A World Within (6 page)

Dadoo did his B.Ed after that and he was selected to go on deputation to Nigeria. He had to stay there for ten years. Unfortunately we had to leave Mala didi and Vikram in India because of their education. Mala didi was in eighth standard, studying in a Hindi medium school, so could not have shifted to the new educational system in Nigeria. Vikram was also put in a boarding school in Shimla so that both had each other’s company. Initially Deepak and I accompanied Mamma and Dadoo to Africa. Vikram too came to Nigeria after Mala didi completed her matric and shifted to Solan, where our grandmother came to stay with her.

Dadoo instead of living miserly and saving money like so many others of his generation, travelled all over Europe, Asia, Africa and America. We used to rent a house in London for a month and he would take us to different countries. We roamed around like gypsies.

9

Brain works round the clock but when we are healthy we do not appreciate its effort. We take it for granted. It is not a machine, all our ideas and tales of laughter, desire and pain take shape inside the brain. It separates the past from the present in a very meaningful manner without de-linking the two. It is an always churning and brewing melting pot of sanity that gives us sense of time and meaning to our existence.

But for Dadoo this churning has stopped. For him there is endless confusion. He is at war with himself, trying to give meaning to things that he had always known but which are so unfamiliar. Everything is slipping before him; slowly, each moment.

He does not quite remember which day of the week it is. A few months back he used to be focused on Sundays: He’d often ask, ‘Today is Sunday?’ ‘When is Sunday?’ or ‘After how many days is Sunday?’ May be that was his way of keeping track of time. But now even that is disappearing.

It is true that death erases the entire burden of living. Whatever happens, the thought of death being there at the end provides relief. I agree with him when he says, ‘Enjoy and celebrate life, each one of us will die one day.’ But celebration of life and comfort of death seem so meaningless when I see him ebbing away.

10

12 May 2010

I am so surprised. The man who left his home at the age of four, built a house in another part of the state, left India with family to work in an unknown African nation, roamed around the world would be so obsessed to return to his native village.

In the last few years, he had started talking for hours about Kuljar, his childhood and lament why he built this house in Solan, so far away from home. He felt rootless and displaced. ‘I am an outsider. You will never understand what it means,’ he would say to us.

‘I want to go to Kuljar.
Sohnya sardara wey, neeli ghodi walya, tain kithe dera la laya, vey sonhnaya sardara vey …
[Oh handsome warrior with a blue horse/where have you settled/Oh handsome warrior …]. Kuljar is my
watan
[native place]. I own large areas of land in Kuljar.’

I sit and listen as he sings.

Some things are so deep-rooted, it does not matter where you live all your adult life, in the end you want to return to where you were born. Dadoo repeatedly talks about his village, and contemplates to shift though there is no house to live in. But this does not matter to him as there are always the houses of neighbours,
kyonki woh apne log hain
[because they are our kin].

One day I asked him, ‘Dadoo, what made you come back from Nigeria? They had extended your deputation.’

‘No one can stay away from parents for long. In Nigeria the relationships were not permanent, my parents were here so I had to come back. I saw several countries, saved money, bought land with that money. Now I don’t know where these lands are or what happened to that money. I have forgotten now. Anyway what do I need money for? Nothing.’

And then he goes on, ‘Since my father was educated he enrolled me in a school and then college. I was thrown out of my house at the age of four by my father. Imagine!’

‘But it was for your good, for your education,’ I say.

‘Oh! You do not know. Every child needs parents. It makes such a difference,’ he says then adds, ‘You cannot understand this as you have not gone through anything like that and you have not known displacement.’

‘Whenever I returned home from school or college during vacations I was treated like a king by my father and the villagers were in awe of me. I too considered myself above them, way above. After all I was the only one from the village going to a college. Then I became the first MA of Bilaspur State. It was a proud thing.’

‘My mother gave me an extra helping of butter; I got the pickles, curd, buttermilk ahead of my brother and sister. Villagers came to me requesting me to write letters for them, or to read letters or other revenue papers, official letters. I enjoyed the wonder and reverence that I saw in their eyes.’

‘You too considered yourself special, Dadoo?’ I ask.

‘Yes, everyone in the house would get up early and start working. My brother, Prakash, and sister, Maya, would get up at four and start doing household chores, but I could sleep till late. My mother would not let anyone disturb me and whenever Prakash and Maya complained your grandfather would just smile. I would get up at my will and hot water was ready for my bath.’

‘You were a spoilt child,’ I say with mischief in my eyes.

‘May be,’ he says calmly, ‘whenever I expressed my desire to eat something your Dadi would cook that thing immediately. I was the male child, the elder one and on top of that I was educated and had seen the world.’

‘But there were other things too that made me feel special. The villagers used to wait for my annual vacations to get their paper work done. I enjoyed that attention. As I grew up I started to feel that for people I was important, they looked at me with awe and respect,’ he recalls.

It suddenly occurs to me that he got all the importance and attention but no love. He got love only from his mother. Even his brother and sister did not love him, they too were in awe of him. His father was like most men of his generation who never showed any emotion or affection. The villagers who came to him to get their letters read did not love him either. This led to a void forming deep inside him that he never fully understood but it was there. So may be that is the reason why he longs to go back to his roots but at the same time he runs away from it as he knows that there is no one there to welcome him.

‘My father was not a typical moneylender. He was a kind man who loved people and helped them. They reciprocated this help by making him the pradhan of the gram panchayat every time the elections were held; but this respect was only for him,’ he mumbles.

Dadoo has another part to his personality, a part that does not want control over people but wants people to be part of his life. He wants to be able to share with others, so he always tried to make friends.

He said to me once, ‘At times I felt that my father showed me as a trophy to everyone, that I was a matter of showing off. This robbed me of love of people. They just looked at me with admiration, they did not care for me. And remember this is very important – care and love, along with respect.’

He repeats the same things again and again. Earlier I used to tell him that he had already told me this, but now I realize that he does not remember. So I nod as he repeats the story, ‘My father was a moneylender. The interest that he earned was his income. He used to pledge gold too. Once all gold was stolen from the house, it was more than a hundred tolas, I think. Since it belonged to other people, it had to be returned. That was a difficult time for us. Your Dadi had to do a lot of work so that the gold could be returned. It took us decades to return the lost gold.’

‘Why did you not put it in the bank lockers?’ I ask.

‘At that time there were no lockers, it was always kept in the house, buried underground.’

‘Tell me something about Dadi, was she strict?’ I ask.

Dadoo looks at me bewildered, ‘What do you mean? You cannot define a mother. Strict or not strict, she was a mother after all. She was affectionate, she never scolded us.’

‘Did she discriminate against girls?’ I ask bashfully.

‘At that time equality was not what you understand by it now. Boys and girls were not equal. Parents preferred sons. Those were different times. Now there is equality. At that time parents thought that girls were to be married off. That was all. You have not seen those times. Those were bad times. There were only two girls in my college and there were a couple of them in the school. You could not have lived even for a day in those times. It was a bad time, very bad time.
Bahut ganda samay tha larkiyon ke liye
[it was very ugly time for the girls].’

‘I would not have cared, I would have set people right,’ I say haughtily.

‘This you are saying now because you are living in today’s world. Had you been living then you would not have said this.’

I nod trying to understand. I have never experienced discrimination on the base of gender in our family. We have always been Mala, Vikram, Rewa and Deepak – individuals with our own likes and dislikes. Dadoo has never said ‘I have two sons and two daughters.’ It has always been ‘I have four children’.

‘Tell me something interesting from the days when you started teaching,’ I ask changing the topic.

‘I used to give money to a colleague to provide me company in Bilaspur, my first posting. You would not find people to talk to in those days. Moreover, there were very few educated people with whom you could have discussion.’

‘Money? You paid money to someone to talk to you?’ I ask astonished.

‘Yes, to give me company. I paid him by the hour,’ he chuckles.

Dadoo never ceases to amaze me with his unconventional ways.

11

20 May 2010

It is a bright morning, I am looking at the flowers blooming wondering whether it will be the last season for the feast of flowers in our garden in Solan. Dadoo seldom does gardening now.

After watering the plants, Dadoo comes and joins me.

‘
Kaam
theek chal raha hai
[is your work going on well]?’ he asks.

‘No,’ I mumble.

‘Why? What is the problem?’ he asks anxiously.

‘I am not able to do my work.’

‘Because of us?’

‘No, it is just that I don’t do it.’

‘Is it a new book?’

‘Yes.’

‘On what?’

‘Bilaspur.’

He looks at me blankly.

‘On you,’ I add.

‘Me, what about me?’ he asks bewildered.

‘On your life, your lifestyle and culture of your village.’

‘Oh you will have to go there, stay there, and talk to the people. Only then will you be able to write anything. What are you doing sitting here, go there and do some research,’ he says.

‘Tell me something about Bhakhra Dam,’ I ask suddenly.

Dadoo, almost instantly starts narrating, ‘We got land in Kuljar after the submergence of Chaunta, our original home. Raja Anand Chand, the ruler of Bilaspur state tried his best to save the ancient town of Bilaspur. He wanted to lower the height of the dam to a level, which would have saved the town. It was a beautiful city on the banks of Satluj, with famous plains of Sandu, palaces, temples and well- planned residential and market areas. The plain of Sandu was a huge flat grassland of about one and a half miles in circumference. Submergence started in 1954 and thirty-six villages went down in the waters of Satluj. This led to dispossession of people but the process has not stopped. We are still homeless. The feeling of being uprooted ends only when one dies, not before that.’

‘Bhakra Dam gave electricity,’ I try to cheer him up.

‘Yes, but to whom? People have to pay for it, it is not free. Those who lost their homes could never settle again. You have been born in good times and have seen good life. Life at the bottom of the society is very different. People who beg in the streets, they too have a life. You have not seen that. That time almost everyone in the villages was poor.’

‘What has this got to do with Bhakhra Dam?’ I ask confused.

‘We were uprooted and got land somewhere else. It is very difficult to resettle and build a new life after being displaced like this. The land allotted to us was barren. It was so difficult for poor people,’ he says wistfully.

‘But you were rich,’ I persist.

‘We were moneylenders. We were better than them but many times people did not have anything to repay the loans, so we filed cases against them. It was a profession, we lent money on interest and if the person failed to repay we filed cases. That was all.’

I am intrigued, ‘Did you torture people who did not pay, as we read in stories and watch in films?’

He looks at me in shock, ‘No, not like that. It was not like what you see in films, the bad moneylenders. Fifty years back there was lot of poverty. We helped people.’

‘Oh, could you explain, Dadoo?’ But his attention is diverted.

‘I played
bansuri
[flute] on the banks of streams near our house in Chaunta. We used to take bath in the stream, I learnt swimming there. Soap was only provided to men; even we weren’t allowed to use it everyday. Women used
rakh
[ash] to clean themselves up.’