The young boy was vociferously insisting that Emperor Akbar was the father of Babar! And Babar had two sons — Shahjahan and Aurangzeb!

The lad, Ajit Singh, was on the verge of punching his classmates when they questioned his pathetically poor sense of history and told him that he had made a mess of the Mughal lineage. But the boy would not accept it and shouted down his challengers saying he had answered the question right.

Ajit was in a group of 10th standard students who had just come out of the examination hall after answering a question paper. Heated exchanges over the Mughals created a near-riotous situation. Coming from a rustic background of a newly emerging neo-rich class of farmers, Ajit was known as a sort of a self-righteous bully who won't give in easily. Still not willing to relent on his version of Indian history, Ajit told his detractors: "Don't you see the likeness in the father-son duo's names — Akbar, Babar? Akbar must have given his elder son the name Babar which sounds akin to his own."

The argument did not cut any ice or save him from further ridicule. Offended by his brazenness, his classmates deserted him. Soon after, wisdom dawned on Ajit. Realising that all the boys could not have been wrong, he feared his ignorance could lead to his failure at the examination. And that would upset his own and his family's plans. The rock-faced boy lost no time in taking the unusual step of barging into the examination room and asking the teacher in charge that he be handed back his answer book to "correct the parentage". He was turned out of the room.

The boy came from a milieu where his father, a semi-literate but neo-rich farmer, had promised to buy him an expensive motorbike (considered a status symbol) if he cleared his high school examination. And later, that qualification would make him eligible to get a "beautiful" bride. Unfortunately for him, Emperor Akbar shattered all his dreams.

Ajit represented a new generation, brought up in a totally different environment with changing social values. Its aim of going to school was limited to acquiring working knowledge of social affairs, not achieving academic excellence.

Heavy price

What mattered most was obtaining a high school certificate or some diploma and hanging it prominently in the outer room for the benefit of visitors, including the parents of the bride-to-be.

Ajit was not born with a silver spoon in his mouth. He found it between his teeth when the family's highly fertile land was bought at a very heavy price by some builder of multi-storeyed towers. The farmer, who used to look expectantly at the sky for rain-bearing clouds, was told by the buyers to look down instead at the ‘golden' earth. Soon, he was rolling in wealth he had not imagined seeing before.

In no time, not only basic necessities but items of comfort and luxury were brought in, transforming the looks of their conservative modest dwellings.

Areas which had erratic electricity saw installation of diesel-run generators. Life became much easier with the installation of modern-day gadgets and equipment, including refrigerators and room coolers or ACs. The farmer who had toiled hard on his land was now enjoying a puff at his ‘hookah'.

Some years back, I was amused to see a farmer feeding his buffaloes out of big vessels kept in his car's boot!

And then there was a large family of farmers where preparing lassi on a mass scale was a cumbersome task. They solved the problem by deploying a small washing machine for the purpose!

 

Lalit Raizada is a journalist based in India.