On an August day falls the death anniversary of Bhagat Puran Singh, the sage of Pingalwara (Amritsar). The last few weeks of this servant of the hapless and the forlorn were full of pain, which reminded one of the suffering of Christ on the Cross. The day after his passing into eternity was the sixth day of August. Pasternak says in "Zhivago's Poems": "You walked in a loose crowd. /Then someone remembered/ That by the Old Calendar/Today was the sixth of August, /the Lord's Transfiguration." Was it a coincidence or a manifestation of the Supreme Will? This great man is not dead. He lives on amidst the suffering people, transfigured and immortalised. He did not work miracles. But he did reveal, in word and deed, the power to transform lives, alleviate pain and lift up such hearts as are hurt, depressed and disconsolate.
We remember him respectfully because he was different from most of us: he worked recklessly but splendidly to show us how not to make yesterday's cup of bitterness "more full with the pain of today." He sought to shake society out of its sloth, not with aimless fury but with deliberate effort, and found for grief the panacea of service humility and compassion. He had immersed himself in the teachings of the Gurus. He had imbibed the essential Gandhi as he had assimilated history and the distilled wisdom of the centuries. There was no fretting or regretting.

His was a life well-lived. Ours are lives spent in the settling of scores and in the settlement of accounts. He was a Bhagat (a devotee), Puran (whole) and Singh (a lion). Few names suit a person so aptly. The lion-hearted devotee wanted us to realise what the Rishis have commanded us to be: Be thou whole. The rest is immaterial. "People are my God," he said. He worked for their well-being. Nothing else mattered. Nothing else matters for an unfragmented person like him. He did things in great sweeps. He had the choice of working in certain spheres which promised comfort, money and material satisfaction. He chose a path which brought him, all these "gains", but not for himself. What personal consideration would-matter to a man who had learnt to remember this; "Truth is our another, justice our father, pity our wife, respect for others our friend and clemency our children; surrounded by such relatives, we have nothing to fear"?

The curvilinear movement of life took him from his place of birth in a well-to-do Hindu family of Ludhiana, through hard times and with little formal education, to Gurdwara Dehra Sahib in Lahore. His mother had prepared him for the daunting tasks ahead. A crippled and mentally retarded child, spotted by him near the gurdwara, confirmed him in his mission. As Jesus founded his church on Peter, his rock, Bhagat Puran Singh laid the foundation of his Pingalwara on the ennobling presence of this beloved child named Piara Singh. Lahore's Dyal Singh Library helped him in self-education. The inhuman condition thrown up by the country's partition led him to the ideas of organised and institutionalised patient-care.

All forms of handicap could be treated and mitigated, he said. No stigma was irredeemable, he taught. Hundreds of unbearable lives were made worth living by him. Women and children were the main beneficiaries of his "God-guided" plans. He inculcated in people the habit of giving until it hurt. Pingalwara became a metaphor of help in a world full of misery. The institution has grown and become the centre of a service movement. Will it remain so? No one knows the answer. His death could not destroy Bhagat Puran Singh. The deterioration of his institution can do so. Our duty to the Pingalwara (s) is clear. The sage told us that abandoning the instinctive pursuit of self-interest, man must cultivate the higher instincts of sympathy and mutual help. We felt supremely happy by achieving the political miracle of freedom on the quicksand of social slavery and inner corruption. This teacher of ours warned us against viewing historical surprises as the roots of our troubles. The strength of the many must conquer the sufferings of the few. Finite man has infinite capabilities; realise this; work; suffer; mitigate suffering ... Bhagat Puran Singh's thoughts should form part of the process of our daily examination of conscience.