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'Real' India is a village
There was unanimity between my wife and me over the issue of taking our ten-year-old daughter, Bhavya to our ancestral home in the village.
- By Vimal Yogi Tiwari,
- Published: 23:41 June 29, 2008
There was unanimity between my wife and me over the issue of taking our ten-year-old daughter, Bhavya to our ancestral home in the village.
The reason was we had planned to sell it off and therefore wanted to spend a day or two with her there. I wanted my daughter to get a first hand knowledge about the difficulties and problems the people of the village faced.
I wanted her to see how the needy and the deprived; the influential and the gullible lived and thrived amidst so many odds.
The real driving force behind this trip however was, the fact that my daughter had learnt in school that India was a land of villages. So, according to her concept, the town we were living in was not the real India. She wanted to get acquainted with the "real" India.
Since she had never ever been to a village, I decided to tell her the problems she was likely to face.
One morning over breakfast I spoke to her and said, "Look child, there is no electricity there; therefore there would be neither a fan nor your video games. Then don't grumble about the thatched roofs and mud walls, that is how they build their homes, especially the poor. Don't look for taxis, for there are none. Instead there will be tongas and the bullock carts."
She asked no questions and continued with her munching.
"You see there is no cooking gas, so you will have to bear with the smoke coming out from the mud stove and firewood. Neither there are any malls nor any shopping complexes, which means no ice cream, no Pepsi and no pizza.
"The only thing that will greet your eyes will be the fields and the mango groves. No doubt you will also come across the droppings of cattle and other animals on the narrow lanes."
With this, my introductory sermon came to an end. The date was decided and tickets were booked. My wife was giving the last minute instructions to the servants about the upkeep of the house.
Had the driver not blown the horn, the do's and don'ts would have continued. For me the trip to my village was routine, but for my daughter it was a dream- cum-true. She was about to see the "real" India.
Uncomfortable
When we returned from the village, I asked her how she found the village life. I was waiting for her adverse comments, for I knew how uncomfortable she must have been, amidst unknown and anxious faces and the weird queries about town life.
But to my surprise her reply was just the contrary to what I had expected. In fact, it made me feel a bit ashamed.
"Yes dad, you were so right. It is sad they are deprived of the modern amenities that we have, yet how content they are. And indeed, the grooves so common over there are no where here. We have grooves, but they are of steel and concrete. We have imported lanterns hung on trees to decorate our garden. They have the sparkling stars to deck their milieu.
"We have a small piece of land to live on and they have sprawling fields that go beyond our sight. We have servants to serve us and take our care, they serve others. The balcony of our house reaches to the front yard, while they have the whole horizon. We have a pool that reaches till the middle of our garden, and they have a rivulet that has no end.
"And last but not the least daddy, while we have walls around our property to protect us from thieves and trespassers, they, on the other hand, have friends and loved ones to wipe their tears in time of need and dance in their time of joy."
Vimal Yogi Tiwari is a journalist based in India.
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