Parkash Singh Badal was tall, handsome and came from a wealthy zamindar family, classmate in Lahore recalls their hostel days : The Tribune India

IANS

Washington, April 27

Washington-based Shamsher Singh, who was a classmate of the late Shiromani Akali Dal (SAD) patriarch and five-time Punjab Chief Minister Parkash Singh Badal in a Lahore school in the early Forties, says he’s saddened by the passing of his school pal.

“Badal and I had been classmates at Lahore’s Sikh National College for 2 years — from 1943 to 1945. He was one of many many college students from Punjab’s Malwa area who studied at that school,” says the 95-year-old who in 1954 was one of many first Indians to land in Washington DC.

“Badal was a tall handsome younger man who came from a wealthy zamindar household. Though we weren’t quick pals, I knew him very nicely.

“Out of about 560 college students in the faculty, almost 500 used to remain in three school hostels. Badal and his pals from the Malwa area stayed collectively and we used to name them Firozepurias,” he added.

Singh says Badal and Malwa college students used to get continuous provides of desi ghee from their villages.

“Unha de gharan toh desi ghee de pipay bhar bhar ke aunde ate Badal aur uhde dost sare takde jawan se (Badal and his pals used to get countless provides of cans of desi ghee from their villages and they had been all very robust),” he says in Punjabi.

But Badal was very common in his research and he handed his exams because of tuition, he says.

“Badal used to obtain tuition from Prof Arjun Singh, who taught us chemistry in our school.” He says Badal left Sikh National College to hitch Lahore’s Forman Christian College in 1945. “Once he left our school, I had little contact with him as a result of Badal was not energetic in Lahore’s Sikh scholar politics,” says Singh, who moved to Delhi after 1947.

He provides that Badal was introduced into politics in the early Nineteen Fifties by Sikh stalwart Giani Kartar Singh who was the Akali Dal president on the time of the Partition and later Punjab’s income minister.

“I knew Giani Kartar Singh very nicely and knew how he mentored Badal. When Sant Fateh Singh changed Master Tara Singh because the Akali stalwart, he promoted Badal.” He says Badal’s greatest high quality was that he cultivated relations with all types of leaders and folks.

“The final time I met him was in Chandigarh in 1999 when he launched my e-book, ‘Unblossomed Bud’, about Lahore’s National Sikh College,” says Shamsher Singh, who was additionally pals with US Vice President Kamala Harris’s mom Shyamala Gopalan.

“I knew Shyamala very nicely. She was simply 18 when she came as a scholar to Berkeley in 1961.”