The red river is slowly engulfing the blue ocean, both the color are intermixing to create a monumental string of landscape that I had never seen for a long time. Alongside, the chirping of birds feels like a mesmerizing symphony created by nature adds to the experience. As you go on observing the sunset, the time slows down. You can feel the breeze just caressed over your face to create a sensation of exhilarating. You inhale, exhale, and notice the difference in the air. The air is light.
The air is indeed different. It belongs to the native place where I went last week to attend last rites of a distant relative. The place was both depressing, as the guiding light of one house had extinguished, as well as joyful, as he escaped all his misery. Like a tree’s bittersweet smile when the leaf falls.
The event was attended by many people, some of them I met after a gap of 10 years. It reminds me that I am not alone. There are people who know you but have lost touch.
On a different note, I can see visible differences have emerged between tree and me. The tree is stable. Not much has changed. Same old water buffalos roaming around houses almost in ruins, the smell of fresh cow dunk cakes, no regular electricity or sanitation facilities. While I have matured over the course of years.
The trees customs and culture are same. A gentle reminder was the rampant discrimination the village holds in gender, caste, and class. The gender is the extreme one. Why should a woman be under a ghunghat, when she has lived her entire life in the village? Why should you have separate eating-places for them when the function is common? Why should they get married off at 18 years of age? WHY? And the same goes on to the other ones as well.
I had hoped the scenario to be different since new leaves are taking over. However, alas it is not so. The older generation is simply being replaced in terms of occupation. Earlier Uncle used to drive the tractor for cultivation and now my cousin does. But, as the responsibilities are passed to generation, bad habits to trickle down. There is a perceptible increase in smoking bidis, hookas and alcoholism in the village as told by my cousins.
One cause is unemployment. People have a lot of free time due to mechanization of cultivation. The result of free time is indulgence in the above activities.
Additionally, the older generation do not want their children to become farmers, they want jobs. They want security. They want freedom from uncertainty from agriculture. Imagine the amount of stress level when you are 26, 27 and still not earning and your family is dependent on you. The result is the same. This isn’t the story of a single village, this is ubiquitously present in India.
I am not blaming anyone but I firmly believe that it is very different from sitting in ivory towers of a metropolitan and formulating a plan and actually implementing it. Had someone just visited a village even once, the urgency of action would be the result? I really want to do something to improve the situation and one day I would.
What has changed has also piqued my interest. Be it an influx of iPhones copy or branded clothes. Perhaps the Sankritisation theory is actually correct. People try to copy the upper class when they have money.
Finally, the red river has merged with blue ocean. Now, the darkness prevails.
Some images to enjoy upon.
Man_of_iron 