Yet he would be in crisis if money 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 wrote to Madan asking not to 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 mentioned how her father used to sing 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.According to Daman, 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.” He also liked to give 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.Singh gave their pet dog Penu a string of affectionate names such as ‘Nut Babu’, ‘Nutter’ and ‘Douse Fellow’ and even composed little jingles around them.
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