WRITING ON THE WALL

: rice-shelling business, and were now running two shellers. Two years ago, when they built a house in one of the better residential areas of the town, Pehowa knew they had arrived.
The house in the heart of the town is a far cry from their cramped family haveli in the narrow lanes of Murtazapur village, 8 km away, where they used to live as a joint family till a couple of years ago. Though divided into 10 caste-based mohallas, the entire village knows the Singla family, thanks to the chakki (grinder) started by Narata Ram, Mam Chand’s father.
Angrez Singh Bajwa, a tawny-eyed teacher in a private school, says that though Narata Ram also suffered heavy losses as a commission agent he managed to stay afloat due to the chakki that continues to be patronised by people from four villages.
With his father’s losses fresh in mind, Mam Chand, the eldest of four brothers, grew up to be a cautious businessman. “He was a very hard-working and good-natured man,’’ remembers Angrez, who used to daily hitch a ride on Chand’s moped. Very unassuming, he even dressed up like a peasant with a white kurta payjama topped by a white wrap on the head. His sons, however, had more urbanised sartorial tastes. While Pradeep had a weakness for safari suits, Amit preferred trousers and shirts.
And it was Pradeep’s suit that helped his friends identify his body and later that of Amit in the canal on March 31 even though the police refused to believe them. Later, it was due to the efforts of a dozen Rajput divers from the village that the police managed to fish out the second-hand Maruti car bought a month ago with the rest of the family, including Mam Chand, his wife, two daughters-in-law, one of them eight-month pregnant, and three young grand-daughters, the eldest only seven.

The village is yet to get over the shock of this loss.

It can’t be a case of suicide, they were all too lion-hearted to take such a step, is the general refrain. More than the tall, wiry Mam Chand who had a narrow escape during the Amarnath yatra last month, the villagers remember his wife Nirmala Devi as a woman with a sunny smile.
The friendly matron who spoke fluent Haryanvi and a smattering of Punjabi ran her own hole-in-the-wall kiryana shop in the village with considerable elan. She knew both...

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