An Order Published Too Late
A malady worse than cancer has gripped the old & new generation living in the hills. Some time back a feature had been published in your daily titled: “Plight of Women in Uttarakhand”. In that article, Bhagati Devi accidentally cut her leg with a sickle. Her young husband had to rush to the village to bring her to Srinagar for treatment. This time I write about this young man in particular & all other peasants in general to reveal the rot that has set in the lives of these erstwhile simple people.
Balam Singh, name changed, was summoned back to the village from Doon to help his father till the land measuring about 55 Nalis scattered over a wide area. His father was in the Army & pestered the Commanding Officer for voluntary discharge after earning pension able service. He did not alter his resolve even after sage counsel. After retirement his only son, Balam Singh was born. Had he been in the Army he would have been compelled to record it by means of an “order”. In the village he did not deem it necessary only to sow the seed of an impending tragedy that followed. Soon the wife died & Balam Singh was raised by the aged grandmother.
Balam Singh’s father was dim witted & delightfully gullible for the wily counterparts in the village. They methodically nurtured his foolish ego & in turn were rewarded with a perennial supply of tea & hours of gossip in his house. This lifestyle rendered his pecuniary condition critical. Still, ends were being met though with great hardship. His aged mother tilled the land, & still does, to eke out living, growing vegetables. Meanwhile he lazed about subsisting on his meager pension.
One day, a “bosom” friend took a loan from the local bank while Balam’s father stood as guarantor. As expected, his friend went to some town or city & never returned. His pension was attached for repayment of the loan. Now he was poorer than the proverbial church mouse. This did not alter his life style. The tea kettle was always full to quench the insatiable propensity of the peasants to sip tea. How did he manage? Well he took rations & money on loan & soon became heavily indebted. He proudly but foolishly warned his son that the latter would make good his debt throughout his life!
While children normally grow up, Balam tumbled up & despite this, grew to be a sprightly young man. Predictably, the father took Balam for enrolment only to find that his son was short of pipping the desired height by 2 cms. Balam tried again & again only to be told that he was too short. Only if he was a son of an Ex-Serviceman could he avail a 2 cms concession. Still wisdom did not dawn on his father. Much later he went to Lansdowne & got the needful order published. By then it was too late. The Army had raised the physical height further as a result of which Balam was now 4 cms short. (Apparently it seems that the Army discovered that taller men make better soldiers than shorter ones & that indisputably they look better. Twisting the logic further, they would assume that in hindsight taller & better looking soldiers would have performed far better than 2 cms shorter ones in WW I & II!) All hopes for Balam Singh to join Army vanished. He still had hope. His father owned some land in the village at a potentially commercial area where a road had been developed. He could open a shop there & do good business.
Balam Singh was dismayed to learn that his father had sold of this piece of lucrative land. With this, whatever hope he had to fend for himself vanished. At this stage the evils of new culture prevalent in the hills overtook him. His peer group gathered around him & accentuated Balam’s frustration. These gatherings were always accompanied by drinking bouts & useless rambling over their collective despondency.
Alcoholism is the Achilles’ heel of all hill people. Earlier the only source was the monthly quota from the Canteen. Now a new development had taken place. Cheap & readily available labor in the form of Nepalese had made their indelible presence in the remote areas of the hills. Their technology of making cheap hooch was quickly mastered by the locals. Every enterprising household was preparing this heady brew, packing it in polybags & using young children as couriers, often their own, to deliver the same to the market place. The reward for the children - two toffees or biscuits! With this system in vogue, the rot spread from the very impressionable age of the children. The illegal distillers of hooch encourage the women & children to become addicts. Shocking? Wait till you read the next lines.
The liquor is made under highly unhygienic conditions. In order to hasten the process & ensure a good “kick,” some shocking ingredients are added that will assure death in a matter of months. One deadly ingredient is Urea. The other is the use of the carbon rod of dry cells, which are ground & added to the mixture. Often the brew is consumed even before it has cooled down. Such cottage industry is flourishing. A young boy once revealed to the author that he too had procured the containers & tools to start making liquor but soon abandoned it. All this is shocking revelation. The prior evening Balam Singh had consumed such concoction & was found cold & lifeless next morning. He leaves behind a young childless widow, a father neck deep in debt, & a 90 odd year old grandmother who tends the vegetable patch & cooks for her good-for-nothing-retired son.
Life in the hills is tough for any hill dweller. Here, in Uttarakhand, men are often seen sitting idly gossiping & smoking. Women literally kill themselves with work. Disco dancing during marriages is keenly looked forward to. Every marriage, as in Doon, is a three day affair. The fare on all days is the same – meat & liquor. However the occasions are different. The first day is “Cocktail Party”; the second is “Baraat”; & the penultimate day is “At Home”. Are you reading this Mr. George Bush? We in the hills are not far behind you & could have given you some ideas on how to blow up scarce money on useless avoidable marriage ceremonies. When the author tells some literate men to mend their ways, they find the suggestion ridiculous – “What will others say if we don’t have a three day ceremony & that too without liquor & meat?” they say. They are convinced that the author has gone bonkers!
Most of the youth cheat in the exams. Attending school is a big farce. There is no vocational training & there are no jobs. In the plains they have to compete with more sturdy & aggressive youth of other states. They travel from town to town, city to city, hoping they will make it big one day working under a “Sethji”. Dreams remain dreams. With them their young brides, left back in the village, are doomed & so is the fate of the hill districts of Uttarakhand. No one can help. The locals have to help themselves. The million dollar question is – WILL THEY?