Monkey Woes

These last few months have seen me engaged in a campaign to house the monkeys of Ayodhya and Faizabad in mini-sanctuaries at different places in the two towns. I have submitted a detailed proposal on behalf of the Sahriday Samiti to the district, State and Central administration to prepare such green forested acres for the monkeys who run rampant among the rooftops and streets, snatching what they can from unwary people, and getting caught in wires and cables.

The monkeys here, Rhesus Macaques, are a khaki coloured, low-browed and short tailed species different from the Bonnet Macaques seen in the South. They are always ripe for being made into a political-religious issue by Hindu fundamentalists who make much of them being forms of Hanuman. But their welfare is not a matter for anyone to be unduly worried. In fact, they are perceived as a huge nuisance, and cost lakhs of rupees in damages every month and crores every year. The telephone department alone shells out Rs. 20 lakhs a month on damaged cables and installations, not to mention the Electricity Board, local cable TV operators, shopkeepers and street vendors, and ordinary residents who cannot put out clothes or edibles in the sunlight, grow a kitchen garden, or even have a peaceful cup of tea or coffee on the terrace or balcony of their homes.

If things are left to be this way, any residual affection that people have for these animals, either in religious terms, or just as fellow-creatures will disappear, and more and more cruelty will be practised on monkeys in the name of self-defence. Recognizing this, I took up the cause of monkey rehabilitation to make people work for their own welfare, to separate issues of the common good from emotive religious and political flashpoints, and to actually achieve some long-term relief for monkeys. After all, with humans encroaching on vast areas of forest every year, where are these animals to go? My proposal covered points of public-private partnership, making faith and a respect for animals the positive cornerstones for true development, and creating examples of monkey rehabilitation that would serve to inspire other monkey infested towns of tourist importance, like Agra, Mathura and Brindavan.

So far, my proposal has met with a stony silence from the administration - both local and Central. My people's campaign, meant to put pressure on the administration through means like writing postcards and having neighbourhood meetings has been handicapped by my contracting TB, and by the stupendous inertia of the people in this part of the country.

Meanwhile, my own friendship with the monkeys is growing stronger by the day. Not only have I successfully got an injured baby monkey back on her feet after two months of care, I have also had my heart broken by her, and am daily called and greeted by around a dozen familiar monkeys who frequent our compound. I may never be able to solve their problems in the way I had dreamed, but at least I can give them grapes, bananas and roti!

Another Kalavati

The 10th of November, 2009 saw me spend the day in a village near Nawabganj, a bus ride away from Ayodhya and Faizabad. It was the thirteenth day ritual for Kalavati Singh, wife of an elderly Thakur farmer from the village, who had died the day before the annual Panch Kosi Parikrama, on her way to her daughter's house in Ayodhya.

I had met this lady but once in my life, when I had gone to her daughter's house for dinner, cooked partly by Kalavati herself. A sharp, wiry village woman who looked healthy enough to live to a hundred, she always thereafter enquired about our welfare, my husband's and mine, from her daughter and son-in-law. We were regularly sent pickle or slightly pink curds, made from thickened milk, from her house in the village. She asked us to visit again, but we never went back to her daughter's house, in the way that the closest of friends is forgotten in the daily whirl of meaningless preoccupations.

The next time we visited would be in the shocked hours following Kalavati's death in an accident on her way to take part in the Parikrama. A veteran of many similar journeys to her daughter's home in Ayodhya, Kalavati set off from her village, carrying bags of provisions and village goodies, accompanied by a teenaged boy. She got into a three wheeler, the rickety 'sharing-auto' that is the standard means of conveyance in these parts. The driver promised to drop them off at Naya Ghat, Ayodhya. However, when they reached Katra, still some km before Ayodhya, he said he couldn't go further. Kalavati remonstrated, but he said they had to get off. She and her companion did so. They had hardly gone some distance when he called them again, and said, "OK, come on, I'll take you."

The teenager ran ahead with the bags and got back into the auto. Other passengers scrambled. Kalavati hurried too, but a truck driver, just starting his vehicle from the side of the road, failed to spot her and drove right over her, then, responding to the screams of passers by, reversed back over her stomach. Kalavati lasted some hours. She was rushed to the Ayodhya hospital, but could not survive that afternoon.

The most horrific detail of this incident relates to the auto driver who called her back after expelling her from his vehicle. He drove away from the accident, after being its prime cause. He went on looking for passengers who would pay him Rs. 2, Rs. 3, Rs. 5 and so on to get short rides up to Ayodhya town. If any one thing proves the sheer negligence, the attitude of people here to the sanctity of human life, it is this.

At her village home in Nawabganj, I sat and looked around me at every evidence of Kalavati's vibrant life. Inconsolable neighbours and relatives. Women who lived all around for many km came to her for wise counsel and help. Children who ran into her home from many houses nearby, confident that she would wipe a nose, slap a wrong-doer, or offer some freshly cooked treats. Buffaloes who were used to her feeding and milking, her voice as she tended to them. Now they stared past me at the crowds in a puzzled way.

Her death had torn the fabric of life for dozens of people in a way that was very difficult to bear.

Yet, when people discussed the accident, they blamed the truck driver, jailed for his crime. They did not discuss the poor facilities for transportation of pilgrims during Parikrama. They did not blame the authorities for all the hurdles put up in the path of pilgrims reaching Ayodhya safely. They did not discuss how auto drivers and the pathetic way they conducted their business needed to be regulated, and wrong-doers penalized stringently.

They blamed fate. "Who can prevent death when it comes for you?" seemed to be the general sentiment.

When Rahul Gandhi introduced a rural woman and her predicament into parliament, a woman who went by the name of Kalavati, the media went into overdrive. Some admired his sincerity, others lampooned his championing of this particular cause.

I needed to come to this village in Nawabganj to finally understand how much the life of each Kalavati means to her family and loved ones, and how little to our society as a whole.

Parikrama Perils

Dust, grime, decay, neglect have a way of settling on the soul. I am finding this out the hard way in the goodlands of U.P. Goodlands because Awadh, the region which Faizabad and Ayodhya represent, is quite different from the real badlands of East U.P, like Gorakhpur or Azamgarh, or West U.P, like Meerut or Saharanpur. And yet, for someone arrived from the gleaming metro of Chennai, where buildings, streets and neighbourhoods get regular makeovers with the steady inflow of capital, the visual landscape here is tough to get used to.

People live in dilapidated houses because they cannot earn enough money in this sluggish economy to do major repairs. Tin roofs and makeshift arrangements involving a few bricks here, a stone slab kept over some drain there, are common. My own present living arrangements consist of a large, long room with a tin roof, and a bedroom in the older portion of a sprawling house whose walls give off a seeping chill in the winter months.

Still, old buildings and non-aesthetic surroundings are not enough to damage the soul. What really does?

In late October 2009, I set off for the Chaudah Kosi Parikrama. This is a nearly 60 km circumambulation of Ayodhya, two days before the shorter Panch Kosi Parikrama, both annual rituals for thousands of pilgrims from nearby villages. I must admit to a certain dewy-eyed naivete when I started the parikrama. I had been to the Mahakumbh Mela in Allahabad in 2001, the Sinhasth Mela in Ujjain in 2004, to places like Thiruvannamalai and Tirupati regularly. This would be an opportunity to explore my faith and deepen it, I thought.

Instead, it was a stumbling across miles and miles of rural paths, plotted by some fiendish government officials who had decided to make life as miserable as possible for pilgrims, to extract the utmost mileage for an angry God. We set off in a heady fashion alongside the Sarayu river from Faizabad, reached Ayodhya and walked on in what was a night-long walk. I was hoping the journey would be enlivened by song and satsang, bhajan and shared accounts over cups of hot tea. What I found instead was an endlessly hurrying stream of most businesslike people, discussing the prices of essential commodities, as they hurried to complete this ritual. The Chaudah Kosi Parikrama, apart from its most unfair length, which covers Darshan Nagar more than it delivers proximity to Ayodhya, seemed to me quite bereft of the madness, the crazy love of the divine, that one encounters in places like Varanasi. This was a hurried procession of practical, tight-fisted, rural people.

And there were genuine dangers. We were miles away from hospitals. No one who had fallen sick or had a heart attack would have found any transport in the middle of the night to reach civilization. There was a huge build up of people in front of a railway crossing that made me fear a stampede or a mass mowing down by train (all things that have happened here in the past). The night air had just begun to turn cold with the approaching of winter. I rested in two places with my young companion, Lakshmi, on hay spread out to give some warmth. At one place, there was a pond right next to where we lay, and the chill crept out in silent waves, making it impossible for one farmer to continue. He had underestimated the cold and not worn or brought any warm clothing.

Anyway, a day later, I was not at all keen to take part in the Panch Kosi Parikrama, which local purists informed me, was a must after the Chaudah Kosi! Who makes all these stupid rules, I wondered. In other homes, women were getting ready to start their brisk 15 km or so walk around Faizabad and Ayodhya towns. "Why didn't you start with the smaller version?" many demanded, with an irritating practicality, to my refusal to accompany them. "This is a much nicer Parikrama - you can complete it all in the daytime," others cajoled. Thanks, but no thanks, I thought. The lack of any identifiable spiritual element in the Chaudah Kosi Parikrama had cured me of any desire for a repetition.

Besides, my legs were aching far too much!

To Rahul, With Thanks

It is difficult to put in mere words the profound gratitude I feel this February evening towards Rahul Gandhi. Today is the day he visited Mumbai for some hours and traveled by local train, withdrew money from an ATM, and offered flowers at an Ambedkar statue that has become the symbol of the Sena and BJP animosity towards Dalits, even if they are Marathi manoos.

Thank you, Rahul, for finally and comprehensively driving the Amar Singh story off the airwaves.

SRK began this noble mission, but it needed you, with your dimpled dignity, to push this verbose monstrosity into well-deserved (albeit, unfortunately short) obscurity (given the tendency of our media to pander to this long-winded self-promoter).

Thank you, Rahul, for bringing simple things like good manners and courtesy back into public life. This thanks has been coming to you for some time, what with reports of your thanking drivers who took you places and ordinary gestures of good behaviour that have become so remarkable for us, with the daily spectacle of graceless netas being part of our normal fare. Of course, thanks for this should partly be shared by your parents, who obviously brought you up right. At least, as a mother who is herself partly responsible for a young man whose manner towards less privileged people bears certain similarities with your own, I cannot help get misty-eyed when I see you go places. Thanks for making it fashionable for young people to be decent and good-hearted, for making cynicism look crass.

There are so many other things for which to thank you. The list is only beginning. But I also feel afraid. I ignored all the initial hoopla about your entry into politics not only because I found the dynastic angle abhorrent. I was also afraid to get too attached to you - the way I had become to your late father. The tears I shed at his untimely death shocked me with their intensity, the sheer sense of loss. I did not want to take such a risk again, in case the hate-mongers got you too. Better to stay indifferent and not be bothered, I thought.

But that can never be, can it Rahul? As an Indian and a patriot, I cannot help but notice the path you have chosen to succeed in your father's footsteps. A longer, more difficult, but also much more change-bearing path. How can I then stay indifferent, or not burst out into wild cheering when I see TV coverage of your Mumbai trip? How can I pretend an intellectual superiority when I do not feel it? I feel a sense of great kinship with your mission, to make goodness and honesty and a concern and caring for people the basis for a career in public life. Thank you for your quiet courage.

Wishing your vision stays clear and uncontaminated, and you become the longest-lived Gandhi-Nehru of five generations.

Going Away Feet

The last two days have been stressful. This is the month of Ramzan and the children are being called to attend a daily 'Qayda' or religious instruction class that clashes with our class timings. All our star students either arrive very late for class, panting, or miss class completely. The kite-mad boys who have to be dragged to school make little attempt to attend, because their more serious friends are not coming. And Laxmi and I wait anxiously in the afternoon hours, fanning ourselves in days that have turned humid and hot once again, waiting with maps and the precious football, to explain night and day on planet earth, where Faizabad is, and the intricacies of the solar system.

We have encountered the complications of sustaining any attempt at educating first-generation learners.

Farida, short of thirteen, has decided she is in love with a boy called Chhotu and has no use for a class where teachers tell girls to first become strong and financially independent before they get married. Rahela and her sisters and brother are notable absentees. Our most loyal follower, Razia, most noticed for her big front teeth, is absent too - she is running a fever. We joke with the children, hand out work, pat heads for good effort, but all the time our eyes return to the gate. Is anyone else going to show up? I secretly feel a pang for Pratibha Miss. She is the Anganwadi helper who used to go to the children's homes to shepherd them for half an hour of Hindi and English alphabets before they began attending our undoubtedly more glamorous class. Now I know how she must have felt!

Our children are going away from us all the time, all over the place, and there's precious little we can do to stop it.

Then I notice that someone has left their footwear behind. Typically, it is a slipper each of two different pairs, exactly what a rag-picker manages to assemble from daily foragings. For no explicable reason, the sight brings me comfort. They will be back. Of course. And I had better learn to manage the extremes of a heart that fills with liquid love every time I see mis-matched slippers.

Phulshan

The children were delirious with joy. We had bought them a football. In the first indication of their natural sporting talent, the older boys kicked the football in straight, shooting arcs that made me fear for the neighbouring windows. Since the class of rag-picker children I teach with my assistant Laxmi has moved to a tin shed in my home here in Faizabad, I have to be careful of what family members and neighbours will say about our more abandoned efforts.

Anyway, the football reminded them that they were after all Bengali/Assamese kids, with football in their blood. So grateful were they for this gift, that they volunteered to trim our overgrown lawn the next day. "We will cut the grass and carry it away," said Hashim. "We will clear up the whole garden," said Al-ameen. I didn't really set too much store by their promises, but there they were the next day, all of them, busily trimming the grass, carrying away bricks and stones that littered their playing area. I had gone out and arrived to find them busy at work under Laxmi's watchful eyes.

"What hard-working children!" I exclaimed. "Have they cleared up all this?" I marveled, noticing a new boy, a small, dark child with chipped front teeth. "Who is this?" I asked, smiling at the boy. "He is bad!" said Razia. "Don't let him come to your school!" "What?" I said. "How can he be bad?" "He will say 'Randi!" said Ramisa. "Oh, he actually worked the hardest of all," said Laxmi. "He came along with them, and began working. I don't even know his name, but he's really sweet."

"No, he's not!" protested Mumtaz. "He's bad, and he won't come to your school, just see. You will give him a bag and books, and he will just disappear." "We'll see," I said. Losing a litle of our investment evey now and then with some child who drops out is an occupational hazard with our class, we have found. Families move to different neighbourhoods, parents decide that even the two hours their child spends away from sifting garbage is too costly for the family, children get too used to being unfettered on the street...there's plenty of reasons to lose our students.

"What's your name," I asked the chipped-toothed kid. "Phulshan," he replied, a name I had never heard before, and had to have repeated several times. "If he begins coming to school, I will stop coming," said Hashim darkly. I was perplexed. What had the little kid done to inspire such dislike among the whole class of them?

Over the next few weeks, Phulshan became one of our favourite figures among the littlest ones. Always dressed in the same drab grey clothes, he showed great happiness at being part of the class, got over his hurt at the other children's rejection of him, and seemed to be getting along fine. Then he missed school for a few days.

When we were going to celebrate Independence Day on the 15th of August, I told all the children to bring along every one who had ever come to our class. "Tell Phulshan!" i reminded them, and sure enough, Phulshan came to our Independence Day function wearing a new, turquoise blue vest and shorts. When I had the children fight with toy swords in pairs, he had to be dragged to the front, he was so shy at coming out before all the children. And yet, surprisingly, he fought with great finesse, almost like a true fencer. "A big hand for Phulshan!" I said, and all the kids clapped. When we were distributing sweets, his elder brother came forward and took some too. "Phulshan will attend regularly from tomorrow," he promised. "And I will come too."

But that was the last we saw of them both.

'Randi!'

In the fourth month of my class with ragpicker children, named Sahriday 'Balwadi' or children's centre to distinguish it from an actual school, we are still grappling with the term 'Randi!', meaning 'Whore!', the favourite term of abuse among two, three, five and six year olds.

They listened to me with wide-eyed attention the very first time I told them it was a bad word and must not be used in class. along with other, worse ones. However, every few minutes, there would be small fights like minor cracker explosions among the kids, with 'Randi!' being bandied about like crazy. It appeared that this particular term was very dear, that it tripped off their tongues almost without their knowing, since it was so natural for them to utter.

My assistant Laxmi and I did manage to make some breakthrough in the weeks of June and July. The older kids began to look shame-faced if they were caught using the word in class. We began meting out punishment. Any child who said 'Randi!' in class was promptly sent home and had to miss play time, or whatever we were doing that day. A whole culture began developing of informers - "He said 'Randi!'", and "She said 'Randi!'" became common complaints that we had to sift through with care. How could we send everyone home? "Did you just say it?" we would ask, towering above the erring child, who looked at us defiantly, while a host of voices around us confirmed, "He did!" "She did!" or, occasionally, "No, she didn't! It was Rushna!"

'Randi!' became more familiar to me and Laxmi than it had ever been in all our adult lives. Sometimes, we would turn from a mild scold to a child and hear him/her mutter, 'Randi!'. "Haven't these children learnt any other way to describe a woman?" Laxmi would sometimes ask, with equal disgust and despair.

And now we are in September, and our class has a blackboard, and is approaching the shores of civilisation. In a discussion about the children's occupation of rag-picking, we talk to them about the different zones for groups of rag-pickers within the town, and learn from them the importance of territory. "Ok, suppose you find some people from Shehenwa (across town) in your area, picking among the trash, what do you do?" I ask them.

"We fight!" says one. "We say 'Randi!'" says another.

The class erupts in full-throated laughter.

That is how far we have come. Turned the near-constant abuse and frustration they have inherited from their parents' speech into a source of humour. Small blessings, but they feel good to us.