The one who served like no other

Rajiv Sharma

HOUSE No. 3, behind Pingalwara, Amritsar, was our address for almost 30 years before we decided to move to the other end of the city because of space constraints of our ancestral house. Born and brought up around the haven for the physically and mentally challenged, Pingalwara gave me an opportunity to observe the lives of the forgotten strata of society from close quarters.

 As a child, while going to school, I was petrified by the shrieks of kids my age, peeping through wire-meshed windows of the building. I tried to avoid eye contact, but soon I got accustomed to their cries and started stealing a glance to invite a smile or two. Thereafter, I merrily passed the street laughing and gesturing to the less privileged children. They jumped in elation and hugged one another everytime I waved and smiled at them.

Later, when I moved to middle school, I happened to pass through the same route, which Pingalwara volunteers took to carry the mentally ill for treatment. In those days, they couldn’t afford fuel-driven vehicles. Men and women were chained and locked to be transported in an iron cart, pulled manually by the caretakers, all the way to hospital, 8 km from Pingalwara. 

This may seem as a barbaric practice, but the science of psychiatry was not so advanced then and patients had to be restrained to prevent them  from harming themselves or others. We usually came across them at the level crossing while waiting for the train to pass. Blank expression in the eyes of the desolate was too much to handle for our tender hearts. Every cart used to carry Buddha’s message: Anyone who wishes to serve me better, serve an ailing person.

Bhagat Pooran Singh was the lone man behind the noble mission which seemed impossible in those times of scanty resources and negligible support from government. He single-handedly raised a shelter for the poor, deprived and differently abled people to live with dignity. He was also a staunch environmentalist and crusader against social evils.

Once while playing outside the complex, he signalled me to come in along with my friends. Sitting on a cot, sporting a white beard and a frail frame, with one of his assistants, he asked me: ‘Do you watch TV?’ I nodded. ‘TV is akin to TB. It drains your mind and body.’ Then he gave us few pamphlets printed on reused paper, against TV viewing, to distribute in the neighbourhood, which we gladly did.

In the twilight years of his life, he could be seen sitting outside the Golden Temple, distributing leaflets and booklets written by him on the preservation of environment and against social ills. Once on my visit to the Golden Temple, he whispered in my ear when I bent to touch his feet: ‘Rukh lagao, sukh vadhao (Plant trees to yield happiness).’

Such was this man extraordinaire who kept working selflessly for the uplift of the poor and the abandoned till the last breath of his life.