India has an enviable record of producing great characters who originated from very humble backgrounds of village or small town set ups to rise up to lofty heights of achievements in the fields of astronomy, mathematics, science, philosophy, philanthropy, new thoughts, principles, religion and spiritualism.
Kalpana Chawla was different in the sense that boosted by burning desire, hardwork and brilliance she physically soared to astronautical heights to the delight of her countrymen. An additional hurdle she had to cross was the gender handicap; a girl born in an orthodox family of a town called Karnal (Haryana) where the girls were taught to keep eyes always fixed to the ground while walking and to the floor indoors because it was the civilised tradition. But this girl had her eyes set in the skies and younder. And how did she manage to get away with such audacity? That is what her story is about which should inspire every young person born with inherited disadvantages.
Kalpana was too brilliant and too ambitious to let herself be ruled by orthodox traditions to be led into the confines of some husband’s kitchen and stay trapped there for life listening to the shrill whistles of a pressure cooker. Instead, by dint of her courageous pursuit of studies she went beyond shores jumping all hurdles to don space suit and sit in the Space Shuttle bound for the skies. She would rather hear the countdown for the blast off instead of pressure cooker screams.
Her father
Banarsidas Chawla was her father whose life was torn asunder in the wake of the tragic partition of the country in 1947 when the subcontinent was divided into two nations, namely, India and Pakistan. Banarsidas was then merely a fourteen year old teenager trapped in enemy zone.
The family used to lived in the city of Lahore before partition which fell into the newly carved out Muslim majority country Pakistan. It was a very bad news for the Hindus of that city. For centuries Muslims and Hindus had been living together as brothers and neighbours peacefully. The teenager Banarsidas had spent his childhood in the streets of Lahore.
The division of the country changed everything. In both Pakistan and India communal violence broke out. The air was filled with much hatred. Bands of fanatics roamed around killing maiming, plundering and burning the members and properties of the rival communities.
Millions of Hindus fled Pakistan for India to escape from carnage. Similarly millions of Muslims left India to seek refuge in Pakistan. Helpless refugees flooded both countries.
Lahore saw one of the worst communal violence where both the communities had sizable presence. Teenager Banarsidas saw Hindus being butchered, raped and their houses torched by fanatic mobs. Like other surviving Hindus he too left for India in one of the refugee caravans. Heroically he also saved some of his relatives, mother and brother.
To make matters worse his father was not with the family at Lahore. He happened to be in Bikaner on some business when the tragedy struck. He could not go to the aid of his family.
Somehow Banarsidas managed to bring the family to India where he ended up in Karnal. The life of a refugee was daunting for a teenager. Almost everyone was now on his own to make a living and survive. Banarsidas made up his mind to make Karnal his new home base.
All his friends and aquaintances had been left in Lahore or got separated in the exodus. Karnal was a new place with unfamiliar faces and layout. A challenge for a teenager refugee. The escape from Lahore and journey to Karnal was traumatic and tortuous. The locals looked down upon the refugees as nuisance.
How to feed the family was the question? His father was still in Bikaner, trying to do something. All he had was now in another country. He had little means left to render any help to the family.
Young Banarsidas had been studying in the high school when he had to leave Lahore. He wished to continue his studies. But the circumstances now were against it. He must look for some job immediately to stave off the prospect of starving. He looked for a job and found one with a small chutney shop. The job paid little and the work was not to his liking. Banarsidas got disenchanted with it quickly.
He was able to land another job as an attendent-cum-errand boy with a two wheeler shop which dealt in the sales and repair of scooters. Banarsidas hoped for the better as it was the only two wheeler shop of the town. So, he really worked hard.
But he was in for a shock. After several months the stingy shop owner paid him only Rs. 5 as his total salary. His own pitiable state and the heartless exploitation by the employer grievously hurt young Banarsidas. He could not continue on the job. He quit.
The youngman saw no point in doing odd jobs any more because it was obvious that the people were out to exploit the helplessness of the refugee. One way out was self employment. The inherited business sense and enterprise were inspiring him to try his own thing. The young Banarsidas was ambitious by nature.
But, to start one’s own enterprise some capital is needed. Banarsidas had no money. He was barely making two ends meet.
His father was still in Bikaner trying to settle down. Banarsidas informed him of his own plans and the dire need of the capital. The father arranged for some money and sent it to his son asking him to keep up his courage in dealing with the adverse situation. He assured that he would soon be joining the family as soon as his business in Bikaner was accomplished.
The encouragement and support lent by the father galvanised the young Banarsidas. With great hope and youthful zeal he began the trade of making boxes. The entire capital went into it. Banarsidas had hopes that the business would prove a money spinner. But a youngman’s dreams and harsh realities don’t always agree. Only zeal and courage can’t make a business successful. Experience and inside know-how of a business play more vital roles. Here Banarsidas was gravely lacking as he was merely a teenager torn away from the studies by the turn of events. It proved fatal to his fledgeling endeavour.
Soon, his business folded up. The entire capital was lost. Young Banarsidas was again penniless and on the street. Again, the youngman faced the problem of earning a living for his family. His brother was also struggling and meeting no luck. Banarsidas did not give up. He took up the arduous trade of selling soap door to door in the narrow lanes of Karnal. He would carry basketful load of soap-cakes and sell them to housewives using all his salesman tricks. The work was rewarding but the leg work was killing. The profit was just not enough compensation for the labour put in. Hence, Banarsidas decided to put a stop to it. His youthful zest and dreams were driving him to try something really good. Afterall, he was a young man. Time was on his side and he could experiment with his life. He had nothing to lose because he already had lost everything to the partition of the country in Lahore.
He thought that selling peanuts sitting upon the footpath was not bad idea. There was no leg work involved and the winter was setting in when North Indians impulsively ate toasted peanuts. So, Banarsidas started selling peanuts and dates on a pavement. It earned him some money and he could set aside little sums as savings. He would sit and sell mechanically while his mind remained busy in making future plans or seeing day dreams.
His heart was not satisfied. After lying low for sometime his wish to launch his own enterprise was rearing its head again. The life of footpath appeared to lead to nowhere. An ambition driven Banarsidas again delved into the business of box making. He had learnt some lessons from the earlier failures and analysed the causes of the downfall of his earlier attempt. This time he decided to do the selling himself in a hard way no matter what toil it took.
He began to sell his boxes to local shops and made special effort to contact refugees arriving at the railway stations to strike a sympathic chord to make them buy his boxes. It worked.
This time his business took off and flourished. Now he could effort to save substantial sums of money. Better living conditions for the family and healthy financial state helped him think better and more positively. He was now planning to move over to a more profitable venture.
Banarsidas liked the idea of manufacturing steel trunks and boxes at a cottage scale. This time his business acumen and hard work paid. In a short period of time his cottage endeavour grew into a proper factory that had a dozen skilled workers on its rolls. After that Banarsidas never looked back.
He made progress further and further. The successes made Banarsidas Chawla a well respected figure of the town. Karnal was no more a town of strangers for him. He was now moving in upper middle class society. He had built a kothi in prosperous people’s colony, a mark of his new social status. He was eating rich, living rich and conducting himself among the people with rich style. By nature he was serious and sweet. The business had taught him polite speech. All these qualities combined to elevate him into the high society of the town. He now had a wide circle of aquaintances, friends and well wishers in the upper echelon of Karnal’s social life.
Banarsidas was yet a bachelor because the trafic events and struggles had not given him any elbow room to start his own family. Now the things had eased up. The others too had begun to notice his eligibility for a proper alliance.
It did not escape the notice of a prominent doctor of the town by the surname ‘Kharbanda’. Dr. Kharbanda was mightily impressed with the achievements of Banarsidas Chawla. And he had a daughter for whom he was looking for a suitable groom. As soon as he met Banarsidas and learnt about his endeavours he knew that he had found his right son-in-law.
Dr. Kharbanda proposed and Banarsidas Chawla readily accepted as he himself was eager to start a family to see his success translated into marital bliss and the fatherhood. ‘Sanyogita’ was the name of Banarsidas Chawla’s life partener.
In the context of Kalpana Chawla, the story of her father is very important because she inherited the genes that carried the indomitable spirit of taking up dislocation as a challenge, adversity as an adventure, failures as lessons for the success, hurdles for jumping over and not as full stops, and fight against all kinds of handicaps. Like father daughter also did the same in different conditions and at different levels.
Banarsidas Chawla’s wife Sanyogita proved a lucky bride for him. With her arrival the business of Mr. Chawla prospered at faster rate. That enthused him and he worked harder. The wife also took no under time in making her husband a proud father. Their home now was filled with happy squeals of the children.
The first to arrive was a girl who was named Sunita. Then arrived Deepa, another girl. The third one was a male child who was christened Sanjay. The last to arrive was Kalpana against the wish of the parents who were hoping for another male child to have a natural balance in numbers between sons and daughters. Her arrival was a bit of a dampener because traditionally Indian parents pinned their hopes on sons to earn a fair renown for the family.
