Page 9 - Seniors Today Jan20 Issue

While I was in my final year my father passed technology. The area from Japan to the Middle
away and that was a huge blow. Driven by the
emotional trauma of my father’s death and the
need to be independent. I decided to join the Navy
and to my good luck I was selected. However,
while waiting to be commissioned I saw an
announcement in the paper for a government
scholarship to study at the Queens University,
Canada for a course in electrical engineering.
To my surprise I was awarded the scholarship
to study power engineering at one of Canada’s
premier institutions, in Kingston near Toronto.
The Navy agreed to release me from their
employment and I set out for Canada in 1946.
My family were among the leading business
houses in Peshawar. We owned a large
department store called Kirpa Ram & Brothers,
and had over a hundred employees, right from
horsemen, coachmen, tailors, accountants, store
managers, etc. We lived in a lavish house above
Kirpa Ram & Brothers and it was one of the
largest establishments in Peshawar. I left in 1946
from an undivided India. After doing my masters
at MIT I worked with General Electric for some
time and when I returned in 1951 India was
divided. The Partition had affected my family in
numerous ways and in the meanwhile I got a job
offer from the Tata’s and I decided to stay back in
India.
When the troubles started in January 1947,
my brother’s families were sent on a holiday to
Mussoorie where Kirpa Ram & Brothers had
another leading departmental store. My mother
decided that she was going to stay back and my
eldest brother stayed back with her. One evening
the governor of the province came over to see
my mother and convinced her to catch the last
chartered flight out of Peshawar where he had
reserved last two seats for them. My mother was
reluctant but he would have none of it and said
he could not guarantee their safety, and they had
to leave right then. My mother wanted to go to the
bank and bring all her jewellery, but he told her
to come back later. She packed a small bag with
two pairs of clothes, her medicines and she left.
In the 1970s I got an opportunity to visit
Pakistan again. At that time I was the director of
Region Ten, an institute of electrical engineering
9 SENIORS TODAY | Issue #7 | January 15, 2020
East, including Pakistan, were my territory.
After the Partition I was very reluctant to visit
Pakistan in spite of being the Director of Region
Ten. However, I went to Pakistan and had
meetings in Lahore and Rawalpindi but I longed
for Peshawar because that was my home. My wife
also joined me on these conferences and always
looked forward to visiting Pakistan as much
as I did. She had spent a lot of her childhood in
Rawalpindi and this would have been the first
time since Partition that we would be going there.
The schedule for the Pakistan conference was
one day in Karachi, one day in Islamabad and
two days in Lahore.
Swarn Kohli:
I was born in Rawalpindi. My grandfather was
a well-known lawyer. My father was a sugar
technologist, his elder brother was a lawyer
and the younger was in insurance. Twice a year
we all congregated in Rawalpindi. I studied
in a boarding school in Simla in Tara Hall, a
branch of Loretto Convent. I happened to come
to Rawalpindi for my brother’s mundan (the
ceremony when a child’s head is shaved for
the first time). It was like a mini wedding. My
grandfather decided that he would like to keep
me with him in Rawalpindi. I was the eldest
grandchild and his will overrode everything else.
I left Tara Hall and got relocated to Rawalpindi.
Since people in school did not speak English
well and I was good at the subject, I was given
a double promotion, going from the sixth grade