As you drive down National Highway 1,the signboards on either side that announce the names of villages come with a hint of folklore. Down this highway is Rasoi. Youd think its so called because of the string of dhabas that dot this road. But people in Rasoi wont buy that simplistic a theory. Their story is this: the village got its name after a Brahmin family allowed a migrant Jat family to set up a kitchen here and cook for themselves,some 700 years ago. Rasoi today is a predominantly Jat villageof the 450 families here,nearly 350 are Jats. It was way back in 1339. Two brothers,Manpal Singh and Bircha Singh,from Mudhal village in Bhiwani district of Haryana were going to Delhi to sell their wares on a bullock-cart. They were hungry but then there were no dhabas in Sonepat. They went to a Brahmin household and asked them for some food. The family let them set up a rasoi (kitchen) and cook their food. The hospitality must have won the brothers over because soon,many families from Mudhal migrated to the village and it was named Rasoi as a tribute to the benevolence of the Brahmin family, says village sarpanch Satpal Singh. In hindsight,the Jat brothers seemed to have chosen the right stopover. Sonepats proximity to the national capital region has brought in private land developers and that has meant high compensation for their land. Rasoi now has its own share of millionaires who have sold land to private developers such as TDI and Ansals. And even besides the glitz,its clear that Rasoi has got its social narrative rightevery home has a toilet. While Rasoi owes its identity to food,adjoining Bad Khalsa (pronounced baad),which means the severed head of a Sikh warrior,owes its name to a rather turbulent phase in Sikh historythe beheading of ninth Sikh Guru Tegh Bahadur by Mughal ruler Aurangzeb on November 11,1675,in Delhi. It is here that Bhai Jaita,the Sikh warrior who escaped with the severed head of the guru to Anandpur Sahib in Punjab,first halted. Our village is nearly 50 kilometres from Sishganj,where the guru was beheaded. It had no Sikh family,but one man,Kushala Dahiya,of the Jat community offered his head to be taken to Aurangzeb instead of the gurus. The village was later destroyed by the Mughals for the deceit. Several people were killed while others fled and years later,some families came back and the villages name was changed from Garhi to Bad Khalsa. Now,the village has nearly 639 families and a Guru Tegh Bahadur memorial to mark the place where Bhai Jaita rested, says Rajesh Kumar,a farmer in the village. In Sonepat,which derives its name from the Sankrit word,Suvarnaprastha,meaning golden city,Rasoi and Bad Khalsa are not the only villages with a story. The dhaba junction,Murthal,eight kilometres from Sonepat,too derives its name from an interesting feature. Earlier called Morthal Khas,it means a village of beautiful peacocks. Further away from here but closer to modern history are names of Haryana towns like Ellenabad which was named after wife of a British Deputy Commissioner,Robert Hutch,who delivered her child at the villagea famous hunting ground for the Britishwith the help of locals.
