Daily Times

Fishing and cattle bathing in the canal were strictly prohibited. Fishing rights would be officially auctioned off and cattle were considered a serious hazard to the banks. The other very tiny but lethal hazard in those days used to be the field rats. These hefty rodents were fond of drilling their breeding burrows into the canal banks. One too deep invited water seepage from the stream, gradually breaching the bank and flooding the villages around. To help block the breach was everybody’s duty and it was religiously done without asking but with great energy and urgency. There could be very few examples to match such outstanding collective social solidarity in our rural life. Food and water were brought to the breach for those busy plugging it. Anything close to it used to be the annual canal desilting. Its importance was unquestionable; therefore, it transcended village rivalries. Every able bodied man participated in this under the technical supervision of the irrigation staff. Huge mounds of wet sand and clay would be piled along the banks of the canal and other distributaries that looked like a series of small ridges in the flat landscape.

The Punjab Irrigation Department ran another remarkably efficient system too. It was its own telegraph network spread almost over the entire web of the channels. It worked very well, passing on all the data about the discharge of river waters from headworks into the canals, all the way downstream. At the respective head offices a wholesome picture of flow and volume of water in the canals continued to emerge. Sometimes the local police would also request passage of certain information from this channel. Although strictly forbidden, private news would be occasionally transmitted, including a snap inspection tour by a more fastidious senior official. The telegraph office was straight out of John Masters’ Bhowani Junction: ancient Raj era telegraph poles setting out from the window of the key room, hurrying to the canal bank and dutifully stepping out on to their different destinations, disappearing into the distant horizons. Doves, sparrows and a few other birds kept either a lazy perch or a quiet watch over worms from these convenient heights.

Inside the telegraph office was a small marvel of the day’s modern science and if seen today, a piece out of the telegraphy museum: a thick brass key tick tacking away Morse code messages or receiving some in a metallic tapping sound that only the operator could understand and only he could send. Power supply consisted of a set of cookie jar-like stout porcelain containers with a lid fitted with two brass terminals. A mesh of wires connected it to the keyboard. Many years later, one learnt in the high school lab that those containers were called Leclanché cells and they needed to be occasionally filled with water and acid and then placed in the sun for a few hours to recharge. At that time they appeared to be sunning in the open like pickle pots near the key room, emitting a curious smell. These telegraph wires used to literally hum when a message was being passed. On a perfectly still evening, one could actually hear the hum if sufficiently attentive and close to a pole.

Despite so many small but vibrant nodes of very important activity within its premises, the canal colony was essentially a spare, laidback and marvellously calm outfit, delivering with perfect composure and efficiency. It had an inimitable ambience of total entitlement, quiet but graceful presence and aristocratic, unruffled countenance that radiated naturally from proper authority, integrity, efficiency and a sense of plenty. It did not need wide Panaflex banners, buntings and media campaigns to tell what the Irrigation Department could do. Their performance was reflected in the happy peasantry that it served, bumper crops and well maintained running canal system. It was not without reason that Punjab was known as the bread basket of the subcontinent and even farther afield. Today the system is a pathetic reflection of its glorious past, teetering on the verge of collapse like any other in the country. One can still see a row of forlorn, petrified telegraph poles along the dilapidated, treeless canal banks in some remote rural area: neglected, disused and sentenced to solitary confinement on their own. Some have wire still clinging to them, the others bent at crazy angles by thieves trying to steal the alloy wire. Most are dotted here and there, where doves perch next to white insulators with their beaks tucked under the wings as if lamenting their demise.

Spick and span service tracks along the canal banks have disappeared long ago; so has the breed of efficient, fastidious irrigation officials. Tracks are pitted and bumpy, huge shady trees cut and sold either in league with greedy officials or because of the toothless and reeling Irrigation Department. Canal rest houses along the branch canals are either neglected, or occupied by the local crime gangs, influential men or the political powerfuls for their illegal private use just like the rest of the state structure. One is pleasantly surprised to chance upon a living and well maintained canal bungalow or a rest house, a sight that is becoming increasingly rare. The Hijaz Railway could not have been more comprehensively destroyed by Lawrence of Arabia than the utter devastation that we have inflicted upon our golden heritage, the Punjab canal system. Deplorably, treasury guards no longer dress up in their khaki shorts, wool stockings and shiny brown shoes. Their sabre blades are not sharpened nor scabbards polished anymore. There is a pervasive apathy all around and everyone seems to be packing up and leaving. They have stopped planting trees and flowers for those who would come after them. Too much water has passed under the bridges and colossal damage done.

(Concluded)

The writer is a retired brigadier of the Pakistan Army. He can be reached at clay.potter@hotmail.com