Kehna Dhar Sir Ne Kaha
A Memoir
I’m writing this (on Sep 13) while desperately waiting to board a flight which would eventually take me to Jammu tomorrow morning. May be I’ll see him, may be not. At this time, I don’t know.
[Update — I couldn’t see him & reached a day after his cremation]
Daddy has left for heavenly abode sometime yesterday evening just a year after the passing of our beloved Badi Mummy.
I had a video chat with him last time on Monday.
He asked how much I was earning, why I moved jobs, how happy he becomes hearing my progress, how little I share about it with him, and how he thinks about the time when I was a small baby (mentioned the celebration of my first birthday).
Daddy & I shared a special bond.
In my childhood, I slipped a note into one of Daddy’s notebooks.
“Daddy — Aap mujhe cycle ya scooter kyu nhi laake dete”.
Next year, he got me a bicycle. (The happiness I had is unparalleled with anything I can think of purchasing today.)
He had never ridden a bicycle himself, so, he paid a random guy at the park to help me ride the bicycle.
Daddy used to get his notes printed for students from a particular photostat shop in Udhampur. This shop also had playstations.
He would pay the guy and ask him to let me play. This continued everyday for many summer holidays that I would spend at Udhampur. I loved it.
I wrote a poem about Daddy when I was around the age of 13. I phoned him & recited my poem. He was very happy, & even told his students about it.
Poem was titled — O’Daddy!
When Daddy was promoted to the position of a Sr. Lecturer, he phoned me & shared his happiness along with a Rs 500/- grant to purchase anything of my choice. I bought the cassette based video game with it. It was amazing.
When Daddy retired from his government service in 2004, he wrote me a long letter & made sure I received it the same day. My father read it out for me & I was in tears.
Born as Omkar Nath Dhar in a small village in Kashmir in 1947, Daddy spent his early childhood in extreme poverty. By the age of 15, he witnessed the death of his elder brother & father. How he collected the ashes of his elder brother from Delhi at such a young age was a story of its own.
At this young age, he took all the responsibilities of the house including the education of his two brothers — the youngest one being my father.
By the time he was in class 9, he had already started teaching home tuitions. A year or two later, he was appointed as a government teacher & in parallel continued private tutorials.
He completed his bachelors followed by a Masters in Political Science. A friend named Mr. P.L.Waguzari who was also his mentor convinced him to pursue a second Masters — this time in English. He pursued it from Punjab University as his wife (our beloved Badi Mummy) was admitted in the hospital at Chandigarh.
He was promoted to a Lecturer in English in his government job & started focusing on this subject full time. There was never a day in his life when he was not teaching at multiple places.
He taught in the rural areas of Kashmir & Kishtwar before migrating to Udhampur (Jammu). In his lifetime, he was able to make a tremendous impact on the life of thousands of students who went on to do great things in their lives, and some of them are even grand-parents today.
There was almost no major school left in Udhampur where he didn’t teach. Besides the government higher secondary school, he taught at Nehru Memorial, Kalra College, Vijay Hr Sec, NITL, APS, Happy Model, and for a long time at Brahmrishi Bawra after which he finally decided to retire from teaching at the age of 70. In this time, he was also teaching classes from 11th to College Graduates at his residence in Udhampur.
Daddy always used the short form of his name — O.N.Dhar & was popularly known as “Dhar Sir” or “Dhar Saeb”.
Daddy passed away in his sleep sometime between 2 pm & 5 pm (as we speculate based on evidences) on Thursday, 12th Sep at his residence in Jagti — exactly the kind of painless death he always longed for.
On the bed were his favourite books — Macmillan English Dictionary (he always felt it was superior to Oxford or may be he loved the font — who knows but I’m keeping this one with me), Drug Index (he was a priest of medicines as he would say — Robert Lynd wrote about “priest of medicines” in his essay Forgetting), book of Lord Shiva & Bhagwad Gita.
The phrase he would always use to describe his death was “kick the bucket” which he finally did.
Daddy was extremely detail oriented. He would write his journal everyday, so we now know exactly how he was feeling & when. He would also make sure to put the date & details on every single purchase/maintenance whether it was a book or an appliance.
I’ll continue updating this blog with more thoughts & memories. If you have been a student of Dhar Sir or have any fond memories of him, please share with me here or through my email rainaankur92@gmail.com or whatsapp +91–7042912626
