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!