The Playing Fields of Shimla

t had been a lonely winter for a twelve-year-old boy. I hadn’t really got over my father’s untimely death two years previously; nor had I as yet reconciled myself to my mother’s marriage to the Punjabi gentleman who dealt in second-hand cars. The three-month winter break over, I was almost happy to return to my boarding school in Shimla— that elegant hill station once celebrated by Kipling and soon to lose its status as the summer capital of the Raj in India.

It wasn’t as though I had many friends at school. I had always been a bit of a loner, shy and reserved, looking out only for my father’s rare visits—on his brief leaves from RAF duties—and to my sharing his tent or air force hutment outside Delhi or Karachi. Those unsettled but happy days would not come again. I needed a friend but it was not easy to find one among a horde of rowdy, pea-shooting fourth formers, who carved their names on desks and stuck chewing gum on the class teacher’s chair. Had I grown up with other children, I might have developed a taste for schoolboy anarchy; but, in sharing my father’s loneliness after his separation from my mother, I had turned into a premature adult. The mixed nature of my reading—Dickens, Richmal Crompton, Tagore and Champion and Film Fun comics—probably reflected the confused state of my life. A book reader was rare even in those pre-electronic times. On rainy days most boys played cards or Monopoly, or listened to Artie Shaw on the wind-up gramophone in the common room.

After a month in the fourth form I began to notice a new boy, Omar, and then only because he was a quiet, almost taciturn person who took no part in the form’s feverish attempts to imitate the Marx Brothers at the circus. He showed no resentment at the prevailing anarchy, nor did he make a move to participate in it. Once he caught me looking at him, and he smiled ruefully, tolerantly. Did I sense another adult in the class? Someone who was a little older than his years?

Even before we began talking to each other, Omar and I developed an understanding of sorts, and we’d nod almost respectfully to each other when we met in the classroom corridors or the environs of dining hall or dormitory. We were not in the same house. The house system practised its own form of apartheid, whereby a member of, say, Curzon House was not expected to fraternize with someone belonging to Rivaz or Lefroy! Those public schools certainly knew how to clamp you into compartments. However, these barriers vanished when Omar and I found ourselves selected for the School Colts’ hockey team—Omar as a fullback, I as goalkeeper. I think a defensive position suited me by nature. In all modesty I have to say that I made a good goalkeeper, both at hockey and football. And fifty years on, I am still keeping goal. Then I did it between goalposts, now I do it off the field—protecting a family, protecting my independence as a writer…

The taciturn Omar now spoke to me occasionally, and we combined well on the field of play. A good understanding is needed between goalkeeper and fullback. We were on the same wavelength. I anticipated his moves, he was familiar with mine. Years later, when I read Conrad’s The Secret Sharer, I thought of Omar.

It wasn’t until we were away from the confines of school, classroom and dining hall that our friendship flourished. The hockey team travelled to Sanawar on the next mountain range, where we were to play a couple of matches against our old rivals, the Lawrence Royal Military School. This had been my father’s old school, but I did not know that in his time it had also been a military orphanage. Grandfather, who had been a private foot soldier—of the likes of Kipling’s Mulvaney, Otheris and Learoyd—had joined the Scottish Rifles after leaving home at the age of seventeen. He had died while his children were still very young, but my father’s more rounded education had enabled him to become an officer.

Omar and I were thrown together a good deal during the visit to Sanawar, and in our more leisurely moments, strolling undisturbed around a school where we were guests and not pupils, we exchanged life histories and other confidences. Omar, too, had lost his father—had I sensed that before?— shot in some tribal encounter on the Frontier, for he hailed from the lawless lands beyond Peshawar. A wealthy uncle was seeing to Omar’s education. The RAF was now seeing to mine.

We wandered into the school chapel, and there I found my father’s name—A.A. Bond—on the school’s roll of honour board: old boys who had lost their lives while serving during the two World Wars.

‘What did his initials stand for?’ asked Omar.

‘Aubrey Alexander.’

‘Unusual names, like yours. Why did your parents call you Ruskin?’

‘I am not sure. I think my father liked the works of John Ruskin, who wrote on serious subjects like art and architecture. I don’t think anyone reads him now. They’ll read me, though!’ I had already started writing my first book. It was called Nine Months (the length of the school term, not a pregnancy), and it described some of the happenings at school and lampooned a few of our teachers. I had filled three slim exercise books with this premature literary project, and I allowed Omar to go through them. He must have been my first reader and critic. ‘They’re very interesting,’ he said, ‘but you’ll get into trouble if someone finds them. Especially Mr Oliver.’ And he read out an offending verse—

Oily, Oily, Oily, with his balls on a trolley,

And his arse all painted green!

I have to admit it wasn’t great literature. I was better at hockey and football. I made some spectacular saves, and we won our matches against Sanawar. When we returned to Shimla, we were school heroes for a couple of days and lost some of our reticence; we were even a little more forthcoming with other boys. And then Mr Fisher, my housemaster, discovered my literary opus, Nine Months, under my mattress, and took it away and read it (as he told me later) from cover to cover. Corporal punishment then being in vogue, I was given six of the best with a springy malacca cane, and my manuscript was torn up and deposited in Fisher’s waste-paper basket. All I had to show for my efforts were some purple welts on my bottom. These were proudly displayed to all who were interested, and I was a hero for another two days.

‘Will you go away too when the British leave India?’ Omar asked me one day.

‘I don’t think so,’ I said. ‘My stepfather is Indian.’

‘Everyone is saying that our leaders and the British are going to divide the country. Shimla will be in India, Peshawar in Pakistan!’

‘Oh, it won’t happen,’ I said glibly. ‘How can they cut up such a big country?’ But even as we chatted about the possibility, Nehru and Jinnah and Mountbatten and all those who mattered were preparing their instruments for major surgery.

Before their decision impinged on our lives and everyone else’s, we found a little freedom of our own—in an underground tunnel that we discovered below the third flat.

It was really part of an old, disused drainage system, and when Omar and I began exploring it, we had no idea just how far it extended. After crawling along on our bellies for some twenty feet, we found ourselves in complete darkness. Omar had brought along a small pencil torch, and with its help we continued writhing forward (moving backwards would have been quite impossible) until we saw a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel. Dusty, musty, very scruffy, we emerged at last on to a grassy knoll, a little way outside the school boundary.

It’s always a great thrill to escape beyond the boundaries that adults have devised. Here we were in unknown territory. To travel without passports—that would be the ultimate in freedom!

But more passports were on their way and more boundaries.

Lord Mountbatten, Viceroy and Governor-General-to-be, came for our Founder’s Day and gave away the prizes. I had won a prize for something or the other, and mounted the rostrum to receive my book from this towering, handsome man in his pinstripe suit. Bishop Cotton’s was then the premier school of India, often referred to as the ‘Eton of the East.’ Viceroys and Governors had graced its functions. Many of its boys had gone on to eminence in the civil services and armed forces. There was one ‘old boy’ about whom they maintained a stolid silence—General Dyer, who had ordered the massacre at Amritsar and destroyed the trust that had been building up between Britain and India.

Now Mountbatten spoke of the momentous events that were happening all around us—the War had just come to an end, the United Nations held out the promise of a world living in peace and harmony, and India, an equal partner with Britain, would be among the great nations…

A few weeks later, Bengal and Punjab provinces were bisected. Riots flared up across northern India, and there was a great exodus of people crossing the newly drawn frontiers of Pakistan and India. Homes were destroyed, thousands lost their lives.

The common-room radio and the occasional newspaper kept us abreast of events, but in our tunnel, Omar and I felt immune from all that was happening, worlds away from all the pillage, murder and revenge. And outside the tunnel, on the pine knoll below the school, there was fresh untrodden grass, sprinkled with clover and daisies, the only sounds the hammering of a woodpecker, the distant insistent call of the Himalayan barbet. Who could touch us there?

‘And when all the wars are done,’ I said, ‘a butterfly will still be beautiful.’

‘Did you read that somewhere?’

‘No, it just came into my head.’

‘Already you’re a writer.’

‘No, I want to play hockey for India or football for Arsenal. Only winning teams!’

‘You can’t win forever. Better to be a writer.’

When the monsoon rains arrived, the tunnel was flooded, the drain choked with rubble. We were allowed out to the cinema to see Lawrence Olivier’s Hamlet, a film that did nothing to raise our spirits on a wet and gloomy afternoon— but it was our last picture that year, because communal riots suddenly broke out in Shimla’s Lower Bazaar, an area that was still much as Kipling had described it—‘a man who knows his way there can defy all the police of India’s summer capital’— and we were confined to school indefinitely.

One morning after chapel, the headmaster announced that the Muslim boys—those who had their homes in what was now Pakistan—would have to be evacuated, sent to their homes across the border with an armed convoy.

The tunnel no longer provided an escape for us. The bazaar was out of bounds. The flooded playing field was deserted. Omar and I sat on a damp wooden bench and talked about the future in vaguely hopeful terms; but we didn’t solve any problems. Mountbatten and Nehru and Jinnah were doing all the solving.

It was soon time for Omar to leave—he along with some fifty other boys from Lahore, Pindi and Peshawar. The rest of us—Hindus, Christians, Parsis—helped them load their luggage into the waiting trucks. A couple of boys broke down and wept. So did our departing school captain, a Pathan who had been known for his stoic and unemotional demeanour. Omar waved cheerfully to me and I waved back. We had vowed to meet again some day,

The convoy got through safely enough. There was only one casualty—the school cook, who had strayed into an off-limits area in the foothill town of Kalka and been set upon by a mob. He wasn’t s

een again.

Towards the end of the school year, just as we were all getting ready to leave for the school holidays, I received a letter from Omar. He told me something about his new school and how he missed my company and our games and our tunnel to freedom. I replied and gave him my home address, but I did not hear from him again. The land, though divided, was still a big one, and we were very small.

Some seventeen or eighteen years later I did get news of Omar, but in an entirely different context. India and Pakistan were at war and in a bombing raid over Ambala, not far from Shimla, a Pakistani plane was shot down. Its crew died in the crash. One of them, I learnt later, was Omar.

Did he, I wonder, get a glimpse of the playing fields we knew so well as boys?

Perhaps memories of his schooldays flooded back as he flew over the foothills. Perhaps he remembered the tunnel through which we were able to make our little escape to freedom.

But there are no tunnels in the sky.

RSVP Vijay Singh whatsapp +91 98110 56361

Living a Life

Earlier this month, Former J & K governor N.N. Vohra unveiled “Living a Life”, a memoir by retired IAS officer Ravi Sawhney, (Lefroy 1959), in the presence of former foreign secretary Shyam Saran and former principal secretary to the prime minister, S.K. Misra (in 1990, when Chandra Shekhar was the PM. Our best wishes!

Ravi Sawhney,1959, Lefroy House,a retired senior IAS officer,has written this book,which will be launched in Delhi in November.

Best wishes
Vijay [Kuttu] SIngh

You have made Our Class of 1970, Lefroy and Bishop Cotton School PROUD!

Warmest Wishes – Vivek Bhasin [1970 Batch]

I had to rework some parts of the full package on the fall of Saigon since I first wrote it for The Bulletin newspaper in Bend, Oregon, on the 25th anniversary of the fall of Saigon.
I ran a somewhat similar version, including other thoughts, on another anniversary when I was in Laredo, Texas, and for the Korea Times in Seoul. Yet every time I try to put this together, there are so many flashbacks of sidebar stories I wish to include. But as the years pass, a compulsive guessing game continues to which I fear finding answers.
For instance: where, I still ask myself, is the beautiful woman who has come to symbolize for me the lost world of old Cambodia? Offering a fruit in her hands, sheathed in an emerald-green sarong, she moved with the sensuous grace of celestial dancers carved on the friezes of Angkor. She came one Buddhist holy day to a 15th century temple as late monsoon clouds darkened the sky. Our eyes met fleetingly through a curtain of incense perfumed by jasmine, and then she melted into the vivacious swirl of worshipers.
Where is the lovely girl, who wrenched herself up from a hospital floor in the refugee camp of Aranyaprathet decked with flies and feces to tell me her story? An American pilot had mistimed his bomb drop by a few seconds, so her right arm was now sheared off, the collar bone jutting out naked and already greenish with decay. Her little body trembling with pain, she looked at me and smiled: the fathomless stoic smile I think saved Cambodia from collective insanity — and melted my heart.
And what about Mark Basinger. He was just 17 months old when his father died. He has no memories of the man who left on a train in August 1966 and never came back. His mother remembers, though. And when she recalls Capt. Richard Louis Basinger, her tears flow.
Mark still watches old newscasts from Vietnam and thinks: “That’s where my Dad died.” And he wants to know more. He has pieced together a Web site that pays tribute to his Dad, his more than 350 helicopter combat missions, and his death on May 12, 1967 when his helicopter was hit by an enemy mortar round near a Marine outpost at Con Thien.
Capt. Basinger was 24 years old, 14 years younger than the son who so desperately wants to connect with him. Mark now wants to go to Vietnam. He will, he hopes, visit the spot where that helicopter crashed.
“I’m just trying to feel a part of him,” Mark says. But his mother tells him he need not go to Vietnam to do that. “Look in the mirror, son,” she says, “and you’ll know your father.”
And where, I wonder, is Helen Nguyen — the stunningly pretty mamasan at a Tu Do Street bar in Saigon. She didn’t have any time for me because I wouldn’t buy her the $25-a-shot Saigon tea. Our paths crossed again shortly before the fall of Saigon and she didn’t want to let me out of her sight. She brought a mattress and slept outside my hotel room door.
And remember Ha Thi Tran? I left Saigon three days after the Viet Cong gained total control of the city. Helen joined me and one member from India of the International Control Commission on Vietnam as we made it to Bangkok via Hanoi. Ha didn’t want to go to Hanoi and failed to show up in Bangkok a week later as planned. Neither did she make it to the sprawling refugee camps of Aranyaprathet on the Thai-Cambodia border. She was not on any of the refugee boats in the years to come and I continue to search for her today.
“I am not going to Hanoi because there is more hell in there than the rest of this ugly war put together,” she said. And I understood why Ha, being a South Vietnamese feared going to Hanoi.
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
By Joe Joshi
Senior Editor, Korea Times

On Monday, April 28, 1975, a late-afternoon thunderstorm rumbled outside the open balcony windows of Saigon’s Independence Palace as 71-year-old Tran Van Huong, lame and nearly blind, clutched the arm of an aide and stepped slowly away from the microphone. He had just given up the presidency of South Vietnam after only six days in office. Another aide scurried forward, removed the red-and-saffron seal from the rostrum and replaced it with another, the outline of an apricot blossom containing the Yin and Yang symbol, an Asian sign for the combining of opposites to make up the universe.
Only then did ex-General Duong Van “Big’’ Minh, chosen as president to make a last desperate plea for peace, begin speaking. He appealed, as expected, for an immediate ceasefire, unconditional negotiations and national reconciliation.
Later, as war correspondents stood on the palace steps to watch members of the new “peace government’’ drive away, a correspondent for the Hongkong Standard said: “Perhaps now we can have some hope in this catastrophe.’’
He was wrong. The Viet Cong’s answer came less than an hour after Gen. Minh’s speech when a series of explosions buffeted the city. Communist pilots flying captured American fighter planes were bombing Tan Son Nhut Airport, though no one knew then where the planes had come from or who were flying them.
The heavy flak guns at the palace balcony opened up and there was pandemonium as policemen and soldiers all over the city began blazing away at the sky. The firing lasted perhaps a half-hour and then sputtered out. Soon the nervous city began to move again, its people hurrying through the dusk to get home before the 8 p.m. curfew closed in.
We could not know it them, but the bombs falling on Tan Son Nhut signaled the last battle of the Vietnam War.
Before dawn Tuesday, when artillery, rocket and mortar fire began pounding the airport, government resistance quickly evaporated.
That day, under the guns of Marine helicopters from a naval task force offshore, the final evacuation of U.S. Embassy staff and other Americans began. In the rush to get out of a city going mad, many desperate would-be refugees were seen clinging to the landing gears of the “iron butterflies’’ and babies were thrust at departing Americans by mothers hoping to at least get one child to a carrier of the 7th Fleet.
But most Vietnamese began to lose hope of being evacuated when U.S. Marines and American civilians used pistol and rifle butts to smash the fingers of men, women and children trying to claw their way over the wall of the U.S. Embassy. Those who didn’t make it also saw that helicopters landing on ships of the 7th Fleet were quickly unloaded and heaved overboard to make room for the next one.
Refugees who used sampans to reach the U.S. carriers sets their boats on fire to keep them from falling into communist hands. It was getting dark now and the tranquil waters, as far as the eye could see, was covered with burning boats. It looked like a vision from hell.
Those who made it to the ships, and those who didn’t, wept.
At that point, my life changed… Something died in me. I was on the waterfront with an arm around Ha Thi Tran, my Vietnamese girlfriend. Amid the clatter of helicopter blades, she silently wiped away her tears and I was shaking.
I had seen many horrible things in Vietnam, but could always turn to Ha for comfort. She was a breath of fresh air, a pretty girl of 22 with a quick, natural smile that made others smile. And she loved to wear the ao dai (Vietnam’s traditional flowing tunic over trousers with slits up to the waist). Ha always was so focused on whatever she did and could analyze situations others could not even comprehend. She made me feel there was some hope in this crazy Asian war.
We returned to the Caraville Hotel and sat by the window of our third floor room. I opened a bottle of beer as Ha pleaded on the phone with the operator to get us a line to Washington, Hongkong, Bangkok, Singapore, Tokyo… anywhere.
Amid the chaos on the street below, we could see Vietnamese women offering money, gold or sexual favors for sponsorship promises and refugee documents, but nearly all the foreigners had left Saigon by then.
Ha and I stayed up most of the night talking about how our lives had taken us in different directions since we met in early 1969 under a hot, cloudless sky at My Khe beach near Danang. Most Americans remember it as the GI oasis called China Beach.
We also recalled our daily trips to Vietnam’s media centerpiece, the MACV (U.S. Military Assistance Command Vietnam) center in Saigon where Ha would translate the daily command briefing which put information (true and false) on the record during the 5 o’clock briefings.
There were several hundred reporters in Vietnam and competition was fierce. There also were would-be journalists, actors, teachers and some characters of dubious background with ambition and a taste of adventure. Many were frequently wounded. In the end, more than 70 were dead or missing.
Ha also was with me a few days earlier when 76 infants were killed in one of the first flights of Operation Babylift.. The C-54 Galaxy cargo plane was loaded with 300 infants, toddlers and caretakers when it plunged from the sky near Tan Son Nhut Airport.
Memories of that tragedy tore at our hearts as we talked about it that night, even though we were already numbed by the war’s horror.
Operation Babylift was authorized to evacuate 70,000 Vietnamese orphans, many fathered by American GIs. Some 2,000 children, with toddlers placed in cardboard boxes along the isles of the aircraft, made it to the U.S. before Saigon was lost to the communists.
Although Ha’s parents were not rich, they helped their only child acquire an education. Ha was studying business administration in Philadelphia.
We finally went to bed exhausted and dreamed of the country she had lost.
The day after that, Wednesday, April 30, Saigon surrendered. The gold-starred red-and-blue liberation flag fluttered over the palace.
After 30 blood-soaked years, the Vietnam War was over.
++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
Filipinas forced into sex trade
By Joe Joshi
Senior Editor
Korea Times
June 2, 2003

Dongducheon – Shirley, a young Filipina, stands in front of the bar where she works in vampish boots and a skirt so short it leaves little to the imagination.

“Work,” she says simply, a helpless smile spreading across her pretty face. “Work, that is why I came. In the Philippines there is no way to make money.”

Prostitution is an old trade but not an honored one, so Shirley prefers not to give her family name. At age 21, she has a plenty of company in this U.S. military base town where bars have names like The Dungeon, DMZ, Sunshine, Papaya, Blackjack, Platinum and Olympia and young women loiter at every corner on the strip.

More than 99 percent of the bar girls are foreign, most of them from the Philippines. Others come from Bulgaria, Belarus, Ukraine and Russia. All of them cater to the sex tourism boom in this town close to the Demilitarized Zone that separates North and South Korea.

Lina, who is very popular among the soldiers who frequent the club where she dances, put Dongdecheon’s lure simply: “One-zero-zero-zero,” she said laughing, “instead of one-zero-zero” – indicating a chance to earn $1,000 a week instead of $100.

But the laughter can be short-lived, promised money illusionary and the human cost high. Scratch the surface in the bar area and a world of violence, xenophobia, disease and misery is revealed.

For the sex trade, the balance of supply and demand could scarcely be better. “The business of trafficking for sexual exploitation is booming,” said Lee Bong-chol, who manages a neighborhood convenience store. “It is an industry now worth several billion dollars a year.”

Some of the Filipinas come here without illusions, however reluctantly, that prostitution for a wealthier clientele is the only way to feed their families and fashion a future. Others come deluded, lured into thinking they will work as singers or barmaids, but are forced into unpayable debt and deprived of all freedom in the end.

Maria, a Filipina with so many curves, it made my head spin just looking at her, was waiting outside the nightclub for a soldier who had just paid a $200 bar fine for her. Maria told me she saw no alternative to her current work on the strip. Her parents are dead, killed in a car crash when she was 16 and still at school. She took a succession of odd jobs, but they were insufficient to support her 10-year-old sister. Hardship, dead ends, vague dreams of getting married and maybe finding happiness, brought her to this God-awful place.

She stops talking abruptly, saying she has to go, when the soldier comes out and puts his arm around her waist. Of the $200 bar fine, Maria will get about $33. The bar owner gets the rest.

Maria takes a wad of notes out of her bag and hands it to her bouncer who has a distant look, track suit, Adidas sneakers, gold chain and sleeves short enough to reveal the bulge of his muscles.

Lorna, 19, also from the Philippines, is standing outside a nearby strip club. Unlike Maria, she is in the second category of women, those deceived, trafficked and ultimately trapped. She came to South Korea believing she would marry a rich man. Her husband turned out to be a poor farmer.

Lorna says she was locked up 24 hours a day and escaped when she was allowed to see a doctor. She was recaptured by her broker and had her passport taken. She was then told she had been “sold” to the bar where she now works. She has no money, she says. Her gaze is vacant.

Some of the Filipinas at the clubs are undocumented workers, others have three-month tourist visas arranged by gangs that bring them under false promises. Their stories tend to resemble one another. The women may be teachers, farm laborers or unemployed, ages 18 to 30. Often they have one or two children to support. They receive false offers of temporary work and good earnings. Travel and visas are arranged for a large sum of money – the women’s debt to the gangs that organize their transportation and work. After arrival, passports and any money are taken and the women are deposited in small guarded apartments. Then they are told what their real job is to be.

The average rate in brothels is $200, but no more than a tenth of that reaches the women’s pocket. Their “owners” buy food and pay rent, and the debt becomes intractable. The women are terrorized because they are often unable to pay off the debts. And they are paralyzed, afraid to go to the police, terrified the gangs will do something bad to a member of their family back home if they try to escape.

The trade in women from the Philippines has spread throughout South Korea and is increasingly well organized. The gangs that dominate the business are slick, flexible and elusive. Everywhere, women are reluctant to testify because they are afraid.

If they are going to testify, these women need witness protection, often new passports and assurances they can remain in South Korea. But government authorities will not provide this. And the gang members are much more sophisticated than the police.

At age 21, Raquel graduated from college with a degree in business administration and left the home of her poor, widowed mother to come to South Korea and clean the houses of upper-class families.

For years she scrubbed the floors, washed dishes, hung laundry and baby-sat toddlers — all the while cowering as employers called her stupid and sexually harassed her. Now she is a nightclub dancer.

“Many times I had to leave my job because of the sexual harassment,” said Raquel who has no valid travel document or permission to work in South Korea. “I always had to eat after my employers did, on separate plates, as if I were a pet. In fact, I think pets have more privileges.”

She has no pension plan, no social security, no health insurance, working practically in slavery. That’s because South Korea remains in the dark ages when it comes to the treatment of foreign workers, particularly the undocumented ones. This is despite repeated efforts by activists to reform antiquated labor laws and President Roh Moo-hyun’s promises to improve conditions for all workers.

One young Filipina outside a bar who refused to give her name, has a tattoo of a rose on her upper arm and a ravaged look in her big brown eyes. She seemed a waif broken before she could live.

She sells her body voluntarily. At least this is “voluntary” work in the sense that it is the only work that she has been able to find that allows her to make what she called a “reasonable living.” She plans to stop working next year.

“I met an American GI here who is my stable boyfriend and he wants to marry me,” she explained. “He understands why I have to do this. If things work out, I plan to go and live with him in America.”

…..

A fantastic book on legendary School Captain – Hassan Agha (Ibbetson 1947) – who led the school during the dark times of the partition and had to leave BCS due to it. Written by his son, Jason Agha, the book primarily revolves around Hassan’s life and the countless adventures they had as a family, including a devastating tragedy.

A true Cottonian, Hassan showed great fortitude and lived a life with utmost humility and service to others. A very good and emotionally moving read! BCS is mentioned more than a few times, including some photos from school days! The book is available on Amazon

– Abhilekh Singh Virdi

Mukul is based in California and works with technology companies to serve small businesses. This is his first book.

More about Mukul and the book.

Suresh Sethi  E-mail: sureshsethi49@yahoo.co.in

My poems have been published in:

Poetry, Australia : Australia Five Poets Magazine           

Journal Of South Asian Literature:USA

The Canadian Forum      : Canada                                         

Queens’s Quarterly        : Canada

The New Quest               : India

Indian Literature              : Sahitaya Academy–India

The Penguin Book Of Indian Poetry: India 2012 

Signatures                : National Book Trust Of India 2003

19 Poets Ed: Keshav Malik : New Delhi 1981

The PEN                          : U.K.

The P.N. Review             : U.K ( Carcanet Press) 

The Colorado North Review: USA

Born:1949, Ferozepore, Punjab and went to school in: Bishop Cotton

School-Shimla (Himachal Pradesh). Did graduation from Punjab University in Chandigarh. Worked with a MNC for twenty-five years before taking early retirement to devote my self full time to writing. Married with a son and daughter.

I have translated more than thirty books of OSHO from Hindi into English. These books include a wide variety of discourses of OSHO on the Saints of India, The Upanishads, The Gita & day to day problems of modern man. I have also written a weekly column for the English Daily—The Tribune, Chandigarh  and for the Punjabi Newspaper `Ajit’ which is published from Jalandhar-Punjab.

I have also published a collection of poems in Punjabi.

My first collection of poems in English: Musings Of A Tom Brown School Boy– was published last year by Authors’ Press, New Delhi.

                                                                                Suresh Sethi

Musings of a Tom Brown School boy

High up in the Shimla hills, I stood

my gaze through the big passes

of Himalayas. Splashing overhead

a restless raven tips its wings

on coniferous pines. This land

with a boundary stone, strange flags,

traditions, mottos, was mine,

as my youth tied to expensive tags

of English breeding, stiff upper lip,

and my tongue was taught to wag

to prosodies of Harrow and Eton;

house spirit, school song, the discipline

of a Spartan, and the confidence

of the conquerors and the manners

of an English gentleman.

In the long, cold and austere dormitories,

home was just beyond the valleys.

All these years of homesickness,

brought no images of a mother’s pangs

of separation. All those years now haunt me

of an unfulfilled promise.

When the school padre opened the Bible,

in Shimla’s elite and venerated public school;

with his starched cassock, sonorous voice

booming in a hushed cold class-room

with our faces cupped on elbows, expectant,

we listened. In the cool breeze of the Himalayas;

he talked of Jesus healing the sick, the great

victories of king David, the Acts of Apostles;

and the stories of the Prophets.

Eagerly we took notes. Our minds on the exams.

In private we devoured the passages

of king David making love to his wives,

and wondered how a holy book

could possibly have such vulgar details!

The padre talked of the resurrection of Jesus; the

tricks of satan:

with sin heating our flushing faces!

 In a Himalayan churchyard

(at the grave of Headmaster R.K. Von Goldstein)

Now you lie on this consecrated ground,

And exiled stoic facing the charge to the very end.

Here, in a famous resort of a Himalayan beat

Snow is relaxing its grip; springs’ levers

Are opening dark pores; tenderly like healing fingers.

From below the railway gauge whistles

Noisy, gate crashing tourists to this town.

Through the key-hole I see your last night,

In coveted silence, listening to rich baritone tunes

While you lovingly mull over

The England countryside of the twenties.

Gently patting your Alsatian dog,

You sip brandy, cigar smoke curls up to the ceiling.

On your lap is an ode of Keats.

 A cool dependable full-back who term by term

Handled the bully, the underdog, the tongue-tied

With an equanimity of a commander—

And set a personal example of courage and honor

`play up and play the game.’

Taught us to own up to life in toto.

Now in an alien land under a modest headstone

The shades travel further and leave you alone;

But this is exactly how you would have wanted it;

Knowing that a man can clear space in any wood,

Ignoring titles, footage but still stick to his word—

Then let death trip the plank anywhere without a hint.

COVID-19 

Krishna,

I know you love to show off your magical powers—

To bring massive upheavals on this earth:

And then justify them with your old excuse—

‘ I have to reduce the burden of Mother Earth’.

Hence the great war of Mahabharata;

Followed by countless, wars, floods and famines—

And now Covid-19,

Your latest arrow from your armory of Maya.

( to add insult to injury you admit you could have prevented all of them)!

I admit and acknowledge:

 That you are the Big Boss of the Cosmos—

And you are legally allowed to do anything you want to do:

But please for a change—

Can’t you send us the virus of: love, peace & happiness—

I mean just for a change?  

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