By Anju Kaur - His first life, which began as a privileged son of wealthy landowners in Lahore Cantonment, ended abruptly with Partition. Ajeet Singh and his parents would never see that kind of life again, but through his persistence and passion for education, Ajeet began to pull himself and his family out of disparity. In his second life, he was literally on top...of Bhakra Dam.

PICKING UP THE PIECES

Ajeet, his parents and two sisters were refugees now. They stayed at a bungalow in Sanawar that belonged to his brother’s assistant.

He still thinks about his brother, Mohinder, not coming to Lahore to help his parents. But he also has good memories of the only brother he ever knew. He remembers when Mohinder showed the Lawrence School principal his first year report card, standing first in his class. Principal Carter surprised Ajeet with a firm handshake and said with his British accent, “I didn’t know that my Mohinder’s brother is a brilliant young man.”

A year after Partition, Ajeet and his parents scraped together enough money to get both of his sisters married before moving to Ambala, 40 miles south of the Simla foothills.

In the government’s property exchange program, they were given a two-room dilapidated house, which belonged to a Muslim family that escaped to Pakistan, in exchange for their properties in Lahore Cantonment. Monthly income from the government’s refugee-relief fund also helped make ends meet.

“We were fortunate,” Ajeet said. “We had a roof over our heads and food to eat. We did not have to live in the refugee camps.”

The Punjab Government Engineering College had reorganized in Gurdaspur. Muslims took over the college in Rasool, now in Pakistan. Principal Blake went back to England and M.G.K. Moorti, the former vice principal, became principal of the new college in India.

The college still recognized Ajeet’s scholarship. As the top student, he became head prefect in charge of 100 students while enrolled in 13 classes. He remembered his fathers words not so long ago: “You don’t really need to study, son.” Now, ironically, his scholarship was a helping them make their way out of poverty.

Two hard years went by and Ajeet had earned his overseer’s certificate. But he had one more lesson to learn – politics.

Although he had earned the recognition, Ajeet would not graduate first in his class. A relative of the chief engineer of Punjab, who was in his class, was going to be given the first-place gold medal by the principal. It was a political game Moorti played to keep his cozy job.

Ajeet was threatened with cooked-up charges of conspiring with two Sikh professors against the Indian government. The professors were transferred, eliminating the only Sikhs from the board of examiners that determines student ranking.

“They were able to play foul with my final test papers to make a Hindu boy stand first in class and receive the gold (medal),” Ajeet laments. “Otherwise it would have been the first time in history that a Sikh got the gold (medal).”

Threatened with expulsion, Ajeet asked his father for advice. “Wise people do not look back. You don’t need this,” his father told him.

The college still valued his work. It kept his hand-rendered engineering drawings and journals as exhibition material for visitors. But Ajeet graduated second. It was 1949.

TAKE THIS JOB AND SHOVE IT

Graduates of the government college were regarded as “super engineers” who knew the ins and outs of engineering. But the political play had left Ajeet disenchanted.

“They were dishonest,” he says. “How could I serve with them?” He refused the overseer’s position for maintenance of Punjab’s canals, a lucrative and pensionable job with the government’s irrigation division. Instead, he went to work for a couple of architectural firms in New Delhi.

He rented a small place from a friend. It wasn’t much, but it was a roof over his head. His mother, always worried about her son, stayed with him for long periods of time. His father stayed in Ambala, 120 miles north, but often came for visits.

On one of the visits during the hot summer months, Ajeet remembers his father had stayed up all night fanning him so he would not awake from the intense heat.

“Hardship brings the family close,” Ajeet says. “My brother was a victim of luxury.”

Employed and settled, Ajeet was still not satisfied. His thirst for a proper engineering degree was not quenched. He began studying by night for a bachelor’s by correspondence from Calcutta. And by day, he was learning a great deal about architecture, something not taught in engineering schools.

Civil engineers work with architects, but to have the knowledge of both, using both the creative and mathematical sides of the mind, was to have the rare ability to combine beautiful form with logical function.

His design and construction of houses, apartment buildings schools and dispensaries in the swank parts of the city were considered remarkable. And his employers made a lot of money from his work.

But when Ajeet began receiving anonymous gratuities, like furniture and cash, he was turned off. It smacked of bribery and it did not sit well with his conscience. After discussing it with his father, he resigned.

Ajeet went to work as an assistant design engineer for the Central Waterways, Irrigation and Navigation Commission.

But he was also moonlighting as an architectural consultant. His boss, who read about his architectural experience in his resume, would ask him for advice on the construction of his house. Ajeet would modify the design and often supervise the construction. He never sought any money for that work.

Soon, Ajeet was giving architectural advice to other managers and their relatives. Word of his architectural work spread quickly, all the way to the top.

Ajudhiya Nath Khosla, known as the father of Indian engineering, was chairman of the commission. It was one of many agencies under the Ministry of Irrigation and Power with offices at the Secretariat in New Delhi.

Khosla also began asking Ajeet for architectural help on the construction of his house. He would send a car, a big black one with flags, to bring Ajeet from his little rundown shack to the shiny government offices at the Secretariat.

“The advice I gave for the design and construction of his houses, Khosla sahib used to love that,” Ajeet said, smiling. Their meetings became routine. And people began to talk. Who was this guy and why was Khosla so enamored with him?

Ajeet’s mother was worried. He was working all day and when he was home, the fancy cars would take him away. But the money was not getting better. And on Sundays he was gone to the gurdwaras. She barely saw him. Ajeet was happy, however. He liked his job and was enjoying all the historic gurdwaras of New Delhi.

WORKING WITH THE AMERICANS ON BHAKRA DAM

With his degree in hand, Ajeet competed against top engineers in India for a position with the Punjab Public Service Commission to work on what was the largest dam project in the world at the time.

At 25, he was recruited, along with 100 other design engineers, for the Bhakra Dam Design Directorate. The dam was to be constructed on the Sutlej River, near Nangal, Punjab, 200 miles north of New Delhi.

When Ajeet told Khosla he was leaving, Khosla made arrangements for him to work with the Bhakra Dam design team in New Delhi. He didn’t have to move. It was 1952.

The government had been planning Bhakra Dam for decades. Its construction was needed to provide power generation, irrigation, navigation and flood control of the river basin.

After Partition, the Indian government, Pundit Jawaharlal Nehru’s government, shopped in the world market for grants set aside for underdeveloped countries. This was India’s first major project.

When a water dispute arose between India and Pakistan, Khosla led a delegation to the United Nations, as special secretary to the government of India, to negotiate and settle the Indus water dispute.

The UN selected seventeen top-notch engineers from the United States - from the Bureau of Reclamation in Colorado, the International Engineering Company in San Francisco, the Army Corps of Engineers and the Tennessee Valley Authority - and sent them to India, under a technical cooperative mission, to provide design direction and construction management for building the dam.

It was a learning experience for the Indian engineers. This kind of knowledge could not be learned from textbooks.

Ajeet was one of several guzetted sub-divisional officers heading the design group, with more authority than non-guzetted engineers. An American, B.M. Johnson, was the first director appointed to the design directorate. And Harvey Slocum was the 79-year-old general manager of construction.

According to Time magazine’s 1955 story about Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s visit to Bhakra, “Slocum and a group of 50 U.S. construction men are supervising the Bhakra project. Punjab officials described him as "American adviser to the 300 Indian engineers building the dam" and Slocum's 50 U.S.”

Ajeet also worked with Slocum. On one of his assignments, Ajeet was to confer with Slocum in designing an approach road on the right bank, up the mountainside, to the top of the dam.

“I went there (to his office) and he verbally abused me in filthy construction language,” Ajeet remembers. “You so-and-so, why are you wasting my time,” Slocum yelled, “I don’t want to meet design engineers. They are a waste of time.”

When Slocum calmed down, Ajeet told him that he was sent to work with him on the road assignment. Slocum took him for a ride.

Everyone on the construction site used a Jeep, a pickup truck or a Land Rover. Not Slocum. He had a new white Cadillac specially shipped for him to the construction site. Slocum took Ajeet in his Cadillac and drove around the mountain in the muddy, mucky roads.

“His eyes were nothing but an electronic survey,” Ajeet remembers, “He looked around the entire area and we came back.” He then went to his secretary and dictated three pages, in bad grammar, which laid out directions on how to make the road, with specifics on how much earth would be removed, how much blasting would be required, where the construction trailers would be placed, and on and on.

“Rubbish,” Ajeet remembers thinking.

Ajeet put together his own team of 10 people to survey the mountain, measure the alignment by traditional engineering methods and plot the contours. It took them several weeks to complete the design.

When he and his team went back to the mountain to begin construction, they found Slocum there.

“That son-of-a-***** had already built half the road,” he says, still awed by the memory. It was exactly the way he had dictated, and it was perfect.

“He was so great,” Ajeet adds. “I knew the Harvey Slocum nobody else knew.”

Slocum never went to college. He was a bricklayer who had risen through the professional ranks to commanded hundreds of engineers and was respected by all.

Slocum had built Grand Coulee Dam (550 ft.) in the northwest U.S. state of Washington, and now he was in charge of Bhakra Dam (741 ft.) that by the end of its construction would be slightly bigger than Boulder Dam (726 ft.) in Colorado.

He was the top construction expert recruited through the United Nations, under contract to the Indian government, and was making the highest salary in India, even more than the president.

WATER TRAGEDY

Construction of the dam was well underway when a terrible accident stopped the project.

Two 50-foot tunnels, each one-half mile long, were built on either side of the river to divert water. But when a gate was partially opened in one of the tunnels, vibrations from the gushing water broke the gate and the water flooded the inspection galleries, killing many people who were working there.

Prime Minister Nehru summoned top engineers to explain the tragic failure. Newspapers accused the engineers of not knowing what they were doing.

Ajeet was asked to prepare a drawing of the destruction area that would clearly explain to the prime minister and the press what had happened. He did. The project went forward.

“Engineers always learn more from catastrophic failures,” Ajeet says.

The problem, Ajeet recalls, was the construction team had ordered and installed the wrong kind of gate, which did not follow engineering design specifications.

Ajeet’s other responsibilities included serving as the liaison between the Indian team and foreign dignitaries who came to see the dam’s construction. And as an assistant design engineer, he was also the liaison officer between the architect, the construction team in Nangal and the design team in New Delhi.

The Indian government commissioned the famous French architect, Charles-Edouard Jeanneret-Gris, known as Le Corbusier, to design the dam. He came to Punjab from Paris and examined the site by helicopter.

Le Corbusier made architectural drawings of his vision for the dam. Like nature, it would have no symmetry, Le Corbusier said. And, on the top of one side would be ‘the hand’ – a giant bronze monument above the observation balcony that would read: “Dedicated to the people who laid their life in the construction of Bhakra Dam”.

Ajeet was not impressed.

“Engineering projects must take care of the safety and utilitarian aspects,” he told Le Corbusier. These drawings were just aesthetics, he thought. Ajeet had his own ideas of how the dam needed to be built, in traditional engineering style.

Le Corbusier was furious. He went straight to the vice president of India, a college buddy, and asked for Ajeet’s removal. But that was not going to happen. Other engineers also argued that the hand was prone to vibration and could break and fall down and cause massive damage to structures below, such as the power plant.

In the end, Bhakra Dam looked the way other dams did - symmetric - not like Le Corbusier’s.

LOSE FATHER, GAIN WIFE

Ajeet’s father didn’t live to see Bhakra Dam. He remembers the last time he saw his father. He had come for a visit and they chatted over dinner. He was teary eyed. “I wish I could have seen you married,” he said.

“It’s okay, I’ll get married tomorrow,” Ajeet remembers saying. “I didn’t know that tomorrow would never come.” It was 1955.

Ajeet was living in New Delhi. He was depressed.

“I had lost my loving support,” Ajeet recalls. He had received many offers for marriage, but he did not want to think about it. A couple of years later, one of his assistants showed him a picture of his daughter’s classmate.

“Very good,” he remembers thinking. And soon after, he brought the girl’s father to Ajeet’s house. They had tea and they talked. Joginder’s father was eager to settle a marriage proposal, but Ajeet wanted to meet the girl. Boy was her father angry. It was not proper to meet your future spouse.

They made arrangements for Joginder to do keertan (sing Sikh hymns) at her aunt’s house, and Ajeet would conspicuously come to watch her sing.

“I would look at her and her father would look at me,” he said, still amused by the thought. Ajeet knew he was going to marry her. Her keertan was irresistible and the shabad she sang was close to his heart.

It had been two years since his father died and his mother wanted him to get married. So he did. Khosla attended the wedding in his father’s place. A year later, the couple had a son. Another year later, they had a daughter.


Note: Top image of Bhakra Dam courtesy Central Water Commission, India, cwc.nic.in.
Corrections: The original story said Bhakra Dam had a gate in each tunnel, but only one had a gate. And, Ajeet Singh was not with Le Corbusier in the helicopter when he surveyed the dam.
Related: Ajeet Singh - Part I: From Privilege to Partition
anjukaur@sikhnn.com.