Chak De! Indiyeah!
Originating from Gomukh, the Mother Ganga flows through the heartland of UP where she is revered & worshipped by the masses; the high-point of this worship being the Ganga Aarti on the ghats performed every evening where she is adorned with lamps and flowers & hymns of Her praise are sung by the assembly.
The heritage of the erstwhile Varanasi has been a rich blend of fact & fiction, but the current cultural mix of the place goes beyond national roots reflected in the paraphernalia on sale by the ‘gali-vendors’ of Benaras, which begins with beads and ends with bongs.
Having got a glimpse of this celestial evening celebration, I was on my way to my current base town of Patna.
Awaiting my more than late train, I found comfort in the arms of the bench donated by one Mr. Sharma in loving memory of Mrs. Sharma (I wondered, ‘itna sharma rahe the, to public mein love ka ailaan’). Browsing through a magazine, I noticed the Siliguri-Benaras express pull into the platform and the station coming alive with the vibrancy of alighting passengers.
Small groups of measly-attired rural women whose slumber had been broken came into their own with chatter all around. On the haunches in a circle, the women pressed ‘datun’ between their teeth with the astringent pulp of the bark working its way through their teeth. An immediate gargle of water was followed by a bounty of bananas being gulped down.
One from the group came up to me and enquired about the time. The awe & amazement when I replied ‘1 am’ made it evident that the early evening nap on the train journey had been mistaken for a nightful of sleep and the midnight hour was being misinterpreted as dawn. Even today, the concept of time for rural folk is simply the schedule that nature follows in its functioning. For most parts of the country, the cock still announces the arrival of the first rays of light and cattle returning from the grazing fields harbinger nightfall. I wondered how all logic over the debate of dividing the geographical landmass of India into different time zones lost significance when a large population already functions in tandem with nature.
My thought process was broken by the arrival of a youth who made himself comfortable on the same bench and was en-route to Patna as well. Introducing himself as a fresh PG-Ayurveda passout, he spoke with the zeal of a newborn child in praise of his progenitor about his alumnus Benaras Hindu University. Seeming to suggest that a Benaras visit was incomplete without a visit to the 14-acre BHU campus which sheltered 1.5 lakh students undertaking courses in subjects varying from kushti to astronomy, my counterpart gave me a glimpse into his past 6 years of life at BHU.
The conversation then revolved around future plans; he mentioned he had taken up social work of educating tribals during free hours past college and in his own village he had begun to experiment with what he learnt at college. Hailing from a small village on the outskirts of Vaishali district of Bihar, he had made his fellow villagers aware of the benefits of certain plants that otherwise grew in the wild outside the village and were now being cultivated on large-scale for the purpose of their properties. They were now sold through intermediaries in markets, which would fetch them a premium price. He planned to get a job in a private company dealing in ayurvedic products such as Dabur, Emami, Baidyanath etc. or else teach after a Ph.D.
Being in a position to influence a job opportunity in Dabur, my forth-rightness was reserved on account of my initial introduction as a student from Kolkata due to the skepticism of introducing my true identity to a stranger.
Post an hour & a half of healthy conversation, the Punjab Mail came into the platform at 2.30 am. Bidding farewell, I mentioned my name as ‘Gautam’ and he introduced himself as ‘Rahul’. I somehow wanted to follow, but the impending commotion of getting to my seat left matters in a limbo. He too, in the meanwhile had made his way out of sight.
Immediately on the berth, I wondered what had made me reserved in my response; it was probably that the ‘Metro-Indian’ hardly trusts the ‘Other-Indian’. As a country, we may all be one in our celebrations on 15th August or 26th January, but trust of another from within the same geographical context is limited to the periphery of one’s own social & cultural background and given the diversity of India, there can hardly be a commonality on which both extremes meet, unless one of them takes the initiative.
The next morning, on arrival at Patna, my eyes were fixated on the platform hunting for a lean figure in a light blue shirt & black trousers…
… on re-introducing myself as ‘Gautam, ASM-Dabur’ extending my business card, when he responded with ‘Dr.Ashok’ and shook hands, I realized the initial mistrust and latter trust had been reciprocated; but then again it was in this trust or the lack of it that some commonality had been found and new ground broken.
Earlier, the equation may have been 30:10, but now it surely was Twenty 20.
Chak De! Indiyeah!
PS: Gave me a lot of pleasure that Dr.Ashok was recruited into the Consumer Health Division of Dabur India Ltd. in June '08 and is currently settled in his job as an OPM.