Khemchandji, IAS (Retd): The enigma that he was

When I agreed with my wife Tilak’s suggestion to write about my father, Shri Khemchand ji, I didn’t realise what I was letting myself in for. Let me straightaway away state it's one of the toughest tasks I have undertaken to write so far.

No doubt it’s challenging. No doubt it’s one sided. No doubt it will always be inadequate. No doubt it will appear distorted, perhaps even prejudiced. Why?

Because assessing one’s father in public domain is like committing hara-kiri. And if that father happens to be Khemchand ji one can be rest assured it is sticking one’s neck out. The axe will fall.

Thus I chose the soft option of looking at such a towering figure in the administrative circles of Rajasthan from the eyes of his children and grandchildren, with occasional references to his official persona.

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Legend has it that Khemchand ji did not spare even the most powerful Chief Minister of Rajasthan, Mohan Lal Sukhadia, from his sharp tongue and ready wit.

Sukhadia sahib was slated to chair a coordination meeting of PWD, Health Dept and Urban Housing departments. Khemchand ji waited for the CM to arrive for precisely 15 minutes before starting the meeting in his absence. Tea was served at the appointed hour. Sukhadia Sahib entered the Conference room just as the cups and snack plates were being cleared off.

Khemchand ji welcomed the Chief Minister but pointedly told him that he would be served lukewarm tea as he was late as tea had already been served at the scheduled time. Hushed silence descended upon the conference room. The attendee officers waited with bated breath for Sukhadia Sahib to simply turn around and storm out.

But Sukhadia Sahib was far too mature and sophisticated to respond ‘normally’. He knew Khemchand ji well. He rose to the occasion.

“Khemchand ji, knowing you for the past so many years as a stickler, I am ready to drink whatever you have on offer.”

With that exchange of words the attendees heaved a sigh of relief and the conference went back to work.

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For the children, meaning us eight siblings (six brothers and two sisters), Khemchand ji was Daddy. For his fourteen grandchildren, he was simply Babaji.

While we the eight siblings never had much courage to pick up a conversation with Daddy (except for most essential purposes), the grandkids were all over him and immune from his stature and standing in the family and the society.

To our shock and horror, Daddy didn’t seem to mind. The grandkids conjured up new pranks and didn’t hesitate to play them out. They had a free run of his prized possessions.

His head came in for special treatment too. Neha, his granddaughter, didn’t like her grandfather going around with white hair. He looked so childish. Neha, in cahoots with Tushar, dare-devil grandson, simply used Kiwi boot polish and painted his grey hair jet-black with the shoe polish brush. The transformation was complete!

Babaji didn’t flinch an inch while Neha and Tushar went to work. It took him several weeks to remove the boot polish with sustained shampooing.

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For the children, meaning us eight siblings, dinner time was also general knowledge test time. Daddy asked the questions and we had to answer with knowledge and insight. And he could pick any topic.

One night I was the singled out as the target. He lobbed a few at me but I fielded them easily and confidently. That didn’t go down well with him.

After a bit of contemplation he threw the bombshell, “What’s the new movement ‘The New Left’ all about?”

That stumped me. I had not even heard of the New Left. That evening I got the wrong end of the stick. Imagine, here I was, a student of political science, with a not a clue about such a powerful political movement launched by university students in France in the 1960s.

That encounter was enough for me to keep away from the dining table for the next few days.

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One day, the grandkids decided that Babaji’s prized possession, the two-in-one radio was being bitten badly by the mosquitoes. They had to rescue the two-in-one from this invasion. It was their bounden duty.

The Gang of Four, Gaurav, Tushar, Rajat and Rakshat, managed to smuggle the two-in-one out of Babaji’s room, along with his tube of Odomos, a popular mosquito repellent with a foul smell.

They smothered the two-in-one with several layers of Odomos paste. One could sniff the foul smell from afar. When Babaji used it next, he never noticed the difference or the smell. He accepted the two-in-one with that foul smell without a word in protest.

This mischief came in handy to locate Babaji’s two-in-one from the hundreds of two-in-ones recovered from Ramchander, a serial robber who was operating freely in Bapu Nagar and Tilak Nagar area for several weeks.

Ramchander would recee each potential house for three days. He then selected the easiest entry point, then break in and enter comfortably.

He had broken into our house twice in quick succession quite easily as Babaji kept his back door open for fresh air and also thieves. (In those days, it was more important to breathe fresh air and allow good sunlight than maintain security.)

Ramchander was eventually trapped, not by the police, but by the Tilak Nagar all-night vigilante group.

Babaji’s two-in-one stood out in the long line-up of stolen goods due to the strong odour it emanated. We immediately returned it to Babaji. He was happy to be able to tune into the BBC and hear John Arlot running commentary on the Ashes series.

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Khemchand ji was born and brought up in Alwar. He went to Mission School at Alwar in Munshi Bazaar, near our ancestral home. The house has since changed hands but the new family has retained it as it was.

The new owners told us a few years’ ago that they will preserve the house as the property belonged to an illustrious family. We were humbled.

Khemchand ji did his under-graduation and masters from St. Stephens at Delhi where the famous Mr Monk was the Principal.

He began his career as Naib Nazim after his selection in 1935 with Alwar state services.
With sheer hard work and copious output Daddy rose rapidly in the hierarchy. Within no time, he was picked up to work as Secretary to the Prime Minister of Alwar.

Khemchand ji became the first Collector of the newly formed Alwar District in December 1947. At that time, Alwar was still part of the Matysa Union but had joined the newly independent Indian nation.

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Nearly ten years after Khemchand ji retired in 1969, one family retainer Kaluram approached him to request the Collector Alwar to post him, Kaluram, to a particular department in Alwar itself.

Kaluram’s request had been turned down by the Collector as it did not meet the guidelines of the transfer and posting guidelines. Kaluram was due to be transferred out of Alwar on tenure basis.

Khemchand ji made the call. The Collector told him that he could not budge from the guidelines and, in any case, he did not know who Khemchand ji was. This incensed Khemchand ji. The subsequent conversation went something like this:

“Mr. Collector, are you sitting on a swivel chair in your office?”

“Yes sir, I am. What’s the point?”

“Please swivel your chair with you sitting in it 180 degrees and face the name board on the wall behind you.”

“Ok. Yes sir, I have done that. Now what?”

“Now, if you still desire to know who I am, then please look at the first name on the board.”

“Yes sir, I get it. Now I know that you are The Khemchand ji. Thank you for my first lesson in Being Humble. Sir.”

Kaluram to this day cannot forget that favour. At the drop of a hat, he can recount the entire sequence of events. Verbatim. Proudly.

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Khemchand ji went on to be the District Magistrate and Collector of Bharatpur, Udaipur, Jhalawar, Bikaner and Ajmer. He became Alwar Collector again for two years from 1949 to 1951.

Khemchand ji's passion for outdoor life from early life continued into his service days. Being the Collector of a District did not curb his style. On the contrary, in Bikaner he even took the District SP along a for an all night vigil on a ‘machaan’ for a tiger shoot.

Yet a simple drive back home in the family car, a Morris Minor, with my sister and I on the front seat, produced startling dividends.

As we climbed uphill for the next turn we found a panther sitting on the side parapet, staring at us nonchalantly.

The driver halted the car immediately. Khemchand ji took out his .12 bore gun, inserted two BG cartridges, took aim and fired. The panther was hit but merely injured. The big cat slid off the parapet and disappeared down the hill in the thick forest.

Eventually some villagers found the panther after a week nearly 5 kms away from the road. The panther head trophy adorned our drawing room for several decades till it withered away.

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We, the siblings, never went to Khemchand ji's office chamber in the Collector’s office to meet him and talk to him. He would have been outraged.

Even top politicians did not show such courage either. We often found stalwarts like Kumbha Ram Arya sitting patiently on the sofas in our foyer waiting to meet Khemchand ji for a tete-a-tete over kebabs and more.

One day Khemchand ji was driving from Ajmer to Jaipur in his private car. He was Member, Revenue Board at that time.

About 40 kms from Jaipur, a police constable in Uniform flagged the car down and requested for lift to the outskirts of Jaipur. After due permission, the driver asked the constable to hop in.

Just as the car reached the outskirts, the constable requested for a halt so that he could get off. Khemchand ji instructed the driver to drive on to the residence of the Inspector General of Police, Shri Hanuman Prasad ji, on Ram Singh road.

Suddenly the constable became nervous and pleaded furiously for forgiveness. He swore not to do such a thing again.

But the car rolled on and reached the gates of the official residence of IG, Rajasthan.

When the car stopped Khemchand ji did the unexpected. He allowed the nervous wreck constable to get off and go home. But with a warning, “Respect the uniform and be proud of your actions.”

It would have been grossly inappropriate on Khemchand ji's part to have ‘hung’ the constable for such a measly favour.

The constable simply ran away at a speed faster than that of Usain Bolt.

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In many ways, Daddy was a pioneer. He agreed to marry our mother, Dayawanti, who came from a Radha Soami background of pure vegetarianism and abhorrence for wines and drinks.

In 1937. In a civil ceremony.

Consequently, we did not have a puja room or puja nook in our house. My memory tells me that puja with everyone participating happened only once a year on the occasion of Lakshmi Pujan at Diwali.

I distinctly remember a glass of Black Label whiskey being passed around for a sip. After the brief puja ceremony involving the worship of instruments of choice like writing pens and newly-bought utensils, the family got down to playing Chaupad, a board game similar to Ludo, and Ganchua, a card game handed down to Kayastha Mathur parivars from the Mughal times.

Thus we siblings never got familiar with the rituals of daily darshan or daily puja, prayers and other ritualistic traditions associated with Hindu religion.

We knew more about cricket, world politics, Indira Gandhi and doing good to others.

For the family, cricket was like religion. The family followed the matches everywhere — on radio, in the newspapers, and on television. And they played cricket everywhere. Wherever they went with instant set rules framed on the spot.

During a family get-together at Gwalior in 1995, the grandkids were even able to coax Babaji at age 85 into an on-drive.

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Post retirement in 1969, Khemchand ji lived a happy and contented life at his residence Ram Kutir, B-87, Ganesh Marg, tending to his plants. He loved watering the garden. He had a special love for grafting roses.

On his 100th birth anniversary in 2011, the family paid a tribute to him by organizing a Mushaira at Ajmer. It was a fitting tribute as he could read, write and speak both Farsi and Urdu fluently. Most of his private noting in his diary was in Farsi. He often hosted a mini Mushaira at his residence.

Khemchand ji passed away in February 2004, sitting on his favourite moodhaa in his beloved garden, 35 years after superannuation.

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The month of April was a very important one in the life and times of Khemchand ji. He was born in April. His wife Dayawanti was born in April. They got married in April. His wife passed away in April.

For him, April was not the cruelest month, as opined by the poet Eliot, but a most happening one.

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