I had the opportunity and
privilege of living with my siblings, parents and grandparents , nice neighbors
and friends in Jhalu in my ancestral home and house for a long time. We enjoyed
living together cordially and happily caring for each other. Such a possibility
does not occur any more. see my blog about ancestral home; https://shubhkamna-davendra.blogspot.com/2021/07/ancestral-home.html
Description of my house and living
conditions in those days are given in another blog; https://shubhkamna-davendra.blogspot.com/2015/03/living-conditions-in-small-town-during.html
Once I mentioned to my
grandson, Satvik about the living conditions of those, he simply said "
Baba, your life was much better than ours and perhaps, your parents and
grandparents might have lived much better life in a very peaceful environment
" I have a few blogs about my conversation with Satvik; https://davendrak.wordpress.com/?s=satvik&submit=Search and
one about the living conditions in my village; https://davendrak.wordpress.com/2015/10/03/a-conversation-with-my-grandchild2-life-in-a-village-in-early-1950s/
Any way, one has to leave his
ancestral home and the town for further/higher education and employment
postings at some point or the other . I have to leave early in 1950 after my
middle school education as there was no facility in my town after middle
school. Once I left, there was no return except during summer or other
vacations or waiting for employment periods etc. I lived in several places in
India and abroad - with my relatives, in the hostels, temporary shelters and
mostly in rented houses/ apartments and during my early career with ONGC in the
field camps. The experience of living in various and different situations (
places and times /durations etc) is very rich and interesting, very unique in
its own way;
Places I lived; Jhalu,
Chandpur, Meerut, Varanasi, Gajraula,.Katni, Aligarh,DehraDun, Baroda,
Jodhpur, Anjar (Kutchh) , Karaikal, Madras (Chenai) , Bangalore,
Dharwad, Ibadan (Nigeria), Addis Ababa (Ethiopia), Southfield (Michigan),
Dublin/Columbus (Ohio), now Windsor (Ontario, Canada) ;
Field Camps: During 1961-1969,
I worked for Oil and Gas exploration and lived in the field camps; Field
camps used to be for a month or so in one place and we used to live in tents (
living tent, kitchen tent, bath tent and a toilet tent) :
I started my camp life in
December 1961 from Chakkar ka milak (Moradabad) - a village near
Moradabad and our camp was next to Police training centre; and the last one was
Ghotaru ( Thar Desert in Rajasthan ); There were several camps and
partial camps during this period. I will try to give some salient features and
important events of those camps;
CHANDPUR; Chandpur was my next
residence like a home where I lived my respected and most beloved beloved
person during 1950-1955 , pursuing my education in Hindu Inter College from 8th
class to High School and Intermediate. we lived in a spacious space and the
best location of a big house of a big combined family. The big house accommodated
the families of Hakeem Ajudhiya Prasad -Triloki Nath, Ishwar Chandra Bansal,
Piyare Lal Bansal ; all very close relatives of my nani ji; in fact, my nani ji
was living in a rented portion of Hakeem ji; Great and wonderful environment
for me. I spent one of the prime period of my life here with great comfort,
love and care from everyone and completed some big steps of my education from here. I had very good friends from Chandpur
and I still continue my association and contact with them; I learnt many and
many new things here from Mama ji (Hakeem ji; I used to spend some time with
him each evening ); Mama Piyare Lal ji was my great teacher, learnt my reading
newspapers from him ( He was alone for first three years , then got married ).
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