The Artist

 An artist is the one who is tethered to the pole of his passion. This pole is no ordinary, logically definable axis; rather it is ever shifting, ever broadening, ever enfolding entity that envelops the artist from all dimensions. His life then becomes a luxurious escapade into the mystically mazy horizons cajoling him forever and forever; the melodious mix of such courteous calls leaves him an infatuated follower of the lady of his heart and mind. His soul gets a unique imprint. The domain of his art holds him in a firm grip and he turns almost a slave to it. 

In the not too big hall of his two-storeyed house, the head of the family served as the head of an institution as well. Madhav Mishra, defying all diktats of materialism and modern culture, still worshipped his beloved form of art through his Kathak Kendra. Those who registered themselves there were easily carried away on his path, the guru leading the way in full-length traditional costumes.

Well, this little whitewashed hall opened on a not so prosperous street in Indore. As you entered the threshold, you came across a fantastic portrait of Guru Birju Maharaj. The achievement-bound people said the head of this tiny, barely surviving Kendra was a gross under-achiever. While the sensitive arts people still didn’t dither from paying homage to him.

The nondescript persona had in fact performed at a few Lok Utsavas and festivals of India organised in foreign countries. But then all the stars—though equally bright—cannot shine with equal brilliance in the sky’s art-frame; for the world, expecting the true artistic breed to be found in the rarest of rare cases, allows only a few stars to rule the skies; or put it this way, as society needs little doses of artistic sips and that too during those artificially imposed moments by the so called ‘culture-crats’, they select just a few ones for the so called polished and cultured form of entertainment.

Nonetheless, starhood or not, it should not make an artist bigger or smaller. All true artists know this. In this quest for excellence—mostly unrewarding—there are no goalposts to be reached in the shortest time at the greatest of speed. Here, maintaining a run in full earnest is the winning itself. The ever-retreating creative urge is the almost unachievable finishing line. In this game, either all are winners or all losers. Logically, hence, all are winners in their own ways.

The other day, one of his disciples, serving both her artistic passion and the practical means to survival in her capacity as a trained Kathak dancer-cum-journalist, arrived with much gusto at her guru’s place. She had met the Secretary of the Sangeet Natak Akadami at a cultural event she had gone to cover. During the conversation, it had befallen her ears that the post for the Director of a prestigious government funded Kathak Kendra had fallen vacant. Expecting some good to fall in the kitty of her unremunerated guru she had recommended his name.

‘Make sure Anjali that while you run fast and haphazardly to recommend me, the rhythm and movement of Kathak doesn’t escape from the soles of your feet. At my age, I can either have a few fine steps for myself and my trainees, or run after a job. Maybe in youth it is possible, but for now I prefer to do the former only!’ the wise artist calmed down her enthusiasm.

The episode let loose a wave of disappointment through the old maestro’s family.

‘You always kick away whatever good chances come your way!’ they chorused their protest.

‘Mine are no ordinary feet walking in a part of an avenue. I ought to kick away everything that might hamper the fluidity of my movements!’ he hit back his artistic dart.

****

Like the truest of artists—for only they can fall in love with the fullest of force, which either makes (less probably) or breaks (more probably) them—he had fallen deeply in love with a girl when his artistic passion upped the slope on each morning he woke up.

He came from a musical family, the gharana as we call it. His father was the last head of the court musicians of the local ruling family. So he trained each of his four sons and the daughter in classical music and dance. During those days, the princely luxury did find ample accomplishments in artists. So as a child, along with his siblings, he would go for the musical parties arranged by the Maharaja for the high officials and special dignitaries from the British government.

To put a bit of shade on the face of art, the eminent dancers of the court served as mistresses of the noblemen also.

His father held equal expertise in both Hindustani and Carnatic music. One eminent dancer of the court took her dancing steps to the whirlwind of majesty as the handsome moustached Keshava Nath Mishra accompanied her steps to the mystique heights of grandeur. Sometimes as a dance accompanist both he and Leela Bai danced with such synchronism and energy that it left sweat marks on the polished floor. Since Leela Bai was one of the most favoured courtesans, her special status being recognised in the form of a little luxurious palace placed at her disposal, their special chemistry was an eyesore to the ruler’s eyes. Still the relations between the courtesan and the elder Mishra were known to everyone.

Young Madhav was more interested in orchestra that accompanied the steps from an ornately raised platform. Flute was his first item of attraction. His uncle Bhuvaneshwar being the flautist, he took initial lessons from him. Sujata, the beautiful little daughter of Leela Bai, would laugh at him listening to his initial tentative, rough-hewn notes of percussion. In childish disgust he threw away the flute. Nonetheless, his likes and dislikes seemed to share a path with the courtesan’s little daughter, who lived like a princess, being the daughter of one of the Maharaja’s favourite lady of the court.

Following the footsteps of her mother, little Sujata was also being trained as a classical dancer. Although full of childish manners and pranks, her force of dedication to the art was evident in her subtle facial expressions on her beautiful, pink, round face, the fast and expertly unfolding mudras and the fluidity of the movements of her little limbs.

A statue of Bharatamuni (the eminent ancient writer on natya) adorned her little luxuriant room. An eminent exponent of the true tradition trained her under the Maharaja’s special instructions. In fact, the Maharaja loved her like any of her legal daughters. It was a proud day when she led her dance troupe of children—little Madhav being one of them—in honour of a musical party for the British resident of the Central Indian princely states. In this dance drama, Madhav was the Krishna and Sujata played the part of Radha. The legendary drama unfolded to synchronise his heart’s soft soufflés for the little dancing princess. Thus was laid the foundation of a true artistic passion—the love of a woman and love of Kathak.

****

With independence, the princely world with its dreamy charms was broken. Gone were those days of musically saturated, beatifically stagnated luxurious moments. In the changed order of things, the erstwhile ruling families got busy in exploring new roles and esteem in a free, democratic India. This was the time of real struggle for Keshav Nath as the head of a large musical family. The prospects of dance and music as a profession had rapidly dwindled. Art was no longer a spiritual thing to be worshipped like a Goddess during these critical times when more practical things occupied space in people’s mind.

During those moments of riyaz, the necessity of keeping the hearth kindled pulled with its begging bowl at their aprons. The stalwart’s love for his art became merely a series of frustrated movements to and fro to get a chance to perform at festivals and concerts. The time that ought to have gone into regular riyaz to create something new was now utilised for seeking favours with the artists in demand so that he could accompany as a vocalist at concerts.

With his fall in position, he lost the favour of Leela Bai as well, who—thanks to those years of gifts and showers of the Maharaja’s favours, enabling her to live quite comfortably even now—dropped him out of her list of attention. Madhav’s heart was broken as he could no longer visit his childhood favourite’s luxurious apartment. They were now poor after all, he consoled himself.

The father was much worried about the future of his kids. So the eldest son was left as an apprentice-cum-domestic help with a pioneer of tabla gharana. So Kishan, as his name was, put his young palms on the tabla and mundane household chores. He grew up with stars in his eyes to perform one day as a soloist, as a star. However, as the time will tell him, a tabla player’s beats are more fitting as an accompanist—a nondescript entity in the orchestra, while the hero artist bundled up all the accolades to his share.

The other one, Ganesh his name, went as an apprentice to a local doyen of khayal, whom his father knew, to pay his part in the musical homage. After his endless recitals and doing a lot of household work for his guruji, he returned one night as a spent boy. Though in his tone and tenor, the melodic strain was brilliant and aesthetic, yet instead of polishing it the guruji spent most of his flirting time with a European lady—a daughter of some political agent of the British government before independence, who had spent her childhood in the cities of central India and now after having a full swing at the occidental charms had come back to enjoy the oriental enigma of her childhood. Now the guruji trained her as a light classical vocalist. The old doyen of old heritage now trained this white lady with dreams in his eyes of sleeping with her some day. The talent in Ganesh withered with the passage of each day. His guruji won’t so much as give him the slightest attention. As the months passed, he turned into a house servant.  

The third one, Dhruva, had a fling with sitar, sarangi and sarod respectively for some years, and when none of their soundboards talked to him in amorous, sacred tones, he dumped these; and took a spiritual dive into vocal music. This virtuoso of nothing and master of everything put the ageing patriarch in such a situation that the fatherly artist, whom the circumstances were constantly beating to make a real man of him, started beating his child prodigy.

‘You are fit for only a menial job. This sadhna won’t survive with you!’ the much aggrieved father shouted finally.

A pall of gloom descended over the family when one morning they found him missing. They searched for him, but he was not to be found. He was gone to explore his own dream in an unrealistic world galoring with numerous possibilities and prospects.

That leaves us with our very own Madhav. During the fifties of free India, he was growing up with sweet-sour love-strains haunting him. Those were painfully throbbing adolescent days; the pain aggravated by the fact that now they had degenerated into low class. Their lowly status was pinchingly brandished by the fact of their avoidance by those with whom they mixed freely during childhood.

Leela Bai who had been the classical consort of the Maharaja during his royal heydays still enjoyed his favour; his physical and artistic affection for the erstwhile courtesan now changed to fatherly feelings for her daughter Sujata whom he wished to provide the best of education and classical training. The mother and the daughter lived in a luxurious apartment in the city’s affluent section and when the Maharaja—who now enjoyed most of his time holidaying in Europe—returned and spent some time with them, it was just like a family get together.

A young Madhav painfully struggled to yoke himself to the twin purposes of survival and Kathak, his chosen field of art. Sujata, beautiful like a rose and educated like a lady of class, left their city to pursue and hone her skills at the Delhi University’s Faculty of Music and Fine Arts.

Sangeet Natak Akadami arranged a tour of the student artists to Europe. At these festivals, Sujata performed remarkably well.

‘These handpicked Deans and Heads of the Music and Performing Arts Department will soak away juice from the ripe fruit of art to satiate their bulging bellies!’ Madhav would grumble as a new class of culture-crats took leadership in their hands like the erstwhile ruling class and the nobility did earlier.

Music and performing arts now seemed ever eager to get accolades from the affluent sections in the Western world; while the so called cultured class of India leered from the backseats in such a close proximity to the persons of the race that a short while ago in history ruled the country. The spiritual base meanwhile got buried under their well managed, manicured talks in plush auditoriums and fantastically furnished theatres.

Sujata’s young heart had stumbled upon the classical recitals of a young vocalist at the campus. Like the young couples embrace, cuddle, caress and kiss, their explorative steps on the love-path took the medium of their arts. During their free time with each other, under the lyrical and emotively throbbing vocal support provided by her love-accompanist—Kanak was his name—this freshly emerging Kathak exponent honed her repertoire. Time watched mutely at the synchronicity of her limb movements. Many were the eyes that kissed the soft, lyrical waves fleeting around her slanderous body.

The passionate intensity of these love-sessions meant that every performance was meticulously rehearsed. It made her a good student at the most; however, the real artistry is honed during those solacing fine moments when the panged-to-the-core artist creates symmetry around him, isolating himself from the pinching asymmetry of his life otherwise.

One summer she took Kanak to her native town. Showcasing the chaotic, mundane bazaars to her lover—who for the courtesy’s sake praised each and everything they came across—they happened to come across Madhav, time-beaten and worn out by the fruitless passion of his art. Both were struck by the change each one had undergone since they had seen each other last time a few years ago. She was more beautiful than ever; more suave, educated, urbane and dressed untraditionally. Kanak too was in a suit and patent leather shoes; exquisitely showing that their art was no burden on them. They carried it lightly on their light shoulders while they donned those artistic clothes under the light and refreshing guidance of the professionals.

The poor, jealous, silent lover vented out his pathos—as is expected—through the medium of art.

‘These days art needs a paper to prove his/her credentials. Damn the degree. I tell you, they are making this field of music and performing arts cheap and mundane like any other field of study. Good student may you become, but not great artists,’ he blurted out.

Kanak came to the aid of his baffled lover, ‘Dear young man, if being an artist only means wearing heavy wooden sandals then I congratulate you on your simple and concise definition of art,’ with a mocking expression he stared at the jealous lover’s dusted half-worn footwear.

‘And since we have fallen into each other’s way, I’m trying to find an iota of art in the modern, Western trappings around both of you,’ the aggrieved lover almost sneered.

‘Is it art only when one reaches the brink of hunger, without applaud, praise and money. Does dying in oblivion is the only mark of a true artist?’ Sujata retorted, again driving the prong of his adverse situation into his heart.

‘If such fates deter you, then there are manifold lucrative professions in the world where one can put his part-time for great monetary favours. My sweat and toil gives me the trophy of satisfaction. I may appear famished outside, but my interior is furnished with extensive, elaborate, unchecked, unhindered trimmings of my self-taught, self-rehearsed, self-derived artistry,’ Madhav was panting almost with rage that he could barely hide.

‘And just say on whom such art leaves any impression? It makes art fit for nothing in people’s eyes, and that is why they are flocking away from it like the rats from a sinking ship. Art, thus, needs to be showcased, organised at a well fed-up lucrative platform, so that people do look at it with respect instead of mocking at it as you people end up doing!’ Sujata the student, the affluent one, and already used to praise, countered with her pink colour flushing up with anger.

‘Again speaking from the point of art as a mere profession! Lady, art is no mere profession. It is penance. In tapasya there is no part-time. It is just full-time. As per your aspects, art becomes just a part-time thing, while something inartistic takes the centre stage,’ Madhav won’t budge from his point.

‘Then what is the use of devoting your whole life to something if you don’t get recognised?’ the lover couple chattered almost at the same time, and looked at each other with more affection in their eyes for saying the same thing.

‘A true artist is recognised by his own inner self first and foremost!’ Madhav took a deep breath as if to have the same feeling.

‘But one is supposed to be an artist only when the others say that for him. It is the society that has to provide the tab. After all we are social animals,’ Sujata spoke as a very bright student.

‘No, no...no! A true artist is concerned about the eyes of his Goddess of art,’ Madhav spoke a bit louder to subdue her studiousness.

‘Only time and society will tell who of us is right!’ Kanak intervened to close the chapter.

‘What can time and society say regarding art? Both have terribly missed the mark always!’ Madhav said with an ironical sigh, indicating a reconciliation to the adversity in love—like a true artist—and shook hands with his rival in a resigned, genteel manner.

****

To Madhav the tradition related to Kathak was the only definition of religion. Its fundamentals, its presentation, majestic postures, those narrative envisions of myths and legends, those divine themes of natya, those glittering costumes, all these and much more were sacred, inviolable and pure beyond any tinkering. People began to say that he is an art fundamentalist. More than his worship of art, his radicalism regarding it fetched him a bit of fame.

To his critics he countered:

‘There is infinite scope for improvement and dynamism in Kathak. By merely following the real classical form, we may end where we started from. We may spend hundred years of our individual lives in perfecting the art. The generations might pass but the perfection might not descend on us.’

His Kathak Kendra—he as its sole master—provided him with infinite leeway to hone and rehearse his own and other’s skills. It also fetched him survival crumbs along the way. His was a balanced lamp that was glowing steadily in a mundane hall looking over a poor market.

Sujata, meanwhile entrepreneurly aided by her vocalist husband, whose khayals and dhrupads in their varying entertaining tones through music mixing, galloped over the culture scene like a swift mare both as a solo artist and group dancer. As a successful art entrepreneur, cross-pollination of different art forms was her hallmark. So those lightly, laughingly carried out group choreographies involving Kathaka, Mohiniattam, Odissi and other tribal and folklore elements grabbed mass fancy. It was eclectic. It was inclusive. She became the queen of cultural events. Many fusion elements were mixed up to cash in the natya hype. Her troupe’s contemporary and ever-changing costumes, in addition, ended up making a terse and effective fashion statement.

All these untidy, unsymmetrical experimentations spread the artistic dish over a wider horizon to be enjoyed by a greater section of people. Its character was pan Indian, her singing and dancing minstrels fetching immense praise from art critics. The troupe travelled worldwide. Her choreographic placements were fabulous as those clusters of limbs cut air like slowly moving swords. On top of it, their exotic costumes made her an artistic leader for film choreography as well. Her fame flashed like lightning; its glitter spreading far and wide. The cultural season would provide fiesta time to music and dance lovers. There was no strain either on the performers or the audience. It was tantalising experimentation. And it fetched the artist couple fame and money in big halls.

Meanwhile, fixed at a point, the puritan’s lamp kept on glowing steadily.

Sujata’s husband rose academically to become the Dean of Faculty of Performing Arts and Music at a prominent university. While delving in diverse genres of body movements, thanks to her jugalbandi and fusion of artistic coordination from different dance and music forms, she became the brand ambassador of Indian music and dance festivals in big theatres and plush halls.

As an influential Director of a government-funded Dance and Music Academy, this exquisite Malaika scaled one peak of fame after the other. Seeing her rise and the glitter of her career, it seemed as if all the boons and benefits of many centuries owed by the society to all those famished creative geniuses, who died impoverished and tormented by the contemporary society, had fallen in her corporate lap.

The groups trained by her won prizes at national youth competitions. Many of her pupils—both in solo and group choreography—went onto make a film career in song and dance sequences. Her array of fusion provided such entertainment to people that the earlier boring ghazals, thumris, ragas and classical dance movements acquired mass acceptance under the foot-tapping notes of jazzy drums, keyboards, tabla, violin and bass. These music and dance jugalbandis cropped up as a watershed separating the classical from the modern. This distinct tapestry was too glittering, across which the flirting art-senses of the modern generation couldn’t see the softly reverberating verses of the real classical dance and music whose balance, swara and laya, both in verbal and dance forms, took a backseat and existed only in classical books like some obsolete forms.

Even culture in its brand, corporate form can be over-sweeping. So this tradition, twisted to suit the Westernised and invigorated needs of the modern audience, lifted the now flimsy weight of the classical art on its nimbly swaying head and ran redeemingly to make up for the economic losses.

The puritan Madhav but—a worshipper of his art—kept guarding his tiny battlefront. Against the frantic excellence of mixed dance—the all-abuzz modern dance scene—he kept on honing the rhythmic nuances of balance, harmony and quietude. His relaxed prowess and stillness defining those expressional subtleties of Kathak created good classical dancers, but rarely the successful ones, in the monetary sense of the term. Success after all has come to be defined by the amount of money earned by a person, in any profession, with whatever means deployed. The crowded, jarred senses required some obliviating dives into the tuneful, rhythmic poignancy of notes and footwork. Glittering and dramatic costumes were more important than the poise, grace, laya, balance, discipline, and undisturbed and restful fluidity.

Indian artists, ever eager to reach out to the Western audiences, dubbed their endeavours as abridgement of Western and Indian classical forms. So the sharp lift movements and high-pitched abstract acrobatic and athletic movements of the Western dance were being interjected into the fluid grace of classical steps.

****

Sujata’s troupe of agile, nimble, high-vaunting dancers, attired in uncharacteristically bright and varying costumes, arrived at her native city for a performance. It was a group of confident, successful dancers. These versatile dancers, flirting with aesthetics, dexterous in multi-pronged ability to blend swirling legs, leg splits, attractive formations, geometrical patterns with chocolate-mild softer versions of un-intricate light classical steps. If their legs cut air like scissors on the one hand, they glided with—if not with perfection—tolerable tradition as well.

At long last, Madhav’s puritanical, untainted art world came to be shoved from so near. He had been feeling the repercussions—in his eyes it was sacrilegious to art—of this art-blend for a long time. To him these were choppy tugs at the traditional body of music and dance to dismantle it piece by piece and then erect a poor, contrived behemoth attractive to the public from a distance.

As an old guru of the trade, he had been fighting the battle by training his small group of disciples in his strict ways and writing articles for the dance and music sections of newspapers and magazines. All this but sounded a kind of eulogy to the bygone art and those exquisite times.

Now when the fire arrived so near, he feared that the last bastion of classicism will be conquered by the marauders. The maestro waited anxiously for the visitor’s first performance. At least in the city he was respected for his passion and puritanical dedication to his art. With some inexplicable instinct, the people seemed to bow before him. That was enough of a reward to him. Now he grew apprehensive that even this little reward will be robbed from him.

Just like a dog is stuck-up with his bone, an artist in his proud and passionate capacity as an artistic canine is glued to the bone of his art. Similar was the case with Madhav. Every ounce of his soul rebelled against this transgression into the pure domain of his art. In a way, it was not just about art. It also mattered who the transgressor was. He had many grievances to nurse against her even now after many decades since his one-sided love was crushed by her and the circumstances.

Through the vernacular tongues of the local media, he condemned the blatant overtures of the visiting troupe. He termed their effort as the plundering manoeuvre of dismantling the ornate, aesthetically massive monolith of pure art; a crash course in business to dress the tiny pieces hastily to lure the superficial senses of non-serious masses. By flirting so vagrantly with the classical form, they will make it a dirt cheap, hasty movement of limbs, he noted with much dissent. Through an open letter, he challenged the visitors in the erstwhile royal auditorium—now furnished in modern style—for a competition. He proposed that the auditorium will be thrown open to all and sundry without any tickets and the sheer amount of applauding noise will decide the winner.

Sujata accepted the challenge thrown by the erstwhile lover. The dancing and musical duel was fixed a week hence; and both parties got into the sweat-drenched process of rehearsing. The artistic juices that had been ornately concretised in the cocoons of his chambers glittered like gold under his competition-driven skills. The maestro virtually laid his entire worth bare before his group of disciples.

‘You have the responsibility to prove that art is greater and purer than any hastily, greedily bastard begotten by some vagabonds and tramps,’ he mustered up the army of classical dancers.

On the appointed day, his disciples performed with the honesty, steadiness, dignity and sedateness of an oil lamp lighting up the small interiors of a Godly shrine. Its focus was too pious, too deep, too profound and multi-fold powerful in proportion to its appearance. If beauty is truth and truth requires no explanation, then sheer beauty and truth emanating from the classical presentation reached every part of every mundane, inartistic heart. All of us have an inherent, even if unseen and not felt directly, respect for some soul’s pious dedication irrespective of our likes and dislikes.

While the energetic versatile troupe in attractive costumes waited for its turn to strike at the classical facade with modern vengeance, they and Sujata in particular saw the fury of classicism in its silent torrents. They were young performers, not too experienced, but the force of their master’s dedication oozed through every movement of their limb. Each step and every moment of the performance made her realise the fantasised and glamorised trivialness of her experiments. Here was an artist who had steadily honed his art for decades to remain poor. She on the other hand had leaped from platform to platform to win accolades and money.

‘The people of entire earth might gyrate to our modern forms; but if Gods are watching from somewhere, they will shower rose petals on this one!’ she sighed.

The dedicated iron-rod of the puritan shattered her glittering, glassed world in one silent strike.

‘I know that this crazy mass of people will respond more thunderously to our crazy gyrations. The crowd always chooses the wrong!’ the softer cords of her conscience were touching her heart.

She had pity on him, felt sad for his unrequited love and almost got a drop of tear for his almost wasted life.

Just after the performance was over—while the decent round of applauding was subsiding (she knew that these very mouths and hands still have more potential in them that she could harness through the spiced-up versions)—she took the mike and gave one of the finest ever compliment to the performers and their masters.

‘It’s only due to the steady, pure light of guru Madhav that petty professionals like us also make a living at the fringe of his light. To compete against the perfect art would be self-defeating. So even without putting up a challenge, we accept defeat and still feel privileged in losing!’ she couldn’t control tears of pity for him, for his dedication to a cause, and still more importantly, his unrequited love.

This time there was still larger, noisier round of applauds.

In her humble self she too had been victorious in her own way.

‘More than anything else, guruji’s unflinching dedication makes him the winner. It’s a prize in itself to lose to such a piously lit shrine of artistry!’ she could barely control her emotions now.

There were tears in the old maestro’s eyes. His moment had arrived—though late. However, it arrived with such splashing resurgence as if it had been accumulating all the potential energy worth tapping at the high level the worshipper had been busy in chiselling the classical dance form for the last few decades.

Marked for Misery

 

There was a man called, or rather nicknamed Sant. Well, some names tend to summarise the bearer’s persona exactly in the manner of their literal meaning. So if ‘Sant’ means an ascetic or a man of religion then our protagonist did full justice to it. Right from childhood, he took the unexciting sidewalk, trudging broodingly on the unpaved path—but lost in its own charm of forlorn dirt unstamped by the stampeding crowd of other children and their beaming childhood—going along almost as a mismatch to the usual hilarity and mirth of childhood.

He remained aloof. However, his non-participating, inconspicuous nature still vouchsafed for some inner peace and contentment with himself. Jestingly people started calling him a ‘sant’ for he was never involved in the oft-repeated countryside nuisance of the childhood on rampage. A very decent boy they dubbed him. And he indeed was one.  

Nonetheless, those who walk by the sidelines of busy, bustling road are tempted sooner or later by the clarion call of commonality. But those who still prefer their sidewalk need to turn along some further isolated bylane to keep following their own path of solace or strife whatever falls in their lap by the hand of destiny. Thus his adolescence found him parting ways even with the sidewalk from where the constant hoot and holler of the buzzing mainstream was feebly audible.

His status as one of the two sons of a poor farmer helped him initially in following the path defined by his nature. Everyone could see that he was drifting away from the so called worldly ways involving earning, marrying and raising children like everyone else did. His family as well as the villagers allowed him this unconventional space under the presumption that the elder son, his brother, was sufficient to fulfil all these duties. They expected the other son to get married and sire sons to keep the family name alive and get moksha for the parents. 

A boy of average health, common capabilities and almost non-existent wishes, he completed his matriculation with regular marks from the village school. All along his studentship he had been helping the ageing patriarch in their small landholding to retrieve the morsels of survival from the earth.

Then the things took a serious turn. His elder brother too, though possessing the dominant nature of rural rusticity that enjoys its patriarchal status to the fullest, deviated from the country-folks of his age in the matters regarding matrimony. Despite persistent pressure of the early marriage diktats, he somehow dodged the schemes of near and dear ones and enjoyed his days as a bachelor. Then the parents were gone leaving behind two young, bachelor orphans with a patrimony amounting to a few hundred rupees and a small landholding of just couple of acres.

During the seventies of the last century, the arrival of youth among the rural ruffians was defined by their defiance of the family and after a few beatings running away from home to grab the ever-existent job of a truck helper. The night-life along the road had all its attractions for these scions from a very conservative society. Alcohol, opium and sex workers along the tireless roads across the length and breadth of this big country were the major incentives of the trade, leaving the salary as a poor bonus only.

Sant became a truck helper. But even on the roads, he obstinately remained stuck-up to his sidewalk, i.e., he didn’t do what others normally did accepting it as their right to relieve their sleepless, exhausted selves. So the stories of his chastity in the much maligned job reached the village from the mouths of fellow drivers and helpers and this indeed further consolidated the status of his nickname.

‘He is really a sant,’ they slapped the compliment as he walked in the street with his red face and a broad forehead that showed some signs of a prematurely receding hairline, thus making it appear still broader.

Till now the bachelor status of his elder brother had been accepted. If not ready for the crush of bones in the cart of domesticity, why then break one’s back in the fields? He thus gave out the land on lease and started a tiny provision shop in the front part of their house. As the days passed, his interest for the profits diminished and the beard on his face grew longer.

Quite surprisingly, the people still found the younger one more stoic and saintly though he kept his face clean-shaven. Saintliness is no slave to long beards. The people thus happened to accept their status as such. But then change did occur. The people had, after all, accepted the brothers as bachelors; and the younger one more so, given his bearing and record.

But then there was a big stone in the tranquil waters of the pond. The younger brother jolted the villagers’ senses. He became a news item in the village.

‘Sant is going to marry!’ most of them exclaimed as if cheated by him for keeping the decision up to the critical limits of his forty odd years on earth.

The people easily conjectured that someone in need of being eased out of her tough situation, most probably on account of scandalous nature, had been thrown in his lap. Was it his own decision to marry? Or his elder brother forced him? Or some too dear and overpowering well-wisher convinced him? Nobody could tell for sure. It was a big question.

Most of us come in the form of human packets containing something good and something bad. The overall goodness or badness is defined by what is good or what is bad for the takers. Sometimes there is bad which is supposed to be good and vice-versa. Well, his bride was no exception. The good part was that she was extremely beautiful—fair coloured, finely balanced features, tall, slim and extremely feminine in stature. As a shy bride in her bridal attire, only this trait was the most show-piecing one and many were the hearts that jealously begrudged him such stroke of luck at the fag end of his youth. But once she came out of her bridal attire, what was wrong with the poor lady surfaced with point-blank precision.

She was a simpleton. As a female, she didn’t know how to put up a fine, showy covering over the naked pangs of desire. People usually have nice covers to defang their desires and present themselves as nice beings. To be frank, the humanity carries this naked desire in its still more naked form inside as the most predominant element of existence. But then we are sophisticated, cultured, refined enough to keep it attired in genteel socialising and stealthy prowls, keeping it hush-hush, all going in full throttle under the covers. She but was no expert in keeping the scandalous passion under the coquettish robes of morality and make-believe mannerism. Before the eyes of others it danced as nakedly as it did inside her.

Some said she was dim-witted; enough to be snared by the ever-spawning male desires. Within no time, there were many dandies in the village who wandered the streets and credibly claimed that they had tasted the sweetest fruit. To pamper their swarming passions, she was gutsy in her simplicity to go to any length. She was so bold regarding it that it could not have been credited to any other trait except dim-wittedness.

The elders said she wasn’t a fool. She just playacts being a dim-wit to feed the devil, they maintained. As a matter of fact, the lady was incapable of reining in the chariot of her rampaging passion. It was not in her capacity to turn it to marvellous, subtle, stealthy sojourns along the sideways and by-lanes like almost everyone else did. She thus went full throttle along the crowded street in broad daylight, making a mockery of all social endeavours to clad our passions under social fabrics, mores, conventions, ethics and the basket of moralities.

Then her history surfaced. She had been married thrice earlier; came out of each marriage as scandalously as she had entered a ‘house desperately in need of a bride’. Poor Sant was her fourth husband, while the number of lovers might have gone into hundreds. All along these natural satiations of her basic desires, the lady hadn’t conceived even once. Mockingly, they—thus—branded her a barren field where all eligible ploughers could dump their seeds without any prospects of a crop.

Her status of being a woman being jestingly hurt, she branded all the men around as impotent. Further poked by the puns, she flatly declared that she is yet to come across a real man. Thus her search for the real man continued, while the poor spouse suffered the society’s condemnation for being the husband of such an errant wife. He walked like a corpse lost in his thoughts of the other world—thoughts of grave. Already there were very loose strings through which he was related to the society; but now even those feeble sinews were snapped, leaving him drifting away and away from the society with each passing day.

Then one day the news busted.

‘Sant’s wife is pregnant!’ The news did tornado-kind rounds in the dusty streets. A great game of guess now occupied the people’s minds.

‘Who sired it?’ was the puzzle to be solved.

As the legal husband, Sant had every right to be called a father, but who cares for such legal norms; so even if poor Sant could have been easily the real father, the stompings of her free-wheeling passions took the searching trial far and wide. Failing in the quest, they left the answer to be settled by her only. But with a mischievous smile she guarded the teasing secret. Naughty and tormenting glint in her eyes always seemed lost in the wild imagery of that real man. Nonetheless, the truth was that even she had doubts.

She gave birth to a girl. Here, but, she showed the littlest bit of her wifely duty towards the tormented husband.

‘You are the real father of this girl!’ she had enough wits to declare it to the wronged husband, and his eyes glinted after so many lightless days and nights, as if he had finally achieved some compensation for all those horrid wrongs against his person by his wife.

For this moment of happiness, he even rewarded his wife by absolving her of all her past sins.

‘Maybe she went off the path to become a mother and now that she is going to be one, she’ll definitely mend her ways!’ he drew some solace.

Despite the society’s constant suspicious hen-pecking regarding the real father, he loved the girl child with all the emotions allowed by his soft heart. However, motherhood didn’t change her ways. Now that her matrimony had been further strengthened by the new-born daughter, she became even more liberal and free-spirited in the pursuit of her agonising desire. These days, she would vanish with her latest beau for days on ends; but would always return after each escapade.

In these hours of desperation, he was clinging to the girl for support with as much filial affection as his pathetically sulking existence allowed. Whenever she returned from a furlough, he tried to close the door in her face; but there are limitations to the opposing force put up by a gentle soul. She would easily break in—either using her own strength or with the help of some lover of bad repute who threatened the poor husband with dire consequences if he kept the wife out.

To augment her case further, all the carefully manicured laws to protect the women rights were in her favour for she belonged to that category of humanity that has been historically harassed and exploited by the male-dominated social system in India. Whenever he threatened to put her out of the house, she spoke out her more dangerous threat of going to the police. Since as a father now he had more responsibilities, he did try to put check-dams across the course of this freely gushing mountain river; and whenever checkmated, she responded with a hissing and sinister look. So to all her forte of easy morals, a newly fanged trait was added.

She then found someone whom she could clutch onto for months. This time she was away for many months. All along the period, the poor husband kept on praying for a satisfying life for her somewhere else. But then she returned and to add to the incessant flow of news, she was rumoured to be pregnant again. Carrying the child of that lover, she had tried her best to cling to him but he had very efficiently vanished into thin air. She thus returned with a heavy heart and heavy belly. This time the husband did his best to keep her out of the house.

‘I’ll not allow you to remain under this roof with that bastard inside you!’ he hollered against his otherwise calm and composed demeanour.

‘If you can keep one bastard then why not two!’ she hissed like a snake.

The fort of his resistance caved in and she entered triumphantly. All through those months of pregnancy his face turned graver and graver. He was at that stage of his parentage when he couldn’t stop loving the girl. He constantly convinced himself that he was the real father of that girl and she was just lying to punish him for his resistance to her freeways. The more he pondered over it, the surer he became of his fatherhood.

He was now living separately from his brother, who witnessing the deeds of his sister-in-law had distanced himself from the whole episode.

Without any jest and urge for life, Sant now survived on the tiny plot of land falling in his share. Sadly, there was hardly any farmer’s excitement as he worked in the field and the child played nearby. To earn a few morsels for the kid seemed to be the only aim left in life.

This time it was a boy that was delivered under his roof. Again she took to her natural ways as soon as she was out of bed. During such absences he, now, had to take care of two children. But even after drawing out all the niceties in him, he could not help disliking the boy at least because he was sure of its illicit origination.

As if to draw the last nail in his coffin, she then eloped with a relative of his and didn’t come back for months. During this period his health went plummeting down; but those around barely discern the changing colours of a stone. To them he had become a perennially sulking statue. A stone he was while feeding and taking care of the daily needs of the boy and the girl. His only moments of being human silently surfaced only when he cuddled his daughter. Every passing day convinced him more and more that she was his real daughter, while the very same day further added to the gulf between him and the boy. It is not that he was always a stone to the boy. Sometimes the moisture of pity and piety would emerge on his stony surface and he would mutter:

‘A poor orphan! Both his father and mother are as good as dead to him!’

It would have gone on like this for we don’t know what period of time, but then something snapped inside him one day. The girl was aged five at this time; the boy was just two. Through one honest instinct he knew that storms of circumstances finally lashed the crewless ship of his life. The life inside protested for his criminal negligence of himself; for such is the bird of life in this cage of body—it goes on ever making the cursing noises against the confines and limitations, but when the cage gives in, it turns fearful of the vast freedom, and cringes over the broken wires.

Poor Sant knew that he should consult a doctor. But there was no money (less importantly), nor was there any will to live (more importantly).

The boy had never appeared more than an orphan to him. He thus took him to an orphanage and returned only with the daughter to the village. The stony mountain inside him that had steadily built up precipitously over the years had gone too high and steep for its bearing capacity. Shaken by the unnaturally heaving soufflés of his heart, he knew it might collapse any time, any day. His heart now seemed incapable even to carry those fatherly palpitations for the daughter, like a panting mule, heavily saddled, giving a laborious jerk to its brittle bones. During these moments of peril, he clung to the child for support, for no other support was available. Strangely, to the villagers he was the very same Sant who had been always like this—unassuming, unobtrusive, introvert, almost deaf and dumb.

For the last two months or so, his pretty wife wasn’t around, so nobody cared to talk about him. But some soul, which hadn’t the hardest, insensitive shell of self-interest around it, sometimes mentioned in group gatherings that today Sant looked at him in a strange manner. Yes! Stared he at certain faces in the village who he considered had never mocked his circumstances. And it fell like a blessing upon them. Its meaning, but, nobody could interpret.

One day, then, the slope gave away under its own overbearing weight. At dusk, when the sun was gathering its last ray-lets to play with them in the other world, he died of cardiac arrest. The girl was playing in the street while her father collapsed in the room. The door was locked from inside. The people’s attention was drawn to the crying girl who was pulling at the window from outside.

The initial thought of the people was that he had committed suicide, taking a clue from the door bolted from inside. We know for sure, but, that he hadn’t died the way they thought. But why he had bolted the door from inside? Maybe in his stony contempt for this pretentious world, he wanted to keep himself away from its prying looks even after his death.

Faith’s Prisoner

 

Kalu had—we need to use the past tense for he is no more—almost full faith in hard work as a daily wage earner; but he had a still superior faith in getting fully drunk on the major portion of his meagre earnings. And that made him a loser at both ends.

His employers—the farmers, the people adding some more walls to their houses and all those who needed labour in any form—knew that his faith in hard work made him helpless to do at least two workers’ job in a day. As per the inapplicable law of humanity, he should have got double pay for his single day’s work. But the world is ruled by the ‘quantitative’ aspect, not the ‘qualitative’. So right from the beginning, it was a gain for the employer.

As per the applicable law, the hardworking labourer had no right over the unseen and irretrievable half of his well-deserved wage. So year after year, they kept on paying him only half the amount due to them in reality. So what if almost the entire village was indebted to him, the simple creditor but never tormented them on this account, for Kalu was no sahukar exploiting the needy through the exorbitant rates of interest.

For each piece of work he did, a kind of little bonus undid any feeling of exploitation. The people knew his superior faith in cheap, local variety of liquor. Thus after each assignment of work lasting many days and even weeks, he got a bottle worth his half day’s wage. And that squared up things pretty nicely for both the parties. With a bottle of cheap liquor as a gift, Kalu would forget and forgive anything under the sun. The grossest of wrongs committed against him would stand undone just with that magic of alcohol. 

Out of his highly subsidised wage rates borne by his faith in hard work, he had to take big, bitter swigs, sips and draughts of local desi liquor to still more affirm his faith in the Goddess of oblivion, hallucination and cessation of work, during which period the poor chap was spared of the bone-breaking physical drudgery.

Thanks to the inherent charity involved in the system of wages, many people just rushed to hire him. There was almost a mad scampering around the harvesting seasons when the profit-driven farmers just bayed for his blood. Now at least some stakes were raised for him, for the competition-subdued farmers tried to out-do each other by ensnaring him by offering the liquor of superior varieties as a bonus.

If we subtract the cost of his daily sips of ease going away from his own pockets, in the hard monetary sense, we can surmise that the poor fellow broke his back virtually for nothing. We can say that both his faiths supported each other in equal measure.

****

Their community of Lodhi Rajputs had migrated to this part of the countryside Haryana about four-five generations ago, in 1830s to be precise, when the Britishers dug the Western Yamuna canal to supply water to Delhi. His forefathers were hired to dig the canal. They completed the task and settled in the area. The earliest settlers engaged chiefly in taking fruit gardens (mainly berries, guavas, blackberries and mangoes) on lease and do their drudgery on them to carve out a living. The horse was their main pet animal and consequently the tonga was a favourite mode of personal and professional carriage.

Later, the things changed as everything is meant for change, either for good, bad, both or on exceptional occasions, even neutral. So the swift currents of time left a mark on their form of occupation and life styles. However, one thing didn’t change and it was poverty and doing drudgery daily to survive as landless people.

Kalu’s grandfather had died decades ago, leaving his ever-humorous wife in charge of four sons and four daughters and the upcoming trail of grandsons and granddaughters to carry along in her cart of widowhood. She was just in her late thirties. The onerous duties of a single landless parent with an ever-increasing family hardly quelled her comic attitude towards life. She simply laughed away most of the routine challenges of life faced by a poor, socially low-placed family. Her funny anecdotes, crude humour, jibing puns, serious folklore stories and unsparing laughing bone made her arduous journey easy for herself as well as others. The family matriarch just laughed away the hard husbandless, multi-childrened days selling watermelons, sugar beet, berries, guava and mulberries, all made still sweeter by her accompanying humour and the tongue’s nice work. Even the drowning of one of her sons in the canal, taking its life-giving and life-taking course along the village fields, could not cower down her cherishing of life for too long and she was firmly back on her feet.

Her days were as toiling and tiresome as could be expected of any widow with many children, creating morsels out of misery, but her fun and pun-loving nature greased the creaky wheels of her widow-cart; and the matriarchal family just trotted ahead with she and her brood playing their assigned parts. It just stopped to get them married off now and then. So the daughters got alighted from the cart driven by the grey-haired carter but the load remained almost the same, for their place was easily taken by the daughter-in-laws. However, even though both the daughters and the daughters-in-law bore almost the same weight, it but made much difference to the speed and direction of the cart. The journey was made further complex as the grandchildren very quickly took almost all the empty spaces without giving her any respite.

Very smartly Kalu too had been provided a ticket to ride in the cart by the invisible forces of destiny present at the time of his parents having sex. He found the silvery-haired, black, wrinkling matriarch still going strong. But by this time her strength and resolution was depleting as he stepped ahead in his childhood, nestled in a joint family housed in a small brick house that quite commonly had a room on the upper storey. This along with its semi-plastered front wall—leaving the back and side walls unplastered as an indication of how far they still had to move up the social ladder—evinced the tell-tale signs of their joint hard work. The roofs were still not layered with brickwork and the floor too was of mud and dung paste. The small house was thus crammed like a hen-coop where the messrs mother-in-law Vs daughters-in-law were inevitably involved in a game of hen-pecking.

Fortunately, the children aren’t much bothered about such grown-up’s bickering, so Kalu had a full throttled childhood filled with pond and river swims, joyrides on the family horse, riding tonga at a hurtling pace, scaling the highest branches in the family-leased fruit garden, sweet-sour sensations of stealing from under the keen eyes of the family matriarch and still ahead the great excitement and experimentation with sexuality in the form of masturbation and feigning sex acts like the elders with the children of both sexes—how could he help being a witness to the very same, given the still blowing passions of his parents, uncles and aunties within the narrow confines of their tiny house.

The new elements of controversy were added as the grandchildren turned grand-boys grand-girls. The cord of her control was broken and the matriarch diligently held out the baton to the three new families, but not before getting the eldest son’s eldest two sons (that included Kalu in addition to his elder brother) getting married. It was almost a child marriage and still four-five years before they turned the real householders, enjoying the fullest throngs of sexuality just at the threshold of early youth.

In the meantime, Kalu still had to grow both mentally and physically; drop out of the school after class 5 (a clear generosity from the primary school, given so few attendances, no homework and almost no educational learning). The schooling was a mere fun-drag for five years, almost a ritual. He simply declared one fine day that he won’t go to school anymore, come what may. This decision and its bland declaration fetched him a few parentally abiding thwacks from the fresh patriarch on the body of his erroneous son. However, it was expected—later or sooner. So Kalu was adopted as a new labouring hand to the family’s pool of resources.

Their grandmother remained with the youngest son. And from there, she still tried to support all her progenies; though now she had to put up sometimes drama, the other times show subtle shades of diplomacy and now and then feign neutrality and favouritism to support her status of being with one and not the other two. Still the old mother in her had enough calibre to manage all this. She would continue to do the job till she will die suddenly of liver cancer a couple of years into the grandchildren’s real matrimony.

****

Long before he purchased his first whole pack of beedies as a fresh school dropout in his new thatched house, he had already been experimenting with smoking in the secret on the left-out stubs and one or two complete ones stolen from the elders’ collection of these leaf-bound little cigarettes of tobacco.

As he grew up, so did the strains of vagrancy; but one thing also grew and that was his belief in hard work. His dusky limbs grew stronger and his height opened up to an average level. He now smoked in the open like a grown-up right there in the presence of his parents. A first-rated drunkard initiated him into the art and craft of opium and alcohol meanwhile. The habits grew as did his passion for hard work. Now there were no more fruit gardens—save some exceptions here and there and even these had been truncated to a very small size—so they started taking cultivable land on yearly lease to muster up the price to be paid to the owner and surviving morsels for themselves. Off and on, whenever he found time from their own cultivation, he worked as a wage labourer.

His strength grew and so did his reputation as a first rate worker who wasn’t just interested in seeing the sun progressing from dawn to dusk, but found pleasure in watching its differently angled rays at various points of the day reflecting in his sweat’s puddle. Happily profited by getting two day’s work accomplished in a single day at the rate of a single day’s wage, they praised him for the copious amounts of alcohol he would swig down after his backbreaking working hours. Initially his family tried to check down the riveting flow of this fuming river of intoxication, but their piecemeal efforts were easily checkmated.

Thus became his identity in the village: The hardest worker and the hardest drinker.

He formed drinking groups in the other low caste neighbourhoods, which further dented the already skewed economy of his hard work. These were but his heydays, as he got all the compensation through his illicit relations with two or three badly treated women, the sufferers of domestic violence and crimpled-by-poverty housewives in the underprivileged, landless locality. The freshly adolescent snake of his passion hissed in their groins, many-many precious minutes and sometimes even a complete hour when he was high on opium. To checkmate his rampant passion, the father brought his wife—a mere wispy girl—to make him enjoy the conjugal bliss. She, just a tiny streamlet of sorrow, surrendered herself like an obliging, uncomplaining girl-bride to his stream of passion and orgies.

Irrespective of what went in his personal life, the prospective employers still found him the very same Kalu, the forever good worker. After all, the social position of a man is determined by two factors: a) either what he actually gives to others freely or at highly subsidised rates; b) or raises his material status to the extent that although others might not get a penny from him all along his life yet a prospect does exist, however far the hope might galore.

Kalu belonged to the first category. So they liked him without investing too much on their part to sustain the emotion. What he did with his meagre earnings was nobody’s business. Their only motive was to get his help in their business at a highly subsidised rate; which he did like before, so there was hardly the question of his fall of status as a very-very hardworking, honest labourer.

Can a person be good by remaining good to others and being bad to himself? His addiction ensured that he could never be good to himself even if he tried his best, utilising the golden quality of any human character—hardworking nature and a soul that always got attracted to work like iron to the magnet. Many times, he worked assuming work to be his only reward. However, this type of philosophy very easily ensures a highly troubled domestic life. As he was bad to himself only, how could he avoid being bad to his better half? The poor wife-cum-girl or girl-cum-wife suffered all the fire of his frustration.

Now he took days out of work and drank right from dawn to dusk and then again deep into the night. But people still kept on liking him; for he seemed to be making amends for the lost days on the working days by toiling even harder than earlier. Nonetheless, the economy of it was futile, for he got the average working pay even though he worked thrice as much, driven by an unavoidable fury of work that only alcohol made him to forget.

Within no time he was the father of two sons: a suitable threshold for starting a separate family unit.

‘From now onwards manage your own affairs and bake your bread on a separate hearth,’ his father tried to yoke him into responsibilities.

His wife cooked on a separate hearth but they remained in the same thatched shelter run by his parents. In addition to Kalu’s hyperactive role on the poor stage of the famished household, his elder married brother (now a father of three himself) and two younger unmarried brothers kept it a happening place. During all this turbulence, the family had some moments of respite to get the only daughter married off in which the family matriarch, though she stayed with her youngest son, played her maternal as well as monetary part much to the chagrin of the daughter-in-law she was staying with, who accused:

‘You fatten your old flesh on our crumbs and shower your affection on these neighbours!’

****

Now we enter the deciding phase of Kalu’s life. He was in his mid twenties now.  

If we trace the story from his wife’s angle, it will portray another independent story of sufferings and privations. But let us consider it just a tributary stream of sorrows that emptied its surrendering worth into the major stream of the husband’s bigger woes. The fact that her husband was the hardest working labourer in the village, in addition to the another fact that he was the hardest drinker as well, made her life miserable beyond measures. All in all, the poor lady suffered in poverty, deprivation and the barrage of her husband’s acts of verbal and physical abuse. To the rest of the village, he was the very same Kalu who worked double for a single wage and responded nicely, respectfully to their working calls.

Is our goodness or badness decided by the number of people who think we are either good or bad? The poor lady almost worked like her husband but was still a bigger loser; because the husband took away her wages from the employers even before she could hold out her weak hand to gather the fruits of her labour.

Some conscience-driven folks even tried to follow the principle of equal opportunities of work and wage but were faced with the much dreaded threat from the numero uno taskmaster that if they again tried to separate his account from his wife’s then he will never work for them. Now, who wants to incur losses these days just on mere principles. Although they could easily get a replacement yet that would be at the best at a rate of one wage and single day’s work—a huge scale down from Kalu’s prospects of at least double work for a single wage. So the better sense prevailed and they too became party to his exploitation of his wife.

They took on annual lease a few acres of land to plant marigolds. The crop was very good. Marigolds—yellow, orange and scarlet—swayed as the symbol of their efforts, for both of them were almost equally hardworking by nature. The prices were really good in the flower market in Delhi about 50 kilometres away. The big bales of flowers meant big bucks as well. However, it also meant bigger prospects of money for drinking—not only for himself but even for his fellow drunkards from the village, who now swarmed around him like flies around a lump of jaggery.

Many times, when he had lost his senses, he woke to find the money missing from his pockets. After all, it is so easy to rob a fully drunk man. So the whole season passed with almost no spare money and the rent for the land lease was yet to be settled. However hopeless the situation turned, in addition to a more and more whimpering wife who continuously pointed out the impending disaster, it but won’t create much worrying lines on his face. Those who have faith in hard work, they worry less about failure to the same extent. And Kalu was really a tough nut to crack. He knew that he had strength to earn the money through toil and blood and pay the debt. So he laughed off his wife’s desperation and started working with even greater zeal; of course, he continued drinking with equal zeal as well. Lease debt plus the exorbitant interest mounted and at last he started to feel the pressure.

The sky high prices of tomatoes in the vegetable market attracted him monetarily—perhaps for the first time—with the prospects of a short-cut to earn some quick money by reversing the earlier ratio of double work for a single wage. Each and everybody in the farming community was talking of tomatoes for these were fetching hefty prices. A crate of tomatoes appeared like a tiny bar of gold.

Taking a shortcut from his usual means of hard work to way lay the debt, he purchased a raw, handsome, buxom crop of tomatoes at a hefty price. The new scales of profit had already been set up in the village. In the previous season, a seven acre plot of tomatoes had fetched 60,000 rupees to a farmer. Entailing his dreams, many more farmers from the village had planted tomatoes this year.

Simply deriving his equation from the previous year (and also from this year’s early signs of a hefty price because the early-sown varieties were making farmers delirious with joy), he purchased an acre of young standing crop for 25,000 rupees. Easy money shone through the fat, greenish tomatoes of hybrid variety standing in the hired land—for he was just required to pluck these as soon as these ripened: A tremendously easy task in comparison to his earlier drudgery.

Only the first visit to the market with his crateful of ripe tomatoes was sufficient to turn him glum. Instead of a wad of notes, he returned with famished pockets. The prices had crashed due to the glut in the market and he had drunk away the pittance he got in return of his bumper crop after payments for plucking, picking and transporting. Perhaps the providence was unforgiving regarding his earlier equation of work. For double the work, he had always earned almost half in return; and the equation won’t just change like that.

Market kills! The onion that once toppled the government in Delhi; it on another time gets thrown away at 50 paisa/kilogram. The farmer is always held by his throat by the market fluctuations. In its fluctuation of prices, it almost butchers farmers, especially the landless ones who rent land or purchase standing crops at fairly high prices because then the market looks good. Then the weather plays cat and mouse. Earlier it was only the weather given its divine unpredictability that tormented and tortured them; and now came the market with still greater inexplicability, fluctuation, unexpected shocks, surprises and jolts. So between the paws of two mighty cats, the little mouse rolled, getting mortally bloodied.

Kalu also rolled bloodied between his hired standing crop and the market. The owner planter had put up a very grand show of hard work that had been amply supported by an equally grand show of weather conditions. So the crop was amazingly good. However, equally grand show in every nook corner had uniformly showered bumper productivity in the surrounding countryside. Tomatoes were as big, ripe and succulent as their hopes. Even the hardworking Kalu found it difficult to keep up with the picking labour rate on account of exceptionally large amounts of ripening daily.

The market crashed with surplus. Too much of luck to too many farmers isn’t digestible to the market. Prices ate dust. On successive days, his earlier equation of more work for a lesser wage hit newer and newer lows. The poor fellow, for the first time, had drunk away the last portion of his meagre earnings. And when the tomatoes said good-bye to their span of fructification, he was left with only 5,000 rupees at the end of the season. Fluctuations in prices had meant he had been electrocuted.

Quite surprisingly, this time he didn’t drink it away. In the simmering hot days of June, he took one more short-cut to offset the negative consequences of his earlier short-cut. These 5,000 rupees he spent on purchasing watermelons, sold the produce in the wholesale market as well as well as hawked day in and day out by the roadside. However, the law of diminishing returns was catching up with him furiously. Gone were the happy days of double work on a single wage.

This investment of 5,000 rupees fetched him only 1,500 rupees. It had been quite a time since he had been unfaithful to his two faiths—hard work as a labourer and the fantastic guzzler of alcohol. Before returning to the first, he decided to pacify the latter, for he had 1,500 bucks with him. Understandable, when one gets this much out of an investment of 25,000 rupees, the further loss of these 1,500 rupees doesn’t make any difference—unless one is a financial wizard.

So he drank these off quite regally. But this time, even his hallucinated world won’t give him total respite. These big figures still tormented him. In the first half of the first decade of the new century, to a landless wage earner in the famished countryside, it was a huge sum after all.

Including the interest, he the landless labourer owed 40,000 rupees to two landowners. While lost in the sea of liquor, he tried to muster up his belief in the other faith—hard work. Sadly, keeping both his faiths (working doubly for a single wage and worshipping the goddess of intoxication with a major portion of the former) in addition to the upkeeping of the family (we shouldn’t forget he had two sons by now: one aged four and the other just two), he calculated that he will require at least two lifetimes to settle his debts.

Hopelessly drawing out the last notes from his pockets and staring at them he lay in his room fully drunk. During this time, he made amends for his brutalities done to his wife. He spoke nicely to her; even purchased her a new salwar-kameez and two sets of T-shirts and shorts for the boys. With the last hundred rupees he went to the nearest tehsil town and returned with three pills that would affirm his faith in eternal sleep and obliviousness forever. These were deadly poisonous sulphas pills that the farmers put in their grain stores to kill the last of the last insects.

Lying in his room on a semi-depilated cot he had already swallowed the two pills when his wife caught him, tried to prevent the third from ending into the destination of death. But she was weak work-broken creature and he was still stronger than her. Caught in the death’s throngs, he gave his first and last parental sermon to his sons standing nearby, scared out of their wits, the younger one howling because the other one was also doing the same.

‘Keep your mother always happy!’ he managed to say as his mouth started to get effulgent with poisonous foams eating his innards.

By the time they took him to the hospital at the district city his soul had more or less escaped from the cage tormented by his two faiths. The doctor knew that he should declare him brought dead, but realising his Hippocratic oath he still tried for at least a couple of hours.

‘It is the costliest life-giving treatment I’m giving him!’ his eyes seemed to say.

However, it was a foregone conclusion that the poor fellow will not survive. The doctor as well as the patient’s relatives were doing their futile duties only. There is but a limit to which one can perform one’s duty. So they had to finally stop this game of duty.

By this time, the cost of treatment had further gone against the tragedy-struck family. At the final call, the doctor’s hands struck to 20,000 rupees on the price clock. He was smartly adamant; declared that he won’t allow them to take away the body unless they settled the dues. Kalu’s father thus again borrowed money, settled the doctor’s fees and settled a part of the dead man’s debts as well.

The circle of debt would continue, possibly till Kalu’s own father’s death and more unfortunately even to the coming generations.

A Samosa with Extra Chilli

 

I’m passing in front of the famous Chotiwala restaurant at Rishikesh. There is a spicy rush at the eating point. The portly pink mascot sits with his tall choti and peers into the crowd with unseeing eyes. I wave at him to effect not the slightest reaction on his face and move on the pathway leading to Lakshman Jhoola.

You have Baba Kali Kamli’s Swarga Ashram community dining halls, first aid centres and rows and rows of the begging friars waiting for at least as much as mother nature won’t mind giving us—just enough to meet our need, keeping us out of the loop of greed.

Further on, you have big mango gardens on both sides. In between you have tiny cottages surrounded by the terai trees, the luxurious variety of vegetation that enjoys the advantages of both the plains and the hills.

There are numbered cottages, kutis, under the pious protection the Swargashram trust and banner. Kuti number 30 is very impressive. The dweller seems to have devoted a lot of attention in managing it.

In these tiny hermitages, surrounded by beneficent greenery, the unending quest to know the ultimate reality gets a stable platform. Here, the seekers of truth can rest and pause, unbothered about the struggles that they have faced so far in life.

There are yoga kendras and Sanskrit vidalyas situated among the groves. Yoga and meditation centres are a hot sell among the foreigners. Lynched by the inhuman onslaught of consumer and cultural monopoly that leaves hardly any choice for adventure, they arrive here to set out a new path of fun and frolics with the soul.

Taking a stroll along these spiritual delicacies, I take a U-turn and start walking back to have a visual revision of these vistas of faith. A destination-less walk can have as many U-turns and side-turns as possible. A foreigner seems eager to talk as I am walking on my destination-less path. It’s a mature conversation and we walk along the Ganges to reach a tea shop.    

The Canadian is a handsome man of around 50 years. He looks impressive with a baritone voice. Holding tea glass in one hand and caressing a street dog with the other, he looks to have a decent amount of share in both the physical and the metaphysical domains. He has spent a lot of time travelling all over India. He is almost proud to declare himself a staunch Indophile.

‘I love samosa. It’s better than the best burger any day. The corporate are destroying the Indian culture. Back home, you travel thousands of kilometres but still you come across the same food, dress, language, lifestyle, weather and culture. So why should I move around there. I love to travel within India because every step takes me to a new experience,’ he enlists the reasons for being so deeply in love with India.

Well, we have been taught that India is ‘unity within diversity’.

‘Allopathy is good for surgery and trauma. In the rest of the cases, it destroys one’s system. I prefer ayurveda any day. But the corporate-driven cultural onslaught is so powerful that in the next two decades, entire India will be the same boring Western caricature. Then I’ll be able to hang my travelling boots and rest at home. No more adventures,’ he looks sadly into a group of sadhus eating at the langar served by an ashram.

I know it’s lovely to have an exotic, chaos-loving spirit. However, we cannot ignore the fact that poverty and struggle are the backbone of Indian exoticism. The mankind’s sole obsession is naturally a kind of stampede to throw away the yoke of poverty and suffering. Things will of course change. The corporations feel this desperation at the mass level. They throw the baits of ambition, hopes and aspirations.

The entire cosmos itself is being heaved around by a mammoth ambition towards more sophistication and complexity. This ambition can only survive with a huge mass of unfulfilled dreams at the base. It cannot afford to have too many success stories because then, with everyone a winner around, who will labour at the base of mundane activities. The pyramid has to have a huge base of losers. The bier of success has to be carried by the bereaving mass of frustrated people. But that doesn’t mean the losers will stop fighting. They will continue waging wars. The corporate will keep their futile hopes alive. Some will jump out of the boiling cauldron. But these will be generational changes in a particular lineage. For one winner, there shall be at least 100 losers, only then the equation will sustain.

The Canadian is already on the verge of losing the hopes of retaining a poor famished India that appeals to his adventurous soul so much. But another cup of chai by an otherworldly figure revives his Indian exoticism. 

She is a beautiful girl in blue silk sari. Who is she and what is she doing here?

She challenged herself to the farthest limits of her insecurities and came all the way from Japan to marry a man who appears just like any other poverty-beaten figure around. He runs a tea stall. She challenged herself to love unconditionally, absolutely in avoidance of any expectations and security; just the pure bliss of giving all you possess in your mind, body and soul to your beloved.

She has a beautiful round face, puts a bindi on her forehead, wears a peacock blue sari with a golden embroidered blouse. She has taken up the role of a traditional Indian housewife in all its meaning and significance. She picks up the empty plates and glasses, arranges chairs, puts into order the stools, washes utensils, reads an elementary Hindi book in between, while her husband and mother-in-law run the tea stall.

It’s a ramshackle thatched enterprise by the street running down at the end of the bathing steps. A little alley leads from here to the Ganges. Some chairs and stools and wooden benches line up the alley. The sadhus, tourists and pilgrims sit down for tea and cigarettes. She moves around with petite delicacy, the symbolism of her exotic presence larger than the hills to the north.

One of the customers is a short, fiery, slightly built young man with razor-sharp, rolling tongue that stings with acerbic pieces of information, primarily scandalous in nature, with lots and lots of B.C.s. He was born at the premises of one of the most reputed ashrams on the banks of the holy Ganges. His father works at the charitable hospital run by the ashram trust.

‘All this is sham show. Fake babas. It’s basically business. Money. Fuck it, what religion? To have a room here you have to be a foreigner, or possess a gorgeous girl on your arm, or donate rupees in lacs. This man grabbed the property. The previous swami was poisoned. The scandal should be busted. He is always surrounded by 20-30 women who have ditched their husbands for holy dips. They are all part of a big political game. He has a rich family in another state. His children stay in a nice city. He has grabbed all the land up to the hills. India is poor because half the land has been grabbed by these fake babas. If the government takes it back most of our problems will vanish. Do you know who are the real babas? They are the ones who survive in the streets, who beg, stay on the road, eat and bathe in the open, who have surrendered every convenience that may make life comfortable. All the big-name ashrams are money business, popularity and politics. The babas don’t miss a chance to sleep with a woman. Yoga has been glamorized to the extent of being a sex show. It’s like any other product or service. I have seen it with my own eyes. All this big shiny building is hollow inside. There are dalals who manipulate and run the show in lieu of the favours done to them. It’s just like an institution like any other anywhere in any city. Intrigues, strategies, fakery, lies, deceit all are used to sell the services and grab political patronage. The babas are thriving. The Congress used to spank them on their bums. Now they will thrive for a long, long time till the present government is there.’  

He seems a little cantankerous typhoon. You cannot stop him. It’s better to listen or, more suitably, allow his words to enter from one ear and exit from the other without any slowdown midway in the head. If you allow them to take even a slight pause in between, it will definitely take a heavy toll on your mental and physical being. He has enough stinginess to put a robust hole in the fabric of your faith.

There are people at the tea shop who try to defend their faith as he vehemently pokes verbal spears into the soft tissues of their faith. Those who have reasons to keep their faith will go to a fairly long distance to retain it. There is a fight, starting with verbal vollies to graduate onto scuffling and jostling. The attacker on faith is pitted against many defenders of faith.

The Canadian gets into this multi-hued excitement of India and tries to save the little revolutionary. As it happens, the one who tries to stop the fight becomes a sitting duck kind of punching bag. The Canadian gets severe jabs on his ears and scalp. Both parties increase the frequency of their punches as they find there is someone intervening and hence the risk of a full fight is already reduced to a large extent.

The Japanese bride shrieks with shock as her carefully arranged chairs and benches are strewn around. She drops the tray she is holding and runs to hide behind her mother-in-law who takes up her broom lest the ruckus takes bigger proportions and threatens their establishment.

The Canadian gentleman stands with buzzing ears, bleeding lip and blackened eye. India is a happening place after all. The little offender against faith is howling with wounded pride and anger. Choicest abuses drizzle down. A policeman arrives and disperses the crowd.

I feel sad for the Indophile gentleman. I motion him to accompany me towards Ma Ganga a few paces down the little alley. He walks towards the holy waters and sits on a step, his feet immersed in the swift flowing currents. He washes his face. After a few pensive moments he smiles.

‘Sometimes it turns too spicy with eye-watering chilli. Just like samosa is sometimes too pungent. It’s an exception though. My experience of the great Indian cuisine is too big to be spoilt by these exceptions,’ he seems in decent control of his self after the jolting strikes.

‘Mother not only cleanses sins, she dissolves pain also, I mean real physical pain,’ I say.

He completely agrees. ‘But next time I will remember that I am just a witness, only a visiting observer of the game of Indian exoticism. I will avoid the role of a participant in any capacity,’ his smile graduates to a full laughter.

By now I know that he is recovered in the real sense and leave him there by the side of Ma Ganga to reflect more about his search. I then move on my own little path.