Guarding our families and land

This photograph is from the late 1990 at my paternal village near Sri Muktsar Sahib, a south west city in Punjab. I am not sure who took it, but it would have been developed in Muktsar. Here I am as a little boy in the arms of my uncle Jaswant. Ours was an agricultural family, who like many others or decades, if not centuries, had owned and tilled lands for grain. However, since the 1970s the Insurgent militancy in Punjab had begun to disturb the peace of the villages and towns, and by 1990 it was at its peak even though between 1987 and 1991, Punjab had been placed under the President’s rule.

The bittersweet legend of a family mansion

In 1715, my ancestor, an Afridi Pathan teacher Husain Khan migrated from Kohat (now Pakistan) to Qaimganj (now Farrukhabad, Uttar Pradesh). Kohat was mainly a tribal area and Qaimganj was closer to Delhi, the capital of the erstwhile Mughal Empire and may have offered him better employment opportunities. Family legend says he lived for more than a 100 years and was known as ‘Bade Ustaad’ (The Great Teacher). His next three generations (sons, grandsons and great-grand sons) chose to serve in the army.