The Bread of Stones

God must have been in benign, prodigious spirits when He decided to bless this simple farmer couple in rural Haryana with a child who became talk of the village right from his birth-cry on account of his bulk and weight. In was a culture defined by putting on more and more weight fuelled by copious diet of milk, butter, butter-milk and curd, and digesting the same in competition against the beasts in the fields. The most important cultural items, if we can call ‘agriculture’ the culture, included the plough, bulls, cart and hookah. In such an agri(cultural) scene, this robust son of the poor, famished farmers could give smirk, solace and consolation to the perpetually toiling parents, that God had showered all blooms and benediction upon them in the form of this exponentially robust boy whom people loved to cuddle, caress, and call Pahalwan.

It was 1950 when God blessed them with this star of their eyes and everyone else around. Looking at him they would forget their hard days and become numb to the bone-breaking drudgery and, like humans usually do, start dreaming of a comforting future during their old age, secured in his mighty arms. The poor farmer’s family stretched out its last of the last farthings earned from their small plot of landholding to keep up pace with his furiously increasing diet. By his tenth year people started calling him Bhima for he really looked like the mythical super-heavyweight Pandava. If there is power and those around you smirk at it, making it the first item of congratulatory glances in your persona, you too then, like a fleeced animal, jump for an acrobatic display to win more applauds. He too did the same. The boy would crouch down under a calf, taking his arms around the pair of forelegs, and give a ferocious push to lift the little one on his back. As he grew up fulfilling people’s expectations, their hopes also increased in parallel. Such is society after all. It is a playful thing for them to watch someone become increasingly ambitious, venturesome, and adventurous—especially if it does not materialise in monetary gains, in that case they might even start looking down at it, for if money enters the fray it no longer stays a casual time pass and becomes an enviable business. Since not a single paisa was involved in the entertainment, they doled out copious amounts of praise, expecting him to become bold and daring to cross all limits to get crushed one day finally under an unthinkable weight, and become the stuff of local legend that will give them entertaining anecdote to share in chaupals sometime in the future. 

More the people’s expectations, more was the weight on his broadening, bulky back, and still more became the pressure on the resources of his frail father. The prematurely greying man had seen those days when the wrestlers and power jugglers were held in venerable esteem, when wonderstruck Maharajas showered sparkling bounties on their sweating, soil-smeared, muscular frames after witnessing an entertaining, daring show of strength; when the akhara was worshipped like a shrine; when in local wrestling duels at fairs people gathered crazily to watch and holler at the brutal show of strength. Apart from the heroic status, object of incessant talk, it fetched rewards as well. However, in post-independent India the returns from the show of strength were getting bleaker. After all, it was a modern India in the making. Show of mind was getting predominance over the show of strength.

He was their only child. Such a huge one. Easily spottable wherever he went. His body was not muscular like stone. It was corpulent, but that sort of flesh which always breaks the shackles of lethargy. He was wonderfully agile for his shaking flesh. The more he tried to tan and harden his body, thicker grew the flesh. The taller he grew, the more became his strength and agility. His critics started calling him a slumberous elephant, but in reality he was agile like a panther. Someone one day shouted from behind the bushes ‘elephant’s calf’ to which one of his admirers might have justifiably added ‘but having a tiger’s prowess and agility’.

“Studies are for weaklings only! If he torments his brain he will get weak!” his father would easily remark whenever the question of studies arose.

So unsurprisingly he did not know much of letters and books. Despite this his passage through the years was unchecked, his promotion from one standard to another vouchsafed by his brave efforts in the akhara of this tiny primary school that complacently saw the students up to the eighth standard before leaving the field open for the studious volunteers to take cudgels at higher studies in towns and cities.

When he was in the sixth standard—here we include this just for chronology’s sake—tragedy struck the household. It was a fine evening that seemed all eager to bestow all the prospects of a good supper and rest after daylong ploughing in the fields as his father was returning home. The tiny bells around the bullocks’ necks chimed in congratulatory tone for the good acreage covered during the day. He was giving patronising pats at the cattle’s haunches. But then pleasant and carefree present is oftentimes ambushed by the advance patrol of future—is the plan predetermined or we just by chance come into the line of fire?—leaving the main body of future to decide and twist our fate. On a path-side tree, a big hive of bumble-bees, of the size of a fat calf, had been robbed of its orderly sense. Some eagle might have tried to sneak out a beakful of honey from some corner. It might have hit at some weak point and a larger section of comb had fallen, letting loose chaos, and gone was that fine thread of responsibility and commitment by the time to maintain normalcy. Big black bumble-bees were swarming furiously to take revenge and fall prey upon anybody who chanced to arrive and fill up the vacancy of ‘enemy’. The poor tired farmer fell victim to their unremitting fury. He crouched down and fell at the spot. After heart-rending cries he toppled unconscious to get further stings of mortality. The bullocks also bore the brunt of their fury. Pitifully bitten they ran towards the village. An hour later when the villagers approached the scene of the bees’ crime they found his terrifyingly swollen body lying in the sand. If not in life, at least near death he indeed appeared the father of his prodigiously huge son. As the nearest hospital was 20 kilometres away, and no mechanical conveyance at hand, they took him in a cart and beat the bulls back mercilessly to defeat the swift pace of death. The poor farmer died on the way.

He was just eleven when he lost his father. Now was the time to put the stone of responsibility on his bulky childish shoulders in addition to the playful load of entertainment on his back. School was now necessarily a waste of time, for validity of cultural things is relatively defined by the time one has to spend in earning bread and butter. He thus dropped out of the school, like anyone else would have done and in fact scores of others were doing the same, and helped his mother in agricultural chores. It was mere sustainable agriculture on a small plot of land, just to beat the hunger, nothing more. It is a vicious circle among one or the other deprivations, killing of one dream so that others won’t grow at all, of becoming a hardworking brute so that no finer thing pinches the hardened physique and roughed soul.

He was moulded unsentimentally as a boy of his bulk is expected to be when buffeted by adversities. But the human soul cannot be a desert beyond the oasis of sentimentality completely. In his simplicity he knew—in vague connotations and feelings—that his father would have drawn maximum solace from the sight of more and more weight on his son’s bulk. So his duties in the fields could not shun his weight-adding worship to his body. He just accepted it as another brick on his back.

A school dropout, a slogger in his fields, performer at fairs and local competitions (whenever time was available) that is how adolescence took shelter in his bulging figure. It was the rattling anonymous pace for survival. The future devoid of all glory now waited as a mundane akhara to be treaded sweating and perspiring. He simply followed the rut just like others did, though intermittently encumbering his back and shoulders with unbelievably large weight.

Some sympathiser suggested he should join an akhara to try professional wrestling. But quite mysteriously this big strong lad seemed fit for utilising his enormous energy in vertical component more than in any other direction. He could lift huge, unbelievable weight on his back and shoulders. Wrestling, however, is a three-dimensional game of manoeuvrability and force. Everybody expected him to exploit the field in proportion to his weight-lifting capacity. They were not—especially the guruji—satisfied with his performance in the field. In one duel, when the rustic, strongly pumped pride of the akhara was at stake, this big boy, always in news on account of his mammoth physique, could not uphold the banner and surprisingly hit the dust to everybody’s disbelief. It proved decisive.

“You fit-for-nothing big elephant, you slouching sloth! You yourself eat almost half the ration of the whole akhara! And let us down like this!” the head pahalwan in charge of the akhara could not control himself.

Perhaps for the first time in his life, buds of anger sprouted forth inside this calmest sea of eighteen. The head wrestler weighed around one quintal. He just plucked him off the ground and threw him, breaking one of his legs and couple of ribs. It was sacrilegious...unpardonable from all angles. In this mighty game played on the bosom of sand, the guru is even more venerable than Hanuman, the God of wrestlers in northern India. So they condemned him and implicit in this condemnation was the verdict that henceforth nobody would accept him as a pupil wrestler. Led by frustrating, flailing youthful instincts he stopped exercises, increased his gluttony, and worked still harder in fields with lessening returns. Result? The body that could have been sculpted beautifully got puffed up like a balloon. By his twenty-first year he stood six feet four inches around a pulpy weight.

The last vestiges of wrestlership were naturally harvested as his prematurely old mother got him married to a farmer girl. Now in this part of the country, if somebody with power and attitude for wrestling bids adieu to celibacy and ties the knot, putting his langar on the door-side wall spike, he just becomes the yoked bullock of the family institution, all his energies being sapped by the constantly demanding role of the family man.

By the age of thirty he led a brood of four kids, a famished wife with spent eyes and a bed-ridden mother. He still ate much and his quarrelling wife cursed him for this.

“You eat 90% of your farm’s production!” she often cried with scorn.

When after at least a thousand versions of the same scolding put some weight on his heart, and like a father going to the battle field for survival, he decided to do what deemed fit for him—lifting weights. After some days in the privacy of his cattle house someone was fortunate enough to peep inside and come across this spectacle:

The bulky man caressed the buffalo with his huge hands. The gentle animal acknowledging the gesture raised its tail. The man then bent down and sneaked under the animal’s belly supporting it on his back. Resting his palms on the ground, feet planted firmly he heaved gently, softly. His bulk thrust into the protruding mass on him. Another great jerk and his hands were resting on his knees. The animal’s spine arched; hoofs barely touching the ground. Giving a huge cry and grunting his teeth, he gave another push and for an instant the onlooker might have doubted his eyes when he saw the four hoofs slightly airborne for the fraction of a second. The animal panicked and kicking its legs threw the man onto the ground, and almost trampling him broke free of its tethering.  

From that day onwards the word of his feat again started doing rounds. The man was in streets now showcasing his power-lifts. From his thirtieth year to the fortieth he performed mighty heaves and lifts in the countryside of Haryana, earning mammoth praise and pittance of money, sugar, butter, flour, jiggery, and many other things that bucolic praise could fetch him. With the little money he supported his family and ate almost rest of the offerings, sparing just enough for the children and his accusing wife. He lifted heavy stone-rollers on his shoulders; crouched under a wet sack of sand weighing four quintals and still a man sitting on it and moved ahead; pulled massive wooden beam, with many children riding on it, tied to a thick hemp rope with his teeth. He then claimed the maximum attention he could draw. A photo in a local vernacular paper: a felicitation cheque worth 5000 rupees by a state minister. He had risked his life hundreds of times to reach this level.

Nonetheless, any bull or horse, howsoever hard and sturdy in the heydays, comes across the days of ignominy and neglect. Age was catching up with him, and so was people’s expectation. To find no fault with the audience, those who had seen him at the cusp of his abilities, now found little applauding interest in his waning performances. Hence, the quantity of offerings on the linen sheet of his sweat and slogging trickled down rapidly in his forties.

He had three daughters. His son was the youngest. During this period of waning business, with the money he had saved, he married his two elder daughters. The third one, the son and their mother tirelessly worked in the fields to keep the fire going in their fireplace. Now he returned more sullenly and more frequently and earlier from the performing tours.

It was 1995. The third daughter had also blossomed. Sensing the precariousness of youth, his wife continually prodded him to find a match. Out of job he was slouching at home and there was no money. She gave him an ultimatum that the girl had to be married in the upcoming marriage season at any cost. However, before setting out to find a match, he needed the feel of some money with himself to even have the guts to propose because dowry was absolutely mandatory. After much deliberation and no solution in sight, he was thinking of selling the land to save the family’s honour at any cost. Then an opportunity glared!

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In the Buddhist philosophy of interlinking of universal phenomena in a commonly linked cause and effect chain, the phenomena at two places are reciprocally inter-effecting. His individual-level problem and its solution had something to do with the national capital. As the city grew mammoth so did the milk demand, and to meet it illegal dairies boomed. These milk producers—problems or solutions, put anyone before or after at your own convenience—gave rise to an irritation for the urban gentry. It was the problem of stray cattle. These proud beholders of our religiosity now blocked the capital’s rapid pace to development. The Municipal Corporation of Delhi (MCD) had some cattle-catching vans, but the city’s civic body drew flack for its inability to put a check to the ever-burgeoning problems. These mute and frustrated animals, pushed against the wall for survival in the concrete jungle, started attacking the people. Put into a tight fearsome corner, the people themselves started to chase them away. In one month four people had been gored to death. Their status thus became analogous to man-bovine conflict in the concrete jungle.  

The Delhi High Court whiplashed the civic agencies and held them responsible for the incidences. Without mincing any critical remark, it ordered compensation from the MCD coffers, relocation of illegal dairies (most of whom thrived on political patronage), and gave instructions to round up the stray cattle as soon as possible. The MCD in turn reprimanded its Director of Veterinary Services for the cattle menace. Apart from the court’s indicting music, delegations from resident’s welfare association from different colonies led by their smart, suave retired presidents and secretaries virtually bombarded the agency with their incessant complaints. The posh colonies of south Delhi—whose residents having toiled lifelong for urban advancements and amenities found these characteristics of third-word India quite unbearable—were raising hell of a storm.

Poor cows in posh colonies. Not matching. Religion has its use, but from a safe distance. It was an insult to the retired citizens’ right to lead an advanced life in posh surroundings. But then filthy India is too strong and big. It seeps into the islands of peace and prosperity. It was a big problem indeed. They even employed special guards to fight away the pathetic encroachers into the smirking clean neighbourhoods. To fulfil their quota in the problem, these upmarket people left huge piles of garbage on the margins of their localities, where the herds of stray cattle gathered and repeatedly peeked over their boundaries. Further frustrated they installed cattle traps at colony entries, but the problem won’t be solved. Cast out from the illegal and legal dairies and gau dharamshalas, bee-hiving in hellish stinking environment of Asia’s largest fruit and vegetable market at Azadpur and at incalculable small market places and garbage dump-sites, these poor cattle, grossly caricatured in their skeletons, reminded people that India still was a country of masses despite efforts to the contrary by a few selected men of classes.

The High Court bombarded with pleas and litigations from South Delhi colonies had to direct the MCD to announce a scheme of reward to any citizen for catching the stray cattle. The MCD’s veterinary officers and inspectors were directed to make arrangements for this. The Deputy Commissioner of South Zone came zealously forward to follow the directive. A lump-sum prize of one thousand rupees per catch was announced in newspapers. However, very few came forward to take up the offer from inside the city to encash the risky reward. After spending some years in human-hugging crowd of indulgent mundane masses, the sight of an animal puts one in perspiration mode. The city seeps into the spirits. It chains the guts. So the Delhi government, MCD and NDMC raked their brains, ‘Where could the probable volunteers come from?’ The choice was easy: Haryanvis who are born and brought up in the nearest vicinity of lowing and braying cattle and buffaloes. They are more comfortable in the company of quadrupeds than the two-pawed, over-smart animal ruling the earth. So there were quite a few takers for the risky job in the surrounding pockets of Haryana as advertisements appeared in local newspapers. Our out-of-job, 45-year-old man of this type of business also caught hold of the offer. Even if I catch 90 of these it would ensure the marriage of my last daughter, and the dispensation of my responsibility to save the family’ honour, he thought.

In the battle for survival, the stray cattle and our Pahalwan were now face to face. Both sides pushed by the larger forces, driving them into the corner of limitations and deprivations. The cattle, once the proud beholders of the emblem of survival and spirituality, carried a much faded respect as their utility had plummeted down dangerously. However, this fact was not sufficient to wipe these out of existence. Even in this majestically shiny cityscape these were needed when young and abandoned later. The male calves were even at greater risk of being let loose and roam ownerless because they were not for milk, and their utility when grown up was just for farming tasks that was not to be here in the cities. So the dairy owners just pushed the males out keeping the female calves with them. Their rival, our Pahalwan, was also almost obsolete on account of the oddity of preferring physical strength over brain. These were smarter times, of brain over the brawn. With education India was taking massive leaps towards development with sharper minds and less show of brute physical strength that could just provide the job of daily wage earning around construction sites.

Most of the stray cattle were just mute and pathetically fragile animals, and just after a frail tip of struggle gave into the bulky man’s rope, fist, elbow, and knee work. Still cuts, wounds, sores, and bruises cannot be avoided in a fight between animals and humans. Given his lifetime drudgery in the akhara of power game, he performed as he ought to have as per his experience. He did admirably well and within no time became the prized cattle-catcher. After a month in the capital he returned like a soldier on vacation from the battle front; carrying a broken tooth, blooded pupil, swollen lip, and dangerously paining joints on account of his fights in the concrete jungle. However, these things were easily overshadowed and safely bandaged under the note pads of 40,000 rupees under his belt. His ecstatic wife served, solaced, and assuaged him both physically and mentally as to the humble capacity of her weak, work-wreaked body. It was but a half accomplished mission. He needed one more such push, exactly the same in fruits and then he could rest for a bit longer, for the future of his only son should not offer them much problem. In a terribly patriarchal society, the chances of the son of the poorest of the poor are still better than the daughter of a reasonably well-off person. Nevertheless, the son of a poor man meekly saddles himself almost with the same set of problems and solutions as his father.

During this one-week stay at home he was restless; always anxious lest all the cattle are caught in his absence. His tendons, muscles, joints, and ligaments were still protesting when he again set out for the job. As it happens with the two ends of a scale, once evenly balanced, if the weight is decreased in one pan, the other becomes weightier even though no physical weight has been added to it. With each new fight he got more injuries, became less menacing in his approach, and consequently more became the effect of the animals’ protests. Like a long-fatigued traveller, he took final steps into the second leg of his journey. After twenty more catches he was having sleepless nights on account of his pains. Some suggested that he must hire some assistant to help him, but he won’t share the booty with anybody. All along his life he had worked alone, and he preferred to carry with it even now. More than brute force, now he employed strategies and shrewdness to ensnare the animals, which made it even worse, for it became a game running into days and nights with equal felicity. Using more brain than brawn was not his real self. But the game of survival was forcing him to become smarter in the city. During his initial catches people loved to watch him from a safe distance. He was providing a few street shows as well. They applauded when he, like a heavy grindstone, clasped the animal’s neck and forced the rope-end on one of the front hoofs, ran the rope diagonally under the belly to give expertly unbalancing push, and once the cattle was grounded he would just throw his bulk on the terrified body. His huge proportions made him look like any other animal. All hoofs and horns tied, these would be picked by the MCD vans to be transported out of the area of its jurisdiction.

He was in low spirits, bruised, and anxious because the remaining cattle were sturdier, because it is the rule of the jungle, concrete or the green one, the frailest are the one to be wiped out at the earliest. Ironically, the lesser became his odds, the stronger he faced the enemies. In his forty-ninth and fiftieth fight he could have been easily killed. However, drawing out reserves of his strength he turned sure defeat into couple of more thousands for his daughter’s marriage to salvage his honour by getting her married at the earliest. Once so near the target, no eventuality and foreboding would fright him away from the grand figure of money sufficient to pay for the dowry of his daughter.

His body was rapidly giving in. He knew any catch could be fatal and the last. The remaining cattle were predominantly bulky bulls. He just could not convince himself to call it quits with immediate effect. It was like leaving the field out of being scared. His brawn was fighting with his brain; both drawing him in different directions. His brain could not force him to flee with immediate effect. His brawn held him back for some worthy fight, one final soul-satisfying battle. He knew that he was preparing for his final catch and then sweet return to home. He prayed to God—he did it for the first time in his life—to get him face to face against a famished prey. But he knew that none of the frail ones was left. Only hefty beasts were still cocking a spook at the civilized face of urban gentry. The earth is the testing and trying arena of God against our wishes, prayers and dreams. His case was no exception. In proportion to the fervency of his prayer, he came face to face with a bizarre bull that had gored a couple of people to death and injured many others. It was only on account of religious sentiments that it had been given a bit more time to try other means before the final step of shooting it dead. Our Pahalwan, at the lowest ebb of his strength, was against the strongest opponent—one of the few whose attempts at challenging man’s authority in the concrete jungle had sparked the numero uno animal’s anger—the real culprit from among the dozens of previous weakling and innocent ones.

The thought of only one man tackling this monster was a glaring impossibility. However, if one is once at the threshold of a dream’s fructification, possible and impossible lose their meanings. It had even gone beyond the expectation of just 1000 rupees extra. He was fighting it for himself. He believed himself to be the strongest. He had to prove it to leave a local legend so that those who saw it won’t forget it till their last breath. Having pity, they doubled the booty on the fearsome creature’s head and promised help in man and material.

Well, he nonetheless fought the battle of his life. He at the lowest of his will power, strength and capacity while confronted by the mightiest deed of his life. By this time, he had acquired a bit of local fame. This almost pre-announced fight carried news-worthiness with it. His game of life and death carried circus value. From a safe distance a journalist followed the action on camera to catch the highest point of action. People depending on their bravery quotient chose their safe distances as allowed by their urbanity. What happened for the next one hour, nobody, who witnessed it, will ever forget it till his last moment. The bull went on a rampage. Several times it brought him down on his knees with the huge toss of its horns. He but escaped being trampled to death on account of the still remaining signs of his agility that in the face of death so near worked at full throttle. In frustration, and not without a prick of conscience even at the perilous moment, Pahalwan had to thrust a wood splinter into the bull’s eye in order to mellow its lethality and blithe brutality from so near quarters. Both of them were bleeding and panting. The one who lasted more was to win. For dozens of times the bull had escaped the ensnaring loop of his rope. Taking a sharp turn he approached suddenly from the side of the bull’s gored eye. It spared him from the rival’s peremptory advance. The bull was thus a bit belated in defence. Grabbing it like the last opportunity till eternity, he clung to the left foreleg like lice. Jumping and swinging around wildly, the bull gave ferocious jerks at his neck to kill him with its horns. He had been successful in tying the rope-end to the leg. Taking the other free end in his hand, he jumped into the well of death—dived under the belly to emerge on the other side, taking the rope diagonally across the beast. The people saw the hoofs squelching on his flesh. He but was oblivious to all pain now. He looped the other end around the right hind leg and was dragged by the furiously charging bull for a few paces. When the line was finished, its charge forward became its own undoing. The huge mass toppled down. People looked with horror.  

With the spare rope in his hand, the man all bloodied jumped onto the bull and fell between horns. His hands worked till he had tightly tied the rope-end around the horns. The bull had been knotted and embaled. It struggled. The man just remained there on the trophy. Blood copiously oozing from his mouth. All the promised help now arrived. The MCD veterinary surgeon, sure of the safety, injected the bull with heroic fingers. The bull collapsed. The man too. He died. His spine broken. His shattered ribs protruding through his lungs. With full honours he was taken to his native village.

He had gathered 55,000 rupees for his daughter’s marriage. And couple of thousand for the last kill to defray the cremation and allied crematoria costs. It was the last kill!