Bhagat Lakshman Singh's relation with Bhai Sher Singh

BHAGAT LAKSHMAN SINGH AUTOBIOGRAPHY

Edited & Annotated by Ganda Singh

IN KASHMERE

(Pages 249-251)

In a word, my stay at Pahlgam was a joyful experience, thanks to the uniform kindness and courtesy of my host Prof. Jodh Singh. Not less cordial was Sardar Sher Singh, M.Sc’s reception of me.^* He was Divisional Forest Officer in charge of the Banihal ilaqa. He came especially to show me the famous fount, the source of the river Jhelum. What an ecstasy to see the river from the road side and the green fields and groves it waters. My heart was full with the feelings of gratitude to the great ruler or rulers who had spent money so lavishly to provide such a handsome structure for enclosing this historic font and for the great Artificer himself who created this wonder from within a crevice of the huge swarthy great Pir Panjal range. Sher Singh very kindly asked me to let me have the pleasure of his company for a few days at Banihal. The name was familiar to me, as it was I whose review won a prize for the author of the Lakshmi Devi, the well known poetical work of Lala Kirpa Sagar, who so graphically describes the love intrigues of the great Maharaja Ranjit Singh with a Rajput damsel of Banihal upland. I had no opportunity to know and understand the Rajputs over there or hear of their folk-lore. But the tragic consequences of the inclement monsoonish weather of these days filled my impressionable mind with a sort of pain which it is difficult to suppress as I picture to myself what I then saw and heard. What a few days previous bore such gorgeous and transcend­ent look pleasant and melodious to the eye and ear, underwent a sudden change. The skies were overcast with clouds and it began to rain cats and dogs. The state arrangements for the safe conduct of pilgrims to Amar Nath Cave broke down. Most of the pilgrims and ponies perished on the way. And of hundreds of pilgrims that had gone for the darshan of the sacred lingam very few returned. The colony of Pahalgam, too, did not fare better. The bridge over the river was carried off and its waters overflew its banks and blocked the way.

I was then encamped in the bed of the nullah coming down the Banihal tunnel. But fortunately for me the Kashmiri chowkidar who kept guard over me spent the whole night with his spade to turn down the course of the hill torrent and no harm was done to me. Sher Singh with his mother, wife and children, lay encamped higher up away from the passage of the waters. Next morning the Zaildar and other visitors who called on us brought harrowing tales of the havoc caused by the waters down the tunnel. Any number of men, women, and children who slept on the banks of nullah were swept off. A day or two alter the skies cleared, and I was able to leave Banihal and move down to Islamabad. The whole route was ruin and desolation, not a vestige of grown up rice crops was in sight. Peasants leaned against trees were shedding tears and their elderly people were consoling them. The holy poet Guru Tegh Bahadur truly describes in verse man’s helplessness in such dismal moments when he says:

Hari ki gati nahi koi janai,

Jogi jati tapi pachi hare aru bahu log siane,

Chhin mehi rao rank kau karei, rao rank kar dare,

Rite bhare, bhare sakhnavai, yah ta ko bivhare.

[Bihagra, IX, 2-1.]

“The Lord’s ways nobody knows, Jogis, Jatis, Tapis and most men of wisdom all own their helplessness. In a moment he turns a prince to a pauper and a pauper to a prince. He fills empty treasures and those full he empties. This is His way of work.

I was fed up with all this and resolved to move down to my home in Rawalpindi. But for miles the road from Islamabad (Anantnag) to Srinagar was covered with flood waters. I considered it unsafe to cross it and went back to Bawan (Mattan Sahib), where I halted again for about a month and explored the neighbouring ruins of Martanda, a famous Buddhist temple which stands on a vast plateau overlooking the valley of Kashmir. It was in the middle of October that I got a seat in a lorry and arrived at Srinagar which looked as if nothing had happened, the flood water having been turned down under the supervision of my old class-fellow and friend, the late Rai Bahadur Lala Makhan Lal, Superintending Engineer, Kashmir.

* Sher Singh, M.Sc., was born at Rawalpindi on September 14, 1893. Passing his Matriculation from Mission School, Rawalpindi, in 1910, he took up science subjects and passed M.Sc. in 1916. He then joined the Forest Department and rose to be Conservator of Forests. — Ganda Singh.