TWO words that are indelibly associated with the Oxford dictionaries in my mind don’t figure in them, in spite of the steady march of Indian expressions that have now been accepted as English! They are “unparh” and “jahil”-the Punjabi words for illiterate and uncouth.

How? Therein lies a story that has interesting elements. The place: Bhupindra Kothi, Patiala, one of the minor palaces in the city. Time: 6 pm. Dramatic personae: A man with a large turban and a youngster wearing an under-turban or a patka. Scene: The man fuming and fretting, and uttering the aforesaid words repeatedly.

I was wary, since I thought that the words were directed at me. It was to my immense relief that I realised that some unnamed others were the target. The gentleman had come home to meet my parents, and while they were out for a walk, I was trying to entertain him. His angry demeanour notwithstanding, there was something that attracted the 10-year-old me to him.

“How dare they say that the Sikh icon was cyclothymic,” he thundered. I ventured to ask him what cyclothymic meant. “Don’t you know? Get the dictionary!” I scurried away to the nearest bookrack. I thought the world was too big for the small ELBS dictionaries we used for school and thus picked up the Shorter Oxford Dictionary, which despite its name, was quite hefty. I went to the right page to find out that the word meant “a mental state characterised by marked swings of mood between depression and elation.” In the meantime, the gentleman spoke about words, linguistics, philosophy and history, and I just sat listening, mesmerised.

By the time my parents came, he had inculcated in me a deep desire to know more about things in general and the beginning of a habit to consult the dictionary when in doubt. Nowadays, instead of thumbing through the pages, I tend to use my fingers to type out my query, just as, instead of writing in longhand, I input my articles straight on a computer. I thus tend to see the online editions of various dictionaries, although I must confess that I am not one of the many subscribers who pay around Rs 14,000 to access the digital version of the Oxford English Dictionary (OED), the largest and most comprehensive of the dictionaries published by Oxford. It gets 20 lakh hits a month. The many free online dictionaries widely available on the Net serve my needs.

OED takes many years to compile. The latest print edition came out in 1989 and is in 20 volumes. It will take many years for OED’ s new edition, which is still being compiled, to be published, but even then, the news that when it is finally completed, it may only be online, disturbed me.

I still use a fountain pen to write, and consult print dictionaries, especially when offline. On the Net, you type the word and get its meaning. However, when you open a printed dictionary, you look for the page, and then the word nestled among others…there is something to be said for meandering that happens, which often takes you a pleasant detour.

With this memorable encounter, and many that followed, Sirdar Kapur Singh, ICS, ignited my mind. He put on the path of lexographic discoveries and set me off on a journey that I still enjoy, although a bit more while thumbing through the pages of the dictionary than by accessing it online.

The article by Roopinder Singh was published as a Middle in the Editorial page of The Tribune on September 3, 2010.

A file photo of when Sirdar Kapur Singh visited our home in Amritsar. I am in the extreme right hand corner, and he is standing next to me, second last from the corner:

From Giani Gurdit Singh

by Roopinder Singh

IN an exclusive off-the-record briefing in which he demanded anonymity because of the sensitive nature of the subject, a senior official of the Punjab government stridently sought to put to rest all speculation regarding the visit of the state’s legislators to the country known for all things scotch. “It is not only desirable but also necessary that state legislators continually educate themselves,” he said.

He strongly refuted the allegation that the honourable legislators had gone on a pleasure trip. “This is a serious attempt to examine and understand the process with which scotch whiskey is manufactured”, he said, adding that the team would visit various facilities with a view to drawing lessons which would be of immense help to such endeavours in the state.”

When asked if it was desirable that the public exchequer’s money be used for such trips, the official came back with the following argument: “Look at all the liquor shops in Punjab. Even in Chandigarh you have many shops in a single location, like the Sector 9 market. We need quality products for such up-scale showrooms.”

In response to a pointed question about the honourable members’ dietary excursions, he said that scotch egg was a staple with many members in the morning and scotch pancake’s at tea time. Some members had even tried the scotch pie. He pleaded ignorance about whether the members imbibed the more potent drinks that Scotland is also associated with worldwide.

His PA, who had been hovering unobtrusively in the background, taking notes and doing the things PAs do, however, pointed out that it would be rude to refuse traditional scottish hospitality and the members would be expected to do all they can to further the strong fraternal bonds between the scotch and Indians.

The issue of whether the ground water around Punjabi distilleries was polluted (as claimed initially) or not (as the state pollution control board later said), was dismissed off-hand. “How does it matter? We must be prepared for all challenges, extant or anticipated. Pollution is a global phenomenon and we must go globe-trotting to study it,” the official, who is a figment of this writer’s imagination, said.

Talking of global ramifications, a request has just been received for a high-powered committee to study the designs of the scottish kilt. “There is a remarkable similarity between the tartan design and the Madras check. “It is also not a coincidence that the kilt and the lungi are used to cover the lower part of the male torso. “We must examine if there is any patent violation involved in this, and while doing so we can also explore the possibility of manufacturing scottish kilts in Ludhiana,” said the official.

“Brilliant Sir”, said the PA, “other honourable members who have been complaining of being left out. We can take care of them now”. Scotland, here they come.

This middle was published on the Editorial page of The Tribune on July 21, 2010

Here are links to middles that I wrote, one in 1992 and another in 1994, which you may also find interesting. Please click on the headings given below to read them.

Civil action in uniform

What will we do without TADA?

by Roopinder Singh

ONE of the first decisive acts of new British Prime Minister David Cameron was to censure the use of mobile phones, including Blackberries, in Cabinet meetings. His “Not, now. Not here, please” strikes a sixer for cell phone civility, which has been absent from the world in recent days as much as cricket is from Twenty20.

Even as the British Cabinet was meeting to discuss ways to get away from the exertions of forming the Cabinet to being the Cabinet, there were two distracting phone calls and a text, which led to the ban. Ironically, at the same time, back in a country which was once the jewel in the crown of the British Empire, I was sitting in a place where by convention cell phones should not be used - in a place of worship.

We were all there to pay our respects to a wonderful man, a surgeon and a scholar, who had departed us a few months before his 100th birthday. The psalms were soothing, the atmosphere sombre and serene. Till your glance went to someone who was busy texting, or another one who actually took a call!

No doubt, cell phones or mobiles liberate us in many ways. They have revolutionised the way we communicate, and are ubiquitous in their spread. In India, a recent study found out that we have more cell phones than toilets! Not that we need the latter. He who hasn’t seen the sight of a grown-up man (why does it always have to be men?) standing by the roadside, peeing while carrying on a conversation on his mobile simultaneously, ain’t seen nothing yet.

Who hasn’t been embarrassed at hearing in a crowded public place what should obviously be a private conversation? Which social gathering or meeting hasn’t been interrupted with a rude, incongruous sound of a caller tune that reveals the immaturity and fantasies of the mobile owner even as it irritates. I have always called my cell phone an electronic leash that allows me limited freedom at the cost of being available to all and sundry at even unearthly hours and inconvenient times.

As German philosopher Immanuel Kant said, while formulating his Categorical Imperative, “Nothing is good in itself, except good will.” Cell phones have given us liberty, but they should not take away our life with their intrusions. We have to take charge of our lives. Somehow, people assume that cell phone recipients must always be available. Well, they will learn that this is not so, simply if you are not available to them. Cameron has made the right call.

I sincerely hope that it catches up and we can cut ourselves from the tyranny that cell phones impose on us. When I acquired my first cell phone, it resembled a small Nanakshahi brick. It occupied pride of place in a holster on my belt. I guess at sometime or the other, Wild West fantasies played in my mind, and I definitely felt as empowered as any cowboy wearing his six shooter.

It rang one day while I was sitting with an American scholar friend. As my hand moved towards the phone “like greased lightning,” as they say in Sudden books, she gasped: “Your aren’t going to take the call, are you?” For her it was inconsiderate, impolites and a personal affront that I would take a call in the midst of our discussion.

The sharpness and horror in her voice was enough to freeze the hand and make it cut the call, instead of taking it, as originally intended. I had learnt a valuable lesson.

This middle was published in The Tribune on 19 May, 2010

A painting should reflect how the artist perceives the subject, and you appreciate it for the effect it has on you, the viewer. During my younger days, I did not have many definite ideas about art and artists, for the simple reason that I did not know enough, though I did appreciate art. Looking at Rodin’s Thinker was an experience that touched the soul; the impressionists left an impact of a painting that far transcended realism. The fundamentals of art are universal, and people are ready to pay maximum dollars to possess paintings by masters.

Pablo Picasso’s 1932 painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur
(Nude, Green Leaves and Bust). From Website

A painting by Pablo Picasso has just been sold in New York for $106.5 million — a new world record. The 1932 painting, Nu au Plateau de Sculpteur (Nude, Green Leaves and Bust), has Marie-Therese Walter, the artist’s mistress, in a reclining position and also in a bust. Picasso included his own profile in the blue background.

Picasso was a painter about whom I had strong views. When I was young, Picasso’s work left me totally unmoved and impressed, though, to be fair, I had graduated from an earlier stage when I felt that Picasso was a bit like me, someone who couldn’t paint and thus odd shapes like triangles for the nose!

I lived in ignorance for decades. I remained somewhat suspicious of the person whose full name was Pablo Diego José Francisco de Paula Juan Nepomuceno María de los Remedios Cipriano de la Santísima Trinidad Ruiz y Picasso.

Although he dominated the 20th-century art scene, he left me unmoved. By the end of the century, I had seen the world, but not Picasso’s place in the world of art. It was the dawn of the 21st century that enabled me to finally shed this bit of ignorance, and my prejudice towards Picasso. The trigger was a colleague who had just visited an exhibition of the works of the great artist mounted at the National Museum, New Delhi. The Government of France had sponsored the “Picasso: Metamorphoses, 1900-1972, From the French Collections, from December 2001 to February 2002″.

Gaurav had seen the exhibition and was bubbling with enthusiasm, talking constantly about it to my colleagues and me. His account of how great the exhibition was, and how it aided his understanding of the artist enthused me enough to drive down to Delhi one Sunday morning, straight to the museum.

Having started early, I found myself there by the opening time and went in. Here were 122 works - graphics, drawings, collages, assemblages and sculpture. What an array divided into various sections that profiled the panoramic sweep of Picasso’s prolific career. Blue Period paintings, early turn-of-century, brooding contemplative works, the brilliant sculptures, his portraits, which were thoughtfully placed along with photographs of the subjects… Picasso’s greatness finally sunk into.

I realised, not for the first or the last time, what a fool I had been, in not getting rid of the negativity of ill-formed opinions based on prejudice. Thank God, providence and prodding had enabled me to discover the greatness of an artist.

I went out for lunch and came back to the museum. I bought some prints and generally spent as much as I could afford before driving back to Chandigarh that evening. I had thought of meeting friends, as I always do when I am in Delhi, but that didn’t happen. I needed to be alone to absorb what I had experienced during the day.

This middle, by Roopinder Singh, was published in The Tribune on May 6, 2010

by Roopinder Singh

“Ah! That’s one thing in which we are far ahead of the Americans!” I wondered what had brought out this ironically delivered pronouncement from Jaspreet, since yours truly considers himself a bit of an authority on the US of A, having spent a number of youthful years there.

Now for the disclaimer. I did see the inside of cop stations, but purely because of my journalistic pursuits. I was never arrested and nor did I serve any time there. Neither, have I, for that matter, been able to set up anything like a multi-million dollar empire, but then I digress, as has most of the country in the past few weeks.

President Obama was on his pulpit, addressing the world, glancing left and right for the slim electronic teleprompters that provide him with the right words which he delivers with such eloquence. The leader of the Land of the Free asked politicians to “think more about the next generation than the next election”.

Think of the next generation….the penny dropped. We have a strong tradition of thinking of the next generation. Anyone seeking the validation of philosopher Ludwig Wittgenstein’s “family-resemblance” theory just has to glance at the Indian political pantheon. When a few families control the destiny of a nation, we call it a dictatorship. When they are elected, we call it a democracy…it gives us a moral high ground, you know.

How we take care of the next generation! First we provide for it - at least for the next seven generations is the norm. Then we secure their future by “getting them into a suitable line.” Matrimonial alliances are entered into to secure their future, and religious intervention is sought to leave nothing to chance. In case a prodigal son stumbles, we are there for him, assuring him our full support, and maintaining that he could have done nothing wrong.

The darling was denied a drink and someone was shot? Too bad. A few people were mowed down after a few too many were consumed? Sad. However, witnesses maintained that it was not a BMW but a truck that had done the deed. A foreigner was raped? No way could our dear have done it! Besides, you know how the French are, and she never returned to the city of her trauma to testify. A scuffle and shots fired? Come on, these little things happen when boys are growing up!

Not that the Americans did not have their Chappaquiddick incident, but it was an aberration and ensured that Ted Kennedy could never lay to rest the ghost of his party companion, Mary Jo Kopechne, who died in a car he was driving.

American children learn early that actions have consequences. The privileged in India seldom have to face the consequences of their actions. We can take care of the elections as well as (our) next generations. We beat Americans, but at what cost?

We could better them sometime, but only after we learn to equip our children to take care of themselves, rather than devote our lives to “taking care” of them and crippling their growth potential.

This middle was published in The Tribune on April 29, 2010

The tumultuous passage of the Women’s Reservation Bill in the Rajya Sabha evoked many emotions in us as my mother and I watched it on TV like millions of others. My 87-year-old mother has seen the world transformed around her. Her route to empowerment has been education. In turn, she became a teacher and had the satisfattions of teaching the daughters of her students. The world around her has been transformed from the time when women of privileged were expected to maintain purdah, and were certainly not encouraged to step outside their homes. Her sisters, too became educationists, and they blazed their own career paths.

I wrote a on something that goes back to my childhood. Please click here to read it. I have narrated this incident in the book  Woman: Many Hues Many Shades published by Lahore Book Shop, Ludhiana. When I was asked to write for the book, which is a compilation of articles, I cheekily said that if Khushwant Singh wanted to write on his grandmother, I would do so about my mother. Of course, his Portrait of a Lady is a classic. Please click here to read a review of the book.

Among the women achievers I have written on are Prof Upinder Singh, co-winner of the Infosys Prize in Social Sciences: History, and earlier Rupa Bajwa, who won the Sahitya Akademi Award and the XXIV Grinzane Cavour award.

The feminist in me is seldom far from the surface, least of all today!

by Roopinder Singh

UNOBTRUSIVELY the little black box added music to our life. When my wife came back from school one day, it was there; waiting for her, and the little startled smile that came on her face was reward enough.

Worldspace

Our mornings started with Asa Di Var, and kirtan. Later in the day, we would be humming to some old songs on Farishta, or the more contemporary film music on Jhankar.

Jansher enjoyed the latest English songs on Spin and Top 40, which we also liked, after a fashion, but then we had our own little refuge in Amore, that played mushy ol’e songs and spun its own magic.

The selection was great. Sound quality was crystal clear, except for the occasional day when clouds eclipsed a service that lit up our life at home.

It was the gadget aficionado A.J. Philip who had introduced me to Worldspace and its wonders. Typically, the receiver he had was not available in India, and thus we are relegated to using ones especially made by BPL for the service. Then Sunil got his Worldspace and started singing its praises… and then Shastri…

The thrifty logic in me, however, just could not warm up to the idea of paying for something that was free on the airwaves, and has been so ever since the inception of the radio. Let’s not get into details like licence fees, which have thankfully died a natural and least lamented death.

My father always listened to the radio, and normally by the time I woke up he had twisted the knobs of his trusty old Philips receiver and was au-fair with the latest events. Then it was time for music, which would continue all day, and sometimes into the night, providing a background to his reading and writing. So it was not that there was no music in the house, and to top it all, it was free and FM too was fairly good, becoming better by the day, or so it seemed.

All this was fine, till I realised that Jaspreet was pining for Worldspace, and that was reason enough to change my stance on free airwaves. I joined the gang, and realised what I had been missing all these years. Now it was an integral part of our lives. Yet there were clouds, and we are not talking of atmospheric disturbances.

Now that it has been announced that the New York-based Worldspace Corp has filed for bankruptcy protection, the last day of this year will be the end of service of this remarkable satellite radio that enriched our lives. We will still have music in our lives, Thank God for the free airwaves and the wonderful variety of music that comes through them.

This middle was published in The Tribune on December 29, 2009

I had written about how TV and FM radio in India are turning base in an earlier article.

by Roopinder Singh

THEY were a bunch of restive boys, whose visit to Chandigarh had begun with a pilgrimage to the Govt Museum and Art Gallery in Sector 10. They were tired after travelling back from the Queen of the Hills. A few had been sick, since they were not used to hill roads, but they perked up when their Principal told them the three-foot sculpture they were looking at was Buddha’s foot—“the other foot is in Lahore”.

Fakir Syed Aijazuddin, OBE, is uniquely qualified to talk about the two museums, and the treasures that they hold. He is chairman, Executive Committee of the Lahore Museum, and has been visiting Chandigarh since the mid-1950 when the museum was set up under the leadership of Dr M S Randhawa. Aijazuddin and his wife Shahnaz have fond memories of Dr Randhawa’s hospitality.

Aijazuddin wears many a cap — chartered accountant, with experience in automotive, fertiliser, oil and gas, insurance and investment banking sectors. He is also an author with many books to his credit, and now head of his alma mater, Aitchison College, Lahore, where many of the scions of the most-noted families of the region studied. He had come to India, leading a party of young students who had to join in the celebrations of another fine old institution, Bishop Cotton School, Shimla, as it celebrated its sesquicentennial this year.

My alma mater, Yadavindra Public School, Patiala, however, traces its lineage back to Aitcheson College because after Partition, the Maharaja of Patiala founded YPS around a nucleus of Aitchisonians — teachers and students — who had been displaced from Lahore. As a Yadavindrian, my friend Gurpreet Bhattal had asked me to join a delegation that met these Aitchisonians in Chandigarh, something I had gladly done.

“One-third of the Lahore museum came to Chandigarh,” Aijazuddin told his students, as he was escorted by the director, NPS Randhawa, who took them around, showing miniatures and sculptures of a heritage that preceded the international border. As Aijazuddin took diverse strands and wove them into a tapestry of artistic history of the region, he reminded one of Chandigarh’s own Prof B N Goswamy, interacting with whom is an education. No wonder the two families have strong ties.

“If we expect them to respect our culture, we must do the same,” he gently chided his boys, as they broke into giggles over some of the pictures, even as he explained the relationship between various gods and goddesses to them. Aijazuddin has studied pahari paintings as an art historian and I was reminded of the first time that I met Aijazuddin, at a seminar on “The Arts of Punjab” held at Punjabi University, Patiala, in 2006, where he gently supplied a detail that enhanced my caption during my presentation on the Murals of GuruHarsahai.  Aijazuddin  had earlier taken the audience on an impassioned trip of Lahore down the ages through painting and sketches.

Aijazuddin laments that young Indians and Pakistanis are not aware of each other’s cultural heritage these days. As the visiting children were told to go to Sector 17 for shopping and recreation for a few hours, their Principal said he wanted more exchanges between people who have not visited each other’s countries, not just those who have the nostalgia for the land that was once there.

Gurpreet Bhattal and Fakir Syed Aijazuddin, OBE

One reads of a Lahore in the grip of violence practically every day. The students of the elite institution and their principal represent the other side of our old cultural capital. Many of us like my friend Gurpreet and I, who live in Corbusier’s modern city, have never visited Pakistan, but we have a foot in Lahore and quite like the Buddha statue, our ties transcend the physical divide.

A shorter version of this article was published in The Tribune on December 3, 2009

Cathryn Donaldson is now following your tweets on Twitter,” said an e-mail recently. I racked my brains, but while the first name did ring a bell, the second did not. Cathryn is not an uncommon name in the US, and during my years there I had known a Cathryn or two … maybe the Donaldson was acquired after marriage….

For the uninitiated, tweets are text-based posts of up to 140 characters. They are displayed on the author’s profile page and delivered to the author’s subscribers who are known as followers.

Even as the brain was abuzz, the eyes were sending sensory data that broke through my reverie: “A little information about Cathryn Donaldson: 0 followers, 1 tweet, following four people. Ah! This was not a blind follower, just another newbie who had clicked blindly.

My exposure to tweets started long before Twitter.com came on the scene. I was a fan of Tweety Bird, a Yellow Canary cartoon character. Like many others, I thought that “tweet” was a typical onomatopoeia for the sounds of birds, but that was before the Internet began changing words and their context.

I must confess that I do not twit. My first and only tweet was on April 17 this year, an embarrassingly inane one-liner, and till date I have just discovered that it netted me 18 followers! Now, I thought that political and religious figures had followers, so it was a pretty heady experience, till I realised that these were my friends who were far from being followers, mine or anyone else’s.

I have steadfastly refused to include people I don’t know into my online orbit, and this works well on Facebook, where people mutually agree to let one another into their electronic lives. Twitter, on the other hand, by default, lets people share updates and links with anyone who wants to read them. Thankfully, it has an option: “You may follow Cathryn Donaldson as well by clicking on the “follow” button on their profile. You may also block Cathryn Donaldson if you don’t want them to follow you.” Since I don’t know her, I would rather not have Cathryn will follow my tweet, or two (another has been added now).

Twitter is ranked as one of the 50 most popular websites worldwide and is used by all — right from the White House to Shashi Tharoor, formerly of the UN and recently of the bovine fame. While some, like Veer Sanghvi, have thousands of followers and interesting tweets like the following: “We like hosting the Games because it gives us a national high for two weeks. Investing in sportsmen would give us a high for decades.” Most of the tweets are, well, just that, chirping notes, exactly what the word has meant since 1768.

Most of the tweets are not even cheerful or lively. Do they even have a meaning? Sometimes, I really wonder, ‘Will I tweet?’ Not unless I have something to say, something of some import. Meaningless words, even those well strung together, are just that — meaningless.

This middle was publiished in The Tribune on September 22, 2009

From Website

During an evening walk, a strange emptiness compelled me to look towards my right, behind the wall covered with a green hedge—nothing. A battered almirah jutted out from a demolished house, once home to one of the architects who built Chandigarh.
Urmila Eulie Chowdhury was an extraordinary phenomenon—a pioneering architect, teacher and designer who contributed so much to the making of Chandigarh, right from planning the bricks and mortars to laying the foundation of cultural activities along with her friends Champa Mangat Rai and N.C. Thakur. She also established Alliance Françoise de Chandigarh in 1983. The dapper author, N. Iqbal Singh, was a neighbour and a frequent companion.
“Why I hate Children,” came by mail soon after I joined The Tribune. It was a witty, perceptive article and before long Eulie was a regular contributor to the Saturday Plus supplement. She wrote a well-informed piece about Male Cooks of Chandigarh, and once admiringly about a woman who could “drink any man under the table”. The lady did protest too much, but when Eulie retorted that she had much more to say, and the tirade became a simper.
What a woman Eulie was! Petite, fiery and totally cosmopolitan. She was born in Shahjehanpur in UP in 1923 where her uncle worked in the railways; got her Cambridge School Certificate from Kobe, Japan; studied architecture and music in Sydney, and got a diploma in Ceramics from Englewood, New Jersey, USA. That her father was in the diplomatic service explains the globe trotting.
I had just returned from New York, and was familiar with Englewood. In time we became friends, and I would walk down to her house to meet her.
Eulie had come to India in 1951 to work with Le Corbusier. Her husband, Jugal Kishore Chowdhary, was a consulting architect with the Punjab Government.  Eulie would narrate many anecdotes about the time when the city was taking shape and of Le Corbusier, Pierre Jeanerette, Jane Drew and Piloo Modi with his dogs.

A photograph of Eulie published in The Tribune on July 29, 1990

From Website

Eulie was awarded a gold medal by the President for design of low-cost furniture in 1954. A 1996  article by Sumit Kaur, who is now Chief Architect, Chandigarh, says: “All the furniture in the buildings of the Capitol complex and the Panjab University’s Gandhi Bhavan, library building and the Guest House had been designed by her,” says the article.

The International Archive of Women in Architecture says she was the first woman to qualify as an architect in Asia. Eulie was Chief Architect Chandigarh (1971-76); Punjab (1976-81); and Harayana (1970-71).  She was Principal of the Delhi School of Architecture and Planning (1963 to 1965). The main block of the Polytechnic for Women and the Hostel Block for the Home Science College were designed by her.

She contributed Sinners and Winners, a column in The Tribune that pointed out mistakes that had crept in the paper. She also wrote for a variety of architectural journals. Till the very end, she was active, and cause-driven. She joined hands with Mac Sarin in advocating euthanasia.
Eulie, who died on September 20, 1995 , entertained with poise and grace. She would greet her guests as they walked over the black concrete floor that always had a mirror-like finish. What a home it was—witness to history in the making, soaring intellectual discussions, petty party squabbles and delicious gossip. It was also a living example of Corbusier’s design. Seeing this lovely home reduced to rubble left me with a heavy heart—I found it difficult to come to terms with what the home of one of those who built Chandigarh had been reduced to.

A photograph of Eulie published in The Tribune on October 12, 1996

From Website

A slightly shorter version of this article by Roopinder Singh was published as a “middle” in The Tribune on September 1, 2009