by Sudha Murty
He was talking to me in English with an Indian accent.
‘How come you speak English like us?’ I asked in surprise.
‘My name is KeTsang. I was in India for five years. I studied at Loyola College in Chennai. Now I run a restaurant in Lhasa. People here like Indian food and movies. I accompanied my grandmother for her pilgrimage. She was thanking you.’
‘But for what? I have not done anything for her!’
‘That is true, but your country has. It has sheltered our Dalai Lama for so many years. He is a living god to us, particularly to the older generation. We all respect the Dalai Lama, but due to political reasons, we cannot express it in public. You might have seen that there isn’t a single photo of his in any public place in the whole of Lhasa. He is the fourteenth, but we have paintings, statues and pictures only up to the thirteenth.’
I still did not understand the old lady’s gesture. The grandson explained, ‘She said, “I am an old lady and don’t know how long I will live. If I don’t thank you before I die, I will never attain peace. Let anyone punish me for this, it does not matter. It is a gift that I met an Indian today and was able to thank you for sheltering our Dalai Lama. Yours is truly a compassionate land.”’
Her words eerily echoed Maya’s from many years back. I could only look down at the wet spot on my hand and smile.
9
Bonded by Bisleri
The 26 January horror of Kutch in Gujarat is well known. Without any warning, Mother Earth opened her mouth and engulfed the people and their belongings. Overnight, rich people were reduced to the streets. But the spirit of the Kutchi people is admirable. They faced this disaster bravely and are still fighting to restore normalcy.
The media has to be congratulated for its role in the relief efforts. Within hours of the tragedy, all newspapers and television channels had zoomed in to cover the disaster and broadcast it all over the world. Along with India, the rest of the world participated in helping these unfortunate people. After all the rush of the TV crews and media people, hordes of NGOs and government officials landed up in Kutch. People started picking up their life from where they had left it. Life started to return to normal at a slow pace.
I went to visit these areas after some time, when the dust of propaganda had settled down, in order to see actual life. After all, the emotions had drained off and reality had become the priority.
Several small villages deep inside Kutch, away from the main road connecting Ahmedabad and Bhuj, had been badly affected by the earthquake. I was visiting these remote places in the deep interior when one of the tyres of my jeep went flat. Getting it fixed would take some time. My driver went to get this done.
I was alone and bored. I saw a few tents nearby. They were temporary sheds covered with blue plastic sheets. They were temporary houses, schools and health centres for the people residing in that area. Later, I heard that there were tent hotels as well.
Life was busy and people were getting on with their chores. As it was monsoon season, men and women were busy in the fields. It was very strange. For many years there had not been much rain in Kutch, but that year it had rained abundantly. Farmers were having a bumper crop. I suppose nature has its own method of justice. On the one hand she takes away something and on the other she gives something in return. Small children were playing in the dust happily.
I peeped into one of the nearby tents. A young girl, about fourteen years old, was cleaning grains and preparing to cook a meal. When she saw me, she rose with a smile and said, ‘Please come in and sit down.’
As I wanted to see how they lived, I entered the shed. She gave me a charpoy to sit on. Inside the tent it was clean and neat. There was a thin partition made of an old sari. I understood from her conversation that her family was not from Kutch.
The girl offered me a glass of water. Though it was the monsoon season, the sun was hot, but I was a little hesitant to drink the water. Many thoughts flashed across my mind. If the water was not sterile, then I was at risk of contracting diseases like dysentery and jaundice. If I refused to accept the water, however, I knew I would hurt the girl’s feelings. So I took the glass but did not drink the water.
The girl had a younger sister who might have been around twelve years old. There was a little boy sleeping in a home-made cradle. Outside, there was a temporary open kitchen where sabzi was being cooked. The elder one was making dough from wheat flour.
‘It seems from your language that you are not Gujaratis. Where are you from?’ I asked.
Smiling, the younger sister answered, ‘We’re not from Gujarat, we’re from Mumbai.’
‘Have you come here to visit your relatives?’
‘No, we don’t have any relatives here. This is our house. We have come here with our parents.’
I was very surprised by this answer because, normally, people flee areas afflicted by calamities, whereas these people had moved in. ‘What is your father doing here?’
Both girls were eager to give me information. The elder one replied, ‘My father used to beg in Mumbai at Mahim Creek, near the church. My mother used to sell candles at the church entrance.’
‘What made you come here?’
‘One day, we saw the news on TV and came to know that there had been an earthquake here. It was shown every hour on TV in the corner shop. My father said “Let’s go” and we came here.’
‘Who paid for your train tickets?’
‘Nobody. We came here without tickets. The whole train was full of people. There were many people like us who have come. The entire station was heavily crowded. There was no ticket collector.’
‘How did you come from the train station?’
‘We didn’t know anyone. But there were plenty of buses running between the station and Bhuj. There were many foreign volunteers. The buses were jam-packed. We also got into one of the buses and landed on the main road.’
‘How did you come to this particular area?’
‘There were many jeeps going from the main roads to all interior villages. On the main road, there was a convoy of trucks full of different relief materials. They used to unload materials on either side of the road. People who did not have anything would pick them up from the roadside. We also picked up some.’
‘What were the materials on the roadside?’
‘There were food articles, apples, biscuit packets, clothes, blankets and many more items. My father told each one of us to pick up what we could and we collected a lot. We had never seen so much in our life in Mumbai. Everything was in plenty.’
Children are innocent and they always tell the truth until they become adults and lies creep into their lives. One lies to boast, to show what he is not. But children are so confident. They never pretend to be what they’re not. Naturally, the Mumbai beggar’s daughters described the whole scenario as if it was a very memorable event.
The elder one said much more than that. ‘There were people crying, some of them in pain. Some had lost their children or parents. It was very sad to see. But there were plenty of people to help also. There were doctors working overnight. There were swamijis working like common men, distributing medicines. There were army people digging to build houses. There was no difference between day and night, the rich and the poor.
‘Our position was better. We did not lose anybody, nor did we lose any material, because we never had anything to begin with. People who have something have to fear losing it, but people who don’t have anything to lose have no such fear. My mother and father helped people and someone said that inside the villages there was nobody to help. There were jeeps constantly travelling between the villages and the main road. So we got into one of the jeeps and landed in this village. Some organization was giving bamboo, camping materials like tents, and other roofing materials, free to all those people who had lost their houses. As we had no home, we also got all the materials. Sometimes we got double because my mother was in one queue and my father in another.’
‘What all have
you got?’
‘Plenty of food. We have been eating to our hearts’ content every day and we have also been giving some to people who were unable to stand in the queue. We know what it is to be hungry.’
‘Why did you settle here then?’
‘My father had asthma in Mumbai. He was unable to breathe and on many days we would go hungry. Someone said it was due to the pollution. It might be true, because after we came here, he has been normal, because there’s no pollution here. Anyway, we had also built our own house, so we decided to settle down.’
‘What job does your father do here? Does he continue to beg?’
‘No. We are self-sufficient now. He is working as a coolie in a nearby field. He earns Rs 100 a day. Our mother also does the same thing, so the income is doubled. We’re comfortable. The earthquake has come like a boon to us.’
She asked her sister to get some tea and biscuits. She inquired, ‘Which biscuits do you want?’
‘Do you have a variety?’ I asked, surprised.
She pulled the curtain aside and I was amazed to see the varieties of biscuit packets, cartons of Bisleri mineral water, utensils, steel trunks and other things.
‘From the day of the earthquake, most of us here have been drinking only Bisleri water. It seems some foreign country has sent a shipful of it. What I have given you is also mineral water.’
I took the glass of water and immediately gulped it down.
10
In India, the Worst of Both Worlds
Monday is the first working day of the week and an extremely busy day in our offices. All emails and papers have to be processed and meetings held. Long lists of appointments inevitably fill up our diaries. In between appointments, unexpected callers invariably turn up. Secretaries sweat it out on Monday mornings. But we have to get past Monday to reach Sunday again.
I recall one such Monday. I was engrossed in checking and replying to my email when my secretary told me that there were two visitors who had come to meet me without an appointment.
I asked her, ‘What is special about these visitors that you are letting them in without an appointment?’ I have great confidence in my staff and their ways of screening visitors.
She replied in a low tone, ‘Madam, one is a very old man who looks very pale and the other is a middle-aged person. They say it is very urgent and have been waiting for quite some time.’
‘Send them in,’ I said.
They came in and sat opposite me. The old man seemed more than seventy years old. He was looking weak, tired and worried. He carried a worn-out bag. He was in a pitiable condition. With him was a middle-aged man who also looked somewhat worried.
I came to the point immediately. ‘Tell me, what is the matter?’
The old man did not talk but just looked at the younger man.
The middle-aged man said, ‘Madam, I saw this old man sitting near a bus stop. It seems he does not have anybody. He wants some shelter. Unfortunately, he does not have any money.’
This middle-aged man wanted to go on with all kinds of explanations. I often come across people who beat around the bush quite unnecessarily. They never tell you what they want directly. As I am used to such things, I often cut them short even at the risk of sounding curt.
‘What do you want me to do?’ I asked outright.
‘I have read a lot about your work. I want you to help this gentleman.’
‘Do you have anybody?’ I asked the old man.
Tears welled up in his eyes. In a low voice he said, ‘No, I do not have anybody.’
‘What about your family?’
‘No, I do not have anybody.’
‘Where were you working before?’
I asked many questions and he gave reasonably satisfactory replies.
I felt bad for the old man. He had no money and nobody to give him a helping hand. It was a sad case. I thought of an old-age home with which we had regular contact. I called this home and told them that I was sending an old man there and that he should be kept there until we decided what we could do for him. The middle-aged man said, ‘Do not worry. I will go with him and leave him there. From there, I will go to my office.’
Then they left my office. Soon, I got lost in my world of work, visitors, vouchers, budgets and so on.
Not that I forgot the old man’s case. Once in a while I would call the old-age home and inquire about him. They would tell me that he was fine. I never had time to think more about him. I used to send money every month to the old-age home.
One day, I got a call from the caretaker of the home saying that the old man was very sick and that they had admitted him to a hospital. Could I come in the evening?
I went to see the old man at the hospital that evening.
He was really unwell. The doctors felt his condition was critical and that he did not have long to live. I thought there might be somebody he wished to see at a time like this. Maybe not his own children, but perhaps a nephew or a sister or brother, at least a friend? Was there anybody we could inform?
I asked him, ‘Do you want to see anybody? We will call whomever you want. Do you have anybody’s phone number?’
With a trembling hand, he wrote down a number and gave it to me. We called the number and informed the person at the other end that the old man was critical. After some time, a person came to see him. He looked anxious and worried and went straight to the old man.
I thought I had seen this man before. I tried to jog my memory but in vain. I just couldn’t remember why the old man’s visitor seemed so familiar. Perhaps he resembled someone I had met on my travels.
Meanwhile, the doctor came out and told me that the old man had breathed his last. I felt sad. I neither knew him nor had any contact with him. But somehow I felt very sad.
After a few minutes, the visitor came out. He had tears in his eyes. He sat down quietly on a bench. The whole place was quiet and depressing. The caretaker, this visitor and I sat in the visitors’ hall, waiting for the formalities to be completed.
The visitor asked, ‘Where is the bag he had?’
‘What bag?’
‘This man came to the old-age home carrying a bag,’ he said.
My interest quickened. How did the visitor know that there was a bag?
I sent a peon back to the old-age home to fetch the bag. When it arrived, the visitor was eager to open it, but I did not permit him.
‘You may not open the bag unless you identify yourself. What is your relationship with this old man? I want to know how you knew about this bag.’
He seemed very upset with my questions. Maybe he didn’t like a woman questioning him. In India, men often get upset when women raise questions that are inconvenient for them. They prefer women who do not question what they do. Fortunately, this trend is disappearing slowly.
‘It was I who accompanied him and left him at this home,’ said the man.
‘Who are you?’ I was very curious.
‘I am his son.’
You can imagine how shocked I was. Now I remembered—he was the middle-aged man who had come to our office that Monday morning claiming that he had found the old man sitting near a bus stop.
I was very upset. ‘Why did you lie to me?’
Of course he had a story to tell. ‘I have problems at home,’ he said. ‘My wife never liked my father. She asked me to choose between her and him. At that time we read about your foundation. We thought then that our problem could be solved without money.’ He said he had no choice but to appease his wife because it was she who owned the house they lived in.
‘What a way to solve your problem!’ I protested. ‘We help people who are orphans, but not orphans with children.’
When the bag was finally opened we found three sets of old clothes in it, some medicines and a passbook. When I opened the passbook, I was astounded. The old man had a bank balance of more than a lakh of rupees. The old man had put down a nominee for the account—his son, the same son who had got rid of him. Here was a son
who was heartless enough to pass off his father as destitute in order to admit him in an old-age home. Now, the same son had come to claim his father’s money.
Though his son had not wanted to look after him and had made him lie to me that he had nobody in this world, the old man nevertheless had wanted his money to go to his son. It never would have occurred to him to give that money to the old-age home that had sheltered him in his last days.
In Western countries, when old people die in old-age homes, they often will their property to the home or the hospital that cared for them. This is for the benefit of other senior citizens. They do not bequeath their money to their children, nor do the children expect their parents to do so. But in India, we have the worst of both worlds: children neglect aged parents, and parents routinely leave their property to their children.
‘It is shameful the way you and your father cooked up this drama for the sake of a few thousand rupees!’ I told the man. ‘And you are setting a bad example. Next time when a genuinely destitute person seeks help, we will be unwilling to offer it. The memory of people like you will stay on.’
He hung his head in shame.
11
How I Taught My Grandmother to Read
When I was a girl of about twelve, I used to stay in a village in north Karnataka with my grandparents. Those days, the transport system was not very good, so we used to get the morning paper only in the afternoon. The weekly magazine used to come one day late. All of us would wait eagerly for the bus, which used to come with the papers, weekly magazines and the post.
At that time, Triveni was a very popular writer in the Kannada language. She was a wonderful writer. Her style was easy to read and very convincing. Her stories usually dealt with complex psychological problems in the lives of ordinary people and were always very interesting. Unfortunately for Kannada literature, she died very young. Even now, after forty years, people continue to appreciate her novels.
One of her novels, called Kashi Yatre, was appearing as a serial in the Kannada weekly Karmaveera then. It is the story of an old lady and her ardent desire to go to Kashi or Varanasi. Most Hindus believe that going to Kashi and worshipping Lord Vishweshwara is the ultimate punya. This old lady also believed in this, and her struggle to go there was described in that novel. In the story there was also a young orphan girl who falls in love but there was no money for the wedding. In the end, the old lady gives away all her savings to help the girl, without going to Kashi. She says, ‘The happiness of this orphan girl is more important than worshipping Lord Vishweshwara at Kashi.’