by Akhilesh
It is said that after this incident the people of Sultanpur postponed the tonsure of their sons and daughters, grandsons and granddaughters as long as the Emergency remained in the country. Not just this, it was also rumoured that no pair of scissors and razors were used on the hair of the children, youths and old men of Sultanpur as long as the Emergency continued. And so, the income of the poor barbers suffered and you could behold faces full of unkempt, scruffy hair everywhere. Hair flowed down everyone’s necks, be it young or the old, and the sideburns grew long enough to cover the ears. Later, when the Emergency was lifted, there was such a mammoth crowd before barber shops that it appeared that they had taken out a procession to celebrate the end of despotism. These long queues were so enthusiastic, so disciplined and joyous that one wondered if the men in the line were there for a haircut or to cast their votes.
How could a procession be taken out in such an atmosphere to provide Comrade Komal with the chance of facing the lathis, truncheons and bullets! Let alone a procession, even the crowd at Comrade’s shop thinned because several socialists, frequent visitors at the shop, were locked up and many others went into hiding. A similar fate befell the Jansanghis and the Sangha cadres at Bhatnagarji’s shop. As a result, there was no rush for the newspaper now. The newspapers, weighed down by brick pieces, kept fluttering at the corners, waiting to be read. Naturally, Chacha and the nephew had ample time to go through them at Comrade Komal’s shop.
The nephew had not yet attained the age of discovering any charm in the papers. When Chacha examined the newspaper, he also skimmed it. First, he would look at the photographs. Printing strong photographs was not the trend then, neither were there any colour pages. Those were the days when photographs were printed through the process of making blocks and it was a complex and expensive affair and therefore, carrying photos was avoided. There was also no internet to provide photographs for every article, neither were there legions of reporters. The photographs were supplied only by government agencies. As a result, Suryakant would finish ogling the photos much too quickly and start looking bored.
The college gate would still be locked even when he was done. What option did Suryakant have then? He kept reading although he was unable to understand most of the lines and their meanings. Over time, his language skills really improved. He became such an expert at spelling, inflexions and sentences that people were staggered by his knowledge. He used words like samay sarni (time table), chalchitra (cinema), pratikriyavad (reactionism), anushasan (discipline), fascivad (fascism), nav nirman (reconstruction), parivartan (change), rashtradroh (sedition) and jan jivan (the common man’s life) so frequently and boldly in his youth that people would be taken aback.
And when he pronounced slogans like ‘Indira is India’ and the names of the prime minister’s close aides like Devkanta Barua and Vidyacharan Shukla, the listener would be panic-stricken. One day, in the classroom, Suryakant tried to find a rhyming word for Devkanta Barua and used the word ‘karua’ (bitter) in his attempt. He finally said Deokant ‘Bharua’ (sterilized). The class watched in astonishment that his teacher started trembling as if he was running a high temperature and finally fainted at the table. The students wondered why the teacher had fainted from this affront of an attempt to rhyme; after all he too is a Shukla! The nephew informed them, ‘There is a Shukla – Vidyacharan Shukla.’ Vidyacharan Shukla was the Information and Broadcasting Minister then. The nephew added, ‘And there is a Vidya Sinha.’
His sentences were heard by a teacher who was passing by the classroom with a large attendance notebook and duster and he ran back pell-mell. The classmates looked at the nephew in awe. They thought he was suffused with divine powers whose aura had hurled one teacher into the state of unconsciousness and the other to take flight mode. Naturally, when the nephew was being escorted to the principal’s chamber, the classmates were confident that it was the principal’s turn to face the music. They were certain the nephew was invincible.
The nephew kept staring at the ground when the principal interrogated him in his chamber. The principal was cross, ‘Why have you lowered your eyes? Can you not see? Are you now andhi? Explain!’ The word ‘andhi’ rang a bell in the nephew’s brain and he recalled something, ‘The word andhi takes me to the word nasbandi.’ The principal sprang out of the chair in terror. He put his palm on the nephew’s mouth, ‘Don’t say another word.’ This principal, at the threshold of superannuation, was imploring a little child, ‘Don’t say these things before anyone in this college or else we all will be shot dead and so will you.’
The nephew was bewildered. When he described the phenomenon to Chacha, Chacha said loudly, ‘So, you remember words from the newspapers, but you don’t know what the damn words mean!’ And then Chacha whispered, ‘Deokant Barua and Vidyacharan Shukla are notorious members of the Prime Minister’s caucus.’ The nephew blurted out, ‘And Bansilal?’ although he did not know what he was saying.
The papers at Comrade Komal’s shop affected Chacha in a different way. It created a huge hunger in him to read. He visited Comrade’s shop during the recess as well and continued reading the papers. He developed such an intense interest in reading that he finished all his course books in the first three months of the year. He went to the college library after this. Books lined the shelves in a number of cabinets, secured under seven locks in a total of seven bookshelves. Chacha asked the librarian for a few novels.
The librarian was shocked. He had been a librarian at this college for eight years and nobody had asked for novels or poetry books during that time. Perhaps that was the reason that the almirahs had not been unlocked these eight years. He had even forgotten which keys fit which locks. Finally, he fetched an enormous bunch of keys and tried them one by one, but the locks did not yield. However, Chacha was not willing to leave without the books. The librarian stared at Chacha to evaluate his determination and started breaking the lock of the almirah with the novels with a hammer. When the lock did not break, he broke the glass. Chacha got his novels and asked with concern, ‘How will you manage to keep these books safe now?’
The librarian guffawed and, ‘Which fool will steal them?’
The librarian did not know that Chacha was that fool. He stole numerous books from the library to adorn his house. The library enticed him so strongly that as soon as the college gates opened, Suryakant and Chacha would rush in like arrows, the former into the classroom and the latter into the library. The library did not subscribe to magazines and Suryakant and Chacha were keen on them. The trouble was that they had no money. The combination of the thirst to read and the lack of money finally led them to Khannaji’s bookstall.
The two would head to Khannaji’s bookstall during recess and would quickly start riffling through their favourite magazines. By the time a fed-up Khannaji yelled and drove them off, they would have read stories from a couple of magazines. They could read at such speed that when Gauri handed Suryakant a five-page love letter that had taken her three wakeful nights to pen, he finished reading it in four minutes. Gauri took it as an affront to her expression of love and was irked. ‘Idiot! You did not even go through it thoroughly.’ She snatched back the letter and left in a huff. She was so mad that she stopped talking to him.
Finding no other way out, Suryakant wrote a love letter and shoved it into Gauri’s hand. He had not written anything original, but had instead copied the text of Gauri’s letter. She took the letter home and perused it in privacy. As she pored over it, she rued her mistake. She felt so sorry that she developed a headache. But all this happened a few years later.
When the Emergency was lifted, Chacha and Suryakant’s happiness spilled over. There were two reasons. The first was that Chacha’s brother – Suryakant’s father – had started receiving his salary which had been stopped for several months because he had been unable to procure a ‘case’, meaning a person to be sterilized. The most important government programme during the Emergency was family planning. In each block of each district, there
was a strong emphasis on sterilization. Each government employee was ordered to procure cases. If someone was unable to fulfil his quota of cases, he stopped receiving salary.
Employees tried their best and many submitted fake certificates of having brought cases, and only then did they receive their salary. Rumour was rife that they were grabbing just anyone on the road and putting them under the surgeon’s knife. The mission persecuted beggars, labourers, rickshaw pullers. They were pounced upon and sterilized forcibly. Even old men and teenagers were not safe. There was another rumour that 200 labourers had been called to work at DM Sahib’s bungalow and vasectomy was performed upon them. A similar report circulated that 143 schoolgoing boys, who were in a morning procession on Republic Day, had been sterilized. Several bachelors were spayed before they could become fathers. Old men who had not an ounce of power left to procreate, were often trapped in the jaws of the vasectomy mission. If someone protested or complained, he was detained under the Maintenance of Internal Security Act (MISA).
There was talk that vasectomy surgeries were performed in the jails too. Several leaders who used to assemble at Comrade Komal’s and Bhatnagarji’s tea shops to debate political affairs were put behind bars as soon as the Emergency was declared, and the rumour was that they too had been sterilized. These issues were entrenched so deeply in the popular psyche that when the Emergency was lifted, the freed leaders were overwhelmed by public welcome events, but they had to prove through different manoeuvres later that they had not been sterilized. However, the general talk was that whoever was arrested under MISA had been sterilized. Naturally, nobody wanted to go to prison under MISA. If one questioned the sterilization mission, he was thrown behind bars.
The other reason for them being glad was that they were free to use both their hands now. For the last five months, they had been using only one hand as the other was always occupied. What had actually happened was that for the past few months the college students had been gripped by a dread. There was talk that the government thought that the targets achieved in the sterilization mission were not adequate, and a government order had been issued from Delhi that all government employees and students in schools and colleges should undergo sterilization to make the family planning mission a success. Naturally, terror spread among the students of the Government Inter-College. Some said that this was merely a rumour, but it was a time when the distinction between the truth and canard, tall tales and reality, public servants and despots, the body and its shadow, had vanished.
The entire college was in a state of panic, and the panic spread to other colleges within a week. Now the rumour was that since the number of students from government colleges was not enough to meet the target, this programme would be extended to private schools as well. The students of all the colleges of Sultanpur, including Chacha and the nephew, were terrified of being sterilized. Whether it was at the prayer ground of the school or the classrooms, one hand of the students was always engaged in protecting their member. The dread permeated their subconscious so strongly that young boys began to learn how to ride a bicycle with one hand.
Since Suryakant used to pedal scissor-style, he fell down many times during practice. Chacha and his nephew were so afraid that regardless of whether they slept, ate or bathed, they used one hand to protect the shaft. In all the cultural programmes held on the occasion of the Independence Day or the Gandhi Jayanti, the participants hid their manhood with one hand. They delivered speeches in the same posture, reciting poetry, participating in high jump and javelin throw. They ran with one hand over the schlong. In the high jump competition, they ran gripping it in one hand and made the leap. All the champions in this season lagged much behind the earlier winners in record, but they were not sorry. They were satisfied they had done their best in such circumstances.
When the Emergency was lifted, Suryakant went for a ride on the bicycle with his Chacha. And he was now pedalling properly, from the seat. In fact, he had grown an inch and a half taller and Chacha had raised the height of the seat.
Later, Suryakant took Chacha to the meetings of the party in opposition, the Janta Party. Although those were the days when they should have been preparing for exams – Chacha had to take the twelfth standard exams and the nephew the eighth standard – they had grown fond of attending the Janta Party’s election rallies. Chacha hoisted a Janta Party flag on the bicycle and it waved in the wind. Suryakant was a lot more enthusiastic. He clapped loudly for speeches against the Emergency and shouted himself hoarse screeching slogans in processions, although he had not developed a real understanding of the exact meaning of the words. He was assured of only two things – that his father’s suspended salary would resume and that he would not have to steer the bicycle with one hand.
The scanning of newspapers at Comrade Komal’s stall had familiarized Suryakant with plenty of new words. For example, murder of democracy, freedom of expression, Janta Party, the second freedom, non-Congressism. To be sure, he was unacquainted with their meaning in the same manner he had been of the phrases like twenty-point programme, discipline festival, etc., during the Emergency. However, it became obvious that learning a few words by rote could not turn one into such a staunch enemy of the government as Suryakant had become. His partiality for the opposition was spurred by a small incident. A few days after the Emergency was lifted, the students of the Inter-College remembered the incident when the nephew had made a few avant-garde experiments with words, which had prompted the principal to press his hand over his mouth. The nephew was felicitated in the memory of the incident, and the Hindi teacher pronounced him the Bhagat Singh of the future. This celebration, however, was much too minor and insignificant compared to the great commemoration at the Ghanta Ghar in the middle of the town. A large crowd had come in and the public had showered innumerable garlands around the neck of the boy whose head was half-tonsured and half-luxuriant.
Suryakant continued to roam around with Chacha on the bicycle and was not weary in the least. The nephew would pedal the bicycle, Chacha would be reading some book on the carrier behind, his legs dangling. The nephew would shout, pedalling away, ‘Chacha, are you reading a book?’
‘How d’you know?’
‘You have been sitting quietly for a long time.’
Chacha would laugh and resume reading.
‘Chacha, don’t read so much.’
‘Why?’
‘You’ll go mad.’
Chacha laughed loudly, slammed the book shut and broke into a song:
‘Zindagi ek safar hai suhana,
Yahan kal kya ho kisne jana!
Maut aani hai ayegi ek din,
Jaan jaani hai jayegi ek din,
Aisi baton se kya ghabrana
Ittir ittir re uttur uttur re!’
‘Chacha, you listen to Muhammad Rafi’s songs, but sing Kishore Kumar’s. How funny!’ the nephew said with some surprise.
Along with his addiction to books and magazines, Chacha was gripped by radio fever. He would place the radio on his chest or stomach and listen to it for hours. He would be reading a textbook or writing in Hindi or English while the radio would be blaring on the table. Suryakant could concentrate on his studies even when the radio was screaming. When he studied, all the other sounds of the world vanished for him. This was his secret behind scoring high marks with little study.
He had two favourite programmes on the radio. The first was Binaca Geetmala. Every Wednesday night, he would sit with Chacha in front of the radio and enjoy the sixteen most popular songs of the week. Sometimes, Chacha and he would bet on which song would reach the top rung. The compere advertised the goodness of Binaca toothpaste and Binaca toothbrushes in between the songs. However, the nephew and Chacha used the Bandar brand red tooth powder. The red tooth powder left a permanent mark on their left palm. Instead of a toothbrush, they used a neem twig, and while brushing they would peer in the mirror to make their teeth sparkle.
The nephew listened to the news besides Binaca Geetmala. His habi
t of reading newspapers at Comrade Komal’s shop had developed into listening to the news on the radio. But Chacha listened to other programmes. He came home from college, ate and sat before the radio. He had joined the degree course after graduating from Inter-College, and the nephew had cleared class eight and was now a student in class nine. Since Chacha’s degree college was two and a half kos from the town, he had the privilege of the bicycle now. Suryakant had to walk the distance between his school and home. He would eat rice, dal and pickles after returning from school, play a little and then sit down to study with Chacha. One evening, when he entered the room at study hour, he found Chacha mumbling ‘Balwant Kaur, Balwant Kaur.’
He perched near the mosquito net and asked, ‘Chacha, why are you muttering “Balwant Kaur, Balwant Kaur”?’
‘I was studying history, and there is a character called Balwant Kaur in the book.’ Chacha tried to contain Suryakant’s curiosity.
