A few days back I went to Pilani in Rajasthan, my native place where we are running a college. I was visiting it after two years due to the pandemic. As I entered the city, my mind flashed back to the time when I was child of about 7 years. My parents had sent us to Pilani to live with our grandparents during Second World War which was getting nasty. My father was manager at Birla Jute Mills (Birlapur) and an army station had been set up there. The families were evacuated and we children were packed off to our native place. I still vividly remember the train ride from Howrah to Delhi and from there a narrow-gauge towards Loharu, which was the junction then in Punjab and now in Haryana. At midnight we had to disembark at Rampura Beri, where the train stopped for only half a minute. From there we went on a camel cart, travelling for almost four hours over sand dunes. The winter sky above made it a thrilling experience as we snuggled deeper into our quilts.
We stayed in Pilani for two years during which I got admission to Birla Primary School, very close to our haveli. The haveli had no electricity and we used lanterns at night. During the hot summer nights we would sleep under the stars on the open terrace. There was no toilet and for privacy we used to go to the sand dunes. Those days, Pilani was a big village with bare minimum infrastructure. However, the schools and colleges did have generators as public supply of electricity was very rare.
In the early 1940s, Pilani was a desert with no greenery.
Over the years, it started attracting entrepreneurs and farmers started cultivation towards Chirawa with water wells powered by generators. Soon dunes were converted to plain for agriculture.
Pilani is located on the border of Rajasthan and Haryana. In fact, it was part of undivided Punjab. It enjoys similarity with Punjab and Rajasthan in folk music, dance, warmth of people, and hospitality accorded to guests. Geographically, Pilani is on the fringe of the Thar Desert which touches Haryana. My father, who was from the Saboo family in Bahl about 50 kilometres away, was adopted by his uncle in Pilani.
The history of Pilani dates back to 1794 when Thakur Nawal Singh founded a city called Nawalgarh and commissioned his fourth son Dalel Singh to build a fort, which became Pilani. Many families from Nawalgarh shifted to Pilani. The Birla family was one of them. Not only did it have deep pockets, it had a generous and philanthropic heart. The vision of GD Birla led to a number of educational institutions some of which are world class now.
Pilani has a population of about 30,000, if you subtract the floating population. From a village, it has transformed to a city. Banwarilal Purohit, Punjab Governor and Administrator of Chandigarh, was born in Nawalgarh, and knows Pilani well. UT DGP Praveer Ranjan, originally from Bihar, also studied in Birla Public School in Pilani for 7-8 years. Pilani’s educational institutes attract students and teachers from the whole country.
It’s also impacted the locals. Recently, my wife Usha met the 22-year-old daughter of a traditional Brahmin family that used to run a vegetarian restaurant which closed. Now she is not only preparing to join the banking sector but also prepares much sought after chocolate hampers.
The infrastructure has improved exponentially. Our haveli now has modern toilets and 24×7 electricity. The road connectivity has improved substantially. Till 4-5 years back, it used to take me 7-8 hours to reach Pilani by car from Chandigarh. This time I reached it in 5 hours.
Pilani is on the tourist map due to attractions such as the Saraswati temple, Shiv Ganga, Aditya Birla Museum, and Birla Science Museum.
Pilani is now a destination.
(The writer is the former president of Rotary International)