I remember the day I found out that my grandfather had passed away. Channi, our longtime driver/cook/handyman/and the father of our early childhood best friends, had picked up my two sisters and me after school, and instead of going straight home as on other days, we went to see a movie in the theatre. Of course, we were delighted. What we didn’t know just then was why the movie? And I’ll never forget the movie we got to see that day – Sholay. The film was one of the best Indian movies, and I’ll always remember watching it with so much excitement all the way through and until we returned home. We found out that our grandfather had passed away that morning. That explained going to the theatre instead of the home after school. The house had been turned into a makeshift mourning place for relatives and well-wishers to see him one last time. This was no place for us 5-7-year-old kids, and understandably we were shuffled off to our aunt’s home for the next few days.
Tikka Atamjit Singh Sodhi, or Dadaji as we three sisters called him, had lived a life full of abundance and eminence. He came from an era of a very different India than we grew up in; before the nation became independent from British rule and divided into India and Pakistan. Growing up, I had only heard snippets of how life was for Dadaji and the Sodhi family ‘before the divide,’ and it was evident that so much had changed within the last three generations of our family that it was incomprehensible to articulate those distinctions.
But still, my earliest memories of Dadaji were full of quiet regality and repose. His indulgences were many, but above all, he loved to cook and eat good food. He never let go of an opportunity to hunt for an excellent next meal, and he was considered one of the best shooters and hunters in the region. A distinct practice in his hunting excursions was that he never aimed at an animal or bird without giving it a fair chance to escape from its predator.
Tikka Atamjit Singh Sodhi hailed from one of the chiefs and notable families of Punjab whose prominence and stature was well-documented in the historical legacy of the empire of Maharaja Ranjit Singh and later in the archival records of the British Raj. Tikka Atamjit Singh Sodhi was the direct descendent of Guru Ram Das (Sodhi), the fourth Sikh Guru from Guru Nanak Dev Ji (Bedi), the founder of the Sikh religion. Equally notable was the family he was married into, my paternal grandmother, Rani Jasjit Kaur was the great-granddaughter of Sir Baba Khem Singh Bedi, the direct descendent of Guru Nanak Dev Ji (Bedi) and a cultural, social, and educational leader in the undivided part of India now in Pakistan.
Such was the grandeur and legacy that Tikka Atamjit Singh Sodhi carried along and upheld like a true statesmen in those changing times. I was very young when he passed away but I will forever be grateful to have met him and known him for the life he lived, for he instilled in us three girls the abundance of not what you have but how well you live.
Ruby's Musings 