaced persons now suddenly found themselves to be refugees. Having lost everything – land, property, business, belongings etc, all of them had to make a new beginning of their lives in a new and uncertain environment.

My family belonged to Sialkot District and had to relocate into India when Pakistan was formed. My father, then Captain (later Lt General) Jaswant Singh, on his own initiative organised a Refugee Camp at Daska and facilitated the evacuation of over 100,000 Hindus and Sikhs to India. He, along with his family, later came in a ‘special train’ at the end of October 1947.

My maternal grandmother, who had got separated from the rest of the family, walked with a ‘kafila’ (a large group of people) for over three days in sporadic rain, and managed to reach India via the Dera Baba Nanak border. While recalling the event, she would often say, “Saadhe kapde bhij gaye san, tey jootian tut gayian san”(our clothes got wet, and the chappals broke). She was housed in a Refugee Camp in Amritsar, till located some weeks later by my grandfather.

It is to my family’s credit that they harboured no hatred or rancour, in spite of having been uprooted from their centuries-old homestead and recalled memories of good times with nostalgia.

Although I have penned this Poem in remembrance of those who suffered this traumatic event, in a broader sense it speaks on behalf of displaced peoples all over the world who have, time and again, been forced to leave their homeland due to no fault of theirs.”

New Delhi, 2022.

ARDAMANJIT SINGH SANDHU, better known by his nickname “Abdo”, was born in Lahore in 1946, and educated at the prestigious Lawrence School, Sanawar. He is a military historian with a professional interest in Human Rights Law, and an MPhil. from the University of Madras. He is the third generation of a military family; his grandfather (Subedar Sohan Singh) had fought in the First World War in Mesopotamia, while his father (Lt General Jaswant Singh) took part in the Second World War as well as the India-Pakistan Conflicts of 1965 and 1971, and rose be the Vice Chief of the Army Staff. Ardamanjit himself was commissioned into the 2 Field Regiment (SP)* of the Indian Army in June 1967; fought in the 1971 and 1999 wars; and also served in Botswana. Decorated with the Vishisht Seva Medal (VSM) for “distinguished service of a high order”, he retired from the Army in 2004 with the rank of Major General. Post-retirement he worked in the corporate sector for a few years. He also writes occasional poetry and prose for his Old Sanawarian Groups.

The highly acclaimed military history Battleground Chhamb: The Indo-Pakistan War of 1971 [2017], is Ardamanjit Singh Sandhu’s meticulously researched and detailed account of one of the most intensely fierce, famed battles of the War. His subsequent book With Honour And Glory: Five Great Artillery Battles [2021], recounts the renowned battles fought on four different continents over a wide span of 136 years, viz. the Battle of Gettysburg (1-3 June 1863) during the American Civil war; the WWI Battle of Vimy Ridge (9-12 April,1917) in which the Canadian Corps fought as an independent entity for the first time as part of the Arras Spring Offensive in France; the WWII Battle of Bir Hacheim (27 May,1942) in Libya that witnessed the exceptional valour and grit of the 2 Indian Field Regiment* facing the onslaught of General Rommel’s famed Afrika Corps; the “story of raw courage and tactical hits and misses” that defined the Indo-Pak Battle of Chhamb (3-17 December,1971); and the later Battles of Tololing and Tiger Hill (summer of 1999) at heights of 16,000’.

*Forty-five years later, Ardamanjit Singh Sandhu had the privilege of also commanding the same 2 Field Regiment which fought in the Battle of Bir Hacheim in 1942. The spelling of “Hacheim” has been taken from the original War Diary of the unit which he was able to access.

Ardamanjit published his first poems “We are the Cannons of Sanawar”, and “Ek Hamara Bhi Sundar Thikana Tha” [We too had a beautiful homestead once] in 2021.

“We are the Cannons of Sanawar”, penned by artillery expert and military historian Ardamanjit Singh, provides a riveting history of the residential cannons located on the estate of The Lawrence School.

No longer a military school on Sanawar Hill at the foot of the Himalayas, The Lawrence School with its colonial buildings has a distinguished tradition and history. A prestigious private boarding school, one of the oldest coeducational institutions nestled in the Kasauli Hills of Himachal Pradesh, it was founded by Sir Henry Montgomery Lawrence KCB—an English soldier, revenue surveyor and administrator in the British East India Company--and his Irish-born wife Honoria.

With the vigorous military training provided at Sanawar, several contingents of boys were sent directly to the battlefields of WW I and the school was renamed the Lawrence Royal Military School in 1920 in appreciation. A special message broadcast in October 1941 by the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) honoured the contributions of Sanawar in WW II. The school has the unique distinction of having been presented with the King’s Colours thrice – in 1853 (becoming the second school in the British Empire to be so honoured), in 1922 and 1940. The latter colours continued to be ‘trooped’ till 1957, when they were finally laid to rest. All three colours are now displayed in the Parker Hall Library.

WE ARE THE CANNONS OF SANAWAR

We are the Cannons of Sanawar

But how many know, who we really are.

In front of Birdwood, now we stand,

But we were born, in a foreign land.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar.

Children have come, and children have gone,

While we stood guard, from dusk to dawn

Come hell, or high weather..

We will continue, to be together.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar

Born in Turkey, we were soon put to test.

During the Great War, we fired our best.

It did not matter, who was in front,

It was our job, to confront.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar.

The enemy charged our positions on the Hill,

At them we fired, and we fired to kill.

We hit our targets, we saw them fall,

Men and horses, big and small.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar.

Soon the tide turned, and we were captured by the Indian Army,

After a battle, which was very very stormy.

Brought to India, in Ferozepur we were stored,

And there we stayed, completely ignored.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar.

In the year of the Lord, nineteen twenty-eight,

We were relocated, at a new estate.

This was The Lawrence School, at Sanawar,

In recognition of its contribution, in the Great War.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar.

We now stand outside the Birdwood building,

With our looks, quite forbidding.

Overlooking the Cenotaph, is our final resting place,

Here we will remain, with Abiding Grace.

We are the Cannons of Sanawar.

May 30, 2021, Gurgaon

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