My fellow BootanMandian Behari Lal of Delhi – an Obituary

 

My fellow BootanMandian Behari Lal of Delhi – an Obituary

I feel saddened that it is the second time in this month that I am writing an obituary of people who made some difference in my life. I wrote about a known public figure Chaudhary Santokh Singh last week and today I thought of writing about one of my fellow BootanMandians, Behari Lal ji who passed away on January 19 at 85 (January 1938 – January 2023) in Delhi. I did not know Behari Lal ji before my migration to Delhi for a job in the Ministry of External

Affairs in March, 1970. He was already in Delhi working as an Engineer in the P&T Department and was living in Moti Bagh where I also landed to enjoy the kind hospitality and care of Mama Shiv Ram, a cousin of my mother Pretto in my initial days of my first job. Mama Shiv Ram, an Under Secretary at that time in the Ministry of Agriculture, in the process of making me comfortable and know some more people in the circle, took me to Behari Lal ji. He with his gracious and caring wife, the name sake of my mother, received us warmly and welcomed to Delhi. He spoke high of my family back home and reminiscenced about the general living in Bootan Mandi. I was over whelmed by their sense of belonging and quick adoption of a young lad away from home. It was a love at first sight. I started calling them Chacha ji and Chachi ji. Their children Baboo (Devender) and Baby (I am sorry my memory has failed to recollect her name) were equally good and loveable. They started calling me Bha ji. The rest is history the memories of which we cherish till today in spite of the fact that we had almost lost formal touch with each other in the later years of our lives due to some uncalled for and trivial  reasons which I tend to forget as a bad dream. Devender, who retired recently from a coveted position of a highly placed professional in the ONGC, was kind enough to remember us on the sad day of the demise of Chacha Behari Lal ji and informed me about the sad news. We were shocked and saddened. I thought of writing these lines as a tribute to respected Chacha Behari Lal ji and stand with the family in their hour of grief.

Chacha Behari Lal, like me, belonged to an ordinary family of Bootan Mandi in Jalandhar, said to be the nerve center of dalit consciousness. I think he did his F.Sc. (Fellow of Science) from one of the colleges in Jalandhar in financial constraints and joined government service in the P&T. With sheer grit and steadfastness, he climbed the ladder and retired as a highly placed Executive Engineer,

At the Guru Ravidass Gurpurab at Bootan Mandi in 2011

with the BSNL/Delhi Mahanagar Telephone in 1998.  After 1991, I met him and Chachi ji in 1999 after his retirement at the marriage of one of our common connections in Gobindpuri in New Delhi. We again went incognito till my retirement in December, 2010. We bumped into each other at Bootan Mandi on the auspicious occasion of the Gurpurab of Guru Ravidass in 2011-12. We both were happy to revive our vibes of intense emotions. Later, Devender was also thoughtful enough to pick up the threads and restarted connection on social media. The fact remained that, it seems, both the sides were keen to revive the connection and rightly so.

Chacha Behari Lal was a well involved in community affairs in and around Moti Bagh and was highly respected. During my early days in Delhi when Vidya, my wife, was still to join me, Chacha ji’s home was almost my second home. With or without any invitation or notice, I will often drop in for a meal cooked by Chachi ji, an accomplished housewife. I still relish the taste of mouth-watering Rajmah and Kala Chana curries with piping hot chapattis served with love. When Vidya joined me with a toddler Naresh, our son, the family bonds were furthers strengthened. I cannot forget a couple of

At the Shobha Yatra on Gurpurab

magnanimous gestures made towards us by the family as our benefactors around – at the birth of my daughter Vaishali in May, 1975; it was Chachi ji who accompanied Vidya to the maternity center at Sarojini Nagar for delivery in the early hours of the day. It was a great help to a novice like me – Chacha ji showed concern and did everything possible to help my younger sister, Kamla in getting her a job in the Delhi Mahanagar Telephone and extended both social and financial help at the time of her marriage in April, 1977 – extended appreciable hospitality at their residence in 1981 on our return from Beijing (China) on transfer to Delhi and made us comfortable till we moved to our regular accommodation – Devender, a young University student at that time, helped Vidya and children to in moving to Sanaa (Yemen) in March, 1982 as I had joined their alone a few months earlier and the family joined me later after completing the school year. We remained in good contact and touch, in thick and thin, during our home-leaves in India during my diplomatic sojourns till 1990 till our return from Kandy (Sri Lanka) to Delhi. With a view to cut the story short, both Chacha Behari Lal ji and Chachaji and the family always remained good to us. Vidya and I and also my children often talked about them and felt like meeting them. But that could not be. Life goes on. With the departure of Chacha Behari Lal, I felt like losing a dear one, a fatherly figure. May God grant peace to the departed soul? Our thoughts go to Chachi ji, Devender, Baby and her husband, Bakshi, too an old friend. Bootan Mandi also lost a son of the soil, Behari Lal, a self made man.

न हाथ थाम सके न पकड़ सके दामन ,

बहुत करीब से उठ कर चला गया कोई.