Hailing from a highly educated, partition-affected family with a rich musical and cultural lineage, being a pioneer of the computer revolution in India, Ajai Chowdhry, one of the six founding members of HCL (Hindustan Computers Limited) continues his magnificent journey. In a conversation with Sudeshna Das, consulting editor at EFY, he shares the tales of his life
Ajai Chowdhry comes from a patriotic family where art and music were an integral part of life. Before India’s partition in 1947, Ajai’s father worked as a flourishing criminal lawyer in what is now known as Pakistan. As a president of the Congress at the then Abbottabad, he was deeply involved in the Indian freedom movement and came in touch with Father of the Nation Mahatma Gandhi and Khan Abdul Gaffar Khan, who was commonly known as Frontier Gandhi.
Ajai’s parents shifted from Abbottabad in Pakistan to India along with their six children after the partition. “They came to India in difficult circumstances with nothing in hand, only the children on a train, which was pretty much the last train out of Pakistan. I was told that my parents got separated from my siblings into different bogeys and they had no idea what was happening to their children. On the way, my grandmother died. Finally, they landed in Delhi and started living in an old dirty house that belonged to a Muslim family that had left India. After a while, they moved to a refugee camp,” Ajai tells while narrating the post-partition crisis faced by his family.
Immediately after shifting to India, Ajai’s father got a job related to integration of the princely states after Independence and shifted to Mount Abu in Rajasthan. Ajai recalls, “My family moved to a fantastic place on the bank of beautiful Nakki Lake and their life changed. They all settled down in Mount Abu and I was born there in 1950. I have never been to Mount Abu since then; I’ve just been hearing beautiful stories about how fantastic that home was. Someday, I shall visit that home. It’s on my bucket list.”
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