Page 14 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

The Religion of Good & Evil
Partition and its attendant anguish holds enduring lessons for all of us, even today,
writes Vickram Sethi
The Sethis were wealthy traders from Peshawar,
and somewhere in the early 18th century one
part of the clan moved to Bhera. They owned
salt mines and sold salt to the entire northern
region. In Peshawar and Bhera they built large
havelis for themselves, right next to each other.
This part still exists and is called Sethiyon ka
Mohalla (Sethian da malla). One of the sons
Moolchand married Laxmi Devi, an ordinary
schoolmaster’s daughter who couldn’t afford
to give his daughter any dowry but taught
her to read and write, and infused in her his
mathematical genius. She could calculate faster
than any of the munshis, had a strong business
acumen and became a trusted partner of her
husband Moolchand’s business.
Laxmi Devi and Moolchand decided that
they would move to Rawalpindi. Pindi was
the gateway to Kashmir, North-West Frontier
Province and the Khyber Pass. It became a
centre for commerce, trade and banking. The
British set up their headquarters of the northern
14
command of the British Army in Pindi and it
became the biggest cantonment in the whole
of undivided British India. Pindi was a great
commercial, administrative, ministry and
cultural centre of the vast area, west and north
of Lahore. Moolchand saw this as the future.
He bought an estate of three houses from Wazir
and Fakir Sayyad who sold the three houses
for a sum of Rs. 2,100. Moolchand lived in two
houses and made an office (hatti) in the third
house which faced the road and had godowns
for storing the salt.
Salt was transported on camels and it took
two days. The camels walked through the
night and rested from a little after sunrise to
sunset. There were four spots on the way where
makeshift houses, water wells and shelters were
made for the camels. During winter the camels
reached much faster. Laxmi Devi employed
cobblers to make large leather sacks in which
salt was carried on camels to Rawalpindi.
These sacks were weather-proof and the salt