I like to walk in the rain, because nobody can see my tears.
-Charlie Chaplin
There have been many greats and we have had opportunity to know them from literary works teachings, hearsay or generally about the character of such human beings from the annals of history.
There have been a few unsung heroes; these are the ones who have done more than their share, yet not deriving accolades or praises, continued to do their service to humanity, to downtrodden, to sick, to the deprived, to the needy, to the ill, to the disabled, to all those who were shunned by the society by and large.
I talk about our domestic help, who served us for many years from even before I was born. My Grand Dad used to say he was the gardener-cum-watchman for their society in Quetta, Baluchistan. My Dadaji had leased out 98 flats in the society that he had built behind the cinema hall that he owned called ‘Prem’. The other two were kept by him for is own family.
Ramanand, his wife & his younger brother were hired as gardeners to take care of the landscaping in front of all the flats. The lady used to work in my Grand Dads house. In the evenings, they would double up as cycle stand attendants at the cinema hall. She would run a tea and egg stall near the cycle stand for the last show.
My Grand Dads BIL was crippled in the 1935 Quetta earthquake, but survived. Ramanands wife, 2 kids & younger brother could not be traced. The cinema hall crumbled and the entire market place experienced massive devastation. 40-42 flats were saved, but the rest collapsed. My Grand Dads entire family comprising my Dadi, 3 kids(1 of them my dad) survived & one of my Dada’s sister was found alive after 3 days. Her husbands legs got stuck for over 50 hours before he was rescued. He never walked after that.
Ramanand was the one, who franctically searched for his family & by the 2nd night had lost all hope. He then found S. Didar Singh under a beam & managed to scrape the land under his legs for over 14 hours, till such time he could move even one leg from under the concrete, then came in the rescue team & and in 4-5 hours, got my Dads bhua’s husband out. They kept the legs but absolutely defunct.
Ramanand never ever wept a minute & did not even have a burial for his family members, yet made arrangements for over 60 burials of our family and society members. He then served my Dads uncle for 3 years, before gangrene entered his thigh and diabetes took its toll.
Selfless, dedicatedly, with no commitment to reward and only for the love that he had for the family did he do this male nurse job along with all other duties. He did not re-marry to avoid getting distracted from his work.
In 1947, my Dada chartered an Air India flight from Quetta to Delhi to get all the members of the family & society to safety. He himself drove across the Hindukush, Karakoram & Pamir knot via Ladakh, Himachal & Dehradun to settle there, Ramanand to accompany him and another daring friend of my Dadaji.
A story often told by my Gran Dad during the evenings over his XXX Patiala & Chicken kabab, when we used to visit him at Chandigarh for vacations. We listened more as we got more kababs the longer we sat around him, but today I remember this even more.
Ramanand was more a Son to him than a domestic help. He stayed on till 1975, when a minor illness, viral & an attack surrounded him together…..he had lost the strength to fight, but was never short of COURAGE.
I remember him since we kids used to play with his handle bar Moustaches and a large wart on his left cheek just camouflaged by the Mouchie. The sweetest human being I think I ever have come across who never raised his voice even at the respectable age he was when we used to come for our annual summer/winter vacations. We all cousins, six of us used be full of mischief and pranks and he was there with us all the time.
Unfortunately I have no picture of his now, but had I had one I would have shared it on this portal, as a mark of respect for the service he performed for 3 genererations.
He breathed his last on 16th June 1975. Praying for the departed soul to ever rest in peace.
