A Lesser Death

 

A very beautiful former actress died in the last week of February, 2018 of cardiac arrest in Dubai. Dying at 54 seems too premature for someone whose lively eyes and trilling voice enthralled millions for decades. The news was shocking and there was genuine outpour of grief. Death the darkest mystery stumps us. The actress but stays alive through her brilliant characters in 300 movies she starred in.

So what we do with this life matters more than anything else. We leave a tiny trail of memories for those still alive. Let’s at least try that we leave behind a bouquet of pleasant memories. Well, ‘some nice memories in a few hearts’ must be the hallmark of a successful life. It definitely makes death ‘lesser’ in magnitude.

However small is the arena of your life, the stage set up for you by the forces beyond your control, to dance on it or cry is fully within your prerogative. We can at least try to dance well with joy, of course without stepping on the feet of others doing the same. 

And to remind me how ubiquitous its tentacles are, death ruffled its feathers around me also. A puppy died under my little old car. It wasn’t a bloody death. The little thing must have been sleeping under the vehicle. I simply started the ignition. The wheels rolled for a few feet. I heard muffled sounds. I stopped and found the poor thing struggling for breath with a rattling death sound. It surely was my fault.

One must be considerate for the smaller world that we find almost non-existing around our feet. We take it for granted that the higher world of we humans is all that matters. We shouldn’t forget that to the bigger forces in nature there is hardly any difference between a microorganism and a human being. Both get tossed with the same nonchalance by the forces of nature. We just feel, cry, blame, act and react more. Other than this, there is no qualitative difference between an ant being crushed under a human foot and a human being getting crushed by the circumstantial wheels.  

Well, the writer is completely in acceptance of the responsibility of causing a death. With a bit of more awareness, it could have been avoided. The little thing would have been playing with its itchy siblings in the village street. All of us have our quotas of sins of omission and commission. And acceptance of a fault definitely puts one on the path of betterment. It adds a nice positive element to life.  

Beyond the apparent causes, death drives its own forces. It’s not, as most of us may think, the effect of some accident, disease, crime, happening or mishappening. It itself is the primary cause. The means of death are in fact the effects of death. Its surety, inevitability, the absolute truth behind it, makes it the cause in itself. Had there been an exception to mortality, maybe then it could have been taken as the effect of the apparent means of death.

Death stands alone as an absolute entity. Only the means vary. There are as many possibilities of the so called ‘reasons’ ascribed to death as there are thoughts in mind.

Given the ease with which death picks up its timing, it makes it almost a supreme force. This nullifying interlude is a great push in the cycled movement of things and phenomena.

It picks from the grossest to the easiest routes. All that we can pray for is a painless, simple, aged death—a fading away, a kind of ripened drop, a finely graduated trailing off, a reasonable sign off. A dull gaze of the old, almost blind eyes into the future. A centurion. A kind of lesser death.  

A Full-baked Sense of Security

 

The boy is from Bareilly in Uttar Pradesh and sells coconuts on the pavement at Sonipat in Haryana. There is an awning of polythene sheet and bamboos, a rickety wooden diwan and the heap of coconuts. He wields the big cutter knife with throwaway ease.

He is a nice talker and offers a free conversation as you sip the coconut water. He talks pretty intimately, so much so that the next time you visit his set-up, you come as an old acquaintance even though it’s your second visit only. Well, that is the hallmark of a good salesman. These are inborn traits beyond the reach of business school logic.

‘Life is far better here. Less crime. People don’t bother you too much. I have taken a cheap room on rent nearby and go there just for cooking, bathing and toilet. I sleep here on the pavement and there hasn’t been any problem during the eight years of my stay here.’

Little does he realise that of late Sonipat has almost overtaken his home state in mischief and tumbles on the wrong side of law. But then one’s sense of security and comfort about a place is driven by the weight added to one’s purse by that particular place. All is well as long as you feel the weight in the wallet. So he is right in his judgement as one can see a few customers around him.  

He is dark with taut face muscles on his eager face. His hairstyle gives an inkling that he takes himself seriously to a decent limit. His caste, creed or communal identity is clouded by his primary identity of just being one of the struggling millions who pack their bundles of deprivation and move outstation. They treasure their little vial of happiness. Their eyes always looking at the pleasures of the relatively better offs, which acts as a big driving force enabling them to keep pulling the heavy cart.

We are talking about the gems of hard work and the inherent richness of economically poor people who dig a well daily to drink water. He holds the pavement strugglers in very high esteem.

‘The rich people are very poor in afterlife. All that they have to see is finished in this life only. Their quota of rewards, pleasures and happiness lasts during this life only. Nothing is left for the other world,’ he points to the sky.  

‘The poor are very rich after their death. A poor man will get compensation for his sufferings in the afterlife...there...in jannat!’

Well, for me it would be swarga. Now I get a clue to his religious identity.

The idea of afterlife surely helps the poor people in pulling the cart. This world may not have enough for them. They then take a huge leap of faith to shift the destination into the unfathomable depths of the skies.

‘Did you ever feel unsafe here? Some incidence or happening?’ I ask him.

Now he looks even more confident as he replies. ‘Never, it’s a very safe city as I told you. There is a very kind policeman uncle in the neighbourhood. He is very helpful and always asks me to tell him if anyone bothers me. What a nice man he is! I really like him. Coconut water is really good for one’s health. And such good people must be kept healthy so I offer him one coconut every day before he sets out for the thana. He also understands that I give it to him out of genuine respect so he doesn’t insult my feelings by offering money. I will make him the fittest policeman in the city.’

‘Oh, you are lucky to have a friendly policeman,’ I congratulate him.

‘True. Especially an honest policeman,’ he enthuses.

‘How do you know that he is an honest one?’ I ask.

‘It’s very easy! He has told me that he has never taken a bribe in his career. And I fully believe in him. He is such a nice guy,’ he is all praise for his protector. 

Well, I also believe him. A free coconut every day must be enough to fetch contentment to the policeman. And anyone would feel safe after becoming the part of a fit policeman’s book.                                          

The Rich Princes of Poor Ghettos

 

The laundry man, the fruit seller, the shoe mender, the juice maker, a pan and cigarette stall, a subzi puri booth, a chhole kulche cart, the roadside barber, the coconut seller, the key maker, a sugarcane juice crusher, queues of autos, more juice makers, rickshaw pullers, tea stalls, tiny carts laden with mouth-watering spicy samosas and the changing faces of the people as they pass through this dense urban spot.

The list of its constituents is almost endless and makes it an intense spot of struggle and survival. Life here is static as well as in a flux: static in terms of the very same old struggle, weariness and challenges to make the ends meet by these little protagonists of this tiny stage; in a flux also as the squeezing urban behemoth continuously pushes in and pushes out scores of people through this small spot. Life is slow as well as fast simultaneously. And so are the undercurrents of pleasure and pain. There is a smoky tension in the air. Everyone is on taut nerves. A massive heaving of effort is going on to somehow survive in the urban jungle.

It’s a journey where hundreds of steps count to just one of those in the bigger world. You huff and puff for miles after miles, while in reality you are still at the same spot of your misery. Happiness, the dream puller, is forever cajoling millions after millions. It’s very easy to get seduced by the thoughts and notions of happiness. Sadly, we usually ditch whatever little we possess in the present to avail happiness in future.

These institutions are built upon the pavement with gunny sacks, wooden planks, plywood, plastic and iron sheets. The rickshaws, carts and bicycles constitute the battle gear of this fighting band. They have their own poorly contrived, self-made signboards. Tired labourers, who are the small soldiers of a big battle, sit on rickety stools, chairs and benches and eat the cheap servings to continue fighting for another day.

Two pensioners talking about pension hike. Targets and goals rarely meet an end. It’s always about more money. Your own journey may be ending, but it crosses over to the next generation. You have to grab more of this world to hand over the baton to your progeny. Even though you come across hundred reasons when the ones for whom you are holding out the battle front, even in the old age, make you feel redundant and obsolete. You have but already ceded your life to them. ‘You’ means ‘they’. They may not understand it. However it doesn’t matter. You simply cannot hate them enough to stop worrying about them. Just like they cannot love you enough to help you take less painful steps on your rickety joints.

A rickshaw puller comes, mops his face with the corner of his head-cloth and gets busy in finishing his cheap lunch. He eats heartily. Hunger drives you like the best teacher. It guides you and misguides you at the same time. Poverty makes you devour your frugal pieces with a peculiar nonchalance. You chew more of your worries, hardly giving attention to what exactly you have on your plate.

The spring sun is getting scorching with each passing day. Its swiftly lays its hot fingers to absorb the leftover coolness the air still has. It devours it hungrily. Of course you wish less of the sun now at the beginning of summers, like you pray for more of it during winters.

The bigger world is just at an arms’ length but it’s miles long in distance if you measure the gap between the best dream of the people of this little stage and the normal day realities of anyone in the bigger world. There is impressive Wave City Centre Metro station, part of the world class metro rail system. Then you have an elegantly imposing tower, an ultra-modern shopping mall. Then you have a noteworthy underpass nearby. There are more impressive cars on the clogged road than any other vehicle.

Irrespective of what time of the day it is, you have a heavy throng of people. Young, middle aged, old, students, beggars, rich, poor, fat, thin, crippled, semi-crippled—a tightly squeezed bale of humanity. Their individual identities seem to be melting into a faceless commonness. The crowd colours everything with a swiping monotony. Poverty cuts your life’s meaning to keep it centred around a few bucks earned at whatever cost it requires. When you are pinned against the wall and just fight for a day, you automatically sharpen those instincts to prey upon any possibility or opportunity. The codes, principles and values constituting the great edifice of goodness get clobbered down, lose their value and go down the huge sewage drain whose foul odour fills the lungs with a marvellous continuity. After some time one finds it normal to inhale the obnoxious cocktail of motor exhaust, dust and sewage smell topped by the terribly sweating, smelly human bodies.

You have Audis and BMWs zooming past. On a garbage dump, almost in the middle of the stage, the cows and pigs that usually forage snout-to-muzzle and muzzle-to-snout are suddenly pushed out. There are intruders. A big herd of sheep, jutted against each other to make it one hungry jelly monster, is devouring the shitty leftovers. This is ultra-modern junk—cups, disposable plates, glasses, stale food, fruit peelings, plastic, plastic and more plastic. The Rajasthani sheep herder, roaming around hundreds of miles for the last blades of rapidly vanishing grass, stands pensively with his chin supported on the herding stick. He has his signature tight-fitting kurti, languorous dhoti and a huge shiny red headgear. He stands with the typical nomadic elegance from his part of India. He can have an eye feast. At a short distance, impressive towers having luxurious apartments shine under the bright sun. Many more are in the making. He is lost in their heights with a misty look in his eyes.

Inside the swanky super-mall, a stone’s throw away, it’s a completely different world. It’s not defined by hunger. It’s a replica of the dream after which the poor mass thronging the gates outside is running after. It smells of super elegance and style statement. You inhale a very condensed cocktail of luxury, perfume, spicy food, fine-soled footsteps, clothing, cosmetics, grocery and even Crossword bookstore. It has a heady aroma. A feeling of super-luxury seeps into your nerves. Utter want and hunger is just yards away outside. Many people feel hugely helped by just being a part of this luxurious dream for some time.

Grass is always greener on the other side. Thousands throng the muck to pick out morsels of survival. It’s a fight for more and more in the littlest of space. People leave the open countryside, getting bored with the smallness and feeling lost in the easy spaciousness, and run to get squeezed in the cage to feel a part of a bigger world.  

Learning a Worldly Grip

 

In two months time Sky, my nephew, will be two years old. What do we make of the world around us? It’s not the same world for everyone. To me the movie on the TV may have a certain meaning defined by relationships, love, jealousy, hate, anger and greed. To him the moving picture on the TV means the things he knows: water, car, ball and a few more things he has come to recognize. The entire drama being otherwise meaningless to him, his eyes light up the moment he sees any of these few items he is familiar with.

None of us can comprehend this existence in its entirety. There is always more to know, experience and feel. Just a part of the picture we see and draw out meanings on the basis of what we know, what we recognise and what we have experienced. The purpose of life then is to know and understand more of the picture. Know more, understand more, feel more. It’s no guarantee of happiness though. Some even say that the lesser you know, the happier you are. However, it cannot be helped. The quest stays. The pursuit remains.  

He has taken the first tentative steps to assert his claim to independence and free will. As usual, in an effort to explore the otherwise meaningless world to him, I find him wreaking havoc in the flower bed. And he does it expertly by doing the thing in totality by pulling out the entire branch.

‘Sky bad boy,’ I try to make him say, thinking it will somehow make him learn that flowers aren’t to be torn apart.

He looks at me, a finger pointing to his chest, ‘Sky good boy,’ making it plain that my ‘right’ is not essentially the same to him.

This happens to be the first instance of asserting his right to think of his own, instead of being guided by elders in each and everything from shitting to eating. A landmark indeed!

Another landmark follows. He gets congestion in chest so the doctor has prescribed nebulizer. Now he gets irritated like anything when these vapours engulf his face. He gets scared and howls. Now he learns to bargain.

‘Ma Ma bhaanp de do...and chu-chu de do!’ he says.

It means, ‘I will take steam without any fuss if you let me watch chu-chu TV.’ Needless to mention, he is fond of this animation program to the craziest limit.

There is a little set of picture books. Whenever he sees me reading a book, he grabs the set of picture books, dumps it on my lap and stomps his feet to be immediately taught.

Even when you reprimand him, he repeats your rant word by word as if practicing his tongue for the bigger verbal battles in future.

Then he ignores your presence completely because he is absorbed in watching cartoons on chu-chu TV. Things are now beginning to make a sense to him in the ways and manners of we grown-up humans.

He is scared of aeroplanes. When he is playing in the front yard, the moment an aeroplane’s droning sound reaches his ears, he runs inside saying, ‘Aeroplane, aeroplane!’ Sometimes it’s a false alarm, as he mistakes a vehicle’s sound as an aeroplane.

On a flight from Bhopal to Delhi, he continuously kept a few old passengers nearby on tenterhooks by repeatedly saying, ‘Papa this plane is going to fall!’

This afternoon an aeroplane’s silhouette flashed silvery bright against the blue azure of the sky. I held him in my arms, made him look at it with his little finger pointing towards the metallic bird.

‘Aeroplane good boy,’ I made him repeat many times as he stared at it on the border of curiosity and fear. Hope he finds the metallic bird a bit friendlier now.

He is scrawling every nook corner with whatever object he can accomplish the deed. The walls are his big canvas to draw his sketches and stamp his authority.

His first attempt at telling a lie to fetch the situation to his advantage:

Whenever he sees me reading a book, he runs to grab his picture books. So here he is trying to slip out of my hands. ‘ABC...ABC,’ he is saying. I’m not in a mood to teach him at this point of time. He makes full effort to slip out. He feels my unwillingness to let him go and grab his picture books.

‘Nani pas, nani pas,’ he is trying to convince me that he wants to go to his granny. So here I let him go, taking him on his word. He has duped me. He runs to fetch his glossy picture books and dumps these in my lap. Here are his efforts to get attuned to the larger clatter of life with more impressive notes of the bigger world.

The Curse of a Monitor Lizard

 

The IT engineer’s encounter with the monitor lizard in Singapore, it seemed, changed things quite dramatically. From a bright, flowery, fragrant spring, he seemed to have entered an arid zone of thorny bushes and dry, sighing sandstorms.

The Indian software engineer stayed in a basement room on the outskirts of the bustling cosmopolitan hub. He was sitting on the bed and watching Indian news with dreams of again joining his family back in his homeland. It was an exciting moment after five long, lonely years of earning money for the sake of family. With enough money in the account, the softer side of life beckons, the longing to stay with one’s dear and near ones, for example.

He had been trying for an internal shift to some branch in India. His immediate boss here in Singapore, another Indian, was a tough nut to crack. So the subordinate had to pull out all strength from his skills to be in his good books. He served him to the limits of chronic professionalism in office. Then there was another side, the personal one. He brought himself to the level of a domestic help to pamper the ego of his boss. They sat down for a drink or two now and then and during those times the junior would ensure that his senior felt nothing short of a king. It bore fruits. The process had been completed and he was to shift to their Mumbai branch. Home, sweet home!

Then it got derailed or rather a monitor lizard got on to the track and being a more than one meter behemoth it derailed the engineer’s wagon from the track. He was sitting with snacks and a light drink, watching Indian news and the dreams of homeland beautifully suffusing the room’s air. The nightmare started. There was a rustling sound under the simple plank folding bed. He bent down to find out what it was and two fluidy eyes stared at him and a tongue literally came close to lick his nose. A big monitor lizard it was. It was seeking a safe home like he was seeking a better part of the world.

Out of sheer panic he started jumping on the bed, letting out weirdest mutterings to sound like a cruel predator to scare away the big lizard. The reptile seemed to lose its wits and scampered out only to sneak into the farther recess of the room where his suitcases and travel bags were stacked in a corner. The things got toppled. Then it was running around the room. With shaking hands and trembling legs, he picked up the baseball bat and beat more of the ground in his avalanche of an attack. It was a critical melee. The reptile got a few side-slipping thwacks on its back. But its skin being thick, the fumbling strikes hardly left any mark on it. The attacker himself slipped and fell many times. By the time the intruder was driven out he was sweating profusely.

It was a strange ennui after the war. Suddenly he felt chronically bored with life. And to beat the boredom he took a heavy serving of whiskey, as much as he would consume in an entire fortnight. It had its lulling effect. He felt victorious. But the driven out and beaten monitor lizard seemed to have cast a dark spell on his little plans.

His boss arrived after some time. Some drinks followed. The boss felt relaxed. The subordinate felt he had wings to make him fly after having more than quadruple of what he usually took. Then his tongue also flew. With fumbling words he mentioned that he was a great resource and another company in Singapore was offering him a far better package but he wants to go home and join the home office.

‘So you have been applying for other jobs while I made myself a fool to cross all norms to get you a home shift!’ the boss gave a cold-murdering mutter.

A professionally incisive mail was forwarded by the seething boss to his own boss in London. The curse of the monitor lizard showed its effects. The shifting was stalled and a severe notice was served in his name.

Not having enough clue regarding how to wriggle out of the situation, he shared his woes with a content writer friend who worked in India. The writer, true to his species, gave a pretty literary touch to the scenario and built upon the simple facts provided by his engineer friend.

The explanation, mercy petition rather, was drafted by the content writer and the imperilled software engineer sent it in a mail to the English gentleman. The mail went like this:           

‘Sir, I’m sorry I have to write under these circumstances. It may not mean much professionally but I hope I am justified in giving myself this option to write to you. I have had such a nice experience in the organization for eight years. This time covers the best of moments in my personal and professional life. For an employee, the world stands between the company and the family. I am no exception. My job and my family are both equally important to me. Even if I have to go, I want to go with honours because the organization is really nice and I on my part have always tried my best to prove my worth as its employee.

Is it a sin to have a job offer in hand even when the employee is totally satisfied with the current company and doesn’t intend to shift? I take it simply as a proof of my professional skills. Why do we read ‘a job offer in hand’ just as a design to ditch the current company? Why can’t we take it as the proof of an employee’s worth? Moreover, is it a sin to share the very same casually with one’s manager? There is a huge difference between ‘letter’ and ‘spirit’. That I had a job offer was in ‘letter’ only. A simple fact. I just shared it matter of factly. In ‘spirit’ I had no intention to shift. Had I some design in my mind to shift, I know it better than to share it with my manager. All of us are smart enough for that. I planned for an internal shift to Mumbai with our dear company only. If there is any breach of protocol, it’s only this that I talked to my manager beyond the boundary and casually told him that I have an offer here in Singapore by some other company. If I was serious about shifting to a company in Singapore why would I request shift to the Mumbai office of our own organization? I would have easily resigned here in Singapore and joined the other company. The mere fact that I simply told him about this option in Singapore before leaving for Mumbai proves that I hardly harboured any thoughts to change company.

Sir, it’s not about this or that company. What pains me is that I have to go under such negative circumstances, all born of a terrible misunderstanding. On my part, I still maintain that I want to continue working with our company at Mumbai office. The majority of my eight years with the company have been outside my home country. I am thankful to the company for giving me this great opportunity to be a part of its world class set-up here in Singapore. I would be the last person to let go of such a nice office. But sir, all of us have our own circumstances that sometimes force us to somehow leave the best option and settle for something less. In my case, it’s my family for whom I had to take this hard decision to request an internal shift to Mumbai.

I have ageing parents at my hometown. My old father manages the affairs despite his health challenges. Now it is getting difficult for him to keep the things going. My wife has been very outstanding in raising our two daughters. There are challenges for her also, especially because she is from Philippines and adjusting to a different culture and raising daughters in a traditional Indian family is a totally different story. She and my ageing parents have done their best to manage things and take care of my daughters. All along these great years here in Singapore, one thing is plain that my family is scarifying a lot for me. I managed till it could be managed and requested for a shift only when the situation became unavoidable.

Sir, I know this is not a platform for expressing emotions and sentiments. But I think we devote ourselves to our professions only because we have the roots, we have our loved ones for whose sake we work abroad. Jobs are mere means to a happy self as part of one’s family unit. Jobs are utmost important and one has to prove one’s worth to the source of one’s salt, but still jobs are not the end in themselves. We know every dollar we make comes at the cost of lots of joyful moments that we could have spent with our near and dear ones. But then that’s life. Salary, perks, professional excellence and job satisfaction are very significant factors, but equally important are my old parents, my courageous wife and charming daughters. They have a vacuum in their life. The hole left by my absence. I just tried to fill that by requesting a Mumbai shift so that I could be with them. I want to fulfil the role of a father, husband and son apart from my duties as an employee of a world class organization. In pursuance of the same I planned this Mumbai shift. 

Can you imagine the joy my old parents must have felt after hearing the news of my arrival? Can you imagine the feelings of my wife that her life partner is now on the way to help her cope with the challenges put forward by a different culture? Can you imagine the joy of my little daughters that their Papa is going to be with them? It was a festive occasion for my family. They have been looking forward to it for many years. My father had a new spring in his steps as he planned a little feast for our near and dear ones. And then suddenly this unfortunate thing happens. I don’t know what to say. I am shattered. All I can say is that this world will be better without a broken employee or ex-employee.

I want to continue working with the company but I want to stand by my family also. I know they need me. But they need me as a gainfully employed worker of a nice company. Please ignore if you find it sentimental pleading. On my part, I have shared truth, in fact more than I should have shared perhaps. But truth comes with lots of emotions also. Facts are mechanical. I have spoken out my truth, and spoken with emotions because my truth is derived from my emotions only. I leave it in your hands. If you give me this opportunity it really helps me, my parents, wife and daughters. If you aren’t somehow in a position to help me, then no grudges sir. I will keep pursuing my path balancing my personal and professional life.   

Looking forward to positive outcomes after this negative interruption!’

And the positive outcomes followed. The gentleman from London sent back the following mail:

‘How marvellously you write! I love the way you express your emotions. I really like the way you share your feelings. Now it dawns upon me that most of the time we miss the real talent in people. You seem to be a writer basically trapped in the ill-fitting shoes of a software developer. That’s a sin on our part to keep you deprived of your real talent. With the feelings you write, I firmly believe that content writing would give you far more job satisfaction. Your restlessness will go away. You will have better job satisfaction. So we hereby offer you the position of content writer in the company. You will be helping us on our blogs, news posts and other website content. Hope it brings a smile to you!’

Well, it brought tears. Usually, well-seasoned and experienced content writers get just a fourth of the annual package that a below average software developer gets in the initial phase of his career.

He finished the remaining liqueur in his stock, picked up the baseball bat and went out to find out the monitor lizard in the public park nearby. To beat the curse, to be precise.   

The Big History of a Little Garbage Piece

 

There is an invisible world lost in the glitz and glamour of a city. One just sees through it. Eyes are instinctively prone to pass through it like a piece of see-through glass. It exists and doesn’t exist at the same time.

Garbage, cows, dogs, pigs and beggars man this world. These have been abandoned by the fast-paced cartwheels of the mainstream society. There are homeless beggars, filthier than a garbage dump, and lunatics lying cheaper than the worthless specks of dust around a shiny shoe.

My eyes stop at him. A small, frail man, his skin vying with his torn clothes in the degree of being dirty, sitting on his haunches against a wall. You would easily count him as one more lunatic, a poor mentally challenged invalid caught in a rapidly wasting body, biding time before the bugs of decay chuck out the remnants.

I take a few steps towards him. I have a smile on my face and try to walk as harmlessly as possible to avoid scaring him. He hasn’t possibly taken a bath since the last enforced rain bath during the rainy season. His blackened skin and unwashed black tattered clothes compete in claiming the mainstay of his non-existence.

I’m the least intimidating type; many people have assured me on this. In fact, I myself appear intimidated by the rampaging bullies running around to conquer the world all the time. But he may have his own reasons to get scared of all and sundry in the world.

He stands against the wall as I approach him. His instinctive gesture is folding hands as if asking forgiveness for being so dirty to the limits of appearing a pollutant even among the rubbish scattered around. He just cannot expect someone from the other world to approach him with harmless intentions. He is scared as if I’m coming to hit him. As I come near, he takes steps to escape from the scene, looking behind to ensure that I don’t hit him from behind.

‘Please, please don’t run. I just want to talk to you,’ I add extra sugar in the softest tone I can manage.

He stops at a safe distance. He is holding his hands in that posture of submission. His beard has grown wild like a pristine forest with some human intervention like they do in clearing woods in patches here and there. A few locks have been cut from the side leaving others hanging like the aerial roots of a banyan tree. It looks a terribly bad amateur effort at trimming beard.

‘I just want to know your name,’ I almost entreat.

‘Manish,’ he speaks with a clarity that I hardly expect him to possess.

‘Full name please,’ I probe a bit further.

‘Kalra, Manish Kalra,’ he says.

So it proves that he isn’t totally lost to the world. He knows his identity. His brain has the pathways leading to his awareness of his worldly self.

‘Where are you from,’ I am emboldened now and take recourse to my normal tone after a huge effort at sugar-coating each word.

‘Old DC road. Our house there. We three brothers. They pushed me out. Took my share,’ he divulges the story.

A lot many whom we assume to possess no history at all have in fact a big one.

The mentioned place is just nearby across the congested shopping quarters. He points to his legs.

‘Truck accident,’ he says.

I now realise the poor destitute’s fate is far more bitter than it appears on the surface.

‘I am not a beggar,’ he says. ‘Sometimes when my brother sees me in the crowd he gives me 50 rupees and I eat.’

‘Parents died, brothers not like me,’ he tells.

So he remembers his story. I offer him 20 rupees as if to pay him for this interview. He politely waves his hand to say a firm no.

‘It’s for food,’ I try to make him feel not like a beggar.

Again he says a firmer no. From what I can make out, he may be eating leftovers from the dumps outside the eating points instead of outright begging.

There are stories lost within the bigger stories.

I’m not left with anything to say. His little story is both a question and an answer in itself. With a defeated look I retrace my steps. As I move away and look back, I find him reclaiming his place.

A Pair of Mismatching Slippers

 

It’s the second week of April and the heat is building up. A brief spell of rain in the morning allows a bit of reprieve from the oppressive heat during the travel. I reach Haridwar in the afternoon. The two-kilometre stretch of road from the railway and the bus stand, facing each other across the road, to Har ki Pauri is a busy thoroughfare. It’s a religiously busy world heavily laden with towering facades of dharamshalas, hotels, lodges, restaurants, pavement food stalls and shops full of religious souvenirs.

I am flatly denied shelter for the night. As per rule, the dharamshalas give rooms to families only. Even hotels and lodges have a big problem in giving rooms to solo travellers. Try to convince them and they will hide under the order of the local administration in this regard. There have been few suicides, of course. Solo travellers are assumed to be depressed souls looking for moksha here in this part. The final departure from holy places is believed to take one straightaway to heaven or even liberation. So the suspicion about the solo travellers isn’t completely groundless. People fear that these lost souls are tottering on the brink of committing suicide. A lot many people presume that Indians hardly venture out alone and be happy at the same time. It is firmly believed that the depressed souls set out to call it quits, especially at holy places like these where leaving one’s body near the holy river ensures a direct landing in heaven.

One lodge owner asks me to get him to talk to my family members to verify that their ward isn’t depressed and is in fact happy in going out alone. I try calling my brother, an IT professional, but he is caught in the rigmarole of software designing. The call having gone unanswered, the lodge owner looks more suspiciously at me. Most probably he thinks that I am just pretending to make a call. I am denied the accommodation and move on, only to face the same dilemma in the reception lobbies of many lodges in the locality. I try my best to appear the happiest soul on earth in order to allay their fears about harbouring a depressed soul who may culminate his journey in their room, thus unleashing a barrage of police inquiries at their place, resulting in loss of business in addition to getting bad name for the property, or maybe even a ghost stalking their place.

Practice makes a man perfect and after one hour of continuous smile and glint in the eyes, accompanied with energetic movement of limbs, I am able to win the trust of the owner of a less than modest accommodation. It is at the far end of a narrow and not-so-clean street, beyond the footfall of most of the visitors. It’s a depressive set up, the owner himself looking ill at ease with life. So here I’m able to impose my cheerfulness upon him. I beam with enthusiasm and light their gloomy, musty set-up with my exaggerated verve and energy.

I’m safe here because even a suicide seeker will look out for a better point than this suffering, sulking place. There is a risk that even a happy person may get depressed here. It’s evident they don’t get many guests so someone who has been turned out from at least fifteen places is welcome here finally.

After hitting the jackpot, I freshen up in the staid, sulking tiny bathroom and set out with a spring in my gait as the evening builds up.  Hundreds of pilgrims are walking to Har ki Pauri for the famed ritual of evening Ganga Arti.

On any normal day you can expect a big fair kind of festivity there. The steps along the shores are crowded with pilgrims. Bells chime, mantras vibrate, incense smoke take monopoly of the air, people bathe, huge butter lamps with dozens of burning wicks sway like fiery torches, devotees float leaf bowls containing flowers and oil lamps as an offering to the holy river. Armed commandos are looking every inch here and there. Faith is no longer free.

When so many people congregate at a place and surrender, this slaying of ego confirms the presence of some higher meaning to life than what we can perceive with our ordinary senses.

Finishing the famed Arti, people slowly disperse and move along the crowded bazaar. The restaurants are ready for dinner. And people surrender to the spicy aroma with even more fervour than they had shown during the prayers. Bhojan has a big role in sustaining bhajan.

The next morning has dull sunshine. I am relieved to see the morose owner of the place still alive and try to cheer him up. ‘All of us have to die one day,’ is all he can manage in response to all my efforts at being joyful. I leave for the bathing ghats with serious doubts whether I will find him alive or not after returning.

Bathing in the cool torrents at Har Ki Pauri is piously gratifying. The first thing that strikes you is that the people shed their insecurities, inhibitions and suspicions. Nudity is no longer a scandalous flashpoint. All are children in Mother Ganga’s lap. Everyone is seeking purification from their sins, so egos are rapidly melting, at least for the time being. All are feeling adventurous like playful children. Young, old, children, boys, girls, men and women shed their reserved routine, abandon their fears about appearances, body shapes and status and wallow in the holy waters like funny, naughty children. Nobody stands out. Everyone is yelling, speaking and shouting and still you don’t have a particular protagonist. This merging with something bigger gives a sense of ease and comfort, a kind of lightness that stands in glaring contrast to the tensioned heaviness that we carry usually while fighting our lone battles on the path of survival. Around you many loudspeakers blare with chanting of mantras. Many pandits are loitering around those sitting on the steps overlooking the bathing ghat. They offer their prayer services.

By degrees, little, little private spaces for which we fight so rabidly get pushed away from the centre stage of our egos. You are in public. The ownership of bodies and worldly things is gently shoved away. Your private space gets a dose of sunlight. The doors and windows are opened. You feel life and soothing sunshine.

After a long, adventurous and cascading journey through the Himalayas, testing its zeal to the limits, the Ganges surrenders to pause at the foothills, creating swirly pools for rejuvenating rest and poise for the humbled humanity at her feet. The holy waters symbolise the mother river’s ‘giving and forgiving nature’. The holy stream endlessly flows for the cause of humanity.

After youthful wilderness, it’s the beginning of taking responsibilities, moving slowly, meandering more purposefully. Flowing down south, flanked by tiny ridges on the east and west, it reaches a milestone, of coming of age, of becoming a mother from a careless, flirtatious girl.

The eastern ridges are more wooded. The western ones are under the pressure of human build-up.

Haridwar is majorly sprawled north to west along the river’s western bank. To the north, before the town begins, a sluice dam has been erected to tame mother Ganges, to help it bless the countless who throng its bathing ghats. That is the point from which the mighty river is saddled with the responsibilities of being an uncomplaining mother, the giver, at the cost of its own existence.

The sluices divert almost half of the waters westwards, leaving the debilitated main stream meandering over the greyish floodplain to the east. From the sluices, half of the water circuits back to join the original stream to the east, while the rest moves along a well-made broad canal along the city to its west. Of this canal, a further distributary runs along the extreme west bank, circuiting along bathing steps and little shrine temples, forming the most auspicious Har Ki Pauri.

The city lies rectangular, north to south along the well maintained canal, flanked on the west by low, sadly denuded ridges, on the highest of which stands Mansa Devi temple. Cable cars go to the temple. More arduous is the flight of stairs all the way to the top of the hill. Halfway to the steps, a tar road loops around to take your tiring steps to the destination in case you can no longer keep climbing the steps.

Cleansed by holy dips, as the sun is building up the arena for a bright noon, I am trekking to the holy temple of Ma Mansa Devi. An uneventful walk and then I see him. The mass of his right leg may come more than the whole of the rest of his body. The deformity seems a miracle of God, rather than a curse. He has a small face and frail torso. But his elephant leg can compete with a medium-sized tree’s trunk in girth. It’s bent at the knee and the further part twisted to protrude out a huge foot having massive toes. It’s beyond the measurement of humanly acceptable pain. God has His own mysterious ways of showing his omnipotence. Nothing seems impossible for Him.

A piece of cloth is spread out in front of the boy. His mountain of helplessness is bigger than the hill above. You cannot look into his eyes. You feel ashamed of all your cribbing born of routine problems. Your pride gets a jolt. While putting a coin on the cloth, you obviously bow down before him. There he stands, sits or crouches down like a God. Only God can punish His own self to take a form like this. He does it to pass on some messages possibly. An old man bows down with folded hands in front of the boy.

I walk to the sacred temple and pray for the better spirits of the lodge owner. Faith can move mountains. I walk into the small, musty, smelly lobby in the afternoon. He sees me coming and smiles. ‘Mother has listened to my prayers,’ I think.

‘You have two different slippers on your feet!’ he points. Both of us laugh. Throughout the day I have been walking around in a pair of green and red slippers. It’s a routine thing to go walking with mismatching slippers, or even no footwear at all, from the bathing ghats where hundreds of pairs are spread out and things get mixed up.

Well, even mother’s blessings need worldly cause to come into effect. Mismatching slippers, for example.   

A Nobody's Notebook

 It’s the notebook of a small-time writer. No big efforts at super-heroism, no ironies of heart-breaks, no bombastic romance, no gooseflesh rippling drama, no thunder-stricken rigmarole of saving the planet from the aliens. It’s not about chafing thoughts, it’s all about the frolicking gaiety of common emotions in the life of common people.Beyond the grinding millstone of bigger caprices, it’s about sublimated emotions. It creeps genteelly like a flowery vine. It’s just a fragile moment capturing the kernel of eternal truth in it like you see in a painting of beautiful hills, smatterings of snow on the slopes, chatty streams, green pastures and a sense of virginal peace to tow all these along. There are no chivalric, lionized doctrinaires delving into deep mysteries of human existence. It’s a gently flowing painting on a self-absorbed canvas. The human characters simply add to the soft shades of the softly evolving painting. In this small world, I believe everyone is taking chiming steps to be a nice human being. Come, let’s all walk together for a greater collective good.

Fate’s Sweet Rigmarole

 It was a remote part of the world, smaller than the small, and still smaller. Geographical distance lost its meaning, as in this small world, yards stretched to meters and meters to kilometres. A dilution of specifics—a smallness. Alongside, the big got sucked into smallness as well; kilometres coagulated into little points of human destiny. The vision in crow-flight spanned one hundred kilometres from the nearest influential big city, dusty zigzagging tracks made it two hundred kilometres, and the distance acquired almost unfathomable proportions in the mind.

The smallest store, in the rudimentary form of the shops of today, was twenty kilometres away, at a bigger village, the lazily bustling Bhiwani of today. In hundred years, this small hamlet itself would become bigger than the district headquarters of those days. Well, that’s change. Small worlds become bigger ones over a period of time.  

The wedding party had travelled for a day and half, starting yesterday morning and reaching here in the afternoon, pulled by carts on dusty, rutted paths, skirting the semi-arid sandy loams, acacia trees and tufts of dry bunchgrass. At night the jackals howled and the spotted owlets hooted and ominously shrieked. The groom’s marriage party had stopped in the wee hours to give rest and fodder to the oxen. They started again, taking creaking slow steps to culminate a little girl’s childhood journey, the childhood that suddenly meets womanhood.

The twentieth century was just a decade old, so was Nannu, fondly called so because she was brought up at her nanaji’s place. That’s how people got their names during those days. As the cartloads of peasants, clad in cotton homespuns, dhoti, kurta and headgears, moved towards the ceremony that would make her Nannu Devi, with her childhood suddenly gone, they were more interested in country-made liqueur, laddoos, jalebis, puris, saag and lots of wedding fun. To these country-folks, to whom even plain sugar was a rare delicacy, these items defined what the brief glimpses of heaven can mean.

So Nannu became Nannu Devi and would continue to grow. The woman in her will continue to grow when her marriage would be consummated three years later, when she would become the mother of a girl child an year later, when she would become a widow at 15, would be remarried to her husband’s elder brother, would give birth to three more daughters before hitting the jackpot, a boy, and thus meeting the fulfilment of her purpose on earth, at the age of 23. A lifetime of experience, while all this time she was merely changing from a child to girl and then a young woman.

Her husband had a big acreage in his share, coming to roughly 200 acres of almost semi-arid land, most of it full of thorny thickets and bunchgrass. Agriculture was defined by the weather elements. There were no irrigation channels, and with just two bulls how much of land you will manage to till. So in effect it was just a dozen acres of arable land, on which the joint family, their total acreage going to 600 acres, toiled to get survival crumbs for them and their cattle.

During those days, simple diarrhoea was worse than cancer of today. Her husband passed away, his mortality claimed by the common disease of present times. The titular head of the land, in patriarchy, if she happened to be a widow with a daughter, was as good as non-existing. The younger brother-in-law was a land hawk. He wanted to add more and more land to his share just like he was eager to have more children.

He started bullying her into marriage and that too with the condition that his sons from the other wife will have equal portion from the chunk of land from her share as well apart from their already existing share. During those days, a widow was usually married to her husband’s younger brother even if he was married, a sort of convenient polygamy. But a tall and gaunt Nannu Devi, who was just Nannu till five years back, had grown in guts beyond his guesswork.

‘I have to retain all of my land for my own son that I will surely bear one day,’ was all Nannu Devi could think of. At that young age she needed a dream, a goal. She decided to go for it. Here daughters were excluded from the bargain, as neither law nor convention left them with any option in that regard. The success and meaning of her life was just about having a male heir one day and hand over all the land to him.

During those days murders for land were commoner than marriages. Her younger brother-in-law tried his best set of intimidatory tactics. As she was busy in her fields, and uneasy desultoriness sighed over many miles around, he beat her mercilessly. She fought back, gave him a bloodied tooth at the cost of bruises on her entire body. He tried to scare her by putting the deadly spikes of the hayrack on her throat. She but spat on his face, thundering that she would get married to a bhangi, the so called utmost disgrace in her community, rather than be his wife.

Her diseased husband’s elder brother was a better human being and could feel the fire in her to stick to her land. He had his own brood of sons. ‘I will allow your sons to have possession of all of your land,’ he promised. Holding onto her dreams to see her own would-be sons tilling all the land she had inherited, Nannu Devi became the second wife of her elder brother-in-law.

Almost 200 acres of land and no male heir! That was the most tragic thing to imagine as per the social norms of those days in the peasant society. It just didn’t make any sense during those days. Her eldest born from her first marriage was as good as not there in the first place because it was a girl. The mission now was to have a son. That would complete the journey of her life. Nothing will make it a successful life till then.

One after the other she gave birth to three daughters, making it four from both marriages. But all this was meaningless. The land waited for the male heir. A house was almost without light in the absence of a son. It was all darkness. The daughters, though they worked to the capacity of their little bones, were just there as an appendage to be cast off very soon. The casting off time was just a decade during those times.

And finally her miles-long prayers and efforts bore fruit and a boy was born. Not that it was smooth with the villain uncle all through these years. She had learnt how to defend herself. She wielded a well-oiled stick with more ferocity than any man around. The iron prongs of her hay-mover were sharp enough to deter any adventure on her rival’s part. So more than anything else that stalled her murder by her younger brother-in-law, it was the plain fear of getting himself murdered by her.

She could always smell that smouldering fire of hunger for land coming from her newborn son’s younger uncle. Jorawar Singh’s life was at risk, every day, every night. As she worked in her fields, the son tied to her back, her lethal hay-fork always lying at a hand’s distance, she had four eyes dedicated to the task of scanning all the sixteen directions.    

A child needs space as it grows up. Agile as a willow switch and outgoing like a free cloud, Nannu Devi soon realised he was no longer the little child she could tie at her back and continue working. Tiny Jorawar Singh, named after an adjective something to do with valour and bravery, was trying to claim his territory to wallow in childhood revelry. Little did he realise that his life was always at risk. He carried the ownership of a big chunk of land, which, even though was nothing more than a vast stretch of fallow land, was a literal crown of gold in the countryside where people hadn’t anything but the bare minimum. The land, after all, held the possibilities for the future. The poor people either live in the past or the future. The land means future.

His eldest real sister, Falguni Devi was married at the age of twelve. So to keep him away from the vultures eying his land, six-year-old Jorawar Singh was sent to the village of his sister’s in-laws, a place near Delhi, where the modern day Palam airport stands. During those days it was a forest, interspersed with the outcrops of the ridge, the tail end of the relict Aravalis.

His sister, though just six or seven year elder to him was almost a mother to her little brother. In addition, she was a wife as well. Like the brides of those days she too would continue to grow, carrying multiple responsibilities on her frail shoulders, as she changed to a woman from a girl, became a real biological mother on the way, apart from being a mother figure to her younger brother.

Even at such a long distance from his native village, they just couldn’t let him out freely like other children because there had been scary incidents like some stranger staring at the boy, or the sight of some unknown figure, or some unfamiliar face seen in the neighbourhood. So even here he was kept under the strictest guard. He was a little prince and he had a tiny kingdom to inherit. His life was precious to the women around him.

There at his native hamlet, Nannu Devi’s defiance and gutsy march continued. She came to earn a reputation where even the basest males would think twice before taking a panga with her. She knew that the uncultivated fallow land means ownership in letter and name only. She wanted it in spirit. Day in and day out she worked in the semi-arid lifeless soil, trying to put the vestiges of agriculture, even if for one season, some sign that the land had been ploughed, to show to the world that there are owners and they are ready to tame the wild land. It was a sort of message boldly declaring: ‘Private property, stay away!’

Quite surprisingly, even as a tiny child, Jorawar Sing retained the purity of his mature, big name. His name was never twisted to some affable, convenient, mollycoddling pet name. Though very big and serious for the name of a small child, it remained so. But the boy did full justice to his name, grew strong, reddish and square shouldered. As an adolescent he appeared to do full justice to the mighty name he carried.

His sister, with whom he stayed, very soon forgot when she was a child herself. Within a decade and half even the mother in her started to grow old. During those days, girls stared getting old the moment they stopped to grow. She had four children. Her husband, a mighty, majestic, reddish, fine-featured giant standing couple of inches above six feet, having a bright future serving as Naib Tehsildar, suddenly collapsed like a mighty fort caving in suddenly. Even here there were eyes trying to grab the land of the young widow with four children. So again Nannu Devi arrived at the scene with her well-oiled stick and sharp hay-fork, working with her daughter, stamping their ownership like a lion marks its territory with its urine in the woods. Even at a distance of two hundred kilometres, stretched over dusty rutted cart-tracks, she worked as an effective deterrent.

In any case, the daughter-mother widowed duo held their ramparts. They just stayed there and hid their sons more preciously than the gold in their possession. The land had meaning as long as there was a son. Without a son the land became meaningless. Also the life of a woman was meaningless without a son. A woman could survive without her husband, but life without a son was impossible, the brutal most punishment. 

Jorawar Singh grew lanky and strong. Broad-shouldered, he had keen starry eyes which appeared to look beyond the evident meaning on the surface. His eyebrows were bushy and his lips were finely cut. The upper lip reservedly shut over the lower one. His squarish jaw evinced his masculinity to a decent degree. On top of that he stood well over six feet.             

Not so much for the safety of British India, as for his own protection from his hawkish uncle, Nannu Devi was relieved to a huge degree when the long-limbed lad joined army. Now he became a part of mighty sarkar. He will be having his own weapon. All this vouchsafed his safety. Jorawar Singh stood out as a dashing recruit.

No sooner he completed his training than he was married. Nannu Devi had diligently secured the legacy for one generation. Now it was her duty to prepare the bed for the next generation. Even if a woman lived for thousand years, during those days, the dream of seeing one more son in the next generation would still continue.

A family that hadn’t a son almost ceased to exist. Daughters existed in proxy as somebody’s wife from the day of their birth.

As Nannu Devi blearily peered into the son-full of a future, a culmination of her life-long struggle to get a foothold in the chronically patriarchal society, the Second World War was sucking people’s lives into its muddy, bloody deluge. The star of her eyes had hardly any time to sow the seeds of Nannu Devi’s dream. He was sent to the eastern front where war intrigues were opening up in South East Asia between belligerent, resurgent Japanese and recalcitrant allied forces.

News travelled very slowly during those days. As Jorawar Singh’s fate was lost in the gloomy, smoked South East Asia, Nannu Devi, oblivious to the risks to her son’s life, not knowing to what extent the wars put up threats to millions, her definition of danger being limited to life threat to her son from his land-hungry uncle, put her ears to the womb of her daughter-in-law, a mere girl of fourteen, to get some hope, to get some initial hints of germination.

As the war sucked her son into its bloody guts, she lay sulking that the first and the only cohabitation of the young couple had been fruitless. She wasn’t bothered about larger issues any more. To beat her disappointment, she worked more tirelessly in the fields to bring more and more chunks of lands under cultivation from the vast tracts of the semi-arid barren land of which her soldier son was the titular head, thus adding to the land under their real possession.

She never lost hope about his return to sire many sons who in turn will have their sons to rule over the land they would inherit some day in future.    

It was the balmy air of winters in South East Asia, but it couldn’t have been worse for those who happened to be a part of the war. The 19-year-old Jorawar Singh was stuck up as part of the struggling British Army in Burma. The British forces were already weak after the Battle of Bilin River. Theirs was the 17th Division, a new formation yet to taste the real blood. Well, it tasted a lot between 14 to 18 February, 1942. Two days of jungle combat at close quarters had left many dead, still more injured and the rest in still more dead-cast and broken spirits. The Japanese soldiers were crazy in their excitement for the war. The Indian soldiers fighting for their British rulers could never make out how can someone fight so crazily and willingly to die. The Japanese soldiers owed their souls to the King. The Indian soldiers owed just their professional duty to the Britishers in lieu of the salaries they received. Well, it doesn’t mean the latter didn’t give their best in the battles. They did, but it still fell short of the crazy zeal to die for the Emperor of the land of the rising sun.    

Deep into the grey of his old decades, Jorawar Singh would always remember the Battle of Sittang Bridge (February 19-23, 1942) as vividly as one remembers just a day old happenings. They were pounded really hard. The Japanese pushed for a decisive victory. The British Indian Army (BIA) suffered heavy losses.

Brigadier JG Smyth commanded the BIA at Sittang. The few hundred yards long Sittang iron railway bridge was near south Burma’s coastline. The 17th Indian Infantry Division was in disarray and retreat. On the night of 19 February, they disengaged and retreated under the cover of night to fall back to Sittang bank about 50 kilometres westwards. The Japanese regiment advanced to cut the retreat off and outflank them. On 21 February, Japanese aircrafts bombed the retreating units. The British Indian soldiers were forced to abandon their vehicles and equipment.

Jorawar Singh, bearing many scars and bruises of war, along with many injured soldiers escaped into Bogyagi Rubber Estate. Their ammunition was spent. The rifles were no more than sticks to fight with. And it was not a war of sticks anymore.

Meanwhile, a dispirited detachment from disarrayed units fought to secure the bridge. A major part of the BIA Division was cut off to the east and still in retreat. There were Japanese paratroop landings but a unit of Gurkhas bravely combated to secure the bridge-ends so that the remaining BIA division could cross the river.

Jungle fighting at close quarters ensued throughout the day. The BIA still held the bridge till the evening of 22 February. But as darkness progressed the futility of defending the bridge loomed large. More than half of the British Division was still stranded on the eastern side. But the bridge had to be destroyed to stall the Japanese march to Rangoon. The setting sun saw an explosion as Smyth’s sappers blew the bridge.

The Japanese would have easily wiped out those stranded on the eastern side, but they were more interested in taking Rangoon. So they stopped short of mopping out the 17th Division. The Japanese disengaged to cross the river at some point further north.

The survivors of the 17th Division crawled out of the forest intending to swim to safety and slip away to the north on the opposite bank. Only a handful of their rifles, Bren guns, Tommy guns, anti-aircraft Lewis guns and FWW vintage 18-pounders remained in their possession. Their uniforms and boots were torn and so were the sagging spirits.

The river was in spate and appeared beyond the energy left in the defeated soldiers. But even a river in spate is relatively calmer in the early morning around four or so. There is peace and harmony at that time when the day is conceived in a marvellous equanimity of elements in nature. Somehow Jorawar Singh knew this fact. He suggested this to his fellow soldiers. They had a bunch of papers to salvage to the other end. Being relatively gutsy and in better health, the onus fell on Jorawar Singh.

The enterprising soldier got an earthen pitcher, put the important papers in it, secured the opening with a canvas piece, tied the pitcher to his chest and jumped into the river at a time when he supposed it to be relatively calmer. Using the buoyancy of the pitcher he swam to reach the opposite bank. Putting the papers in safety, he made a few rounds both ways, still keeping the pitcher tied to his chest, and drew a double rope line across the river to enable the rest of his colleagues to cross over.     

From there they crawled forward to merge with the BIA units to the north. Somehow the 17th Division with its paltry remnants was replenished and they continued in skirmishes till July 1944 when they were taken out of the frontline before the Battle of Imphal.

Jorawar Singh was away from home for almost three years, any news about him as hazy as you see the faintest vestiges of horizon on a burning hot day. Thinking him to be dead but assuring each other of his being alive through solacing words, the womenfolk would now and then, when the pain inside burst the dam, would start with sighing whimpers before letting loose a full-scaled spell of howls, making it virtually a mourning for the missing soldier. But then they would realise it, would wipe away Nannu Devi’s tears, put up smiles through their wet eyes to assure her that her son will definitely return.

Destiny sometimes plays a too dramatic a cameo. It was one such spell of howls, the womenfolk totally surrendered to the agony of losing a young son of the clan, who left without leaving behind a male heir, thus rendering the existence of land and women all meaningless, that a battle-broken, haggard Jorawar Sing materialised at his native village. The mourners could hardly believe. More than anything they tried their best to hide their embarrassment.  

But the war for Jorawar Singh was far from over. Nannu Devi had to have her grandson. At any cost. ‘These goddamned angrezs go to hell!’ she declared.

During those days, the best chance for a soldier to become a father was during once-in-a-year vacations, when he returned home, when his half-widow became a full bride. Each had to give their best to be a father and a mother.

As India burst out in joy over independence, Nannu Devi was sulking. Her soldier son’s annual homecomings hadn’t availed any fruit. She even prayed for a girl to set the ball rolling at least. To make it worse, he found himself posted in the volatile parts of Kashmir as the Pakistanis attacked in 1948. ‘As if they can never fight a war without my son!’ Nannu Devi muttered angrily.

That year his annual leave was cancelled. Being robbed of another season of a child’s prospects, Nannu Devi cursed the new masters in India. ‘With the angrezs gone, now they will fight all the time!’ she just felt flabbergasted. In desperation both the mother and the daughter-in-law worked tirelessly in the fields. They put more and more of their fallow land under cultivation. Not that they could maintain a big acreage under regular cultivation. They had hardly any means for that. But as long as you sow some furrows in the fallow patch, even four or five years after the last cultivation you had this satisfaction that the land was once tilled and will be done in future as well.

Nannu Devi was so happy that the fifties chugged ahead without any war and her son could come annually to get a son. And regularly he came, once a year, for a vacation of around two months, to try his luck across two or three cycles of procreation. He but went luckless.

During those days, childless first wives happily gave consent to their husband’s remarriage, accepting their status as that of a first wife, a kind of titular head, and pampering the second wife, keeping her happy so that the new wife won’t throw her out after bearing children. So in the warless decade, Jorawar Singh was happily remarried and straightway started his innings as a father. Even a girl child was welcomed because she carried the prospects of a son down the line. 

Some soldiers are lucky as well as unlucky to be there in multiple wars. Subedar Jorawar Singh, father of a girl, and another child growing in his wife’s womb, was there in the western sector along Aksai Chin during the war of 1962 with China. It was a humiliating defeat. It highlighted the lack of political foresight apart from the shortcomings of military leaders. Carrying a splinter injury in his leg, he was taken as a prisoner of war by the Chinese. Missing for many months he limped home at a sultry dusk. Couple of days after his arrival, his second daughter was born. Nannu Devi didn’t mind it this time. At least her son had returned from the war. And there was another time.

It won’t be before 1967, with a third girl child on the way, and the war with Pakistan coming in 1965, where Jorawar Singh as the lucky soldier again went and survived with his luck, that fifty years of Nannu Devi’s struggle bore a fruit finally.

A son was born. All the cruelties of life were forgotten and forgiven. Nannu Devi could hardly believe that she could be so lucky. Now she could send her son to wars with less fear. The light had been transferred. The land had its master. To rub red chilli down the old arse of her foe, she made grand celebrations.

As they said during those days, ‘One son is like the sole eye of a one-eyed man. It gone, the light goes out.’

So when Captain Jorawar Singh missed his annual leave due to the war of 1971 in Bangladesh, another baby was growing up in his wife’s womb. As the war thundered in the east, Nannu Devi prayed with the fervid power of her soul for another grandson. ‘After this I will never ever ask you for anything more in life,’ she promised to God.

Disapprovingly it will be a girl.

And there at a railway check-post, Jorawar Singh would get sentimental as a trainload of war prisoners halted at the check-post under his command. The Pakistani war prisoners were being hauled inland to be kept in detention, before being set free within two years as per the terms of Shimla Agreement.

Jorawar Singh entered the crammed, stinking compartment. The Pakistani soldiers gave wounded looks, barely able to hide the rage born of defeat and surrender. Like helpless, injured little animals they looked straight in the eye. But there in the corner there was a handsome figure, the majestic trappings of his high-rank uniform dusted and dishevelled. He was sitting resignedly with his head turned sideways. It struck Jorawar Singh that he was avoiding his look.

The Indian Captain reached the Pakistani officer. He was a Brigadier he could make out from his epaulettes. The war prisoner turned his head. Their eyes met. And the bloody history and separation of three decades melted. Brigadier Khan had fought with Jorawar Sing as a sepoy of the British Indian Army in Burma. They had fought as Indians. After the partition he had gone to Pakistan to rise high in the ranks as a soldier. Now the differences critically mattered. Both recognised each other immediately. There are certain personalities that somehow stand out and can be spotted even across decades. Both of them were like that.

Forgetting the war between India and Pakistan, and animosity between a Hindu and a Muslim, the Indian Captain asked what he could do for him. The Pakistani officer, both of them sharing traces of moisture in their cold, battle-hardened eyes, mumbled with a smile, ‘You are doing your duty. I don’t require any special facility. Just allow me to stay with my soldiers.’ Jorawar Singh nodded, stopped himself from saluting, waved his hand at the enemy official before jumping out of the compartment.

Later, Nannu Devi died not so happily over missing a second grandson. The land was too big for just one son, she calculated.        

After retirement, Captain Sahab shifted to Bhiwani, the district centre, which was struggling to beat the bucolic bearings of a big village to have some urban swag.    

Nothing is a bigger teacher in life than the battle between life and death, when you hold your life in your fist, out of which the sand-grains slip out. The soldiers, who have seen death from the closest quarters, either go impassive, a sort of weird ennui, later in life, or become so calculating as to take each step, every breath with so much caution like it’s a matter of utmost urgency to ward off grave risks all along.

Captain Jorawar Singh, lucky to see the normal light of a familiar sun, after spending decades in the army, lucky to have escaped by the blessing hand of providence, and unlucky to be a soldier during the most turbulent phase in the Indian military history, took slow, measured steps for the life beyond the barracks. But it was very difficult to shake off the shackles of war from the after-war life. It was always war in some form or the other, soft war though, fought across numerous fronts in mundane life. It was about winning over tiny obstacles with calm, composed deliberation. Of course the people whose skins got bruised because of his extra caution would take harmless revenge by calling him a ‘miser’.

With no fault of his, he had become extra cautious on account of his realisation that the things which come naturally to us carry mammoth value on a different plane.

Emerging from the turbulent dust of military days, wearing the boots of domestic life, he maintained the tempo, countering each step with measured calm, making every movement with perfect discipline.

Counting his pennies, and bringing more and more of the fallow land under cultivation, he appeared an old titular head busy in kingdom making. Based at the quaint town of Bhiwani, he pushed his daughters and the son towards the best manageable education in the circumstances.

The girls, as was the custom, were married early, but not before they had enrolled for graduation courses.

Some stories simply straighten out of confusion like a jumbled mass of rope, losing the tangled knots, leaving the rope unspooling with effortless ease.

All his daughters would go into happy domestic life, three of them in fact married to military officers, of whom two would retire as colonels and one still higher as a brigadier.

The older he became, the tighter he held the reins of the cart of his affairs, bearing the practicalities of carrying domestic load with silvery, age-old charisma. The progress was measureable through the increasing acreage of the cultivable land from the fallow land he inherited.

Dozens of acres of his land was acquired by the government to develop a thermal power plant at his native village. Though heartbroken over the fact, like a typical Haryanvi landowner who esteems landholding dearer than life, he invested the compensation money in purchasing plots of land in the neighbouring villages.

‘Land’s money must be invested in land only. Otherwise it’s as good as total waste,’ was his principle.

His son Suresh was selected as a commissioned officer in the army. They but decided to keep him away from the risks carried by a military life.

Taking one fistful at a time, using the each and every hour of the peaceful post-retirement time, Jorawar Sing built up a little fortune. It was completely unwise to leave it unattended by the heir apparent. We have our little kingdoms, more in mind than actually in the real world around, to hand over to the next generation. Further, he had given more than their share for the cause of Mother India. He must have calculated his contribution to be enough for the next two generations.

The old soldier managed to pull his life’s cart well into his nineties, till the age of 93 to be precise. His first wife completed her journey a few years back. She lived a life of dignity and respect because the second wife treated her like her elder sister. The second wife, considerably younger to him, is in her seventies now.

It’s the happiest of a family. Touch wood. Happy to the extent that the moment you inhale the air in the unpretentiously elegant house imbued in its quaint majesty, you feel it in your heart. They are natural in their inclination to share their happiness with others. The inherent grace in the old family matriarch goes polishing with age. Smile comes most naturally to her. It’s her trademark expression.

Apart from the rent from the agricultural land, Suresh operates a petrol pump. He has spread his wings to fly in the bonhomie of peaceful times and stability. He travels with as much enthusiasm as he earns money. With his group of happy, well-off friends he sets off for forays into the Himalayas in their SUVs. Of late he surrendered to the Scandinavian charm, which surpassed the Canadian adventure when he went backpacking across the vast country with his wife. There are many other mileposts in his footloose journey driven by independent winds. Of course culturally he liked Rome the best. His eyes stare at the ceiling as he recalls the Vatican, the Coliseum and the paintings.

He stays in the same house his father bought four decades back. At the age of 50 he is as happy as it is possible to hold by his portly but agile physique. A nice flow of money has seen some regal alterations to the traditionally built simple house. It carries a touch of the aura of heritage hotels where the artistic streak gets pleasantly dissolved among the modern conveniences. A world in which past is safely cradled in the present.

Jorawar Singh’s big framed portrait in military decorations looks with probing, disciplining eyes from the living room’s walls. Well, he deserves to keep a watch.

Suresh’s son and daughter have studied at Lawrence School, Sanawar, the famous institution where royalty was groomed for the governing responsibilities.

The well-groomed and polished mannered daughter, carrying all the possible etiquettes with a natural ease, is presently pursuing English honours at Miranda House in Delhi.

The son, tall and hefty for a 15-year-old, gives you the attention and care like he has known you since birth.

Suresh talks to his mother like a child with lots of sweet-toothed exclamations.

Well, let every story be a happy story!