The center point of India

The feeling that one gets in Nagpur is of space. Immense space with sprawling red coloured buildings with sloping red tiled roofs. All of them within large compounds where there would be a garden in front and trees all over the place. What buildings were they? The high court, the district court and the most mundane post office too, the collectors office, the municipal corporation and many more.

I am sure I would love to spend an entire morning trying to post an epistle to some far away land spending time within that post office dawdling amongst the flower beds and walk amongst the shady trees with their dense green foliage.

It would be  a brilliant life instead of standing in that simple modern post office where the queue would seem endless and where I would love to rush in ask "please give me this this this stamp", lick the stamp, affix it to that letter, post it into the non descript letter box and rush back into the waiting car.

Oh those glorious old days which still exist in a sleepy sprawling town called Nagpur.

The air seems fresh, the days laid back, time waits.

The markets are plentiful, as I drove past the wholesale market of Itwari, there seemed to be clothes spilling out of the shops, onto the pathways.

This is the cotton belt of India, which was known for its lovely hand loom textiles, which were made patiently by hand. It now seems to have given way to glitter and synthetic material, which makes life easy, as these  are easy to maintain. In the beginning when these clothes entered the market in the sixties, they used to be called wash and wear and drip dry clothes, and never seemed to fade or fray. Cotton clothes faded and died a natural death soon and so were expensive to maintain, but they could be recycled. 

The  one new evolution in Nagpur that I saw was that the great sprawling lands of the Empress mill which ruled the lives of many a Nagpurkar once upon a time, has now given way to the Empress mall. Instead of producing something, people are now only consuming. You go in quickly and buy a cup of coffee from a multinational, walk around and come back with no great feeling.

Just as it is said that a bull gets attracted by a red cloth, a mall meant chances of there being a book shop for me, so I entered a large book shop which said it was the biggest bookshop in Nagpur. I saw a sparsely populated book shop with more sales persons than customers. Shelves were placed far apart and there was lots of space asking to be filled with more book. I asked for a book on Nagpur. The salesman looked high and low while I walked around and in a period of half an hour came up with a roadmap tourist booklet costing me Rs. 60. The booklet was on Vidarbh and not exclusively on Nagpur. The entire shop could not come up with any book on Nagpur. He seemed bewildered with my request and said no one has ever asked for such a book. I told him now that I have asked for it, please find some books on Nagpur and stock them. Every place has a history, a culture, a heritage, why has no one written on it?  If someone has,  then why is the book not available in the book store? Maybe I have to look for a better bookshop with some antiquity and a seller with some love for books.

The vegetable market near the cotton market huge building had fresh, colorful vegetables beautifully displayed on the pavement.  The artistry in each vegetable vendor showed with the green, red, purple, native vegetables displayed distinctly,  quite colour coordinated. That I suppose is the love for your ware which you want to place artistically with pride and love.

My father used to tell us a story of an old lady who used to sit on the wayside to sell  fish. A young man who used to pass that way everyday would see her struggling to make her ends meet and the way she would haggle over the price of the fish with her customers. One day the man told her that he would buy all her fish at whatever price she quoted everyday as he would supply it to a huge fish monger in the city. The old woman thought hard for sometime and refused this generous offer. The young man was non plussed and said, "Why old mother, why do you not agree?"

 The old lady said, "Son, I love my work, I love meeting people, I love haggling as then people stop, talk, discuss the price of fish, they spend their time with me. I am pleased to strike a deal which gives my customer a look of pleasure and me a companion for some time. I build a relationship, spread satisfaction, and make an acquaintance. If you take away all my fish I will have nothing to do for the rest of my day and there will be no one who will stop by to chat with me."

The people touch, human interaction, is so  very important. We need to talk, chat, discuss and haggle and strike a deal which is always-always beneficial.

Nagpur has wide roads, dense foliage, walking pathways, content people, the zero milestone, which is the center point of India. My driver who was showing me around the city said, "madam this is the center of Nagpur".  I told him " No, this is the center of India".  He was delighted to know that. 

Triloki, my husband says "something happens to you when you visit Nagpur".  

I said, "True, some genes of some ancestors of mine remember those days gone by when people studied under lampposts and a young man named Narayan straight from a village named Kurul of Garhchiroli district, on his first visit to the huge town of Nagpur had asked innocently looking at the Palace theatre, "is this the palace of the Maharajah of Nagpur?" and his friend had laughed and said, " arre nahi re, this is a theatre where people buy a ticket to go and see a movie."

Those were the days my friend, those are the memories which make me see and enjoy Nagpur as perhaps no Nagpurwalla does.

 You have to go out of Nagpur and then look back upon the place.  It gives a different perspective.

COUNTRY ROADS....

Our house with the tall roof, once upon a time.

I recently visited my remote village which is actually back of the beyond. It is located in one of the most backward districts of the country. The district is known as Garhchiroli. My village is known as Kurul, that is how my father spelt it although I think that it should be spelt as Kurud as that is how it is pronounced.

Kurul to this day in 2016, does not have a railway station, the nearest railway station is at Wadsa which is six kilometres away. Wadsa now has broad gauge railway tracks but in the olden days it had only a narrow gauge railway track. My village  is now connected by a motorable road, and I am told that a bus does visit the village everyday. In olden days  the only mode of transport from the nearest railway station, was the bullock cart. 

I have memories of travelling in the bullock cart on a road which can best be described today as a roller coaster ride, as the road was very bumpy because the track was made only by the wheels of the bullock cart. My family owned different kinds of bullock carts, one was a "rengi", one was a covered cart and a few others too, the names of which are not known to me.

The Primary school about 10 years ago.

From that village where there was no electricity, no road, no Middle school too, my father understood the need for education. He went from Kurul to Wadsa, to Brahmapuri, to Nagpur and finally to London  to educate himself. He always got Merit scholarship from the British Government of India from Class eight onwards, as he always stood first in every class.  In 1949 after becoming an Engineer from London, he returned to India to serve his country.

The school today.

He was employed with the Government of India which had then started building a newly freed country. That is the reason that we, my two brothers and I went all over the country wherever daddy, who belonged to the prestigious Industrial Management Pool(IMP) got posted, from Hirakud dam in Orissa to Nagarjunasagar dam in A.P., Kotah in Rajasthan, Bhurkunda in Jharkhand, to Bailadila (Bastar)Iron ore project in Chattisgarh,  Kiriburu in Orissa to Panna Diamond Mines in M.P. We got an overdose of this vast country and learnt about the cuisine, the customs, traditions, language, culture, History and Geography of each place practically, always on the spot. The kind of education that we were exposed to is quite unbelievable and actually enviable.

Hats off to my father who accepted any challenge and posting willingly, and my ever ready mother who trudged along wherever my father went ungrudgingly. All of us siblings stayed in the nearest boarding schools and went home during holidays, as most of the places that my dad was posted to did not have good educational facility. With the limited resources that they had my parents had decided to invest in our education.

 Kurul therefore, remained  in our memory as the place that we belonged to. For a number of years my father always wrote the address of Kurul  as his permanent place of residence. I remember that place very well as we went there often as children, but the visits became less frequent after my grand parents died.

On my most recent visit, I found that the place has changed a lot. The road is metalled, the old school building is dilapidated, and no one except my own family members recognised me. 

This once upon a time was tiger land,  teak land, tendu land, and Mahua land. Now the Tadoba Tiger Reserve is just next door and Mahua trees still stand in our fields. So many tales had been told to me about this place by my father, that I could relate to a lot of landmarks that I saw.

As I stood on the land that my grandfather had bought, I looked as far as my eyes could see and I was told that it was all owned by my grand father. In the third generation, this land has now been split, yet it is still ours and remains in the family.

Our ancestral house has been broken down. That was the house which my father with his elder brother had helped in building. With their tiny little hands they would make small balls of mud  which would be carried to the place where the house was being built.Those balls of mud were used in the construction of the walls. All that labour, all that work has gone because time has taken its toll. 

That small kitchen where my grand mother made aambil( A soup made of Jowar-millet, during summer season) for the people as well as animals is no longer there. The cowshed called "gotha"where lovely cows, bullocks rested at night is now plain land where a garden grows. The beautiful arched massive gate with a latticed balcony is now non existent. This majestic gate with rooms on its first floor and a balcony was built with the money that my father sent from London. As a lone sentinel of those times is my grandfather's well which still stands steadfast in front of our house. 

"The old order changeth, yielding place to new", what happens to memories I wonder.... they remain, oh yes they remain, forever, they do not yield place to new. Our memory capacity is infinite, therefore we can keep adding to it.

My brothers and I have moved on in life, we do not have any rustic element in us, but then you cannot take Kurul away from any of us, we belong to Kurul and will always trace our ancestry there.