Harcharan
Harcharan Singh was born on 2 March 1945 in Sahdra village near Balachaur, in the last years of British rule. His family were Punjabi-speaking Sikhs who worked their own land in a household, the kind of courtyard where several cooking fires ran at once and everyone knew who had eaten and who had not. Men went out to the fields at first light; women carried water and fodder and still went to weed and harvest when the work demanded it.
He entered a house that had already buried two children. His parents had buried a baby girl, Harbans Kaur, in 1941, and then their first boy, Jarnail Singh, in 1943. Surinder Kaur, born in 1943, grew up as the eldest living child, old enough to remember the hush that fell when sickness came. Harcharan was the fourth child and the second living one. A tall boy later, long-limbed and quick to grin, he learned early to win attention by talking. He liked sitting near his paternal grandmother, Bibiji Harnam Kaur, as she rolled rotis and told stories in Punjabi mixed with the hill-side speech she had picked up in her youth. He repeated lines back to her in her own phrasing, making her laugh.
Partition arrived when he was two. In Sahdra it came as families on the road, men speaking in fast, tight voices, and changes in records and holdings that made his father, Sohan Singh, spend evenings with other landholders, comparing papers and arguing about boundaries. Harcharan’s earliest memories included strangers at the gurdwara courtyard eating langar, the steel plates washed in a line at the handpump, and his mother Kishan Kaur pulling him away from the edge of crowds.
More children came. By the time Harcharan was fifteen, he had three younger brothers—Baljit, Avtar, Satpal—and four younger sisters—Gurmeet, Dalbir, Manjit, Ranjit. The courtyard stayed crowded. Eleven children born in all, though two had died before Harcharan could remember them. More loss would follow.
The household was run by elders. Baba Kartar Singh, his paternal grandfather, held the final word in disputes between brothers. Chacha Mohinder Singh lived in the same compound with his wife; their children ran through the same lanes and fought over the same toys. When Harcharan was sent to school, Master Jiwan Lal taught him to trace Gurmukhi letters on a slate. He learned enough to read simple signs and to write his name, but he drifted. He skipped when a fair came to a nearby town, or when a cousin promised a ride on a cart. His father punished him with extra work rather than blows: hauling manure, carrying water to the vegetable patch, standing guard in the fields at night.
By his teens he spoke easily with men at the mandi and with travelers who came to repair pumps or sell tools. He liked new objects. A bicycle bell. A radio that caught songs and news when the weather was clear. He listened to talk about tubewells and new wheat seed and repeated it at home, half understanding it and enjoying the sound of it. Surinder Kaur, already helping their mother in the fields, pulled him back when he got too mouthy in front of elders.
The mid-1960s brought changes that reached even Sahdra. New varieties of wheat, bags of fertiliser, and the promise of higher yields made the family take loans and plan around irrigation turns. Harcharan enjoyed the bustle. He went with his father to the mandi and liked the tea stalls, the jokes, the smell of fried pakoras, the quick deals spoken over stacks of grain. The Indo-Pak war of 1965 brought blackout orders and tense nights; his elders talked of troop movements and price uncertainty. He remembered the quiet after sunset, lamps shaded, and the way even loud men lowered their voices.
That same year, Ranjit Kaur, the youngest sister, died at five years old—a fever that did not break.
Sohan Singh arranged Harcharan’s marriage in 1968. Rajinder Kaur came to the house with her dowry trunks and brass utensils, and she learned the rules of the compound quickly. Harcharan treated her with warmth in public and impatience in private when she asked about money or routines. Their daughter, Jaspreet Kaur, was born in 1970. He carried her around the courtyard and showed her off at the gurdwara, but he also vanished for long chats at the tea stall when she cried at night and Rajinder needed help.
In 1971 the second war came and passed; by then he was a young man with responsibilities on the land. In 1973 Rajinder delivered a son, Gurpreet Singh, who died before he had properly settled into the house. Women whispered about nazar and weakness. Kishan Kaur began keeping more remedies close—warming ajwain in ghee for stomach complaints, tying small protective threads for children.
Alcohol entered Harcharan’s routine through companionship. Banta Singh, a neighboring farmer, liked to stop at a roadside dhaba after mandi days. A few pegs became a habit. Harcharan was loud and charming after drink, quick to start a song and quick to argue if he felt mocked. He came home late, then missed morning tasks. He promised to cut back. He did, for stretches, then returned to it when the fields demanded costly inputs or when someone in the family fell sick.
The losses piled up. Baba Kartar Singh had died back in 1968, before the children started coming; Bibiji Harnam Kaur followed in 1976. But the death that hit hardest was Manjit Kaur in 1975, dead at seventeen. The household never stopped talking about her. Harcharan grew more irritable after that, and more willing to spend on anything that promised relief: a new pump part, a different seed, a medicine bottle from a town clinic.
In 1983, with input costs rising and water turns tight, he began cutting corners. He took water outside the allotted time when he thought no one was watching and sent a boy to cut fodder from common land. It was the sort of petty rule-breaking that often stayed within village handling—warnings, arguments, a shouted threat at the well. He did it more than once, especially after a bad week.
A few years later, in 1985, someone stole from him. A sack of fertiliser and a metal part from near the khuh vanished overnight. He walked the field edge at dawn, swearing under his breath, then went to the market and paid extra to replace what he needed in the middle of the season. He carried the purchase home himself, refusing help, and spent the evening complaining to anyone who would listen. That theft became one of his justifications whenever a brother accused him of taking too much water.
Debt became the main problem in 1990. Crop prices dipped while expenses rose: clinic bills from Dr. Mehta in the nearby town, wedding contributions for relatives, repairs to the house, and money spent at the dhaba. He borrowed on high interest through the mandi system, with Rakesh Kumar, a commission-agent clerk, doing the calculations on paper Harcharan could not fully follow. When repayment dates arrived, he argued, begged for time, and then shouted at home. Baljit Singh wanted strict control of spending. Avtar Singh, the more disciplined younger brother, talked about planning and records. Dalbir Kaur, married out but still close to the family, passed news between households and sometimes sent quiet help through her husband’s earnings. Harcharan insisted he had everything in his head, then forgot what he had promised.
The early 1990s also carried Punjab’s atmosphere of checkpoints and fear. He kept trips to town short when news of violence spread. Some evenings he stayed home, listening to the radio, but the strain still drove him back to drink. In 1996 the family mortgaged part of the land to steady the situation. The dispute over it ran through the household for years.
In 1997, as his health began to falter—blood pressure that made him dizzy, aches that did not ease—his mother and wife followed Sardarni Shanti Kaur to a local sant’s gathering at a derā. Harcharan went at first to keep peace at home. He ended up liking the attention and the plain routines: shoes left outside, a quick bow, prasad in the palm, the sant’s talk about controlling drink and settling family quarrels. He still called himself Sikh and went to the gurdwara on gurpurabs, but the derā became the place he visited when he felt trapped. He brought home packets of ash and sweetened water said to help with illness, and he insisted Rajinder keep them near the kitchen shelf.
Sohan Singh died in 1998, ending the last unquestioned authority over the brothers. The family rearranged responsibilities and boundaries. Harcharan kept farming but with less stamina. Kishan Kaur died in 2007, and Chacha Mohinder Singh followed in 2010. Surinder Kaur died in 2017, and Avtar Singh in 2022; Gurmeet Kaur followed in 2023. Those losses narrowed his circle. His daughter Jaspreet, grown and married, managed more of his medical appointments and brought medicines from town. Satpal Singh, the youngest surviving brother, helped with hospital trips and paperwork when Harcharan’s health worsened.
When COVID-19 arrived, he stayed close to home. The gurdwara langar stopped for a time, weddings shrank, and the village became quiet in an unfamiliar way. He listened to news on the phone a nephew set up for him, pretending he understood everything and then asking the same question again.
By late 2025 Harcharan is eighty. He sits on a woven cot in the courtyard after the morning tea, rubbing oil into his knees before he tries to walk. He reads a simple headline when someone hands him a paper, then passes it on. Some days he helps with small tasks—sorting seed, watching a grandchild tie a bundle—then he drifts into conversation with whoever passes the gate. He still visits the derā when a relative can take him, and he still goes to the gurdwara on the big days, keeping his head covered and his talk low, letting others handle the accounts.