Standing in a dull green-and-gold field, his voice muffled by the sound of the water gushing from a tubewell, Kashmir Singh spreads his arms out and says, “This is the field on which I was working the day I left for Pakistan.” It was 36 years ago on a June afternoon that Singh was sent on an ‘assignment’ across the border. Singh, who was arrested by Pakistani intelligence sleuths in 1972 on charges of spying, returned last Tuesday after serving a life term and some more.

These 36 years, time stood still for Singh but the village moved on—too rapidly, as he came back to discover. Walking around the village—even the name had changed while he was away from Nangal Choran Da (a village of thieves) to Nangal Khidariyan (a village of players)—he looks excited, almost like a little boy in a toy shop. “What is this,” he asked, pointing to a tractor. G.C. Bhardwaj, his childhood friend and the man who pursued his case all these years, pats his shoulder and tells him: “This is what we use in place of a plough these days.”

“Sab kuch badal gaya hai. (Everything has changed),” Singh keeps muttering as he goes around—gone was the quiet hamlet he had left behind; in its place now was a village that proudly displayed its newly acquired prosperity. “There wasn’t a single pucca house here those days; we only had huts,” says Singh. His then turns around to his friend to ask about a three-storied house, the height of affluence those days. “Don’t tell me they have pulled it down,” he frowns. “But my house has changed too. We used to live in a single room. Now my family has built a proper house with bedrooms.”

... contd.