‘But this CM is quite irreverent. Remember how she has attacked Gandhiji. Maybe she won’t be impressed by miracles,’ Tau ventured.
‘The miracle of democracy not believing in miracles? Tell me another,’ Panditji sneered. ‘And if she shows any hesitation we’ll light a fire under those BJP partners of hers. They certainly believe in miracles. Especially religious ones!’
What was this man saying! Dadu looked appalled. And, for once, I agreed with him. Was saving some bighas of land worth risking a communal riot? I raised my own hand and demanded to be heard. ‘We are unnecessarily getting all worked up about this,’ I said. ‘Even if the government does get serious about Buddhist tourism, surely the potential for development of the entire area will benefit us in the long run?’
‘Land is land,’ Tau said. ‘Once it’s gone, it’s gone.’
This simple logic had most of the greybeards nodding. But, surprisingly, support for my stand came from, of all people, my no-good brother-in-law, Mehnath Singh. All his television watching seemed to have paid off. ‘Bringing in the Japanese doesn’t only mean beautifying and preserving the area around Sankisa,’ he said. ‘It means a brand new airstrip − and with the airstrip come more jobs, more shops for selling things. It means better sanitary amenities and lighting and water arrangements, not just at the actual pilgrim site but also in the entire village.’
And then came the clincher, ‘And who owns most of the village − even if we minus the land government may acquire?’
What an effective argument! Thakur Lambemoochwala, who was the second ‘friendly observer’, immediately turned to Tau and asked if he had any land to sell. Shakti Maharaj said he would be satisfied with one over-night murti, around which to set up a modest temple. Even Tau Nakli Singh was happy that our lands – given to us in an unfair batwara done 50 years ago by Dadu’s grandfather, Bir Bahadur Singh Yadav − would now be so valuable. (Bir Bahadur Singh had kept all his own share of lands contiguous within our Etawah village itself and had given all his brothers disjointed stray bits.)
Everyone seemed to be happy except for Dadu. ‘More money means more greed. And more greed means more suspicion. More suspicion means the closeness of the clan will suffer. And all this for a pipe dream,’ he said. ‘Just think, centuries have gone past without any development in the area. This century, too, will pass. Politically, UP is in turmoil. Mayawati is already having problems with the BJP. The BJP is having problems within itself. Our fellow, Mulayam, is waiting in the wings to disrupt the whole show. And the Congress is still there, somewhere in the background.’
Everyone listened spellbound as he spoke. Suddenly the old man who had, all these years since he had given up the pradhani of the village, been content to sit at the sidelines and smoke his hookah, had finally shown some of the old spark. Old affection made them lend their ears. His common sense made them listen.
This was UP, he said, the land where 10,000 murders took place every year (as against 40,000 throughout the country.) This was the state where the conviction rate in these crimes was a mere one per cent. This was the state that presided over the demolition of the Babri Masjid. Which periodically played ‘host’ to communal riots in Moradabad, Meerut, Aligarh and even Kanpur.
Was this the land to which we hoped to attract the followers of the Buddha? True, we boasted of Sarnath (as also Kapilavastu, Kaushambi, Sravasti and Kushinagar − all milestones in the Buddha’s life). But how would we hide the fact that Sarnath was a stone’s throw from Varanasi − where a Babri Masjid-like situation was permanently on the boil? ‘In this situation of chaos is anyone in a position to think of development?’ Dadu asked.
He recalled how our principal from Mission College, Etawah, used to talk about some fellow called ‘Nero’ fiddling while Rome burned. ‘Now I ask you,’ he said, ‘with UP in such chaos, our venerable CM, Madam Mayawati, is flying off to Japan to attract Japanese tourists to UP. Do you see any difference between her and that silly Roman?’
33
THE DARK SIDE OF THE SUN
BABLU IS CONSTANTLY COMPLAINING THAT HIS DADI IS ‘just too dehati for words’; too rustic. His mother, after a decade-and-a-half in Delhi, fancies herself a thoroughly modern Mrs. so when he says something like this she nods enthusiastically.
Kya kare? I put all this down to that age-old jhanjhat, trouble that takes place between mother-in-law and daughter-in-law. Between my wife’s arms and my mother’s bosom there is little choice for me. When I take my mother’s side the little lady sulks for days and serves me cold chai. When I support the wife my mother’s tears are on tap and she repeatedly mutters: ‘A daughter is a daughter all her life. A son is a son till he gets his wife.’
What is a person to do?
They argue about everything under the sun. How to bring up Bablu. Till what point after leaving the village should a bahu be in purdah. Whether I should be served the saas’s favourite aam ka panna or the bahu’s bel pathar ka sherbet in the heat of summer. It goes on and on. One thing they both agree on, however, is the business of superstition. And they are at their best at the time of an eclipse.
Thank god that happens so rarely. For, imagine my plight, as a DLY taxi driver specializing in Rajasthan tours, each time this happens.
Take the tamasha that took place some years ago in October, when we witnessed the last complete solar eclipse of the last century. There had been great excitement at the taxi stand. Hotel rates were going sky high. Taxis were in major demand. An opportunity of a lifetime. And the wife was putting the clamps on me….
‘Tauba! Tauba!’ the little lady said. ‘Will you willingly bring the wrath of the gods down on your head? You, who take your life in your hands each time you set out on the Delhi-Jaipur highway? Can you really afford to take the risk? Do you want me to become a young widow? You want Bablu to be fatherless? No, there is no question of doing any travelling on that day.’
I was furious. There was this filmmaker, some Kashmiri chap called Raina, who had been contracted by Doordarshan to do a film on the effect of the eclipse on the birds of Bharatpur. He told me he might also do a companion piece on how the people of a particular village, close to the sanctuary, reacted to this amazing phenomenon. ‘That should be quite novel,’ I responded. He was quite sure of getting an ‘unusual’ story. ‘These villagers live in a world of more fiction than fact; more superstition than science,’ he said. ‘You would think that living so close to Delhi and in a state so inundated with foreign tourists, they would have graduated out of the Middle Ages. Imagine believing that an eclipse takes place because Rahu and Ketu periodically dare to attack surya dev and that we all have to pray for the safety of the gods. How absurd!’
‘Absurd? What did he mean by absurd?’ Bablu ki Ma started screaming when she overheard me repeat these words to our son. ‘That’s the problem with mixing with these journalist types and firangis day in and day out. Unbelievers! Next you’re going to tell me that Ganeshji didn’t gulp down milk the other day and that it was all a phenomenon of science!’
‘We’re talking of a solar eclipse, Ma,’ Bablu burst in. Over the years our DPS-educated son has started getting more and more impatient with my superstitious wife and there have been times when I’ve had to physically intervene between her belan and his backside. This was the kind of topic that could lead to some belan wielding. So I hung around to referee.
‘This is a phenomenon of science not superstition,’ Bablu argued. ‘This is no attack of the gods by the demons. A solar eclipse occurs when the moon completely blocks the visible disc of the sun. That is the fact of science.’ He turned to me and said, ‘Papa, the newspapers say that in India it will be best seen on a 46-kilometre-wide strip of land stretching over Rajasthan, UP, Bihar and West Bengal. Please, please take up that assignment. It’s a chance of a lifetime for me too.’
I could see that the wife was furious. The belan went up. ‘No question of working on that day,’ she said. ‘Not only that, you will take leave from work and drive
the whole family to Kurukshetra. We all need to take a purifying dip in the Brahmasarovar there. I need to pray for your sins, and those of this rascal Bablu, since you both don’t seem to care.’
Bablu was starting to get impatient. ‘Get real, Ma,’ he said. ‘With so many thousand people taking a dip in that sarovar place we are more likely to get some infection rather than purify ourselves! My home science teacher says there is more infection sitting around the banks of the Ganga than in the casualty ward of your average hospital.’ The belan came down in one swoop, deftly avoided, through experience, by Bablu. ‘Tauba! Tauba!’ she said, the rudraksha beads in her hands moving frantically. ‘Don’t quote science to me or I’ll take out your last report card and publicly read out the science marks. You listen to what your mother tells you. If you pray a little harder maybe there won’t be so many red lines in your report card!’
Bablu went red in the face. But the harami just wouldn’t give up. ‘Ma, how could you be so ignorant? We went through all this eclipse business before in 1980. I may not have been around. But Papa and you were. Papa told me what happened. Don’t you remember?’
That was a stroke of genius, although Bablu had no clue just what he had pulled off. I looked at the little lady with an ‘I-told-you-so’ expression. And, as she started to remember, she couldn’t look me straight in the eye.
In 1980, five months married and four months pregnant, my sister Pushpa had tried to insist on following the entire do’s and don’ts that Jawai Babu’s mother had ordered at the time of a surya grehan. The list was long and tedious: That 12 hours before Rahu started to show his fury, she should empty all the vessels in the house − all food utensils, all water buckets, etc. etc. That the family should not eat during this sutak period and that, at the actual time of the eclipse, she, being pregnant, should lie very still. That, while this was happening, Jawai Babu should liberally distribute food grains to the poor − especially dry grains like wheat, channa, sabut urad daal and til. On the next page of the instructions was the advice that she and Jawai Babu trek to Kurukshetra and take a bath in the Brahmasarovar immediately after the eclipse was over.
Since her naalayak husband had no intentions of spending his own money (even though the instructions were his beloved mother’s) Pushpa had turned to me for finances to see them through these elaborate arrangements. Since Chachi had not been on the scene the journey to Kurukshetra would have to have been by train or bus. But as I wasn’t yet married and hadn’t yet started to face the pressures of superstitious women around the place, I wasn’t going to part with my money without having my say.
Now, while I didn’t believe there was a correlation to the event, I was willing to go along with this distribution of foodstuffs business. Giving food to the poor is always a good thing. It also salves one’s conscience. But why only dry grains? There was certainly no earthly explanation and I wasn’t willing to accept a supernatural or superstitious explanation.
The mother-in-law had also said people should not look at the Heavens during the course of the surya grehan. Fair enough. One scientist savari had also said this was advisable. His explanation had made sense: that looking directly at the sun may cause ‘solar retinitis’ − burning of the retina − which could lead to partial or total blindness. But what I could not accept was the saas’s belief that looking directly at the sun would be misconstrued by the gods as one’s arrogance − arrogance which gave one the temerity to watch surya dev’s ignominious humiliation, rather attempted humiliation − by Rahu and Ketu.
In the end, I’m happy to say I had the last laugh. Jawai Babu conveniently got an upset stomach and declared himself both unfit to travel and to exert himself distributing foodstuffs. I was spared the cost of the tickets but Jawai Babu kept the rest of the money anyway. Pushpa, however, had a comfortable pregnancy. Her first son, Raunaq Singh Yadav (Bachu) − was neither born premature, or underweight, nor deformed in any way.
I glanced at Bablu ki Ma’s way while I flashed back. (I had repeated this story to her often enough.) A look of embarrassment shadowed her face. She, too, remembered. But, side-by-side, there was an unmistakable look of appeal. Consider her situation. Now she was the elder in the community. Now she was the one the young brides looked up to for advice and instruction on the superstitions, the rituals and the beliefs. But now she was also a semi-literate mother with a smart aleck DPS-literate son who continuously showed her down in his schoolboy arrogance. Would I, by recounting the past, expose her further to his ridicule?
My belan-wielding wife was silently begging for a way out. And, in my own fumbling way, I thought I should help. What was the use of ridiculing her? It would only show me down. I turned to her and said, ‘Better make us some tea. If we are to discuss this issue further let’s do it in comfort.’ Then, while his mother went to the rasoi, I nudged Bablu in the ribs and said, ‘Let’s humour her. There are so few moments when she asks to be the boss.’ That seemed to work.
He winked back at me and said, ‘No sweat, Dad. I get the picture.’
There was no one more surprised than his mother when Bablu, normally so arrogant and hard-boiled, put his arms around her and said, ‘Ma, I may not believe. But you do. That’s good enough for Papa and I. And, anyway, the papers say there is a mela at Kurukshetra at this time. It will be a fun trip.’
That evening I did some serious thinking. Bablu ki Ma’s outburst, short-lived though it was, had brought me down to earth with a bang. Arre bhai, what was I running down that village near Bharatpur for its superstition? Today we had the little lady thinking, although we didn’t rub it in to allow her a dignified way out. But how many other such people − who maintain these superstitions even more strongly − could we reach? My film producer client didn’t have to go to some remote village outside our capital city to get his unusual story. We were all living in the most superstitious village of them all.
The village called Delhi.
34
LAAL BATTI NETAGIRI
THE LITTLE LADY CAME IN WITH MY MORNING CHAI AND a frown on her face. ‘How could you decide to take on work at this time? Bablu has nine days off for Diwali and we were both so looking forward to going somewhere for a holiday.’
‘Arre, Bablu ki Ma,’ I said, ‘where was I supposed to be going? Ever since you protested about my ferrying that television producer to Bharatpur on the day of the surya grehan my calendar has been lean. Talk about bad luck!’
She handed me a slip of paper − a telephone message Bablu had taken while the wife and I were at the movies last night. My heart leapt, but I tried to keep the delight off my face. I didn’t want her to know how happy I was to get back into the thick of things. Especially a trip to UP at this crucial time. It seems Trivediji wanted me to drive him to Lucknow ‘post haste’. He could have taken the train but, with every Congressman converging on the state capital ever since President’s Rule had been declared, he did not want to take the risk of getting stranded at the station.
Trivediji was waiting at his gate at exactly midnight. He wore his usual khadi kurta pyjamas − but the starch suddenly seemed to have come alive. Over one arm he carried a pashmina shawl and under the other a thick official looking file. What an irony! I thought. The last time I drove him to Lucknow he spent the whole journey complaining about how some fellow called ‘High Command’ had dismissed UP politics as a combination of biryani, kebabs and ‘Pehle aap’! And how every UP politician thought that successful neta-giri was nothing more than getting your caste arithmetic right.
‘Gone are the days of principled politics and service before self,’ he had said. ‘Now a leader is not a leader of men. He is a leader of Yadavs or Dalits, Muslims or Hindus. Wait till we Congressmen get back into power. We’ll show them what governance is all about.’
‘And just how are you getting back into power?’ I had asked. ‘If the Yadavs and the Muslims are taken by Mulayam Singh; the Dalits are taken by Mayawati and Kanshi Ram; Kalyan Singh has the Lodhi Rajputs; Arjun Singh has the
Thakurs; N. D. Tiwari has the Brahmins; and the Banias and Kurmis are the traditional BJP vote, then what does that leave you?’ (Remember this was the time when Arjun Singh and N. D. Tiwari were in the Congress Tiwari and out of the Congress mainstream.) He had gone a paler shade of red and, to quickly change the subject, had started talking about the latest Shahrukh Khan film instead.
We entered Lucknow in the early hours of the morning. I headed for Mirabhai Guest House − the place my friend usually camps out at. He must have sensed the direction I was taking because he hastily tapped me on the shoulder and said, ‘Kahan ja rahe ho, bhai saheb? Raj Bhawan chalo! I now have every right to stay there.’
‘Bhai saheb,’ I ventured to say. ‘How are you automatically entitled to take over Raj Bhawan? Surely there is some sanctity to the institution of President’s Rule?’ He pretended not to hear. So I let the moment pass.
Just before we got to the imposing gates of the governor’s residence, Trivediji suddenly seemed to change his mind. ‘Go straight, go straight,’ he shouted. ‘Look for a photocopy machine. It’s most urgent.’
‘Whatever for?’ I asked. His impatience was difficult to contain but since he needed my help I was to be tolerated a little further. ‘Laal batti,’ he said, ‘laal batti is the thing!’
Laal batti! I didn’t immediately understand. It was only when we finally located a 24-hour photocopying service and he took out his bio-data to be duplicated that I started to get the idea. Of course! He was looking for one of those freebies that were given out so lavishly the last time UP came under President’s Rule. That ‘laal batti’, that red light which adorns the top of the important person’s inevitable Ambassador car. That symbol of official power!
Travails with Chachi Page 17
