We are who we are because someone took a decision a long time ago. Ok! That may sound so wrong so let me attempt and reframe that sentence. We are where we are in the social strata because someone took a decision a long time ago. That sounds better but the question is what does it really mean?
My paternal grand father was a freedom fighter who had joined the horticulture department after the freedom movement and decided to educate his children (boys and girl) As luck would have it both the sons obtained good education and my father was sent to Delhi to study and live with a Member of Parliament in the late 60s and early 70s. He learnt a lot and with his sheer hardwork made many impossible things possible.
My maternal grand father was working with the railways and married my naniji who was the first student (male/female included) to have cleared her matriculation exam and was a teacher in the railway school. They chose to educate their children (boy and girls included). My mother studied science and us an M.Sc. in Botany and together with my father established the Pharmaceuticals company.
Obviously my parents got married and the entrepreneurial temperament in them led to establishing a company and moving the three of us to Delhi while we were very young. They sent us abroad to study and made us strong enough to take decisions of our lives.
Why am I talking about this? I made a recent trip to my mother’s ancestral village. I had made many trips to my in-laws villages in Bulandshahr and Rewari-Bhiwadi-Alwar belt but I had made far from few trips to Eastern UP from where my parents hail- the interiors of Gorakhpur-Sehjanwa and Deoria.
Summer vacations in our profession are looked forward to where people give detailed descriptions of all the foreign destinations they will be visiting whereas in my case- my siblings and I decided to be variants of modern day Shravan Kumars. So while my sister decided to stay back with my father to ensure he was fed properly and on time, my brother stayed back to ensure that my father’s health could be kept in check while I took my mother to her ancestral village.
Her village is some 50 kms away from the nearest airport – Gorakhpur. The landscape has completely changed of the city since Yogiji-Modiji combination and that ensured we had great infrastructure and electricity 24X7. Mind you this is a remote village in a very rural part of India.
Life is very slow in rural India during summers. This is the time when the land is left barren and rains are awaited. This is also the time when the bahu-betis come home. This is also the time when marriages take place. Many people in the villages are migrant workers who work in factories in Saudi Arabia or in Gujarat. The wives are left behind and they have sufficient number of kids and internal politics to deal with. Anything ranging from who will cook and who will wash the utensils ( typically the youngest bahu being the victim) to who will inherit the property or the best parts of property.
It was beautiful to be able to sleep on the terrace under star lit night listening to ‘ankhiyon ka nu kajal’ on DJ from a remote village or the horn of the maalgadi from the nearby railway station. It was nice to wake up at 5 in morning by the chirping of the birds. The heat was unbearable but I learnt to cherish how the perfect window from where the summer breeze can flow and a fan can help you take the best nap. It makes you appreciate how you cannot identify who is the mother and who is the child. All the bahus and the betis would just come and pick up any one’s child and give them so much love, dress them up, feed them and simply be a mother. There was no ‘my-child-is-better-than-yours’ syndrome. All the kids were everyone’s kids.
I could just sit on the khaat and read ‘Everything is Fucked’ by Mark Manson and simply be.
As I head back home now, I am taking a little bit of everyone with me. The duty bound elder sons have taught me to take up responsibilities without thinking if it as burden, the dutiful wives, beti and bahus have taught me to give unconditional love to everyone, the bitchy and self centred people taught me who not to be and most of all God taught me to not forget from where I came from.
It is upon me to take the right decisions to move forward. As a family and as a citizen. We don’t know how powerful our decisions are in moulding the future. Life will move on but it is upon us to make it worthwhile for our future generations.
While I got ready to leave, mom insisted on taking photos. There was one where the bahu-betis were standing behind the door and I was standing outside the door, headed back to Delhi, to run my lawfirm and work. As I left behind women who could have been me and I could have been them, I couldn’t help but wonder how grateful I am to my ancestors for taking the decisions that has made me achieve what is still only a wish for many.
Until next time.
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