Troubled times…. Brave decisions..
My parents had a rather difficult life because my father was caught up in the depression of
the late twenties/early thirties and remained unemployed for 11 long years from the age of
22 to the age of 33. It was only in 1935 that he managed to secure a job in the Govt. Opium
Factory in Neemuch, MP. This was a temporary post but the advertisement said it was likely
to continue. That it did. It was only in 1950, after serving for 15 years, that his post was
made permanent. He retired on a modest salary in 1957 without qualifying for pension - the
qualifying period for pension being 10 years in a permanent post. But a kindhearted boss
fought for justice and got pension sanctioned. He drew this small pension for 28 years till
his death on March 6, 1985.
It was not the sort of life he must have envisioned for himself when he, scion of a
well-to-do Kashmiri Pandit family, was sent to UK in 1922 by my grand father to receive
training in the Railways. Between the ages of 20 and 22 he obtained this training and was
offered good postings on UK Railways but his parents decided otherwise and he was called
back home. On his return to India he did get some offers on Indian Railways (Railways were
private companies in those days) but on the advice of elders, hoping for better offers to
come, he declined. The great economic depression was then setting in and the unfortunate
result was that he was without a job till age 33.
My mother Smt. Janak Tikku (nee Janak Dulari Kaul), like other girls of her time, had no
formal education but with some home schooling she learnt to read and write in a modest way.
She got married on Oct. 4, 1927 in Sialkot, now in Pakistan. Her husband’s long period of
unemployment and the burden of family responsibilities strengthened her resolve to pursue
studies on her own. Difficult circumstances and the burden of looking after children failed
to deter her. She was a determined woman and passed the Matriculation Exam of the Punjab
University in 1935 at the age of 29. Encouraged by this success, she planned to get nursing
training so she would be able to supplement the family income. Her brother Dr. Tej Kishen
Kaul, then settled in London with his medical practice, offered to help her and a passage
was booked in 1939. By a happy coincidence, a family friend from the same town (Shri Sitaram
Jajoo) planned to go to London and she was thus assured of company for the boat journey. But
destiny intervened again; war broke out and the plan had to be abandoned. But this did not
dampen her will, she now decided to study even further and in 1942 passed the Intermediate
Exam. She appeared for her B A Exam the same year that my younger brother Roop Krishna (born
1934) appeared for his BA exam. But luck did not favor her this time. She got a compartment
in one subject. She then gave up. But she achieved what she had aimed at by becoming capable
of supplementing the family income. In 1949 she secured a job with Mayo College, Ajmer as
Matron in the Senior House of the school to look after the needs of young students, their
clothing/laundry/upkeep etc. and thus funded my engineering education at Birla Engineering
College, Pilani between the years 1949-1952. She gave up the job just before I graduated.
