21 Fools

Icons of the British Raj

Written by H N Shyam

Chai Biscuit - Panchayat

Working as a newspaper sub-editor can be very challenging, especially when you are in-charge of special editions and features in a regional supplement of a not-so-famous media house. In a typical setting, you would have to do be everything from a chaprasi to a driver to a reporter and even the editor. My team (I am proud to use that word as long as I don’t have to admit it’s just the two of us) was working on the Independence Day special edition in those days. It is only customary, or rather quite ordinary, for newspapers to cover a few freedom fighters and publish their opinion of the nation’s politico-social state of affairs as it stands today or may be their experiences in the freedom movement. Considering the fact that even a child born in 1947 would be enjoying post-retirement life by now, it was indeed a challenge to identify genuine freedom fighters who are still living amidst us. That is, when we decided to tweak things a bit and take the focus to a new breed of people called ‘Icons of the British Raj’. Besides the variety of content, it would also give a wide expansion of the domain of people to look out for.

A few days earlier my editor had passed on an email from a Dubai based reader of our online edition. The email was about his driver’s village in Chandragiri district where there lived a nonagenarian Baburao who was a ‘slave’ in the pre-independence days. The reader, for some reason, felt that his story would make readable content and wanted us to do it. So we decided to follow it for this feature.

We reached the specific village in Chandragiri district. A beautiful place, still untouched by the malicious effects of urbanisation and industrialisation, farming was still the main occupation and people actually used to wake up at 4am and go to sleep by 7! Everyone seemed content about the life whose pace was set to facilitate appreciation of the essence of living. Family was accorded the highest importance among social associations and was given the time it demanded from everyone in their day-to-day life.

Baburao had no family, and he led a lonely life. Society in the village is very different from ours in the city. Here, if you have no one, you belong nowhere. In the village if you have no one, you belong to everyone and everywhere. There was not a single family in the vicinity around Baburao’s house that would retire for the day without enquiring Baburao about his health and well-being. As for Baburao, these people were his sensory to be in touch with the world. He would entertain them with stories from the past, of ancestors they had only heard of while they on their part would enlighten Baburao about the latest developments around them – about the harvest, the cattle, an occasional motor vehicle from city, the politicians, stories of foreign land told by son of the potter who went to work in Dubai and other gossips about the people of the village.

When we entered the village, we had at least a dozen people crowding around our car. Some of them unprepared to believe their sight while a few others using the opportunity to touch and feel a motor vehicle. With no movie theatre, there was absolutely no way they would know of the latest cars or fashion in the cities. And for a chance to sit inside one such car, each of them was willing to show us the way to Baburao’s house. We picked a young girl to be our guide.

As we entered the thatched roof house, which would easily have passed off as a hut in our sophisticated city-dwellers’ lingo, we could not help but notice the relic of a building that it was as much as its inhabitant. Sitting inside on his cot, wearing a vest and pyjama, in the dim lit room was Baburao. As soon as we reached, the girl announced our arrival and going near him, helped Baburao with getting his spectacles. Perhaps it was because of her lack of exposure to the modern day newspapers or the camera that we carried; she preferred to just say that we were people from the city. Baburao, still retaining his puzzled look, asked the girl to help us with the chairs and fetch some water.

I looked at Baburao’s face closely. The depth of his eyes carried years of truth in them. The wrinkles on his face spoke of a life full of ups and downs, a life that seemed to have experienced much more than others. In all, he was a person who commanded respect for a well-lived life.

After some brief introduction that the people in the city wanted to know Baburao’s story and quite unsure of what he interpreted of it, I began my interview. Occasionally, the girl intervened to clarify his unclear speech and at times to translate my broken Hindi.

“Tell us sir, about your life as a slave,” I started off quite bluntly. He absorbed the question. After brief moments of silent reminiscence, Baburao spoke:

The thakur was British government’s representative in their village, armed with the powers of an overseer of the people’s welfare and he did everything in his power to harass them. Baburao was enslaved to him early in his life as per the societal norms of those days after the death of his father. While Baburao suffered torture for decades, his small family consisting of wife and a son was whitewashed in a merciless act of brutality by goondas. The thakur would not even let him go for the final rites of his dead family members. His tradition had bound Baburao to the haveli for life, come what may. He then described to us his life as a slave in the haveli and the heartlessness of the thakur.

Though India received freedom in 1947; the village and its people like Baburao did not, until the thakur died at a ripe old age around 1970s. Baburao told us how slavery was a concept that today’s children (by that. he meant me and my colleague and our generation) cannot comprehend how much ever they try to.

After listening to his life at the thakur’s haveli I couldn’t deny that view of his. We are so unwilling to accept the society and its norms binding us against our wishes, unlike people from Baburao’s generation.

To wind up the interview, I asked him a final question. “Did you never get a chance to escape from the thakur?”

“Not one, but many. Especially after the thakur grew very old and lost his sight.”

“Did you run away from him then?”

“No... (After a brief pause) I continued to stay till he died.”

I was aghast. In pure astonishment, I almost cried to him.

“But, why? When you were being tortured so much why didn’t you run away at the first chance?”

Again, a brief pause before he spoke. “I had already lost too much in life. It would all be meaningless if I had run away from my duty.”

He said that with a composure that radiated wisdom and a tone completely unemotional.

I was taken aback by that reply. I could not figure out what made it so profound in depth that it could create the impact it did on me. All I could do was meekly ask him, “What?”

“I wanted to escape very early from my slavery. But, by the time I got a chance to do so, I had lost everything. My wife and son were gone. My family was devastated, and with them my life. I had lost them because of my slavery at the haveli which was my duty; one transferred from my ancestors to me. If I ran away from it, the loss would have no meaning. It would be a disgrace to the sacrifices I had done.”

“And as time went by, the thakur and this haveli became my life. I accepted that, as a wish of my God. I served my master till the moment he died. That’s what my life was to be.”

I was lost but still managed to find a shore in his sea of words. I had not written much of that interview. The feature called ‘Icons of the British Raj’ went on print and received a good response, and life moved on. But the intensity of Baburao’s words cling to me till date, questioning the role of society and social norms in our lives.

Do we get to choose anything in this inter-dependence of our social web? Do our losses and sacrifices in life have a value to it, we must honour? Is it right to believe that God has chosen a way for our life irrespective of how we want it to be? Do fate and destiny exist? By saying, that I am the master of my choices, are we running away from a whole lot of expectations and obligations especially that towards parents and society? Was Baburao’s decision correct? Questions are many that continue to prod my mind. May be the answer lies somewhere within me.