The other day I was walking past Number 240, an old
house that we had once stayed in, a house on what is now a busy arterial road,
filled with people, traffic, shops and the perils of progress. I stood in front and, looking across the road
at the apartment that stood on a once-empty plot, remembered 1980. I saw, in my mind’s eye, the house diagonally
behind that plot, the little Sardar boy who lived there and the event that was
to leave an indelible memory.
Odd, the human mind is, isn’t it? The way it makes
connections…..
But back to the story.
1980 was not just the birth of a decade, it was a momentous year that
saw, among other things, “the longest and costliest conflict in the history of
the public sector in India – the Bangalore Public Sector Strike” (as recounted
by Dilip Subramaniam in EPW). Our city
was the epicentre, for it was here that the ‘thinking public sector’ existed –
the BHELs, the BEMLs, the HALs and the BELs – Government-run organisations that
employed engineers and managers, who aspired to stay there all their lives for
job security and the occasional modicum of achievement that they could lay
claim to within the constraints of a stifling bureaucracy (these organisations
spawned an entire generation of entrepreneurs as a result, but that is another
story for a brighter day).
I was in my early teens then. Just behind our house was an empty ground on
which a few of us played a sprightly game of cricket in earnest competitive
spirit and with the minimal warranted safety attire. Much of our time on the ground, of course,
was spent in discussion, gossip and, when batting, in getting out of the way of
the cork ball and keeping certain delicate parts of the anatomy well protected
from its impact. For a few months prior
to the strike, we had been joined by a little sardar boy, Guddu Lamba, who was
much younger and hence entirely ineligible to apply. Under normal circumstances, we might have
found ways to keep him out, yet the fellow was not just persistent but happened
to be the son of a test pilot from the Air Force seconded to HAL (which, of
course, did much to help his case in our star struck eyes). Guddu was a gutsy little fellow, full of
beans and fight, and we reciprocated with gentle bowling and batting against
him with condescending disdain.
On the big day of the strike, Bangalore wore a
deserted look. Schools, of course, were
shut, but I was not complaining, having just discovered Agatha Christie a few
months earlier. Around mid-morning, we
heard that a large crowd had gathered down the road and was coming up in a
procession, past our home. Looking out
of the gate, I saw – and I am not making this up – the largest collection of
humanity I have ever seen (not having visited the Kumbh). The crowd was in a bellicose mood, the noise raucous
and the prudent thing to do was to lock the front door and stay in.
Guddu stood on the wall of his house – the back wall
was separated from the main road by an empty plot of land - watching the crowd,
as hundreds of men walked slowly up the road, shouting slogans and jostling
with each other. As the strikers went
past the empty plot, one fellow, seeing this little Sardar standing on the
wall, apparently shouted out at him, perhaps mocking him with derision or
insult (much as I try, what he is purported to have said escapes me).
He had picked the wrong little boy.
Guddu jumped down, picked a stone up and hurled it at
the crowd. The next thing we heard was a
squeal from the victim and a roar of anger from the men. After a momentary pause, a number of them, spitting
abuse and rage, scampered onto the empty plot, making a beeline for Guddu but,
of course, he beat them to it, bolting like a rabbit.
The men were not done.
They gathered about twenty feet away from the wall – a whole mass of
them covering the wide empty plot - and began to growl with aggression and
vehemence. Watching now from the
terrace, I could feel my pulse quicken, for the men wanted the little boy and
his family to come out and face this mob and I could sense violence in the
air. The police presence was notional,
and my dad, if I recall, called up the
police station immediately.
Out of the front door of his home came Ajit Singh
Lamba, Guddu’s father. He was wearing a
vest and the inner turban and in his right hand was a long-barrelled gun. “Get back,” he shouted with firm intent and the
crowd, particularly the leaders of the mob in front, retreated immediately,
taking a few steps back to create a generous semi-circle of plot space between
this one man and their army.
“My son has made a mistake and I say ‘sorry’ on his
behalf,” the Air Force man said, “now please go back.”
The crowd began to murmur and dissent, for a mob,
never in its senses, is always overcome by the occasion and its misplaced sense
of righteousness. Lamba, a trim tall man
in his early 40s, every inch the Services officer that he was, stood firmly in
his driveway, and looking back at that hair-raising event, I wonder just what
his inners were made of, for, if any emotion was visible on him, it was
counter-aggression. The men leading the
crowd began to argue belligerently, asking for more, and much of their chaotic
demands escaped the captive audience on our terrace (for more of our family had
joined in by this time).
In this chaos, the mob moved forward again. Lamba raised his gun at the sky. “If you come closer, I will shoot. Before I die, at least some of you will” he
said, or words to that effect.
Was he bluffing or just foolish? The crowd could not quite decide, for in the
tense succeeding moments, there were shouts and murmurs from within its ranks,
some urging attack, others throwing insults at him, still others provoking the
inert middle who remained unprovoked.
And then, with some momentum from the rear, the crowd
surged forward at the wall.
Lamba pointed the gun up and fired into the air.
No crowd has ever set a dispersal pace as quickly as
this one did; men were running in all directions, some seemed to simply
evaporate out of fear and, in a trice, the plot was home again to Congress
grass and no other species. As the crowd
re-assembled on the road in front of our home, the plucky Sardarji reloaded his
gun and took his ready-for-battle stance on the driveway. Standing on the terrace at 240 and watching
this, we all marvelled at his astonishing fortitude that had, by now, pretty
much won the battle. There the two
parties stood facing each other as minutes rolled by, each second edged with anticipation, until the police arrived
and moved the crowd ahead with some persuasion and a subdued use of lathi. Subsequently, I suppose Lamba had some explaining
to do, but he seemed none the worse for wear in the following days.
Three and a half decades later, I learnt that Air Vice
Marshal Ajit Singh Lamba had won the Vir Chakra while in service - no surprise,
he had won much more in my Honours List-, was now 79 years old and in active
retirement.
And Guddu? When
he came on to bowl the next time, I made it a point of playing him with
respect.
There are some people you never mess with.
