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During my growing-up years in Punjab over seven decades ago, daleri – that intoxicating blend of self-assurance, humour, chutzpah, generosity, courage, mischief and roguish charm – animated a broad swathe of Punjabi men, even as the divided state struggled to steady itself after the turbulence of Partition.

Surfacing in everyday encounters and public life alike, daleri cut clean across class and calling, remaining a quality whose full texture and cultural resonance no cluster of English synonyms – boldness, drollery, daring, intrepidity, rakish confidence or allure – can individually or collectively do justice to, or define accurately.

Intrinsically, daleri is simply boldness and confidence worn lightly: a fearless ease, laced with wit, humour, magnanimity and common sense, anchored in self-respect and expressed without bluster. Those who possessed it – known colloquially and respectfully as dalers – carried an instinctive authority that needed neither title nor wealth. While not confined to men, daleri found its most visible expression among Punjabi men of that generation.

In essence, it fully embodied the Punjabi – especially Sikh – reputation for humour, irreverence and fearless daleri: an instinctive, unguarded confidence with which life was once met, rooted in storytelling, gentle mockery and verbal sparring, and sustained by an easy refusal to be overawed by hierarchy or solemnity.

Despite constituting less than 2% of India’s population, Sikhs have maintained an outsized presence in public life since independence, occupying senior positions across the political, military and administrative spectrum. This predominantly agrarian and widely respected community has long been known for its enterprise and boldness, as well as its ease with playful banter that often verges on irreverence.

Sikhs are marked by a willingness to laugh at themselves and to turn humour inward as readily as outward. For them, authority is met with a wry disregard and taken together, these qualities were in earlier days best captured in a single word: daleri. But in recent years, such ease of spirit is far less visible, surviving more as an echo than an everyday habit.

In those earlier times, such dalers included turbaned farmers, shopkeepers who ran their establishments like genial monarchs, village and small-town officials, students and lecturers, as well as police constables, civil servants, military officers and jawans – many carrying a similar and easy blend of irreverence, fairness and humour alongside their roles.

Even in everyday scenes, daleri revealed itself in my youthful years unmistakably: in a cyclist weaving through impossible traffic, one hand off the handlebars, humming a Mohammed Rafi tune as though chaos had been arranged for his entertainment. It also appeared just as vividly amongst village wrestlers who, before........

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