Our father Shri Mohan Lal Uniyal lost his wife just a few years afterhis marriage leaving no issue behind.Father resisted strongly the pressure from his elders and relations to get married again. But the pressure continued unabated. Infact the pressure increased when father built a huge house in the village. One of his cousins thereafter asked whether he i.e. my father intended to spark a quarrel amongst the cousins and their sons over his share of the property that would have no owner once he departed from the scene. Finally, arguments such as these prevailed and our father , twelve years after the death his first wife got married again to a girl who was almost nineteen years his junior.It was not a compulsion for the girl's family because, at that time in the society , such marriages were taking place, and people did not mind marrying off their daughters to older grooms provided the latter were from a good khandan i.e. a respectable(sic) family.The girl in question is now our mother Gayatri Devi .Bharat Bhushanji was born after about one year and ten months of this second marriage.
Since a male child who would be the heir of the father was born, there were bound to be celebrations, especially as the long gap between the death of father's first wife and the marriage with the second had created some kind of negative atmosphere.
Originally the proud father named his son as Bharatendu Pratap Mohan but the teacher in the primary school made it just Bharat Bhushan because he felt that the name was rather longish.
Bharat Bhushanji, though not a bright student, managed to get through his junior high school without much of a hassle The problem began when he had to be sent out to a place called Chamba a small habitat which boasted of a High School.(This Chamba is not to be mistaken with a district of the same name in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh).Sensing that Bhaiji had fallen into bad company at Chamba as he could not pass his 10th Board Examination even after two attempts, our father wisely sent him to stay with a cousin in Dehra Dun, a well known town of north India, famous for its many assets including the Doon School and the Indian Military Academy.
Dehra dun was the place where Bhai saheb spent a larger part of his life.He was doing his graduation from the DAV College.His younger brother Suresh Mohan Uniyal, the next in the line of siblings, was also with him in the final year as the Bhaiji had to repeat the 10th class more than once allowing the younger brother to catch up.
Then, when the two brothers were going to sit for the final examinations, a major calamity struck the family. Our father, the sole bread earner of a large family, died leaving behind our mother, five sons, two daughters and two female cousins and their widowed mother i.e. our aunt. Apart from crops from a small tract of unirrigated land there was no other source of income for the family. Father died in March 1962. The younger brother i.e. Suresh Mohanji got a job with the Survey of India onthe 1st of January 1963 and the elder one i.e. Bhaiji in July of the same year. Bhaiji's job was with the Defence Accounts.. Both the brothers continued to make sacrifice for the cause of the family--bringing up the younger brothers and sisters, getting the cousins married , paying the school and college fee of the siblings, performing the final rites of the aunt, who had died meanwhile, and all sorts of activities necessary to survive in the India of 1960s and 70s.
Bhaiji got married in1970 and soon thereafter moved his own way leaving the younger siblings to fend for themselves. But the younger brother who was also in the job continued to mentor his younger siblings. Then the younger brothers also got jobs and the sisters too, got married and the family dispersal got underway. I got into the Central Government Civil Service . The next of the siblings..Arvind joined the Indian army as an officer and after some time the youngest brother too managed to land a job with a nationalised bank Except for a brief stint in Morar near Gwalior, Bhaiji stayed mainly in Dehra Dun, first completing his M.A. in English literature and then succeeding at his Section Officers' Examination conducted by the Defence Account department. During the concluding years of his service tenure he managed a posting in New Delhi, mainly with a view to providing a better education to his two children...a daughter and a son.Just when he had about two tears to reach sixty years the prescribed age of superannuation from the Indian government service, he quit the job, purchased an apartment flat in one of the housing societies of Delhi and settled there.In the mean time,his daughter got an MBA degree from a London based university and entered matrimony.The son stayed with his parents and continued that way.
On the 27th December 2011 Bhaiji gave up his mortal body to join the immortals. It was a heart attack that took him away.Before that he had suffered a mild stroke causing a serious impairment of his speech faculties.
Bhaiji will be remembered by us for many of his qualities and many of the things he did.While at Chamba he mastered the art of playing marbles and along with one Jaswant Singh ruled the Chamba marble scene We learnt marble playing from him. Bhaiji was interested in the lives of the great men. He loved the fact that Hitler was also born in the month of April and on a date very near his own birth day perhaps thereby convincing himself that he too could be as great as the Fuherer. He learnt palmistry by studying the books written by Cheiro and Comte de St. Germaine. He would read his own palm and also those of his brothers and friends. He also learnt astrology and learnt to interpret horoscopes and natal charts but here he trusted only the Indian system and not the Western one.. In the village where we were born there were no clocks and watches at that time with the result that our horoscopes and charts used to be cast mostly by guessing what sign would be rising at the time of birth.A cousin from the village had cast his horoscope showing the Jupiter in the tenth house. Since the traditional books on astrology extolled such a combination skyhigh, Bhaiji became ecstatic because he was then convinced that he was destined to attain a high position in life.We also learnt astrology mainly from the books he brought and we are indebted to him for this. But we are more indebted to him for opening our eyes and ears. He inculcated in us either knowingly or what is more probable, indeliberately, a love for reading books---books of all kinds including detective fiction. The result was that our horizons were widened and we learnt to see things in perspective, making us more rounded personalities and , I daresay, better human beings.He could never spell it out but he knew ,perhaps instinctively, that a way out of the wretchedness of life in India for people like us was through education and through being better than many others, the evidence of which was your success at a competition He himself appeared in a couple of competitive examinations showing us that even we, the poor village folk coming from one of the most backward areas of the country can make it good to a certain extent.
Yes, he was quirky too. He believed the written word as if it were gospel truth. He had a false notion of his physical and intellectual powers--he would not mind accepting the challenge to fight a wrestling match not only with his collegue Virendra Badoni but also with a professional wrestler. Guided totally by emotion he would take it to heart if somebody proved him incorrect on facts.But he was all kindness and forgave unconditionally.
Bhaiji, wherever you may be .kindly accept my 'pranams' a hundred times and a thousand times.I know that your soul, if there is a thing like that will certainly find the place it so much deserved.
Since a male child who would be the heir of the father was born, there were bound to be celebrations, especially as the long gap between the death of father's first wife and the marriage with the second had created some kind of negative atmosphere.
Originally the proud father named his son as Bharatendu Pratap Mohan but the teacher in the primary school made it just Bharat Bhushan because he felt that the name was rather longish.
Bharat Bhushanji, though not a bright student, managed to get through his junior high school without much of a hassle The problem began when he had to be sent out to a place called Chamba a small habitat which boasted of a High School.(This Chamba is not to be mistaken with a district of the same name in the Indian state of Himachal Pradesh).Sensing that Bhaiji had fallen into bad company at Chamba as he could not pass his 10th Board Examination even after two attempts, our father wisely sent him to stay with a cousin in Dehra Dun, a well known town of north India, famous for its many assets including the Doon School and the Indian Military Academy.
Dehra dun was the place where Bhai saheb spent a larger part of his life.He was doing his graduation from the DAV College.His younger brother Suresh Mohan Uniyal, the next in the line of siblings, was also with him in the final year as the Bhaiji had to repeat the 10th class more than once allowing the younger brother to catch up.
Then, when the two brothers were going to sit for the final examinations, a major calamity struck the family. Our father, the sole bread earner of a large family, died leaving behind our mother, five sons, two daughters and two female cousins and their widowed mother i.e. our aunt. Apart from crops from a small tract of unirrigated land there was no other source of income for the family. Father died in March 1962. The younger brother i.e. Suresh Mohanji got a job with the Survey of India onthe 1st of January 1963 and the elder one i.e. Bhaiji in July of the same year. Bhaiji's job was with the Defence Accounts.. Both the brothers continued to make sacrifice for the cause of the family--bringing up the younger brothers and sisters, getting the cousins married , paying the school and college fee of the siblings, performing the final rites of the aunt, who had died meanwhile, and all sorts of activities necessary to survive in the India of 1960s and 70s.
Bhaiji got married in1970 and soon thereafter moved his own way leaving the younger siblings to fend for themselves. But the younger brother who was also in the job continued to mentor his younger siblings. Then the younger brothers also got jobs and the sisters too, got married and the family dispersal got underway. I got into the Central Government Civil Service . The next of the siblings..Arvind joined the Indian army as an officer and after some time the youngest brother too managed to land a job with a nationalised bank Except for a brief stint in Morar near Gwalior, Bhaiji stayed mainly in Dehra Dun, first completing his M.A. in English literature and then succeeding at his Section Officers' Examination conducted by the Defence Account department. During the concluding years of his service tenure he managed a posting in New Delhi, mainly with a view to providing a better education to his two children...a daughter and a son.Just when he had about two tears to reach sixty years the prescribed age of superannuation from the Indian government service, he quit the job, purchased an apartment flat in one of the housing societies of Delhi and settled there.In the mean time,his daughter got an MBA degree from a London based university and entered matrimony.The son stayed with his parents and continued that way.
On the 27th December 2011 Bhaiji gave up his mortal body to join the immortals. It was a heart attack that took him away.Before that he had suffered a mild stroke causing a serious impairment of his speech faculties.
Bhaiji will be remembered by us for many of his qualities and many of the things he did.While at Chamba he mastered the art of playing marbles and along with one Jaswant Singh ruled the Chamba marble scene We learnt marble playing from him. Bhaiji was interested in the lives of the great men. He loved the fact that Hitler was also born in the month of April and on a date very near his own birth day perhaps thereby convincing himself that he too could be as great as the Fuherer. He learnt palmistry by studying the books written by Cheiro and Comte de St. Germaine. He would read his own palm and also those of his brothers and friends. He also learnt astrology and learnt to interpret horoscopes and natal charts but here he trusted only the Indian system and not the Western one.. In the village where we were born there were no clocks and watches at that time with the result that our horoscopes and charts used to be cast mostly by guessing what sign would be rising at the time of birth.A cousin from the village had cast his horoscope showing the Jupiter in the tenth house. Since the traditional books on astrology extolled such a combination skyhigh, Bhaiji became ecstatic because he was then convinced that he was destined to attain a high position in life.We also learnt astrology mainly from the books he brought and we are indebted to him for this. But we are more indebted to him for opening our eyes and ears. He inculcated in us either knowingly or what is more probable, indeliberately, a love for reading books---books of all kinds including detective fiction. The result was that our horizons were widened and we learnt to see things in perspective, making us more rounded personalities and , I daresay, better human beings.He could never spell it out but he knew ,perhaps instinctively, that a way out of the wretchedness of life in India for people like us was through education and through being better than many others, the evidence of which was your success at a competition He himself appeared in a couple of competitive examinations showing us that even we, the poor village folk coming from one of the most backward areas of the country can make it good to a certain extent.
Yes, he was quirky too. He believed the written word as if it were gospel truth. He had a false notion of his physical and intellectual powers--he would not mind accepting the challenge to fight a wrestling match not only with his collegue Virendra Badoni but also with a professional wrestler. Guided totally by emotion he would take it to heart if somebody proved him incorrect on facts.But he was all kindness and forgave unconditionally.
Bhaiji, wherever you may be .kindly accept my 'pranams' a hundred times and a thousand times.I know that your soul, if there is a thing like that will certainly find the place it so much deserved.
We are indeed indebted to Bhaiji for the things you mentioned and many more. More than anything else he had been a father figure particlarly because of early demise of father. Thanks for the tribute. I am sure wherever he is his benevolent grace will always be with us. My respectful pranaam. Arvind
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