Pratibha's remarriage?

The number of farmers committing suicide in Vidarbha since June 2005 has risen upto 1,136. In November alone, this year, 91 farmers have committed suicide.

This morning, a farmer tried to commit suicide by consuming pesticide in the Yavatmal district. His condition is reported to be very critical. In his suicide note, Rameshwar Annaji Kuchankar has blamed the Maharashtra Chief Minister and Deputy Chief Minister for bringing disaster to the Vidarbha region. His suicide note, released by the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti reads:
I don't know how to continue living. I have taken a loan of 15,000 rupees. The Government says that the price of cotton will not be hiked. Since I have plunged into losses, I am ending my life. My mother and father should not be harrassed. Chief Minister, please give us the correct price for our cotton. Deputy CM, RR Patil, fix the rate at 3,000 rupees otherwise more suicides will happpen. Pratibha, please get remarried; I am sorry, I am leaving you alone.

The scarecrows of Kolezari

The village of Kolezari in Vidarbha’s Yavatmal district is a sample of government’s short-sightedness and administrative apathy.

The board at the entrance of village Kolezari declares that the village is free from open defecation. Yet this small but significant achievement could not lure Prime Minister Manmohan Singh to Kolezari when he came to visit Vidarbha in July this year. “Five helipads had been constructed at various points in the village to facilitate the PM’s visit, but the state government conspired to cancel his visit to our village,” says a villager. This is the village which is at the epicenter of protests against the state government.

It was at the entrance of Kolezari on May 8 that Gosawi Pawar, a 52-year-old farmer committed suicide by consuming pesticide. A day later, on May 9, his son and daughter were to get married. His relatives say that he was under extreme pressure to buy presents for the marriage ceremonies. He owed an amount of 36,000 rupees to the bank and 90,000 rupees to the money-lender. “He was very restless for fifteen days. And then he just left, only to be brought back by the villagers as a corpse,” says his son. The villagers then pooled in money to get his children married the next day.

The villagers had prepared a complete file of grievances, which they hoped to hand over to the Prime Minister for redressal. Villagers allege that a few days before the Prime Minister’s proposed visit to the village, a few men from the state intelligence came to the village with a hidden camera to guage the people’s mood. When they reported the villagers’ anger, the state government decided to bypass the village. On the day of Singh’s visit, a widow, whose husband had died in a road accident, was presented in front of the PM at the Yavatmal town, as Gosawi’s widow, allege the villagers.

One of the letters, addressed to the Prime Minister that never reached him, reads: It is said that a Tehsildar and Talathi are friends of an agriculturist; however this is not true. These individuals have become corrupt and hardly visit the village. Whenever a farmer requests the Talathi for 7/12 extraction (revenue record) of his land, which is made freely available to farmer, he demands money. Such is the sorry state of the affairs at the village level. “Who will complain?,” says an old farmer, “for that, one has to go to the Agricultural officer, who sits in Kalam, 50 kilometers away. That means one has to have 100 rupees in his pocket. And who knows if even that will solve the problem.”

Arvind Lal Singare, one of the educated men of the village, points to a board near a handpump, that was put a few days before the PM’s visit. It informed the villagers that the water from the handpump was not fit for drinking as it was contaminated with fluoride.

“The handpump came into existence three years ago. Imagine we were drinking water contaminated with excessive fluoride and nobody bothered to tell us,” says Singare. Now there is one handpump at the extreme end of the village. “There is always a line in front of the handpump. I have to wake up at 3.30 am to collect two pitchers of water,” says a woman.

Almost every villager (around 350) has got Chikungunya this year. The nearest Health centre is nine kilometers away. “When I went there a month ago, the doctor gave me four tablets and asked me to get lost,” says a farmer. No wonder, most of the villagers went to a private doctor, who is six kilometers away. “He has become very rich,” a farmer refers to the private doctor, “there are times when he puts a patient on two bottles of saline water at the same time.”

“No one comes here. No rain, no Collector, no Prime Minister,” says a farmer, laughingly, “ I will tell you why. Because we are scarecrows. Scarecrows of Kolezari.” Some of the young men laugh with him. In times like these, laughter is a rare commodity. For who knows, when will the next suicide take place. And more importantly, who will commit the next suicide?

Also see: Interview with activist Kishore Tiwari and this.

Heads I win, tails you lose

As farmers in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra continue to be driven to suicide, it is the sarkari babus who are really benefitting from the relief package announced by the Prime Minister Manmohan Singh. A report from Ground Zero.

Even Gandhigiri has failed miserably in the Vidarbha region of Maharashtra. As a group of farmers in Vidarbha’s Yavatmal district washes the feet of a bank manager – to coax him into granting more loans – 45-year-old Kowdu Ukunda Parchake is being laid into his grave, in village Daaba. A tribal farmer, Parchake ended his life by consuming pesticide when his other family members were not at home; a pesticide that ironically cost him 3,000 rupees a litre. Villagers have assembled outside their mud settlement, where Parchake’s widow Savitri sits silently, her tears making two dirty arrays over her cheeks, down to her neck.

Parchake’s story has elements very similar to 111 other farmers of the region, who decided to end their lives in October. And to 1,101 of those who chose to bid a silent farewell to this world since June, 2005. Parchake was a loan defaulter, for 11,400 rupees that he had secured from a bank, and he had further borrowed an unknown amount of money from a private money-lender. He was under pressure to get his daughter, who had attained the age of eighteen, married. The cotton crop he had sown on his 3-acre land had failed, and as the Minimum Support Price of cotton fixed by the government dwindled to 1,750 rupees a quintal last year, he had lost all hope.

It is easy to blame multinationals or foreign powers for the suffering of Vidarbha, but one visit across the region makes it clear that the suicides by farmers are a result of the mess created by the government. The policies introduced by the government, activists working in this region allege, are inspired by economists and agricultural experts who never venture out of their air-conditioned environs. The cotton crop is about to be sold in the market, and the administration is now distributing pesticides to the farmers. A litre of pesticide that costs the government 1,700 rupees is sold off by most of these farmers for 200 rupees. During times when there is not even food to be offered to children, even 200 rupees mean a lot.

“Look at this,” Munna Bolenvar of village Hevyura points at a sack of gram seeds, “The government offered it to us, claiming that they were providing it to us at a 50 percent subsidized rate of 18 rupees a kilo. We went to the market and found that the same seeds, from the Mahabeej company, are available at 18 rupees a kilo. My brother-in-law lives in Andhra Pradesh, and I procured seeds from the same company, at 10 rupees a kilo from there.”


Everywhere in the region, the BT cotton has been affected with the deadly Lalya disease, which hits the crop so fast that by the time the farmer realizes it, the crop is reduced to shreds.

“The government beat drums about the quality of BT cotton. Right from the Union Agricultural Minister, Sharad Pawar, the government swore that this new variety would change our lives. They even roped that Marathi film actor, Nana Patekar, to trap us. Look how they have changed our lives,” says 70-year-old Nagarao.

“The non-BT cotton variety would bear flowers at least twice a season. But this BT cotton has ruined our lives. The moment the disease strikes the crop, we are forced to buy costly pesticides which can cost 10,000 rupees a litre and still the crop will not give the desired yield,” rues another farmer.

The Prime Minister’s rehabilitation packages, meant for the six worst-affected districts of the region, hardly reach any farmers. The packages are for the Yavatmal, Akola, Amravati, Buldhana, Wardha and Washim districts. They are meant to offer waivers of interest worth 712 crore rupees on bank loans, and extension of the period for repayment by three to five years for loans of 1,296 crore rupees.

A new breed of middlemen have come into being, since the Prime Minister declared the 3,750-crore packages. Thakur Sangrachaure, a farmer from village Kolezari, had borrowed an amount of 20,000 rupees from a bank. After the PM’s visit, a middleman arranged to pay his loan back to enable him to receive a fresh loan. After the middleman paid the amount to the bank, Sangrachaure received a new loan of 25,000 rupees. From this amount, the middleman deducted his original 20,000 rupees plus 2,000 rupees commission. Finally, Sangrachaure was left with a mere 3,000 rupees and moreover, he now owned 25,000 rupees to the bank. “This is happening in connivance with the bank officials. The manager has a share in the commission,” allege farmers. There is no way a farmer can put such little money to use to rescue his crop.

“So he ends up purchasing an item like television since it is a matter of prestige among villagers,” says Bhimrao, an activist.

“Is this the package they are talking about?” a farmer tells us, as he shows us a water pump. The pump, bearing the name of Vijay Motor Pump, was offered to farmers under one of the PM’s packages. For a period of three years, the government would offer farmers pesticides and other agricultural equipment worth 25,000 rupees. For this pump, a farmer was made to pay 4,500 rupees; the government claimed that it would pay the rest of 10,000 rupees directly to the company. “But we found that the same pump was available in the market at a price of 6,000 rupees. So who is cheating us? The government itself,” says Bolenvar.

Singh also proposed measures like horticulture and fishery, to diversify farmers’ income. The farmers collective of village Hevyura submitted a proposal for diary farming to the District Collector more than two months back. But they have yet to hear from him.

The Prime Minister also sanctioned 2,177 crore rupees for 523 irrigation projects; most are on hold, due to financial and management constraints. Out of 60 crore rupees meant to be spent on building 3,000 check dams this year, the state government has released only 7 crore rupees so far. Vidarbha has poor irrigation facilities; moreover, water charges in Maharashtra are the highest in the country.

In Vidarbha, farmers do not have easy access to cooperative and bank loans. Institutional loans disbursed to farmers in Vidarbha are as low as 8 per cent of the total of all loans, compared to 80 per cent in western Maharashtra . “It is a vicious circle,” says journalist Jaideeep Hardikar, “When farmers don’t get loans from the banks, they approach the money-lender, who charges interest rates as high as 200 percent per annum.” Two-thirds of Vidarbha’s farmers are loan defaulters. “It is almost 100 percent,” claims an activist.

Farmers across Vidarbha say that they cannot do away with money-lenders. “Suppose I fall ill and need money immediately. Do you think I will get an instant loan from the bank? The bank will never give me money. The sahukar (money-lender) will,” says a farmer. The banks may not have money for farming or health emergencies, but they surely have two-wheeler loans. Activists say they are aware of cases where a bank has personally delivered motorcycles to farmers who did not even known how to ride a cycle. As a result, it is a common sight across Vidarbha, to see motorcycles parked outsides homes who may not have even have a morsel of food.

Have the farmers ever thought of growing food crops instead of cotton? “Yes, we have,” says Dev Raj Sheda from Karanji village of Pandharkawada Tehsil, “We have grown jowar. But just a month ago, jowar was 800 rupees a quintal. Now it is less than 400 rupees a quintal.”

So, is offering packages a solution? No, say farmers in unison. “Just give us a correct price for our cotton. If not 3,000 rupees, give us at least 2,500 rupees a quintal,” says Paras Ram of Saikar village.

“There is nobody as miserable in India as Vidarbha farmers,” declares Kishore Tiwari of Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, “In America, the cotton farmers get a subsidy of 14,000 crore rupees. The Indian ‘Shehanshahs’ (Kings) are acting on behalf of the supreme Shehanshah of the world, George Bush.”

Besides better crops and pricing, another important step to stop suicides would be to bring private money-lenders under some sort of regulation. “If one Harshad Mehta would result in SEBI, then why are so many deaths not waking up the Government from its slumber,” asks Tiwari.

While the farmers are battling weather and debt, the illness chikungunya is spreading its tentacles. In the absence of government medical facilities, almost 80 percent of those who suffered from the disease went to private doctors. As a result, the farmers fell further into the debt trap. The nearest health centre from village Hevyura is 10 kilometres away. “I took a relative of mine, suffering from chikungunya, to the government rungnalaya (health centre) in Pandharkawada, but instead of treating him immediately, the doctor was taking a stroll outside, while listening to music on a Walkman. When after repeated requests he did not budge, I beat him up,” says Munna Bolenvar.

The most disturbing aspect in the region is that tribal farmers have been increasingly committing suicide, for the past two years. “Until two years ago, a tribal suicide was unheard of. No matter what happens, a tribal resident will stick to his land. But now, even they are ending their lives,” says Hardikar.

If Chandrakant Baprao Ji Mule had shouted from his home in, say Delhi or Mumbai, on April 1, people would have thought that he was trying to play a prank with them on April Fool’s Day. But that afternoon, when Mule’s wife, Rekha and his brother, Prahlad heard that cry, their hearts sank immediately. Even before they could react, Mule, a farmer from Saikar village, appeared from his room, engulfed in flames. His brother tried to douse the flames with a bucket of water, but it was too late.

Mule had suffered almost 100 percent burns. The same night, he died in the hospital, leaving behind two children. “He never talked about the fact that he owed one lakh rupees to the bank and an unknown amount to the money-lender. He was an owner of 15 acres of land and had suffered heavy losses for the past two years,” says his brother.

Nobody can identify a farmer who is about to commit a suicide. Almost every farmer has the potential of committing suicide. Prem Das is the owner of 22 acres of land. He spent 1.5 lakh rupees on a harvest of cotton and is hopeful of gaining a profit of 1 lakh rupees. But he owes 3 lakh rupees to a money-lender, for which he has to pay an interest of 1.5 lakh rupees. “I better not think about it, otherwise I will also have to drink Spintor (a pesticide),” he says, as he manages to give a faint smile.

“Why do you drink so much alcohol?” a woman from an NGO recently asked a farmer in Wardha district.

“Because I don’t have the courage to consume pesticide, madam,” he is reported to have replied bluntly.

The government had also roped in members of the Art of Living in few districts to teach farmers how to meditate. “Have they never heard of this: Bhookhe paet na hoye bhajan Gopala (prayers cannot be said over empty stomachs)?” wonders a farmer from Amravati district.

Girls in the region have now become wary of getting married to men who are farmers. “I have seen the condition in my own house since my father is a farmer. I don’t want to marry a farmer and turn into a widow in few months,” whispers a girl.

Meanwhile, foreign journalists are flocking to the area, hoping to report the ‘true image’ of a ‘developing country’ that boasts being a nuclear power. A French journalist asks a farmer’s widow: When was the last time you had meals with your husband in a three-star or a five-star hotel? The poor woman looks at the blonde lady, until the journalist’s Indian resource person drags her away.

Sources say they have seen a few men in the region who talk about ‘dying and killing for a cause’. This is confirmed by a farmer in Pandharkawada, who says that he has seen ‘Annas’ (elder brothers, as men from the neighbouring state of Andhra Pradesh are referred to) talking to villagers. Not very far away from the scene, a farmer picks up from his field a few red leaves of the cotton crop, affected by Lalya (the red disease). “The red colour is ruining our lives, but in the end, we might have to join the Red like our brothers in Andhra Pradesh,” he mutters thoughtfully. He is referring to the Naxalites. Had the government heard this, would it have been worried? Looking at the way the government is handling the Naxalite problem, it seems unlikely.

(This report appeared as a part of the cover story of The Sunday Indian)

India Social Forum, 2006

India Social Forum

'India Shining' in Khairlanji

Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange cannot sing. His wife or daughter were not models, walking over the ramps in fashion shows. In fact, nobody from the Bhotmanges, a Dalit family living in Khairlanji village of Maharashtra’s Bhandara District, could speak his mind on Umrao Jaan in front of titillating television mikes. Probably, that is why what happened to the family never made headlines. But what 50-year-old Bhaiyyalal witnessed on September 29 is something that will continue to haunt him for the rest of his life.

It was towards the evening when a mob of upper-caste landlords descended upon the Bhotmange household. In their ramshackle hut, Bhaiyyalal’s wife, 44-year-old Surekha was preparing evening meals while her bright 18-year-old daughter Priyanka studied in one corner. Surekha’s sons, Roshan, 23, and Sudhir, 21, sat nearby. As the landlords dragged the mother, her daughter and two sons outside, Bhaiyyalal was about to reach his home. But when he heard the cries of his family, he halted and hid behind a hut.

Surekha and Priyanka were stripped naked and taken to the village chaupal, 500 meters away. For almost next two hours, they were beaten up, bitten and raped by the mob. One of them was even strapped to a bullock cart. After more than an hour of rape and plunder of their bodies, Surekha and Priyanka died. Eye-witnesses have told the Police that sticks were pushed into their private parts, and even after they died, some people continued to rape their bodies. Roshan, who was blind, and his brother were beaten up and stabbed to death. Their bodies were thrown at various spots in the villages. The next afternoon the Police fished Priyanka’s body out from a canal nearby.

“ I was too scared; I was almost paralysed,” says Bhaiyyalal, who has now fled to another village, fearing that the upper-caste landlords may even kill him, too. “Nobody, except a single woman from the village, tried to stop the mob. The lone woman was silenced by the men with a slap,” recalls Bhaiyyalal.

For almost a decade, the Bhotmanges had tried to lodge a Police complaint. A portion of their 5-acre land had been grabbed by the upper-caste landlords of the village. Even after that, they would not let the Bhotmange family live in peace with the remaining land. So for years, the Bhotmanges had to tolerate incidents of tractors mowing down the standing crops in their fields. The Police chose not to pay any attention to their grievances. The upper-caste landlords even tried to prove that Bhaiyyalal’s wife, 44-year-old Surekha had an affair with a Police Patil (honorary Policeman) in neighbouring Dhusala village, Siddharth Gajbhiye, who was actually her cousin.

On September 3, the landlords beat up Siddharth so badly that he had to be admitted in a hospital. Fearing for his life, Siddharth’s younger brother got him admitted in a hospital which is 100 kilometres away. The hospital, realizing that it was a medico-legal case, informed the local Police, who in turn informed their counterparts in Khairlanji. This time, the Police was forced to lodge a case and 14 arrests were made. Despite repeated threats, Surekha identified the culprits in the identification parade. All of them were released on bail on September 29. The same evening, they decided to take revenge.

Siddharth Gajbhiye called up the local Police station, six kilometers away, at 6.15 pm. One head constable visited the spot at 8.30 pm, but did not register a report. The next day, Bhaiyyalal Bhotmange went to the Police station to file a report, but he was not taken seriously by the SHO. It was much later that an FIR was lodged. Both policemen have been suspended for not responding, and a case has been registered against the head constable.

The postmortem report, intriguingly, said that the two women were not raped. “Doctors were managed and the police bribed.” This is what Surekha’s nephew has alleged, in a report submitted to a social organization. “Everyone in Kherlanji knows what happened with my aunt and cousins, everyone was a witness to the heinous crime,” he has said in his statement. After pressure from social activists, the bodies were exhumed, and another autopsy was conducted. But that too has not been able to establish rape. Some of the perpetrators of crime are believed to be politically well-connected. Social activists are now demanding the arrest of the doctor who conducted the first postmortem.

“It was a gory dance of death, the height of brutality,” says the district Superintendent of Police, Suresh Sagar. He agrees that the Police did not act well in time. He also clarifies that Surekha did not have any illicit relationship with Siddharth Gajbhiye. The Police have arrested 44 people so far, including 2 women. Police sources now say that some of them have confessed to the crime.

Priyanka was a bright student and was preparing for her HSC. She was also a NCC cadet and wanted to join the armed forces. “Had it been a case of rape or murder of a model like Jessica Lal, the media would have gone overboard. But in this case, not even the National Commission for Women has reacted so far,” says Dr. Rupa Kulkarni, a Nagpur-based social activist. “This is because Dalits are considered worthless in this country,” she adds.

After the protests against the incident turned violent, the State government has finally woken up from its deep slumber. Maharashtra's Chief Minister visited the village and offered a government job to Bhaiyyalal. But Bhaiyyalal declined the offer, saying that all he wants is the guilty to get severe punishment. The question is: Will justice be delivered?

(I covered this incident during my recent visit to Nagpur. This article has appeared in the recent issue of The Sunday Indian)

Chess and Nirvana: A travel along the Ganges

One October afternoon, in 1994, a young, bespectacled man arrived at a roadside resort on the Delhi-Dehradun highway. He was accompanied by a tourist from Britain. The man carried a copy of Plato, and most of the times he talked about chess and the virtues of arm-wrestling.

The British tourist had been invited by the man to accompany him to a visit to his ancestral village. But a few hours after they had lunch at the resort, the Brit found himself kidnapped on gun-point and dumped in a dark room in Ghaziabad town, neigbouring Delhi. It was by sheer chance that a Police party, investigating a case of cycle theft, crossed way with the kidnappers and the tourist was rescued.

Twelve years later, I am at the Cheetal Grand resort, trying to Imagine that I am sitting on the same chair on which sat Omar Sheikh, the bespectacled man, who would grab headlines, worldwide, years later, for the gruesome murder of journalist Daniel Pearl. It is an October afternoon and instead of chess, I have in mind a long journey, which I have planned to undertake with a friend of mine.

Earlier that day, we left Delhi, on an Enfield motorcycle. The plan is to take a night halt at the holy town of Rishikesh, where flows the river Ganges, and then proceed to Srinagar town in Garhwal. We have no further concrete plans. The aim is to just let things happen. Like Che Guevara and his friend Alberto Granado, we just want to explore as much as we can and bask in the glory of the miles covered. Rishikesh is 225 kilometres from Delhi and Cheetal Grand resort is approximately mid way. After a breakfast of Masala Dosa and a lemonade, we proceed on to Rishikesh.

It is towards late afternoon when we reach Rishikesh after crossing Haridwar. The market is bustling with foreigners, mostly from Israel, who have come to Rishikesh in search of Nirvana. Some of them have been staying here for months now, in cheap hotels and paying-guest accommodations. No wonder, I see a restaurant carrying this message: Israeli, Japanese, Nepal-special Chowmein (whatever that means), Italian, Continental cuisine served here. Next to the restaurant is a barber’s shop, where a foreigner is getting his head tonsured. We check in a hotel on the banks of the Ganges. Tariff: Four hundred rupees. I am in a mood to complete this journey in a shoe string budget.

Inside the hotel room, the first thing I do is hide the remote control of the Television that looks down at us from a pedestal. I don’t want my companion to succumb to the temptation of watching the prime-time news bulletin in the night. After a bath in the freezing cold water, we just lie down on the bed to comfort our bottoms. My friend, you see, has not cushioned the seat of his motorcycle.

The sun is setting and we venture out. After gulping down a bottle of water, we cross the Ram Jhula. There are two rope bridges in Rishikesh named after the Hindu God Rama and his brother Lakshman. We cross to the other side to witness the evening Aarti (prayers). Every morning and evening, there is a prayer session on the banks of the Ganges. We can hear it from a distance – the sound of drums and cymbals. Devotees have gathered over the stairs of a temple and they are signing hymns in praise of the Ganges and Krishna. Young boys, wearing saffron dhotis, who have vowed to a life of celibacy, are singing passionately. Between prayers, they raise their hands in unison to offer their salutations to God. Many tourists form a part of the prayer group.

Earthen lamps in small baskets made of leaves are put in the river waters. The lamps bedazzle the water around them and after they have traversed till some distance, they topple in the water as it gains momentum. The water is in a hurry. There are people waiting for it. Waiting to be absolved of their sins.

There are many book stores and music shops selling stuff on Yoga, spirituality and Hindu way of life. On our way back, I can hear an English artist chanting Hare Rama, Hare Krishna in her album. We are going to have food in Chotti wala Baba Restaurant. It is very famous among tourists in Rishikesh. In the evening, a man dressed as a Sadhu sits outside the restaurant on a bridegroom’s chair. It is a gimmick to attract tourists and it also serves as a signboard. Not that you need them in a small place like Rishikesh.

Next morning, we take off for Srinagar, which is 105 kilometres from Rishikesh. The plains give way to hills, as we find ourselves under the shadow of the Himalyas. I am about to experience a very strong déjà vu.

To be continued…

Nonsense offerings of Peace

Drink tea from a bone-china saucer with a slurp. Walk on a highway, whistling, hands in pockets. Listen to a Mohammed Rafi song, in darkness, lying on a cold marble floor. Hear a church bell ringing in the hills. Sing to oneself, the song from the film Khamoshi: Pyaar ko pyaar hi rehne do koi naam na do (Let love remain love, don’t put a name to it). Make an omlette and name it Temptation. Smell the scent of the earth when it is about to rain. Dance in front of the mirror in the washroom of the pub. Search for a round pebble and offer it space on your writing table. Keep a flower to dry between the folds of a book. Wash your white shirt with your own hands. Run for no reason. Sow a seed. Watch a burning pyre. Sharpen a pencil. Throw a coin from a bridge into a river. Climb stairs with hands held behind the back. Talk to yourself when no one is watching. Look at the palm of your right hand the first thing when you wake up in the morning. Rub some cream in your elbows. Imagine your belly to be a drum and try sending a coded message to Phantom. Imagine peace to be a piece of cake and eat it.

The Missing Man: Part 4

There are so many strange things in life. Like the noise that you hear occasionally in your head. Or the fact that the only thing you forget in the pocket of your trousers, most of the times, is movie tickets. Or that very few people use the first urinal in a public toilet. Or that some people sleep so much in a bus that you almost think that they have passed away.


In the street where Srikant lived, there would come, every Thursday, a man whose face was painted to make him look like a monkey. He wore tiny bells in his ankles and carried a whip in his hand. He would be accompanied by a woman, probably his wife, who carried a small drum around her neck. On the beats of the drum, the monkey-man would contrive dance steps and at the same time whip himself. After every whip, he sought alms from people who passed by. Srikant watched this spectacle secretly from behind the muslin curtains of his room.

After he would have gone, Srikant often equated life with the monkey-man’s act. Every moment was a whip, he thought, for which one got one breath in charity. The trick for living life was to remain oblivious to moments, or at least pretend to. When you began to feel every moment, the pain would surface, like the mark of a whiplash, making it difficult to live. The thing with Srikant was that he felt every moment intensely. As a result, he would get flogged with existence.

The bus had been moving for more than six hours and Srikant did not know where it was going. It didn’t matter as long as he could maintain his flight. He knew that somewhere Sneha would be in a similar flight, the wings of which were shaped in mind.

There was some movement beside him and Srikant found that the old man had woken up. He was taking out something from his bag.

‘Where is this bus going?’ Srikant asked him.

The old man turned his head slowly towards Srikant as if he could not believe what he had heard just now.

‘Where are you going, Sir?’, the man asked back.

Srikant let a weak smile and replied, ‘Nowhere in particular. So where is this bus going?’

The old man sighed and said, ‘I am going to Rudraprayag, where the mighty rivers of our land meet, Sir. The bus is also going there. That would be the last stop.’

‘What takes you to Rudraprayag?’, Srikant asked.

The man waited for a moment or two. He felt something in his bag and then replied, ‘Actually, Sir, it was at Rudraprayag, fifty years ago, that I met a girl who would later become my wife. She is no more now and I can feel that my body has also set itself in the mode of an invisible transition. Before the transition is complete, I want to visit those places where my wife and I spent some time together. Before dying she had expressed a desire that her bangles be thrown at the spot where the rivers met. So I have brought them along.’

He took the bangles partially out of the bag and put them back.

Srikant thought of the first instance when he had met Sneha. That meeting was also strange. Strange like the noise in his head.

The Missing Man (Parts 2 & 3)

Part 1
He woke up from his alcohol-induced sleep. He looked at the watch. It was 7.39 am. A straight line of sunlight sieved through two folds of curtains. On the floor lay a heap of books. A book mark peeped from a Bulgarian novel. He suddenly had this urge to disappear.

When he was a child, Srikant would lay hiding amid the bushes behind his house, deriving pleasure from controlling his bowels. He would imagine to have in his possession an invisible space ship that would carry him wherever he wanted. The ship could even enter a room through its keyhole.

When he grew up he wished he were an orphan. He wished that he were brought up by an old man who would have died later, leaving him alone in this world, bereft of any relation. Then he would live life as he wanted to. Imagine what fun it would be to live a life where you had no duty towards anyone including yourself. One day, you would just not want to go back to where you lived. You would not have to call anyone and offer an explanation. You could aimlessly sit in a bus that took you anywhere. You could come back after a week or a month or a year and decide to make love to a young prostitute. You could choose to stay naked inside your house and not venture out for, say, ten days. You could just shut yourself up in your bathroom and not come out till evening. You could decide to eat nothing for two days. Then eat only a banana for two days. And then eat platefuls of rice and chicken curry for two days. And then lift a flower vase and break it against a wall. And then dance over the glass shreds, leaving blood imprints all over the house. And then go and watch a burning pyre on the banks of the river Yamuna. And then put a Nirgun Bhajan sung by Kumar Gandharva on your player and lie on the cold marble floor. And sing aloud with him. And then cry like he did once, in the middle of a busy street, while thinking about the despondency of art. And futility of life.

There was a loud thud. The newspaper had landed in the balcony. But Srikant had no desire to get up. He wanted to disappear. This was a week before he went missing.

***
The diesel fumes of the bus woke him up. His head had been banging subtly with the glass pane of the window but he had managed to keep his eyes shut. A folk song played, probably on a radio set, in the rear of the bus. Srikant looked at his watch. He was a few hundred miles away from his home now. They must be looking for him – his family members – Srikant thought. But inside the State Roadways bus, no one recognised him.

The bus negotiated a curve and Srikant imagined it to skid off the narrow road into the overwhelming river below. All the passengers would die and their bloated corpses would be found miles down, playing footsie with the iron gates of a dam built over the river. No one would come to claim his body and it would lay, for roughly a week, in the freezing drawer of a mortuary. Then he would be cremated (cremated because they would see that his penis was not circumcised and they always assumed such unclaimed body, as per their convenience, to be of a Hindu). Moreover, they would find no identification papers on his body.

Someone snored beside him. Srikant looked at the old man. His head dangled as if he was replying in affirmation to a question. But even in his sleep, the old man was clutching hard a gunny bag. After some time, his head came sideways to rest over Srikant’s shoulder. Srikant could feel the man’s breath making a warm contact with his neck. He looked outside from the window.

The night had taken over from the evening and countless bulbs shone like fireflies in the valley below. Srikant concentrated on one bulb and imagined what could be happening inside the house in its light. May be a young couple was copulating. Or may be a drunkard was beating his wife. Or may be a mother was singing a lullaby to her sleepy child. Or may be a restless man was writing poetry. Or may be someone cried behind that light.

Srikant didn’t know why, but he remembered a few verses of an Urdu poet:

Ghar ki tameer chahe jaisi ho
Isme rone ki kucch jagah rakhna
Jism mein phelne laga hai shehr
Apni tanhaiyan bacha rakhna

(No matter how you construct a home
Make sure you leave some space for crying
The city is spreading in the body
Make sure you save your solitude)

What did a man seek ultimately, Srikant thought. Was it not that some unknown happiness remained, like residue, while one was unhappy? And what of the unhappiness, that invisible ounce, pervading like the smell of damp moisture, during moments of joy? And what about the point when a man felt neither joy nor sorrow? Did he seek something beyond that point? If yes, what?

If Sneha was around, Srikant thought, she would have loved to gather answers for these questions as one gathered berries. But was she not doing that already? May be, one of those lights in the valley below was actually shining over her, as she lay on a bed, feeling the cut on her arm. And may be she had found some answers.

Three friends and days of leisure

A poem dedicated to heady days of late 96 and early 97

Srinagar, Jammu, Delhi

For a man who no longer has a homeland, writing becomes a place to live: Theodor Adorno

Two days ago I saw
My land like a tourist
On the Discovery channel

My father shouted and
Told my niece:
Look that is the Dal lake
Where lotus stems come from

In his shikara
Gulla carried
Bunches of Narcissus
Which we would decorate
In a brass plate
Along with a pen
And a coin to
Welcome the spring

Now springs are spent
In colouring rusted coolers
To enable them to
Provide succour in heat

Relatives from Jammu
Arrive every few months
Bringing with them
Souvenirs of my land
Green saag with roots
And local sesame bread

My father and mother
Arrived in Delhi
A few years ago
From Jammu

And now when
He refers to Jammu
My father says:
Back in Srinagar

And then he stops
When he realises
That Srinagar was
What he left
Sixteen years ago

And then for days
He keeps silent
He keeps on staring
At the ceiling
He also does not
Then read newspapers

Monaco Biscuits

You have retained
Your habit of making
Caricatures when you
Do not bother
To listen to
What a speaker
Has to say

The free strands
Of your hair
Look like Vincent’s
Corn-field and
Your worn-out
Canvas shoes
Like his canvas

You wear
A silver ring
On the little finger
Of your right hand
Through which I desire
To pass like a
Pashmina shawl

When you entered
Yesterday into
The array of my vision
You passed your
First glance at me
How I wished
I had a beard

I also heard
You telling your
Friend that you
Were hungry
I could have fed you
My liver instead of
Those Monaco biscuits

In search of a poet

The train passes through lush green fields and small towns with walls painted with advertisements of quacks and tantriks, who claim to have an antidote for everything, ranging from bad jobs to failed love. I really do not know why I am on this train, bound for Lucknow. But gradually I figure out. Back home, in Delhi, the Internet is not working and the service provider is behaving like Dickensian Uriah Heep. My desktop gets restarted after every fifteen minutes. A local courier has not reached even after three days have passed. The electricity is playing truant. I feel like joining the Gestapo. Instead, I run away to Lucknow.

I have been to Lucknow many times before and if you really ask me, I have never ventured anywhere barring an old bookstore in Hazratganj market that has in offing a decent collection of Hindi literature. But this time I know something which was previously unknown to me. Just few metres away from the book store is an old hotel that has been renovated recently and turned into a huge banquet hall. But on its rooftop it carries a burden of history from which it cannot be absolved. It is the Capoor Hotel.

Raaste mein ruk ke dam le lun, meri aadat nahi
Lautkar waapas chala jaun, meri fitrat nahi
Aur koi hamnawa mil jaaye, ye kismat nahi
Eiy Gam-e-dil kya karun
Eiy vehshat-e-dil kya karun
(That I should stop and take a breather is not my habit
That I should turn back and return is not my nature
That I should meet a co-traveller, I am not that lucky
What do I do, my sorrow-filled heart?
What do I do, my grieving heart?)

These lines were written by Asrarul Haq Majaaz, who is known as the Keats of Urdu poetry. He was very famous among poetry-lovers. Ismat Chughtai recounts that girls used to take out lottery in order to decide who among them would marry Majaaz. They used to sleep with his photograph under their pillow.

Majaaz was a progressive poet who believed in the equality of women. He wrote:

Tere maathe pe ye aanchal bohot hi khoob hai lekin
Tu is aanchal se ek parcham bana leti to accha tha
(The scarf on your head is fine
Only if you could turn it into a flag)

Many of Majaaz’s friends made money by writing film lyrics. Majaaz never belonged there. So he spent most of his life in taverns of Lucknow. It is said that after drinking, Majaaz would wander on the streets of Lucknow. His fans would take him home, make him drink more and make him recite his poetry till he collapsed. Then they would ask a servant to drop him on a bench in a park or in a railway station.

It was on a chilly December night in 1955 that Majaaz was taken by some of his fans to the rooftop of Capoor Hotel where they left him alone after drinking till midnight. In the morning he was found unconscious and was then rushed to a hospital where the doctors said that he had died because of severe cold which had damaged his brain. He was 44.

Bohot mushkil hai duniya ko sanwaarna
Teri zulfon ka pecho-kham nahi hai
(It is very difficult to simplify this world
It is not the tangle of your tresses)

What else is there to write? About Lucknow? About anything else?

More Pics

TV says: Et tu Rahul?

I am working on a mini Graphic novel, titled - Byte Soldiers: The life and times of a Metro TV Reporter, for Sarai (CSDS). You can read some of my postings here:

The BJP Correspondent
The Sissy Proletariat
His shoulders and Dodee
The Ninnies of Television
Skull and Cotton Candy

Your almond eyes

Tumhari aankhon ka aakash
Saral aankhon ka neela aakash

(The sky of your eyes
The blue sky of
Your simple eyes)

You were too young to have inspired the above lines of a Hindi poet, who wrote it decades ago. But if you ask me, Priyadarshani, I would like to compare your eyes to the raw, green spring almonds of Kashmir. I have been told that you were an award-winning singer, who performed in faraway nations like Russia. Tell me, did they look at you, the Russians, and utter: Mera joota hai Japani, ye patloon Hindustani – did they?

I imagine you walking on the road near your South Delhi house, humming a tune gently. Or smiling shyly in affirmation on being asked: Are you a Kashmiri? Yes you were and to be recognised on the streets as one, you did not need the symbolic Dejharu.

Long before you turned 26, your parents, like almost all Kashmiri Pandit families, must have begun to amass many small and big things to be sent along with you at the time of your marriage. Kashmiri shawls, carpets, silverware. They must have spoken in hushed tones about this or that boy who they would have seen during marriage ceremonies of friends and relatives.

These days, I visit your area quite often. I am just trying to help my friend Ajay in his next film. He lives just behind the road that Santosh Kumar would have taken to approach your house, rape you and then kill you by strangulating you with a telephone cable.

You are no more than a faded picture in this mortal world. Your killer is a practising lawyer. But you know, Priya, I have just been back after listening to a man’s story who witnessed the 1947 Indo-Pak partition as a five-year old kid. There is no heaven or hell. Every account is settled here on Earth. His will be too. But don’t you know that already?


This evening, a friend sang Shiv Kumar Batalvi’s song:

Ik kudi
Jidda naam mohabbat
Saad muradi
Soni fabbat
Gumm hai, gumm hai
Gumm hai

(A girl
Named love
Simple
Lovely
She is lost
Lost she is)

Where do I find you? Hey don’t pinch my shoulder.

If I turn blind tonight

Poring over a yellow carton, you entered into my stream of consciousness like a ray. Your eyes were fixed upon your fingers trying to open that carton. But somehow I felt that you had included me in the array of your sight. As if to confirm my view, a smile played on your lips like a flute. It seemed to play a song, the words of which could have been: Hey, do not hide there, for I know you are here...

We never met, we never spoke, but we acted as confession boxes for each other. I could share those really lunatic thoughts with you. So could you and I nearly transformed into a father, a friendly one, while seeking answers to questions you almost asked.

I discovered very early, within you, the same wheel of restlesness which I had driven with the wooden stick of my being when I was of your age and younger. Half hidden behind the red, yellow and blue fibres of Dharamshala blankets, you asked me riddles the answers to which I sought in your eyes and ultimately found them in your smile. How I wish we could lay together, our heads supported by our elbows and, while you shared the secrets of your friends with me, I would remove your yellow hair band and play with it!

We could also wear those masks - I choose the red one with demon's face - and dance stupidly in the wilderness, pretending to frighten each other. We could also talk endlessly with that old Tibetan woman. I could also tell you that the paper machie boxes made in Kashmir are the best.

I am a dreamer, excuse me, and I dream about the most stupid and flimsy and childish dreams ever known to mankind. Consider this - You have put my picture up on your blog and then your statement has changed to this: All photographs published on this website and the man featuring in the topmost photograph are the property of PPK.

And yes, PPK, if I were to turn blind tonight, you would remain dear to me.

(Pic by PPK, taken at Dharamshala)

The shades of his evening

When
Many suns will die
Then
Your era will arrive
Isn’t it?

Many suns have died since these lines were written but their time has still not come. So more lines are being created, more suns are being done to death, in that brick dwelling. Inside the four brick walls, the sun that survived, is wreaking havoc with its heat. The room is hot like a furnace. In the middle of the room, over a string cot, lies Lal Singh Dil, writing the last paragraph of his 78-page poem.

On the cheap register that bears the lashes of his personal history, Dil has noted down the day when he began writing the poem, two years ago. In front of his cot lies another cot, like a berated lover. Few dirty cups share a table with few saucers and two kettles; one made of cheap bone china and the other of aluminium. An old iron trunk plays foootsie with rust in one corner. Numerous mementoes weigh heavily on a cement slab. Their plastic covers have never been lifted. The floor near Dil is littered with Beedis and burnt and unburnt matchsticks.

Jo ladna nahi jaande
Jo ladna nahi chohnde
Wo gulam bana liye jaande ne

(Those who do not know how to fight
Those who do not want to fight
They are turned into slaves)

Lal Singh Dil is sixty-three now. He wrote these lines in 1967 when the thunder spring of Naxalbari reverberated in faraway Punjab. For the first time in his life, he felt as if his life had a mission. There was no point in remaining only a poet now. So Dil picked up a gun and joined the movement.

In his recent unpublished poem, Dil describes a dream where he sees his mother washing his clothes. He tries to hold her and she breaks away, prompting him to write:

Mein kis da putt han?
(Whose son am I?)

It is a manifestation of Dil’s longing for love, which he did not receive from anyone except his mother. Born in the chamar (tanner) community in Samrala town of Punjab, Dil was the first member of his family to finish school. His mother sold off her ear rings to make sure that Dil went right up to college.

Those who know Dil since college days say that he was very handsome and because of this and his poetry, many girls fell for him. There was one girl who wore her hair in plaits and lived in a neighbouring village. She was from an upper caste family. Dil’s friend lived in the same village and so Dil would see that girl often and developed a liking for her. But she died of cerebral haemorrhage. Later Dil would find another girl who looked like that girl, wearing her hair in the same fashion. One day he was invited to that girl’s house where he was offered tea in a steel tumbler. Afterwards, the girl’s mother picked the tumbler with a pair of tongs and threw it in fire to purify it. Dil writes in his autobiography Dastaan (Story) that he can still hear the clank of that tumbler thrown in the fire.

Dil began to write poetry during his college days. One of his early poems was published by Preetlarhi, a leading literary journal of Punjab in those times. He was working as a daily wage labourer when the peasant uprising in Naxalbari spread like wildfire. That was the time when Dil wrote a poem called ‘The shades of Evening’.

After remaining underground for four years, Dil was arrested by the Police. In the lock-up, the upper-caste Police officer slapped Dil hard and shouted: Ab chamar kranti layenge is desh mein? (Would the lower caste bring revolution in this country now?)

For nine months, Dil would face extreme physical torture. He would be subjected to more torture than his fellow comrades because of his caste and because of his poetry.

Soon after his release from the prison, Dil had to go into hiding once again. Only this time the period of hiding was much longer. He fled from his hometown to a village near Lucknow in Uttar Pradesh, where he worked as labourer in mango orchards. He made a comeback in mid 80’s, after a gap of fifteen years.

By that time, the memory of Lal Singh Dil had faded away from people’s memory. He was an icon in 70’s, Samrala’s own Che Guevara. Fifteen years later, he had to open up a tea-stall to make his ends meet. Even that did not last for long. But what did, and still is, is Lal Singh Dil’s ink.

Dil happens to be the contemporary of radical poets like Avtar Singh Pash and Santram Udasi. In ‘The shades of Evening’, based on his experiences during the Naxalbari movement, Dil writes:

The shades of evening
Are old once again
The pavements
Head for settlements
A lake walks
From an office
Thrown out of work

A lake is sucking
The thirst of water
Throwing off all wages
Someone is leaving

Someone comes wiping
On his dhoti
The blood of weak animals
On his goad

The shades of evening
Are old once again
Loaded with rebuke
The long caravan moves on
Along with the
Lengthening shadows of evening

In his one-room hermitage, Lal Singh Dil, the biggest name in Punjabi free verse poetry, spends his last days in penury. He told someone recently that he does not expect anything from anyone.

In the same 78-page unpublished poem, Dil writes:

I do not want to write about my personal sorrows.

Lal Singh Dil’s wounds are too many to heal. And something has to be done with his sorrows also. The shades of evening may have to turn like old once again.

***
This journey became possible because of my friend, filmamker Ajay Bharadwaj. His recent film Kitte Mil Ve Mahi features Lal Singh Dil as radical poet.

Your Painter, yours only

You cannot fool me
In my dreams
By telling me
You are married

I know you are not
The wife of
An Air force officer
You can never be
Because he cannot
Paint with his eyes

Don’t lie to me
Don’t narrate the warmth
Of his joint family
In your letter

Don’t tell me
That you keep fast
For his long life

You don’t lie
To the wind
That ruffles your hair

See your nose ring
In the mirror
Feel it
With your fingertip
My heart beats in it

Sit close to me
Too close to me
Let me paint
Yet another world
For you
Only for you

Someone peeps into me

(C) Rahul Pandita, 2006

My Mother's 22 Rooms

I cannot sing the old songs, or dream those dreams again - Charlotte Barnard

There it is. Huddled among other dolls and a few shreds of cloth. It is wearing a blue dress. I don’t remember what mine wore, for it has been sixteen years since I saw it. It might not be there anymore, but I would like to believe that it is there, invisible to the new occupants of my house. It is a dancing girl made of earth, decorating a corner of my friend’s drawing room. Touch it a little and it will start dancing, moving her neck gracefully. My dancing girl, mother bought it, when I was a child, from a potter selling his stuff on a pavement in Lal Chowk.

And sixteen years later, as I speak to you, there is no significant noise outside my room. No guttural voice and no sound of my mother’s U-shaped walker making its presence felt through the small corridor of my house. Mother fell down from her bed again this morning.

23 years ago, in Srinagar, a team of health officials was to arrive at our school. Their aim was to administer cholera vaccines to children. But for that we were supposed to take the written permission of our parents. Back home I told my father and as expected he wrote ‘No’ on my home task diary. I found it very insulting. Tomorrow all my classmates would take the vaccine and sing laurels of their bravery. And me, I would be hidden in some corner, red-faced with shame. It was not acceptable to me. So I erased father’s nay and wrote ‘Yes’ on the diary. Next morning as the needle of the syringe pierced my left arm, I did not even flinch once. I became an instant hero. But as it is with most acts of heroism, I had to pay a price for mine as well. By late afternoon, a lump had formed in my arm. By the time I reached home I was feverish and drenched in sweat. As I pulled off my shoes, mother saw me and in one instant she knew what had happened.

It was August and even by Kashmir valley’s standards, it was hot. I flung myself on the bed. Mother came and sat next to me. She gave me a glass of milk and kept her fair arm on my forehead. It felt very soothing and cold; like a spring. I went off to sleep. Next morning as I opened my eyes, the fever was gone.

Mother handled the affairs of the house like a seasoned ascetic would control his senses. She knew what was kept where. Rice, coal powder, woollen socks and gloves, soap – she kept a tab on everything. Her daily routine was more or less defined. She would wake up in the wee hours of the morning, wash clothes in the bathroom, sweep and mop the floor of every room and corridor, put burning coal dust in Kangris in winters and ultimately take stock of the kitchen. She did not believe much in spending time in worship. She was not an atheist but her belief was restricted to occasionally folding hands in front of the Shivalinga. Her God was her home and hearth.

But mother was in awe of nature. She feared its fury. Sometimes, when a storm blew, she would close all doors and windows and sit in one corner. When she no longer could face it, she would ask my father, “Will this storm stop?” Father would usually try to pacify her, but ultimately he also lost his patience. “What do you think? Would this storm last till the doom’s day?” he would snap at her. But the same meek heart turned into brave heart when any family member struggled with adversity.

It was in the mid of 1988 that my father had a mild heart attack. Actually father had a pain in the stomach and an injection prescribed by a gastroenterologist reacted, which led to the attack. Everyone in the family was too shocked to react. But not my mother. She single-handedly took my father to the hospital in an auto rickshaw. At the hospital, mother recalls, a doctor appeared like an angel. He had a black mark on his forehead, a result of praying five times a day. The moment the doctor started examining him, my father vomited. Mother says it was so intense that it went right into the doctor’s shoes. But not once did he raise his brow. He kept on treating my father.

By the end of 1989, men like that doctor somehow became rare in Kashmir. One day mother came back from office and she was crying. In the bus someone had tried to help an old Hindu lady in getting down from the bus. Another woman, who was a Muslim, criticised that man saying that the woman he helped was a Hindu and she should have been kicked out of the bus. Mother didn’t know whether what she heard was true or whether it was a nightmare. But what she had heard and seen with her naked eyes was what seemed like holding a mirror in front of Kashmir in a few months time. The time had come, once again, to leave our homeland. The migration began. Salvaging whatever little we could, essentially a few utensils and educational degrees of my college-going sister, we reached Jammu.

After spending a couple of nights in a hotel, father hired a room in a marriage house. It was situated in the old city, amidst a bristling market of saris and dupattas. Every now and then marriage ceremonies were solemnised in the marriage house. When the crude ovens, laced with mud and gas cylinders arrived at the house, we would understand that a marriage was taking place that evening.


In the ten by ten feet room, ants held a sway. No matter what you put outside, it would be swarmed by ants in a matter of minutes. They appeared in hordes, hundreds of them, attacking every edible item. It was similar to how people would come out on streets in Srinagar, few months before we were forced into exile. Mother obviously could not put up a fight with them, but she always managed to save a bowl of curd from the marauding ants, by keeping it in a basin of water. I always felt that whenever mother took out that bowl of curd, a secret smile would pass her lips. It was like a symbolic victory for her or so I thought.

And one night, that smile was also snatched from my mother’s lips.

I remember that evening. Somebody was getting married in the marriage house. The entire compound was filled with men, women and children, dressed in shimmering clothes. The stereo with huge speakers played popular Bollywood numbers as some of the guests danced on the tunes. And a few metres away, we had closed ourselves in the room.

When the bride was taken away and the noise had eased, there was a knock on our door. Mother opened the door and found a young man standing there. He was holding a plate in his hand. He said that he had been told that there were refugees living here and so he came to offer us some food. Before mother could say something, he handed over the plate and turned back. Mother lifted the cover and I caught a glimpse of the food inside. There was rice, dal and some vegetables. Mother kept on staring at it for some time and then she cried.

After this incident, Mother developed a strange habit. She would tell all, whether they cared to listen or not, “ Our house in Kashmir had 22 rooms”.

For the next few years, we would keep on shuttling from one place to place, becoming victim of the whims and fancies of landlords. We stayed at various places. After the marriage house, we stayed in a window-less room in a dilapidated lodge, where the number of mosquitoes was probably more than the cells constituting our bodies. Then we rented a single room where we ate, studied, slept, cooked and ate our food as well. Then there was another house. The bathroom there had no door and we had to keep on coughing for obvious reasons. Amidst these episodes of Greek tragedy, mother kept her struggle on. Everyday was a battle. From filling water from a leaking tap to bathing under the tap of an adjacent vacant plot, life threw numerous challenges at us.

It was years later that I completed my education somehow and came to Delhi. Few years ago, we bought a 2-bedroom flat in Delhi. But the struggle of Jammu has left a mark on mother. She cannot walk now. Her left leg is paralysed. Sometimes she falls down as she tries to drag her leg. As it happened this morning. She cannot even speak now. Degenerative neurosis, whatever that means. With each passing day, her condition is worsening.

I walk on the road. There is a sea of vehicles moving; endless. Sometimes I feel that there are more vehicles than humans in Delhi. And when I cannot bear the noise any longer, I feel like shouting, “Our house in Kashmir had 22 rooms.”