Once upon a time in Ludhiana

It was in the year 1958. We were BSc (Agriculture) students at Government Agricultural College, Ludhiana, which used to operate then from a rented building of Khalsa School at Ghumar Mandi. The PAU had not been created, but construction work had started at the site, where the PAU is now.

The first building to be completed was the hostel, which the students occupied in September 1957. It had 39 rooms on three floors, with accommodation for 104 students. I was in my second year at that time.

Classes were still held at the rented building of Khalsa School, where Khalsa Girls’ College now exists. The College of Agriculture became functional after another two years and the other buildings came up much later. This hostel was renamed Hostel No. 5 and earmarked for girls.

Students from J&K came to this college as state nominees. In 1958, their number had reached over 30 and more than half of them were Muslims.

Those were good days. The monthly charge for mess was Rs 25 a month, which came to six and a half anna per diet for two daily meals. The menu included meat (mutton, as chicken was a luxury in those days) thrice a week. Vegetarian students, mostly from Haryana, were given paneer.

The mutton for the mess came from jhatka shops which Muslim students from Kashmir did not eat. Therefore, they were forced to eat paneer. They requested the mess contractor to cook halal mutton for them. He agreed. For three days, jhatka mutton was prepared and for the next three days halal was cooked. So, non-vegetarian meal was cooked in the hostel mess daily except on Sundays.

We had a student, Phuntsog Namgyal, from Ladakh among us. He was my classmate and a good friend too. Namgyal, a Buddhist, had a great taste for non-vegetarian food. He told the mess contractor that he would like to have mutton daily in his dinner, and that since he was neither a Hindu nor a Muslim, jhatka or halal did not make any difference to him. The mess contractor agreed to serve him meat for three more days on the condition that the monthly mess charge for him would not be Rs 25, but Rs 30 or eight anna a diet. Namgyal readily agreed.

He was the first person from Ladakh to have studied in high school, and then, college. That was the time when one had to walk on foot from Leh to reach Srinagar. After serving the State Department of Agriculture for a few years, he joined politics and was a three-time MP from Ladakh. He had also served as Minister of State in Rajiv Gandhi’s Cabinet. Namgyal died at 83 due to Covid in June 2020.