Winter in the Doon: Of Poverty, Memory and the Wounds of History

 Yamuna Mai: A Mother Abandoned by Her Children

November 19, 2005

It is a very sad sight that I see in front of me: the famished, polluted, almost wounded Yamuna—the famed Yamuna Mai of mythology.

Sadly, Yamuna seems to live only in myths and fables, or on the geographical map of India. It is now a broad, undulating, piteously grey-white dust track, a finger track drawn by some strong mythical finger. No water, except during the monsoons.

The reasons seem to be starving glaciers, decreasing rainfall and the increasing heights of check dams. The only addition seems to be the ever-increasing sewage waste containing all the dirty stuff of urbanization and human habitation, which empties into the holy river.

So the pristine glacial sources of pure water are giving way to industrial wastes and the sewage drains of habitations, carrying the dirtiest things and matter.

Across much of the once-holy river's stretch, it gives the sense of a slightly desert-like landscape. Then, by the sides of the cities that it blesses with its vicinity, the story is different. These cities were once blessed by its holy touch. Just by being in its vicinity, they prospered, survived and were sustained by the holy flow of Mother River.

Now it is an all-encompassing filthy drain, a big drain, a huge blackish nullah between Haryana and Uttar Pradesh.

It serves one more purpose: it defines the boundary between the two states.

Floodwaters surge during the monsoon, with flash floods silting the bed. Sand mines line its gleaming flow, bearing the sand-pitted scars of our consumer interests and ever-increasing greed, without caring about environmental regulations, the sanctity of the holy river, or mining rules.

Illegal sand mining is wreaking havoc on the banks of Mother River.

If one looks into the misty-grey, sinuous stretch of the almost dried-out river, it appears that the once-holy river has been vandalized, plundered and looted by her own children.

She looks now like an old mother, abandoned, her children grown up and fighting for other interests, without caring for her.

As every year its floodwaters reach lower and lower levels, farmers occupy the land left behind by the drying river and make temporary fields overlooking the gleaming grey-white sands. These fields at least provide an embankment of greenness to the mythical river.

The bridge over the Panipat–Shamli Road now looks redundant, almost unnecessary and a waste of resources during most parts of the season, because the river looks so thin and shallow that you could easily cross over, if not for the dark, muddy water, which somehow seems daunting enough that you do not want to step into it to reach the Uttar Pradesh side of the bridge.

A few temples built above the highest watermark of the river's past, high, gurgling levels now stand as if on a hilltop.

From there, steps lead down towards the dirtied stream bed below—to two dark, dust-laden and dirt-laden, filthy puddles of water in which buffaloes wallow and defecate, and some devotees take ceremonial baths in honour of Yamuna Mai.

That is what remains of the once-famed and majestically furious river.

And as I walk on the sand, avoiding the pits dug by illegal mining, and look at the muddy, dark, thin stretch of the once-majestic river, it presents a very sad sight.

I know things do change with time, but looking at such drastic changes seems very scary, because these holy watercourses have been our lifelines, the carriers of our civilization. Their degradation now seems symbolic of how things have gone wrong—the extent and intensity of our greed-driven, unsustainable models of development.

Will things change?

Can we stall this free fall into the dark pit of degradation?

That is the question.

****

November 25, 2005

The Saharanpur–Dehradun Road takes a slight bit of labour in unfolding itself in the lap of these little, little wooded, bumpy elevations at the base of the Himalayas, the Terai area, beautifully unfolding into the Shivalik Hills.

Rajaji National Park is lugubriously spread out with trees of sal in this area.

From the road, the dry, pebbled bed of the Markanda River is sunlit now and then.

Towards the side of the plains, the park surrenders dolefully with its stunted, scattered canopy, dominated by plentiful underbrush.

There are dusty stretches of road where sand and soot fly. The leaves loom around with ghostly greyness because of the dust which gets deposited upon them.

This is the gift of the ever-increasing traffic to the oxygen providers, which stand obediently by the side of the path.

The dusty leaves appear lifeless, suffering a stony, ghostly greyness, and the leaves look almost man-made in this avatar. They get a new coat of ash or dust as the vehicles trundle ahead for bigger motives, pleasures and enterprises in the Doon Valley and beyond.

Rounded, pounded stones in the Markanda bed gleam in some sunlit corner of the broad-leaved grove.

These are the playthings of the river during its monsoonal maidenhood.

You find goats, buffaloes and cattle grazing here and there from the road, using the reasonably wooded slopes.

No signs of animal life.

Maybe there are a few animals far inside the park, beyond our peeking, craning look into the chambers of flora placed on the precipice.

The area now boasts of its woods and greenery, but within a short time it will perhaps pride itself on more commercial things, set up at the altar of nature, as seems inevitable from the developing Doon Valley after the creation of the new state of Uttarakhand.

I am travelling on this road to visit my bachelor uncle, who runs an academy in Dehradun, a coaching institute for IIT-JEE and medical entrance examinations, some of the toughest examinations in the country. He is an expert mathematician.

They are a group of physics, chemistry, mathematics and biology teachers who are making doctors and engineers.

They work very hard.

So apart from making good careers for themselves, they are making good money as well, because it is a very lucrative business and their hard work has paid off now.

Though for Uncle it has come during the later phase of his life, after fifty, his journey has been very tough, and I am happy that they are economically on a sound footing now.

They stay in a very nice house setup in a beautiful corner of the Doon Valley, a green wooded bowl where you can see the greenery of the Himalayan foothills, and at night you see the lights of Mussoorie high on the hills just opposite.

Now, staying with Uncle in this big house on Johri Road, a bit down the lane from Rajpur Road in Dehradun, allows me plenty of opportunity to give free leeway to my wanderlust spirit.

I just start walking into the wooded undulations towards the inner side, coming across little hamlets and villages, and enjoy the slow-paced life.

And moreover, I just share his loneliness here.

The house is big.

Its story goes back to 1995, when he arrived in the Doon Valley with his trusted friends: N. P. Singh, a chemistry teacher; Dwivedi, who taught biology; V. P. Singh; and Ashok Singh, who taught physics.

Ashok Singh can be taken almost as a foster son of my uncle, his protégé whom he has nurtured over the years.

For ten years they made a lot of money.

It was a house bubbling with all the domestic charms that you can imagine.

Uncle even got Ashok Singh married to a reputed judge's daughter, a very nice lady, and both of them looked up to my uncle almost as their real father and really respected him.

But I don't know the exact reasons.

Things fell apart after ten years.

Now the house is empty.

All the partners have parted ways after a successful innings.

Happiness is so short-lived.

And Uncle is staying alone now.

My uncle is reputed for his mastery over mathematics. He has honed his skills over the years. Under his cool, calculating mathematical banner, the academy named Doon Ace hit the scores and immediately took to the sea of money within a short period.

The group worked almost like unselfish brothers, working in tandem for nurturing the family institution.

The institution made a big name in the valley and became a premier coaching institute for medical and engineering entrance examinations.

Every year dozens of students would crack the elite competitions.

And it being very lucrative, the group became quite rich.

A lot of money came within a very short span of time.

And when there is money, you can understand that the softer side of life gets pushed away. Relationships get tested, and beautiful emotions for each other become very difficult to sustain, because too much money can create brick walls around relationships.

A wall with its windows and apertures, which are used to communicate on purpose only.

The free flow comes to an end.

The natural, free flow of communication among the members is stalled.

Well, about that sometime later.

First, a glimpse of those happy, swiftly gone, cosy days.

At various stages of their lives and careers, they needed each other in many ways. That reined in the normal human passions of ego, jealousy and selfishness.

So the horse of relationships was firmly on the track.

Cars, houses, wads of notes, the best facilities and acclaim arrived at full throttle.

And I think my uncle, given his talent and skill in mathematics, almost touching the margins of genius, really deserved it.

He suffered a lot in his life, and now, in the second half of his life, if money comes and he can enjoy his life on his own terms, that is quite commendable.

This house, in a coldly secluded room of which I am writing these sulking lines now, during those days boasted a houseful of lives—a beautiful cage of freedom, cackling with the cherished, sweetest moments.

Dwivedi and Uncle built two blocks that looked like a single one from the front façade, shiny, costly and luxurious as per the latest architectural fashion trends.

So this big house had Dwivedi, his parents, his wife, who was not keeping well, and two brook-like, gurgling girl kids, Ridhi and Siddhi.

In the other block stayed the ringleader of this happy show, the mathematical wizard.

Sharing the floor with him was his protégé, Mr. Ashok, and his most decent and humble wife, Priyanka.

Downstairs, visitors were never short of occupying the rooms.

The chief maid of the house, Manju, and her brood filled the servants' quarters, but they were still more like part of this big family.

Chow, the pampered big cat, which had grown almost like a leopard cat, rolled in the bedsheets, a majestic creature.

And a pair of Labradors, Dice and Jenna, barked in the compound.

Perhaps there was not a single moment during the working hours when some human voice wasn't heard in some part of this big house.

But then more money came.

It showered, in fact.

A rain of money.

More and more students.

Higher and higher fees.

More and more untouched money.

More and more successful stories of engineers and doctors who wrote bright lines of achievement in foreign lands, in Western countries.

So the money, the excess money, had to be put to good use.

Business-like machinations started.

Plans were formed.

Money never comes without its strangleholds.

Some investments brought still fatter rewards of money, and that sent jubilations through the house.

But then things are bound to recoil as well, because that is how the world of money works.

This new catalyst in the chemistry of the friendly group running the academy acted like acid rain.

Fast and furiously, it ate away at the cementing agents of need, respect, reciprocity and many things alike.

Then everything fell away.

Dwivedi was gone with his newlywed young wife. His first wife, who had not been keeping well, had expired. To look after his little daughters, he married his deceased wife's young sister.

He sold his part of the house.

Later, some new businessmen were brought in.

It is a fractured house now.

Another unit belongs to a total stranger, a businessman.

Even Ashok, whom I had always looked upon almost as the adopted son of my uncle, his foster son, went away.

N. P. Singh no longer needed to bear the monopolistic tantrums of Uncleji, because his IITian daughter was earning more money on foreign shores than perhaps all of them together.

So he too acquired some attitude, and there was friction.

And in his majesty, his independent spirit, Uncle would have no acceptance of that.

His massive input of stone, bricks and cement proved to be a castle of cards.

Gone with the whiff of changing winds.

The house stands as loftily as earlier to the eyes of strangers.

But I know that the real house, the lively house, is dead.

It is just a remnant, a stony, dead leftover in which Uncle passes his days all alone.

Some housemaid from the pale old times, whose life he had once helped by getting her married, now comes once a day to cook the meal.

I also help him in the kitchen.

And sitting on two chairs, we eat dinner in the kitchen itself, sharing anecdotes from village life.

The dining table, which used to be abuzz with the clatter and clamour of utensils, table talk, dishes, tongues and cuisines, lies vacant.

Some unused kitchen items are piled upon it.

Occasionally, the silently suffering eeriness is broken momentarily by our tittering reminiscences of Uncle's village life in childhood.

****

December 2005

Sometimes you really deserve, given the amount of invisible, silent labour—which in most cases is left unsung by those around you—that you have put into your schemes and plans.

You have been digging for so long, working silently over the years. But sometimes God, as well as those who are meant to help you in realizing your dreams, delay your harvest almost till eternity.

I just feel the same.

The way I have been, I know that I never had the genius and brilliance to make huge ripples around, but then I don't deserve to be in the position I have been put into.

Even in the lowest forms of life, an insect slithers to safety in the face of danger, adapts and nurtures itself. The mere speck, almost invisible, almost the background of a larger canvas, is mammothly Herculean, in fact. So even against the backdrop of something so big, against the backdrop of such a large canvas, the slightest insect crawls and adapts to ensure its safety and propagation.

I have no such negative, anti-holistic tendencies to go against such evolution-defining instincts of self-preservation.

Perhaps sometimes the particular way in which you wish to survive becomes a virtual affront to the general realities around you, and you end up as a failure.

Perhaps my mistake has been that I have aspired to survive in some obsolete, too-human way.

Yet a fall is a fall.

It is taken as disgraceful.

And fall here means facing a string of losses and defeats and not being able to achieve success the way people have been expecting.

People just love to laugh at it.

It just doesn't matter to them whether you fall after a brilliant run, or you just stumble inadvertently after a casual stroll, or your physical self gives way after that breakneck toil and boil on the stony path, your foot soles lacerated by the razor-sharp stones.

A fall is just a fall to the people.

It is a great leveller, just like death.

It just eats away the sweet juices flowing through the shoots and saplings of endeavour and hard work before that chaotic moment.

And those who fall repeatedly, like me, become the laughing stock of those who somehow manage to trundle ahead with the least number of falls.

They forget that they have probably been lucky in achieving more in lieu of lesser hard work.

Every time one stumbles, scores of advice, admonitions and criticisms storm his ears with stormy echoes and fury.

In the face of such bombardment, I no longer try to rise.

I just roll over to my destination.

Perhaps they will get used to it.

Get used to seeing this mud-smeared, dusted, tattered figure moving on ahead as per his own unconventional and oft-convictions about success and failure in life.

I hope they don't find it too particularly disgraceful, this perpetually rolling fool of mine, as a seeker not accepting the conventional mould of success, as people expect me to.

I have been trying to find my own truth instead of the collective dollops, collective toffees and chocolates of truth, which are convenient, which are handed over to the kids so that they can enjoy and get into a sort of hallucination and not see the larger realities.

Perhaps they won't condemn me as a failure for all, and after holding me responsible for some social evil, won't throw stones at me, because that's what they have been doing to the sages and prophets of the past.

Thank God, this perhaps is one of the few things I have to be thanking Him for.

Till now, stones have been hurled only through words.

Perhaps God will be kind enough to save me from the real ones, because He has already bombarded me with invisible pebbles, boulders and stones.

But then my uncle has big ones to hit me with, and perhaps rightly so.

I am almost thirty, don't earn a penny, ask for my pocket money like a kid from my parents, and this cringes my uncle's soul.

But he should understand that I am trying to come out of having crossed the rough and tough and fiery sea of the civil services examination, where I reached the pinnacle, the interview stage, so many times and finally got even selected to Haryana PCS, only to be denied appointment by the new government, the Congress government led by Bhupender Singh Hooda.

So these are recent wounds and bruises which I carry.

I am like a wounded soldier who had dedicated seven years of his prime, just after graduation, straight away, and almost tasted success, only to be thwarted at the last step into the elite corners of power and influence.

So people do forget your struggle if you don't have the result to produce.

The invisible labour remains unacknowledged and unseen.

My uncle, too, has a long story of mistakes and lost opportunities, avoidable sufferings, and doesn't want the same chapter repeated again.

So probably that seems to be his main reason for criticizing me, giving me advice.

As per him, I have already lost a ten-year start.

Even if I succeed, it is going to be belated.

He says there is a proper way and time for things.

If you earn money, get a wife, get status in the prime of life, only then success counts. Otherwise it doesn't.

It then becomes a too-big fruit which the old jaws cannot chew and the stomach cannot digest.

He further says, if you are not earning for your belly, then are you even fit to be called a human being?

In this way, I just swallow big sips of insult.

Yet, given all these mathematically driven, cold, hard, merciless generalizations and facts of life, I have to respect him.

I can't help it.

Respect him for his sufferings.

Perhaps we can't love the whole of a person, for nobody is perfect, but we ought to love all for some good portion of themselves.

He has this big, mammoth portion of suffering, benevolence and charitable spirit that he almost deserves to throw monopolistic tantrums about life, as if they are irreplaceable laws of the subject he has mastered over the years.

For isn't it a fact that, driven by the same unsparing, unflinching laws, he has produced thousands of doctors and engineers, and that too during those years when his left foot has been afflicted with a non-healing, constantly painful scar due to an injury twenty years back?

No stream of medicines has been successful in healing the scar around the upper ankle.

He himself sums it up as gangrene, septic, varicose ulcer, saying, “All these combined together have come to stall my journey.”

He says, “This is the first of its type, and I will find a cure for it.”

Presently, it has aggravated quite a lot.

Pus oozes from a few boils around the old nemesis.

The surrounding skin, right up to the calf muscles, has turned purple.

He can't walk much now, so stays in the big house looking out for some full-time servant family who will take care of the building in lieu of the fare.

So there is no disgrace in bearing the desperate and tired tantrums of a suffering good man who certainly estimates me high, and it pains him to see that I slog out impractically, futilely, in books and writing.

Literature, he thinks, makes you idle, impractical, cynical and argumentative, and he constantly buzzes in my ears, asking me to come out of this futile, hallucinating world, to come out into the real world of dal and roti.

Certainly, at such times it gives me a lot of pain to be misunderstood by this basically good human being who has throughout his life been a very kind soul.

He has been a giver all the way, right from giving his knowledge and expertise in mathematics to the money that he gives to anybody he comes across who is in need.

He has been a thorough giver, all in and out.

****

Wintertime Anecdotes from the Days I Spent with My Bachelor, Lonely Uncle in Dehradun

As Rajpur Road takes its broad, tree-lined, spacious journey to the north, a new journey of a new path starts at Jakhan, by the Scholars Home, which is a reputed public school, just across the road from the turning to Jakhan.

This new path to the west dips into a cool little dale at the foot of a little wooded ridge running northwest to southwest. On the brow of this wooded ridge sits Johri village, and above this sal-covered, forested ridge looms Mussoorie Hill, which gleams dreamily, bluishly, hazily under the rising sun.

Well, coming to the start of Johri Road, the start is marked by a steep descent between stone-paved high slopes with houses built on top. As you enter this sensuously curving tarred road, cold air strikes you with a welcoming hand.

There are rich houses by the road, poor ones set back from the main road.

Just at the point where the road takes a steep rise to enter the ridge forest, there is a sprawling wedding point. Since it is the start of the wedding season, floodgates of light, song, music, drums and trumpets have been opened during the nights.

My uncle's grand house is situated in the same area, but my sympathies lie with a poor creature which spends its nights in a makeshift tarpaulin shed by the road, a few dozen metres down the path from the start.

It is a slight-built bull.

It pulls its wooden cart during the day and spends the chilly nights in the flimsy shelter, which has enough little openings for the naughty, haggling, icy-cold night to torment it with its freezing wind.

The uneven, dung-, husk- and whisk-laden floor inside; the wooden cart parked by the side at a distance; its little manure heap; and its poor master at some poor place where he also spends the nights with it—I am not sure.

Is all that means a world to this poor creature?

It must be feeling dead afraid while the jangling wedding caravans pass up and down the road during the chilly nights.

When in a better mood and good humour, Uncleji shares important happenings and milestones from his life.

Like he tells me that he took part in a few uprisings in the local Jat history in Sonipat.

One he calls Kanjhawala Kand, which occurred on August 13, 1978.

Morarji Desai's government was at the Centre. The government announced the takeover of panchayat land in Kanjhawala to be distributed among the Harijans. The Jats, who cling to their lands like monkeys to their mothers, revolted.

Though the High Court ruled in their favour, some misunderstandings persisted.

A Jat delegation met the Prime Minister at his residence, while about 10,000 stood outside on Teen Murti Road. Inside, the humble Prime Minister gave all conciliatory gestures, but one lame man, called Langda in local parlance, from Bawana, walked out of the meeting and yelled to the crowd that their demands had been rejected summarily.

Within a few minutes, the Jats and farmers did what they are known for.

Every hand was wielding wood. Like casual, prancing monkeys, they had a go at the tree-lined Teen Murti Avenue. They tore away at the trees to grab any type of branch, wood or trunk to strike at anything coming their way.

Poor trees bore a ghastly autumnal look, with the difference that, in addition to the leaves and bugs, branches and even trunks were gone.

Then they moved ahead to vandalize each and everything.

A force of 25,000 Delhi Police and paramilitary was pitted against them. They dropped wet chadars over the smoking tear-gas shells and hurled them back at the law keepers.

Pavement stones were torn from the road to retrieve throwable projectiles.

By evening, Delhi bore the look of a vandalized and scourged city.

On August 15, an almost tearful Prime Minister announced from the Red Fort ramparts that these were well-planned, systematically carried-out riots by trained manpower. He took a political dig at the Jat leader and rival Chaudhary Charan Singh.

So Uncle was a first-hand participant and witness to all this chaos and disorder that unfolded on August 13, 1978, in Delhi.

Then he tells me about Auchandi Kand.

Due to forced vasectomy operations during the Emergency, the much-maligned Sanjay Gandhi's population-check juggernaut was on the prowl.

The faculty to procreate is considered the all-pervading, most important, life-sustaining force by farming Jats. So there was much anger among the group, rather the community.

In the early morning, it happened that a brother and sister were on their way to the fields to get fodder for the buffaloes and cattle. The mobile operation unit, shielded by a police vehicle, stopped them and treated them as husband and wife.

They forcibly dragged away the brother to the operation table.

His sister and an old lady attacked the kidnappers. In fact, the old lady struck a policeman with such force that he died. The sister and brother attacked them with a grass-cutting scythe.

The news spread by late morning to the villages in Sonipat.

Thousands gathered at Auchandi.

The ladies from the host village prepared food, like an army commissariat.

By the third day, about two lakh people had gathered around Delhi. So the national capital feared an all-wiping attack by the seething mob.

The leaders rushed to the spot to save their imperilled class. They put their headgears, their pagdis, at the feet of mob leaders, clan leaders, khap pradhans and other elders, and mimicked and pleaded and persuaded them to disperse the gathering.

Once the gathering had been dispersed, angry thousands from Punjab arrived at the spot a day later. They were much displeased over the success of the politicians in quelling a mass movement through their smartness.

So here, in this episode, Uncle was a first-hand participant.

He was there, yelling and shouting with the crowd.

So he told me with much glee.

While I am staying here, giving some company to my lonely uncle when he is not passing through a good phase in his social life, I roam around.

I prefer to walk on foot in Dehradun, on Rajpur Road and in the wooded hamlets that I come across on Johri Road.

Now, Paltan Bazaar.

It is near the Tehsil. It is the most important market here, a sort of central business district. Marketing and enterprise of Dehradun throb pulsatingly here.

Days are quite sunny during winters in the Doon Valley.

In the bright sunshine, shoppers just flock to the area. The shop-lined streets are of moderate width, but the way people throng the shopping alleys makes it appear busy like a beehive: clothes, vegetables, groceries, stores after stores, an excited crowd of shoppers.

There is Natraj Publishers and Distributors, a reputed book depot. It is opposite Gandhi Park on Rajpur Road. Foreigners visiting the Doon Valley can be spotted here.

EBD, English Book Depot, is another popular joint for fun, books and get-togethers. Its glass-fronted entrance hall boasts of a Barista coffee joint. Books are available at the back.

Gandhi Park stands out with its green gate, welcoming with the message of peace and greenery.

Now Dehradun has started to adopt the typical urban style.

Couples can be spotted spending some good time here without being harassed. But there are more single, frustrated males who ogle at the lucky ones with envy.

There is the cement statue of Netaji Subhash Chandra Bose in the park.

Then there is Sai Mandir and a Tibetan monastery about two kilometres from Rajpur towards the Doon side on Rajpur Road.

One day I went to Rajpur.

Rajpur.

It was worth any trouble which I might have felt in any way.

The road straightaway leads to an inverted U formed by wooded Shivalik ridges, and in this inverted U is situated this township, more of a large village, with its quaint hilly air.

Life moves peacefully.

Dhakpatti.

Dhakpatti is the main starting avenue as the road takes a pleasant and fatigued ascension towards the high ridge to the north, which stands like a mother over this semi-urban, semi-rural settlement.

The avenue is not crowded.

There are little shops interjected among modest residences on both sides.

What is most interesting about the place is that you encounter a virtual potpourri of different people here.

You see Tibetans, occasional foreigners, pahadis and settlers from the plains.

To link it to the outer world, the avenue even boasts of a cybercafé.

Dhakpatti leads the way to the still more charming, busier Birgirwali Avenue.

Here Tibetans live freely among pahadis and settlers from the plains. They have houses, a few restaurants offering Tibetan cuisines, a Tibetan cybercafé and, of course, the Tibetan Homes School and a monastery.

The Tibetan Homes School has high stone walls closing on the road.

Tibetan children can be seen playing basketball from the road. In the balconies of the four-storeyed hostel, washing lines attract your attention from a distance.

On the gate you see a pamphlet appealing for the release of the Panchen Lama.

“He is the youngest political prisoner in the world,” the pamphlet says.

But the life which met a communist full stop back home seems to have started modestly but freely here.

You see young Tibetan girls in Western outfits, monks in their maroon cloaks and robes, going about like any other religious people in India.

You come across Tibetans eating traditional food with wooden chopsticks in front of small eating joints.

Life does seem to have settled for these refugees.

Older ones sit on their haunches or on chairs, their serene, lost faces, muttering over the beads of strings in their hands, even tiny rolling prayer cylinders held in their hands.

Birgirwali Avenue reaches up to the peak of this settlement, and from here starts the Old Rajpur Quarter.

Also from here, one path leads steeply down to Tapobhumi, called Tapobhumi Marg.

The narrow streets of the Old Rajpur section show true rural characteristics.

The houses are really modest here.

You come across tiny shops selling small-time items.

There are roadside Hindu shrines, and to complete the picture, there is a Muslim mosque as well, visible from the road.

All along these avenues, one cannot miss the imprint of antiquity among these upcoming urban pods in the form of housing and shopping enterprises.

These are the relics from the past.

Quite interestingly, quite a few old, abandoned, mossy-stoned, people-gripped structures have been left untrussed among the newer ones.

One can see the purple-black stony face of some past mosque, now only the gate with its one minar standing among the rubble.

At another place, some hundred-year-old oblong structure with its roof caved in welcomes with its museum smile in the form of a row of broken, vaulted faces along the road.

As you move ahead, water on both sides of the avenue gurgles to provide a Buddhist chanting background to the silent prayers of some old monk rolling his fingers over the beads of his wooden string.

All in all, Rajpur throbs with a life which is quite of its own type, unique.

Below, from Dhakpatti, a path having a stone crust and looking thirsty for tar, but at the same time lying free to provide a crunchy journey to the one who walks on it, leads to Rajpur Park.

This long strip, encircled by grilled iron fencing, is planned in the form of a modest amusement park.

Its main boasting feature is the mountain view overlooking the tiny vale, drawn by a gurgling, pebble-bedded nallah.

From this vantage point, one can see some agricultural strips at the base of the semi-wooded hillside on the opposite side.

****

The bull is famished.

It has to work more and it has to eat less because its owner is a very poor cart keeper.

So the slight-built bull, sheltered under a few sheets, is unfortunate in the sense that not a single green blade of grass or leaf of any type of vegetation is to be seen in the pale, brownish-yellow, dry wheat husk put on the dung- and urine-smeared earthen floor under its hooves, while just a hundred metres away, the forested ridge gleams and glitters with its green top.

So near to the greenery, yet so far.

A tamed, domesticated bull. Its famished master also survives on an equivalently frugal intake, in human terms.

Whenever I cross their place, I really feel sad and find that in the fabric of prosperity, there are dots of impoverishment, poverty and hunger right here in this posh locality.

And along the same lines, there are a few poor, almost dungeon-type unauthorized structures at the back of Uncle's house.

And this is the necessary discomfort the rich have to deal with, because the servants, the dhobis, factory workers and labourers buzz like a busy beehive. A lot of them work in the affluent houses nearby.

Little space for hundreds of humans, in complete contrast to the other affluent houses, especially my uncle's big house as of now, without even the caretakers, and just the two of us, our voices echoing in the big rooms and acquiring a very sad connotation.

As luxurious houses have luxurious leftovers, these, if donated, can fulfil some long-held dreams of a poor household.

But most often, the classes, the so-called big classes or affluent classes, find too little heart to understand this simple fact related to the fates of the masses. So they find it satisfying to see the leftovers going into the dustbins rather than the belly of a poor being.

Uncle, thankfully, falls well short of this qualification.

Probably, as a totally self-made man, he understands well what the word need means in the real sense.

There were many pieces of wood, wooden leftovers from the luxurious, long-drawn furnishing of his house. These were piled spoil-sportingly at the back of the house.

Money-making enterprise would have ensured a few hundred rupees out of this wooden rubbish, but by the mathematical principle of morality and kindness, he maximized the value of these useless pieces of wood and plywood sheets.

There is a big family of migrant Bihari labourers in an unauthorized, semi-pucca, small shelter.

From the back balcony, he called them to take it for free.

It took a minute for them to understand the reality of this free gift.

Two small girls in cheap, heavy woollen tracksuits and pants, as are hawked by the hawkers by the footpath, promptly came by the main gate after ensuring that the dogs were no longer there.

A small ladder was dropped against the back wall, and a young man sat on the wall to retrieve the pieces held over by the girls. Another one, standing in the street, took them from the one on the wall and handed them over to the matriarch, a small, frail lady appearing like a poor puppet in a sari.

She, in turn, gave them to the one who appeared to be her daughter-in-law.

It was a big heap, and it took quite a while to clear all the rubble.

Just see—the mere simple logic of putting away a few hundred rupees from his mind made the deed manifoldly profitable.

He got the backyard cleared and won sympathy. They got at least a couple of months' cooking fuel, as well as the realization that it is wrong to deride rich people as bloodsuckers.

Delighted by the morning sun, the Mussoorie hills appear bluish-grey above the green lower Johri ridge.

Mussoorie appears like a painting from here—unmoving, stagnant, white structures against the greenish background of semi-wooded, bluish-grey spots against the background of overall bluish-grey.

Though in reality there are hustling bazaars, tourist hotels and traffic jams over there, from here it looks like a still painting as I stand on the terrace of Uncle's house.

But from here, this unmoving tranquillity is as real as that hustle and bustle witnessed while being a part of the crowd there.

So reality has many facets, as in this case defined by the distance, the sun, the mist, the fog.

So either all are flimsy, or all are equally real.

I mean reality—the versions of it, the way they appear to us from different perspectives.

The plot adjoining Uncle's house has a thick, jungle-like growth of bushes, plants and some trees.

This is the plotted wilderness.

And taking a shortcut to comfort, which is so uncharacteristic of him because he has always been taking long cuts, Uncleji daily empties his dustbin over the wall into this bush-sheltered garbage site.

Next is another plot whose owner is yet to make up his mind over some cosy shelter.

It also has plenty of wild bushes, but a portion has been cleared to erect a low, tin-roofed structure in which the family of a rag picker passes its days.

All sorts of rubbish and wares are scattered around because it is their workyard.

A carrier rickshaw laden with discarded clothing, tyres, footwear, plastic and metal cases stands amid the jumble.

The rag picker's young daughter can be seen helping her father in sorting out the garbage—items of this category to this side, of another category to that side, of still another to still another side—working expertly, making some economic meaning out of this heaped, discarded, consumed litter.

As per some divine law of constant creation, evolution, drawing out newer and newer means and meanings through newer, fresher methods, moment to moment, the cycle—as I look at them from the terrace, a strange but not yet clear idea about the cycling infinity takes me in its quizzical grip.

The cheap stone in her nose stud still glitters brightly, richly, unrestrainedly, to be visible to the rich eyes, or the relatively richer eyes, hovering from the terrace at a distance from which the subtle nuances of eyes and feeble traces of a smile can't be spotted.

Only the bigger, exaggerated movements of the face and limbs can be seen.

I see her in her working mudra, her dupatta tied across her slim waist after crossing like a policeman's cross belt.

But then youth is no slave to class, caste or creed.

It has its own world, a diverging, exhilarating world of dreams, pleasant pangs, vaguely charming flirtations, and much more.

She is no exception to this.

As almost every young girl is beautiful in her own way, so is this girl, with healthy limbs, brownish complexion, round face, average height and athletic build.

How can the garbage around her dull the spirit of youth in her?

She passes her days like any girl of her age, full of spirits, carried on high by the wings of youth.

The world is still bright if your eyes are bright.

And the brightness of her eyes is personified by that glint of her nose stud, where a cheap stone glitters as richly as a very costly, special stone.

****

In very good mood today, Uncle shares these anecdotes, and particularly this particular one dates back to 1947, the year of Indian Independence.

He tells me my grand-auntie went to the fields at five in the early morning to fetch jowar, the green fodder for cattle and buffaloes.

But she already carried the ripe and heavy burden of maternity and delivered my uncle, with the gypsy-spirit traits, right there in the fields, in the open, without any assistance.

So when she carried the infant instead of the heavy jowar bundle on her head, it did not create news ripples, because it could always be expected of these equally sturdy and strong consorts of the work-brute desert farmers.

So that's how Uncleji was born in the year when India got its Independence.

He was delivered into this world in the freedom and openness of an open field, without any assistance.

No wonder later on, as he grew up, he acquired the same nomadic spirit, just walking his own path, unconcerned and uncaring about what people would say or think.

Many deliveries, many a delivery, happened in the fields during those times because the women could not afford to skip the daily routine of the hard lives they led.

But then Grand-Uncle and Grand-Auntie died within a very short span, leaving the two-year-old infant in the lap of my grandfather, himself a widower at that time.

Those were the days when mothers' breasts and hearts were large enough to accommodate suckling by an extra unfortunate.

So Uncle grew up strong and robust, feeding on the milk of many mothers in the neighbourhood or extended family.

People used to say:

“Beware of him. He has drunk the milk of many true mothers.”

Now Uncle—he has kept the dignity of the milk of many mothers.

He seems to be cutely boastful about this fact.

And now something about my grandfather.

My grandfather took his first cry right in the middle of the first decade of the twentieth century.

There were tiny scrub forests around in which packs of deer roamed.

People say he was fed on the milk of a female deer.

This was the fact many people attributed to his galloping prowess.

Because in the game of kabaddi, my grandfather would jump over the heads of his rivals and land safely behind the line in his part of the akhara.

As far as running capacity is concerned, during his early youth Grandfather could put any youth from the entire surrounding area to shame in running.

He even won many competitions during those slowly moving, dusty, sweet days.

When my younger grand-uncle was married—the third grand-uncle, not the father of this uncle with whom I am staying now—the father of my grand-auntie, the would-be bride, boasted of the running strength of his strong mare.

So the leader of the wedding party, the eldest brother of the groom—that is, my grandfather—challenged the man that he would beat his mare in the dash back to the home of the groom.

If he was defeated, he would forego the small dowry that they had given to the groom.

But if the mare was defeated, it would lose its master.

In fact, he outran the poor creature in the run back home, a distance of at least thirteen kilometres.

It is not without reason that now Uncle says, with his mathematical matter-of-factness, that Grandfather would have won an Olympic medal for the country had he been spotted by some athletics trainer.

But alas, that never happened.

And then Uncle has other anecdotes to tell.

Being born in 1947, he grew up listening firsthand to what happened during the Partition time, because it was then a recent happening.

So he gives me a little chronicle of the local history.

1945

In 1945, the younger brother of the Nawab of Kharkhoda—Kharkhoda being our local town—killed a panchayati bull, the common bull which sires the cattle when they are ready for providing fresh milk.

Now a panchayati bull is a symbol of respect and reverence among the farmers, and angry farmers and Jats gathered in protest.

But since Kharkhoda always had a Muslim SHO, the protest was quelled.

The bull shooter, in fact, escaped even after making an inflammatory communal remark.

1946

A year later, in 1946, for the annual Gadh Mela, the farmers went in long convoys of bullock carts, armed with lathis and multipronged iron anchors.

They would proceed on unprotected Muslim-dominated paths.

The caravan would stretch for miles as it moved ahead on its journey.

And a fearsome Muslim misbehaved with a Jat lady.

The furious woman challenged the manhood of her menfolk and relatives, and they were instigated into taking revenge.

It resulted in communal clashes.

Since the farmers numbered in thousands, they drew inspiration from the bull episode, sanctified its glory, and butchered many Muslims—a communal carnage.

On the way, Uncle Surje and his accomplice killed a horse-riding Muslim, looted his money and stole his pistol.

As the caravan crossed the iron bridge over the Yamuna near Red Fort, the army wanted to search the caravan for weapons.

Uncle Surje was caught with the pistol and was sentenced to six years' imprisonment just for this frivolity. The possession of an illegal weapon. The murder remained unaccounted because it was the age of murders justified in the name of protecting one's religion. 

1947

Now coming to the 1947 chronicle, as narrated by Uncleji long after the events, here in the Doon Valley.

The 1947 culmination of hostilities and communal fires ended in Kharkhoda.

Since Kharkhoda was under the sub-infeudation of a Muslim Nawab, who ran it almost like an independent principality, it was very difficult for the surrounding farming community, basically comprising Jats, to “clear Kharkhoda,” as they called it.

So as the communal fires spread—up here in India and there in Pakistan—here in the Hindu-majority areas, Hindus trying to drive away Muslims, and there in Pakistan, Muslims killing Hindus—in the same communal stream, the surrounding farming community, basically comprising Jats, gave a slogan:

“Kharkhoda todo.”

Kharkhoda todo means: break the Nawab's control over Kharkhoda.

The movement drew weapon-wielding ruralites from the neighbouring countryside.

The defending Muslims were firing from the rooftops of their havelis in the crowded, congested lanes where the community lived, almost like in a fortress.

And the farmers, the Hindu farmers, basically Jats, contrived a basic, rudimentary cannon-like instrument.

They called it tobda.

Tobda, derived from top, that is, a cannon.

It was an ironmonger's work, an ironsmith's forging—a medium-sized cannon muzzle carried on a horse, along with the ammunition.

It was quite rudimentary, but it did the trick for the attackers.

The bull killer tried to escape on a horse, but he was brought down by a seventy-year-old lady who hit him with a walking stick.

He was then cut to pieces by the angry mob.

The communal flare is unceasing, after all.

And the tobda, although it did not break the sturdy small-brick walls, created enough noise and smoke to create panic among the defending Muslims in Kharkhoda.

And there was this short guy from our village, belonging to the barber community.

He had gone mad with communal fury.

He was always instigating more and more attacks to liberate Kharkhoda from Muslims.

People still remember that he was involved in numerous killings of people of the other religion.

But one day he carried it too far and ended up getting killed himself.

A very old farmer still remembered it, and Uncleji recalls that this farmer told the same story during his youth.

There was this big haveli of a Muslim family.

Only the women and children were hiding inside. The men had been killed.

So the attackers said:

“Let us just move on because there is no threat left.”

But this chap wouldn't accept it.

He just ascended the wall, and in his excitement happened to fall into the courtyard on the other side.

He was never ever seen or heard from again.

The women must have cut him into pieces.

So he carried it too far.

Another anecdote is from another old farmer named Bhaganna.

I remember him—a stern-faced, ramrod-straight, tall man with unsparing red eyes.

He would just flare up at any instant.

Now there are stories about his very passionate participation in the communal riots in Kharkhoda.

He would be the leader of the attacking groups, and he himself would boast later that he had been involved firsthand in dozens of killings.

He recited one incident.

He said that just as he was killing, this very young and beautiful Muslim girl fell at his feet.

Just as he was about to strike her, she shouted:

“Jai Gau Mata!”

Now Jai Gau Mata translates roughly into “Hail the glory of Mother Cow,” and the cow being an object of great devotion to the farming community, he spared her.

He thought:

Let me save this poor girl.

We will just change her religion, make her take a bath in Ganga jal and perform the basic ceremony, and then she will be married off to some suitable bachelor in the village.

So he was carrying her in his arms, thinking that he would just put her at a safe place, away from this bloody massacre that was going on all around him.

But in the blood-curdling and blood-drenched fury and passion, somebody speared the girl.

She was mortally injured.

There was no chance that she would survive.

So this man thought it best to cut down on her agony and finish her off.

So that is the tragedy of communal strifes, communal wars and riots.

Pain here is as good as pain there.

When a person dies—of this religion or that religion—it is the same pain and suffering that one's near and dear ones face.

Human blood cannot be qualified on the basis of mere religious differences.

In a laboratory, it is the same blood, the same cells and tissues.

It is very tragic that we humans have created such religious differences only to end up slaughtering and committing genocides and so many other crimes against our fellow human beings.

And the Partition-time riots, communal warmongering and bloodletting are one such tragic chapter in India-Pakistan history.

It was so bloody that such narrations keep cropping up till this date, after almost sixty years of the happening.

****