A Distant October of Old Hearts and Ripening Fields

October 2007

Tau Ram Singh is no more, the square-built old farmer of about 85 years, who saw money almost raining down on his clan, thanks to the blessing hand of Lord Kuber, through the clouds of mushrooms so honestly cultivated by his grandsons.

He died in Brahmamuhurat.

The day before, he had gone to Sonipat, as had been his norm during his post-farming days. He was a genuine well-wisher of my family. Losing him means we miss the support of an aged, blessing heart.

I wish he was still there when something came out of our hugely belated results in lieu of our hard work, because he would have really liked it. Like our own grandpa, he lived life fully, worked tirelessly in the fields during his heydays, saw his four grandchildren making a fortune through mushroom cultivation, and, of course, two big houses in the making, with lakhs and lakhs of rupees spent on them.

He was friendly. He loved going to meet his favourite people, the people who respected him and welcomed him in front of their doors. He had had his goodly share of heated tantrums with his granddaughters-in-law, of course. He threw obscenities in his liberal paternal way, and showered kindness on whom he thought he must. The sturdy farmer would shake with bone-shaking laughter while sharing guffawing anecdotes.

Many a time he seemed to be running out of patience with my success that always appeared 'yet to come'.

“When will your time come? I'm afraid it will come when I am gone forever,” he exclaimed once.

And I convinced him that he would be around when the results of my doings would start coming forth.

But the man is no more.

His loss is redeemed by a few facts: he lived up to a ripe age and died without getting bedridden. He leaves behind a happy and prosperous big family. He leaves behind fond memories in the hearts of those with whom he spent his old days, taking great pains in reaching up to them, if they, like me, the rooted one, did not go to him.

A good life. He definitely passed the test.

May God bestow peace upon his soul.

*****

Benazir Bhutto, the lady in exile, has returned to Pakistan, but all does not seem well for her political future. The ceremonial march of her convoy was greeted with deadly explosions, killing 140 and injuring scores of others.

The attackers are believed to be from among the teeming terrorist groups, ranging from the Taliban to the loyalists of the late General Zia-ul-Haq.

Pakistan is bleeding too profusely now for any humanistic eye to see it through the narrow, stilted, bracketed vision of history, wars, geostrategy, animosity, religion, fundamentalism, terrorism, etc.

But still one cannot escape being caught by the accusative snares laid by the sufferer against their madly supposed and imagined  archenemy India. 

Pakistan, the nation which for 60 long years fed hate into most of its institutions, which slowly percolated into the quiet, walled alleys of its society, now bears the recoil.

If you dig holes for others, there will be a day when you yourself will fall into one of them.

Those who managed this bloody programme are a tiny section of the whole population of Pakistan, yet for their deeds the entire poor, common, mundane, helpless mass gets branded with fanaticism, jihad and terrorism.

Wishing a bloody consequence upon one's enemy is too short and puny, temporary and farcical a dream, simply for one reason: if our neighbour's house is on fire, you are always in danger of being caught by the angrily lolloping tongues of the fire, because it needs more and more fodder from the surrounding areas.

So the best means of security one's own home and hearth is to help quell the source of the scourge.

India is too big, brotherly, progressive and tolerant to always think in the narrow terms of going gaga over others' fires. We ought to believe, we ought to behave, in a manner befitting our status.

The world has shrunk too rapidly now to permit us to treat the problem in a limited, petrified, single-issue persona. We have to think and devise in a broader, accommodative, calculating, futuristic manner.

The more we help in getting our neighbourhood stabilised, the better chance we stand of pursuing our dreams of developing India into a developed country, playing a big international role, taking up responsibilities as a global power.

Afghanistan is still burning. Communists are on tenterhooks in Nepal. The military is going back on history in Myanmar. The LTTE in Sri Lanka. Bhutan needs support for democracy in its womb, which makes it a very tough task indeed.

*****

In the second half of October, here we have Dussehra, the famous festival of Vijayadashami.

No specific victories for the day, except that I helped my brother, Amit, whom we call Tina, in clearing the field of the last patch of drying jowar, so that oats, barsham and wheat can be sown during the upcoming winter season.

While you put the drying jowar to the sickle, it never gets undone without giving you a few nasty cuts to your fingers and palms, however coarse, calloused and hardened the farming hands might be.

For such a purpose, mine are almost virginally soft, because yours truly is basically a writer and reader. Yet I did the job to the part-time farmer, part-time student's satisfaction.

Now, the part-time farmer and part-time student happens to be my brother.

If you earn a few drops of perspiration with farm work in the late morning, the cool mulberry shade becomes far, far more enjoyable than an icy shelter amidst the hot June desert.

I earned a few, and enjoyed the latter effect as well.

Customs related to Dussehra have almost died in this part of the world. It has now become one more holiday, whose arrival is applauded by school and office goers. But the poor date this year falls on a Sunday, so the school kids even hold a grudge against the festival for losing its effect on a cool Sunday without adding to the latter's charm in any way.

So they look forward to Diwali, which fortunately doesn't fall on Sunday this year.

Elsewhere, in the Supreme Court, the judges are still roosting over our civil-service case. The case was closed with a reserved verdict on August 30. I don't know what more they want to know which escaped their scrutiny during the year-long proceedings.

They are well and high. They must be knowing better. We can't even say anything against them. They can easily put anyone behind the bars, especially the poor and the unprotected who can't spend money on legal proceedings. 

But one thing is clear: the cause of justice has been hugely, irreparably dented during these three long judicial years since the case has been pending, denying us appointment forever.

It needs hell lot of hard work to get into the civil services. Then you face this. This is harassment. Plain and raw. Illegality in legal corridors. 

Such delays only purport that the judiciary is beyond the laws of the land, almost.

So one more Dussehra goes without doling out the little piece of concretisation of the faith behind the myth and legend of the festival. The myth: The victory of the good over the evil. I can't see it happening anywhere in fact. 

The stepmotherly hand is roosting over the illegal hatchers.

The finality, the reality, is too big to raise a voice against it.

*****

Farmers, at least a section of all those who have sown the 1121 sub-variety of the famed Basmati rice in the district, are to gather for a protest and petition to be forwarded to the state government, which in turn ought to forward it to the Centre. And for this, the starting point is to arrive with the petition at the District Commissioner's office.

A fortnight ago, there was a stock-market-type boom, buying and surge in the prices of the 1121 paddy variety. With an average acre producing around 20 quintals, it was expected to fetch anything in excess of 40,000 rupees.

Since this variety is sown about three weeks earlier than the real trademark Basmati, the patrons of this subsidiary jeered with joy at such high returns, which the real branded Basmati would barely hope to match in the coming weeks.

But then the euphoria crashed like the Sensex.

Export was stopped, docks thus dried under the dumped weight. Traders, piqued over such high prices, argued that if the namesake Basmati was selling at such high prices, the prices of the real one would burst through their trading roofs.

A case was thus put up before the legal luminaries.

The price has now crashed.

It is the moment of triumph for the heralders of true Basmati. They gloated over this ill fate of the 1121 paddy variety.

A farmer is the worst enemy of his fellow farmers, as they say.

They will let themselves be cheated by the Baniyas in the mandis. They will forgive the government for all the major crimes against their interests and hard work. But when it comes to things between themselves, they spare no nonsense in hitting each other on the head as hard as possible.

So while the poor 1121-wala farmers gather before the DC office, some real Basmati-wala farmers are heard gloating:

“The fools should be lathi-charged. They must return with their dhotis torn.”

While the worms of despair are eating into the hearts of 1121-sowing farmers, the seeds of hope are sprouting in similar chambers inside the real Basmati-wala farmers.

“The longer the logjam continues, the better the conditions for the stalled market. Our Basmati will then touch the 5,000-rupees-per-quintal mark,” they muse enthusiastically.

*****

Let us now move over to a bit of talk about the heart.

Heart attack is emerging as the biggest killer in the countryside. Even in the rural areas where people's lives are dominated by hard work in the fields, the nemesis has now started to pick up its victims across all age groups and all weight categories.

The news of a hale-looking farming man in his mid-thirties being checkmated by the first cardiac attack now no longer comes as a surprise.

People now have been forced to accept the bitter reality that death is nearer than ever.

Looking at the number of heart-attack cases around in the countryside, one wonders whether the organ, the mythical storekeeper of all the emotions, the soft, sensitive, the soft susurrations of art, culture and history, is on the warpath.

Or are these the death pangs of the rapidly obsolete organ during the heady rush of modern times ruled by reason, ignoring the softer heart?

Traditionally, heart, the organ, has meaning at two levels: in letter and in spirit.

Literally, it is the organ which pumps blood to keep the system going. But this is not what we have known the organ in the chest for.

It is the definition in spirit which makes it the king organ of human anatomy—the keeper of love, truth, empathy, honesty, kindness, spirituality, vibrant emotions.

But all these are becoming the poor tools of laggards in these ultra-reasonable, headily competitive, mammothly materialistic days.

So, shorn of the mythical sheen around it, this lump of flesh is going to snooze with more and more frequency.

It is not that, in increasing the frequency of its collapse, it will be successful in punishing human beings for their treachery.

They are evolving too headily, with the pumping of reason in their arteries and veins.

As per the law of evolution, the next generation will learn to live heartlessly.

Maybe the deaths of the heart are an indication of its rapidly upcoming extinction in modern physiognomy.

After all, in this concrete, solid, material-ridden age, what is the need of a poor heart with its dregs of vibrating images, celebrating emotions, unnecessary pricks of conscience, which are speed breakers on the path of progress?

So the system is getting overhauled.

The heart is getting extinct slowly, slowly, with the passage of each decade.