Former Prime Minister Manmohan Singh faced a tough time while he was pursuing his studies at Cambridge University in the mid 1950s. He was on a scholarship and money was the only real problem that the leader faced at that time. Due to financial constraints, Singh had to even skip his meals sometimes or live on a sixpence bar of Cadbury’s chocolate, his daughter Daman Singh said.
Despite the hardships, Manmohan Singh went on to earn a First Class Honours (Tripos) degree in Economics in 1957 from University of Cambridge.
In her book “Strictly Personal: Manmohan and Gursharan”, published by HarperCollins in 2014, Daman Singh tells the “story of her parents”.
She mentioned that her father often spoke about the hard life in the village as well as the charm of a simpler existence as he shared about his early life. Singh was born in Gah, which is now in Pakistan’s Punjab province.
Daman also recalled that when her sister Kiki asked Manmohan Singh if he would want to go back to Gah, he would refuse saying, “No, not really. That is where my grandfather was killed.”
She also wrote about her father’s days at Cambridge, mentioning how money was the only real problem that bothered her father as his tuition and living expenses came to about 600 pounds a year while the scholarship he had received from the Punjab University gave him about 160 pounds.
“For the rest he had to depend on his father. Manmohan was careful to live very stingily. Subsidized meals in the dining hall were relatively cheap at two shillings sixpence. He never ate out, and seldom indulged in beer or wine,” she wrote.
He would be in crisis if money sent from home fell short or did not arrive in time. “When this happened, he skipped meals or got by on a sixpence bar of Cadbury’s chocolate. He would never borrow money his entire life, but this was when he came closest to doing so. The only person he could think of turning to was Madan (close friend Madan Lal Sudan),” the book said.
After the results of the first-year Tripos examination were declared and Singh came first, he asked his friend Madan to not send him any money from then on. “I think I will get some prize worth about 20 pounds and if I press I might get an Exhibition (an allowance or scholarship), but I am not so greedy. I prefer to wait till next year,” Singh wrote.
Daman also wrote how Singh enjoyed singing at family get-togethers and picnics. “Whenever we went on a picnic, people used to sing. He knew a couple of songs. He sang ‘Lagta nahin hai ji mera’ and Amrita Pritam’s poem ‘Aakhan Waris Shah noon, kitey kabran vichon bol’,” she wrote.
“Aakhan Waris Shah noon…” is about Partition and Amrita Pritam invokes Waris Shah to come and write about what happened to Punjab.
“Lagta nahin” is the poem penned by last Mughal emperor Bahadur Shah Zafar when he was in exile in Rangoon, where he later died.
Daman said her father had a good sense of humour. “This was evident when he was with friends, even if they were economists. It was comforting to know that he could laugh and crack jokes as well. With us, he rarely did either.” She also wrote that Singh liked giving nicknames to people.
“Unknown to them, one of our uncles was ‘John Babu’, another was ‘Jewel Babu’, and a third – to commemorate his pointed turban – was ‘Chunj Waley’. My mother was ‘Gurudev’, and the three of us were ‘Kick’, ‘Little Noan’ and ‘Little Ram’. Some of the other names he coined were less charitable,” Daman wrote.
The former PM had also given their pet dog Penu several affectionate names such as ‘Nut Babu’, ‘Nutter’ and ‘Douse Fellow’ and even composed little jingles around them.
