“........It is my belief,
Watson, founded upon my experience, that the lowest and vilest alleys in London
do not present a more dreadful record of sin than does the smiling and
beautiful countryside.”
-Sherlock Holmes
I
read that one long time back perhaps when I was only in school. Had it not been
for the internet I would never have been able to quote it accurately and in
full. Till school I idolized village life like all educated Indians do; it was
only when I started studying in the university that I had my first brush with
people from villages; even these were not pure villagers because as can be
imagined only few of them could have managed to qualify an entrance exam for a
masters degree in English literature even with more than nearly sixty five
percent reservation. In the university I first had the experience of ‘pits’.
Even in higher education and that too humanities stream I could see these
‘villagers’ treating their fellow lady students as sex objects. Their really
uncouth nature and primal instincts came to the fore during festivals like holi. Though most female students stopped coming to
the university around holi time some
of them did come for reasons I never understood and these were actually chased
and groped by their fellow ‘villager’ students; needless to say the local
students never ever joined these goons. It was this that first made me hate the
semi ‘villager’ crowd the worst was yet to come.
My
first real brush with a real village came when I was sent to meet a tailor
working in a village about fifty kilometres from Lucknow. Since I had been
given my first motorcycle I was always looking for just such errands. I sped
down to the village in no time but once off the main highway it was a struggle
getting to the tailor’s place as there are no real roads in villages. I reached
the place and my ordeal started. Villages by and large stink generally of cow
dung but this one had all types of odours; and then the insects – there were
swarms of them including mosquitos and they bit me everywhere. To top it all I
ran out of petrol and the tailor was gracious enough to get me a litre of it.
It was good enough only to get me out of the person’s area but once his ‘house’
was out of sight my motorcycle just would not move and was releasing clouds of
smoke. I realized that the petrol was adulterated. It is nothing unusual; most
villages in my part of the world have almost everything contaminated. Villagers
do not hesitate to spray and mix all kinds of toxic material with food stuffs
to make them look good. I somehow found a real petrol pump and the guy there
made me drain every single drop of petrol before filling the tank and said I
barely missed destroying my engine.
My
second experience of hard core villagers was when I was travelling to Lucknow
from Allahabad. I was unlucky enough to be travelling on the same day as a
Bharti Kisaan Union rally. Once the train began to move all the villagers took
their positions. They occupied every seat, then the aisle and then the space
near the toilets. When the ticket checking clerk tried to enter the coach they
kicked him back on the platform threatening him with dire consequences. So I
was there standing on my feet right outside the toilet for the whole time with
no opportunity to sit throughout the journey though I had a reserved seat.
There was a family in a much worse position. They were returning after visiting
Sangam as they had had a baby many years
after marriage. The mother was overweight and could hardly stand with the
infant in her lap and pleaded with the villagers to allow her to have at least
one seat but they absolutely would not listen. These goons committed many
bailable offences along the way and it was a great comfort to finally alight at
Lucknow. A stench of sweat is trade mark of villagers and it can make you throw
up in no time but traditionally Indian literature celebrates ‘pasina’ or sweat of a villager.
Most
villages have full fledged goons or semi goons as their representatives in
assemblies and most pradhans are not
the sort of guys you would allow in your homes. Villagers have little knowledge
of law which they take into their hands all the time. Just flip through case
files in any police station in a village and you will find most heinous crimes
being committed for the smallest of disputes. That is what Sherlock Holmes was
referring to. It is the community or mob or tribe that is important for
villagers and they would support even a murderer if “he belongs to our
village”. It is rather a miracle that wonderful cities like Lucknow have come
up amidst a maze of criminal-infested villages in UP but sadly the weeds are
overrunning the garden again. Whether you like it or not; whether politically
correct or not migration from rural areas is spoiling everything that was
beautiful and civilized and valuable in cities like Lucknow and I am sure many
others.
Villagers
in India in my opinion are like black holes- their income is tax free; they do
not pay VAT/CST; they get seeds and fertilizers at highly subsidised rates;
admin ignores their petty crimes and they do not have any deadlines to beat
still they are always beating their breasts about their plight whereas their
counterparts in cities with much smaller incomes have to fend for themselves
without any help. Is this fair? To top it all one would laugh if an urban lower
middle income person were to come out on the roads to demand scrapping of his
vehicle loan but villagers do it all the time for their loans as if it is their
birthright to take huge loans and then turn wilful defaulters.
Villagers
have little regard for freedom or even dignity of women; just flip through any
newspaper and you will see majority of news is about violence against women in
villages also most violence against women in cities is committed by people with
a rural background.
So
the big question for research is who actually romanticised life in villages in
India? I have no answer to that and am sure neither do most of the well
networked ‘intellectuals’; all I can say is that it is one of the most sinister
myths preserved and passed down in India.
Beware of
farmers and their representatives they are everywhere!
copyright Anurag Kumar - please do not reproduce without permission
