REBIRTH ON A BIRTHDAY

When my wife asked me to post one of her  write up in my blog, I never thought translating a Malayalam story would be so difficult.....It took me almost two days to complete it.   

Delhi Musings:-  Rebirth on a Birthday. (Janmanalil  oru  Punarjanmam)

16 January 2002, it was on this day in Delhi, that I became a proud mother of a cute looking baby boy, Akshit. With his grand entrance into this world, we found our lives have become more blissful than ever before. We beamed with love and ecstasy. An addition in the family strength was celebrated with exuberance not only by us in Delhi but also by our relatives and friends in Trivandrum.  And eventually, two years later, his second birthday was celebrated in the same place, but this time with a miraculous rebirth of me, when I survived a nasty electric shock which almost took my existence away from this world; 

“Den for all Delhi”, has always fascinated me in my school days.  Whenever my history teacher elucidates in a theatrical way, the rise and fall of mighty emperors in their majstic palaces rivaled each other for those thrones made of most luxurious objects which reflects umpteen ‘paramountcy’, I dreamt about visiting that place, even for once in my life time. It was after my marriage was fixed in the month of November in the millennium year 2000 to a Special Protection Group Officer working in Delhi, I started reading more about it.





 

I never thought in my wildest dream that I would be marrying a person with a job outside Kerala.  As a reticent village girl born and brought up in suburban Trivandrum, I had my marriage dreams tailored around someone who comes back from the office in the evening and taking me out for a kitty shopping or to a second show movie in a nearby film hall in his scooter. My limited ambitions in life never allowed me to dream anything bigger than that. But as it is popularly said in my countryside, marriage of a girl is  being fixed in heavens under the fate and she has not much to do about that.  I was doing my second year post graduation in Malayalam literature when the fate and the heaven, both intervened in my life. I adjusted myself and re-wrote my dreams and ambitions to marry him and moved out from Trivandrum to a place where fortunes of history oscillated with every overthrow of regimes.

I held my breath to control my inner trembling and pretended courageous in front of my weeping parents as I stepped into the compartment of one of the oldest running passenger trains of Indian railways getting ready for a three days journey to Delhi.   The sudden ringing of bell followed by a long horn announced the departure of Kerala Express from the land where I lived for twenty five years. As the waving hands of my parents gradually diminished and vanished on the culvert, I glued to my husband and broke down silently to not to alert any passengers.  I was so emotional that my hands and feet went cold.

“Hey…See… what happened” murmured my husband in my ears, holding my hand with love and affection. That appeared as something soothing to my otherwise turbulent mind.

 “I...I don’t know.”

A concealed smile on the corner of his lips brought me back to normalcy and I felt ashamed about my stupid behavior on the spur of the moment.  

After three days of exasperating but emotional journey,  the train came to a screeching halt at the New Delhi railway station on a murky afternoon. A waiting friend of my husband received us at the railway platform. With heavy traffic, active pedestrians, lot of greenery and chilly weather, this place in its mid winter, made me feel like I’am in an altogether different world. Old fashioned palatial bungalows on either side of the road were suddenly replaced by ultra modern shopping blocks on a heavy market place.

 “This is Connaught Place”, his words were like introducing me to Delhi, his Karmabhoomi in an authoritative way.

 “How contrast this city is”, I thought. Sitting inside a Maruthi Omni van, gazing out the window and enjoying a new world beside a person new in my life, I was like –Alice in wonderland. “This is the Delhi I read in books.”  I murmured to myself. But all of a sudden it came to my mind, like an uninvited guest, the reminiscences of my serene village and my innocent neighbors, the Devi temple and my house thereby clouding the ecstasy and I lost in my thoughts and imagination. I felt like crying. Again the same caring hand came to my rescue. 

When our car entered into a colossal complex through a large gate heavily guarded by CRPF men, my husband whispered in my ears, “This is the place we are going to start our new life.” With that concealed smile popping up again on his lips he continued, “This is where, the nation’s most elite and baffling commandos who are entrusted with the deadly job of protecting the head of the government of the largest democratic country stays.” He paused a while and with a swinging action of his hand pointing towards numerous apartments there, said, “Welcome to our family”. The word “our” for which he gave an extra thump was not initially understood to me. I have never had any idea what so ever about SPG or its high liability job of protecting the Prime Minister of the nation till my marriage was fixed. I thought.  ‘Protecting the Prime Minister of a country is not in any way a joke’. Even now after spending almost ten years with my husband I still haven’t much idea about this furtive organization as he never ever discussed about it even after he was repatriated from this organization five years back. S.P.G will remain as an organization ambiguous to me till one day he starts telling me about it, may be after his retirement from service.

I don’t know what a feeling I carried about the winters in Delhi when I started my ‘life as a wife’ in that heavily guarded fort at Pappankalan, Dwaraka. There the winters sometime becomes vindictive as chill fog swaddles its sprawling historic dominion.  The streets usually wore a deserted look late into the day as passers-by opt to stay inside waiting for the first golden rays of sun creeps through the old Jamun trees. Those who dare the chilling cold would be the hapless office goers or the diary farm workers from the nearby villages, wrapped in thick woolen quilts, reaching their permanent customers in bicycles. Early morning haze, thick fog at night, bone chilling breeze and murky afternoons had become a part of my life. I found myself draped in the bliss of a new married life, the experience, I only heard several years back in the corridors of my women’s college when my friends shared gossips of their or somebody’s newly married nephew or a cousin and giggle. Though I never showed any profound interest in listening to those frivolous pastimes of young girls, I too had a personal leisure pursuit of writing a note book about the silly romantic phrases and thoughts. In fact I had fallen in love with my cute little book and I wrote continually on it and filled its pages with my own day dreams. Apart from that I liked rain, that too, night rain. Admiring its soft sound, I gazed through the window of my small house for long, watching her dancing with the wind and making obscure patterns in the air.  I converse with stars when they twinkle. And yes..! They gave answers to my many silly questions. I never liked moon for that it often changes its shape. The moon according to me was an opportunist, till one day I fairly understood that it is not the moon but the dominant sun and the earth doing all the tricks at the cost of this poor moony.   Sometimes when my mother gave me a slap or an earful for scoring fewer marks in English or Hindi test papers, I prayed to god to stop the sun from rising in the eastern horizon for days and thus enable me to get several nights at a stretch to talk to the stars. Whatever I used to share with my lovely stars, I shared it with my dearly note book too. On one such night, when the stars glimmered and the sweet fragrance of night blooming water Lilly filled my heart, I wrote, by looking up at the night sky, my soul in my dearly note book.  A handsome prince from the heaven with a cute smile tucked in the corner of his lips coming to marry me in a golden chariot pulled by seven white horses, escorted by rain. When the chariot landed at my door step, the rain stopped for a while, I get into the chariot and above the clouds we flew to a mesmerizing paradise where the angels danced with us.  Oh my god, what iam into. It is an old understanding that I will not disclose anything I wrote in that tiny note book except to my prince who comes to marry me. I have to keep my word.








Special Protection Group

 For any SPG officer or in that matter any Police officer on his active duty, there is little regard for his personal safety and security. Initially the frequent tours and tedious duty hours of my husband were enough to make my days dreary. I have to admit I was angry about it too. But gradually I understood the dignity and importance of his work. He often told me, “Being a body guard is a thankless job and we are paid to be in the line of fire”. Even though he says that jokingly, I knew, no other jobs in the world require the stress and strain demanded incessantly of an SPG officer. As a newlywed I didn’t even know how to cope with my husband being called for odd time ‘extra duties’ when we planned an overnight dinner at Sector-8. But after spending days with him together I felt it’s all not just about us, the family, but it’s all about the job which he has been entrusted with. On the day I married a police man, my life as a civilian ended. And as a wife of an SPG officer, whose job is of clandestine in nature, the thought was always there in the back of my mind that anything could happen to him anytime. “Trained to be in the line of fire”, the phrase often used by him with an extra bit of pride coated on it, was enough for me to understand the threat of imminent danger always looming over his head in his day to day work. Every day when I see off my husband out into his job, as any women do to their loved ones, I carried in the core of my mind a strange feeling of scare for his life. That was the nature of his job as a Personal Security Officer to the head of the nation.

SPECIAL PROTECTION GROUP

I remember, barely an year after Akshit came into this world, one day I woke up to the news about a serious security breach in the Prime Minister’s cavalcade and gun shots fired by SPG men. Stared at the television news channels, I watched a shattered car which intruded into the cavalcade of the Prime minister and few animated descriptions by the news reader on how the incident had happened. The whole nation was by then glued to the satellite news channels. I knew it was on his night shift duty that the incident had happened and as PSO to the Prime Minister he would be in the thick of events.

I got my breath in order only when he returned back home safely the next morning several hours after the incident. He never told me anything about this incident till this moment, neither have I asked him about it.  But I knew it was his team that opened fire and he was very much associated with that incident.

The weeks give way to months and months to years. When Akshit was born in the year 2002, we were little bit surprised by his extraordinarily fair colour. Our good neighbors, particularly those from north India, often tease me saying “it is because that he born in Delhi, he has got his fair color”. Though I knew that my son got the colour of his paternal grandmother, we never intended to deny their version so as to make them feel happy as they were so affectionate towards him.

 His first birthday was celebrated with great grandeur in Delhi amidst a huge gathering of neighbors and our relatives from Trivandrum.  This event was a great opportunity for me to see how the armed force members live with utmost harmony and brotherhood and with that association among each other. They organized everything, from decorating the house to arranging the furniture, from welcoming the outside guests to distribution of food. It taught me the power of an organized community. It was on that day I understood the meaning of that “our family” my husband told me the first day when we entered the complex.  

One more eventful year has gone in the history of my new life and came the second birthday of my son. This time it was a quieter event. My husband took one day leave from his duties and we woke up bit late in the morning and missed the sun rise. He told me and I agreed that between three in our family we can make this birthday really special. A simple vegetarian ‘Sadya’ in the afternoon, a visit to a temple in the evening followed by a private dinner at sector-8 was what we fixed as our programme.

I remember, it was a bleak and blustery winter morning. A thick veil of fog that engulfed the national capital at night was still swirling around mysteriously. Sun, the redeemer was struggling to chase it away as if to illustrate the virtues of benevolence still persists on the blissful face of earth to those hapless but rare breed of eternal optimists.

My husband  was getting ready in his room and my little son, who would do anything for an outing, was fervently pleading his father to took him along,  was what I saw when I entered his room to hand him over the list of items to be purchased from the vegetable shop nearby. A glance at the list, I found him truly amused at that.

 “I may need a translator to convert the names of these south Indian vegetables in Hindi…It’s going to be a tough time ahead with that Haryana vendor”. 

He was worried because he was sure that he wouldn’t be able to locate many of those vegetables in the shop and thus couldn’t help the vendor identifying it. For that I said “A ‘Sadya’ is not a joke. It took some seven vegetables for a ‘Sambar’ and almost same number for an ‘Aviyal.” But still he felt apprehensive about items in the likes of “Kachil’, ‘Koorka’ and ‘Koval’ to name a few. 

My son literally won the battle and was already on the shoulder of his father in a tight hug. I didn’t know when he would be back from the shopping arcade, so I told him to call me to bolt the door from inside and said a bye to my son with a kiss on his red cheek which I normally do. I sprang inside for the bath room with an electric immersion rod to arrange some hot water for a bath.

“Lock the door, we are leaving” I heard him closing the door from outside as I was just checking whether the powerful electric immersion heater I mounted in a bucket full of water in the bathroom was functioning or not. Those tiny bubbles confirmed it was working. Just as I was about to bolt the door from inside I heard him coming back in a hurry.

 “It’s very cold outside…. let him have an extra pair of woolen socks and a shoe”.  I went inside and came back with a pair of tiny woolen socks, handed over to him and returned back to see the condition of the water again.

 What happened next was like a blitzkrieg for me. I remember, I touched the water in the bucket to check if it’s too hot, the way I normally do. The next thing I remember was lying flat on my back on the corner of the bathroom with that immersion heater, with current still flowing through it, clasped in my hand. In between I knew I made a horrific scream, it was a loud screech of a dying person for help Iam sure. Next moment everything was calm. With the immersion heater still clasped in my hand I was lying in a pool of water with a bucket broken into two pieces. I was in a semi conscious state and was wailing in pain. I felt like my right hand was being torn out of its socket. It was already black in colour. I couldn’t get up. In my blurred vision I saw him rushing towards me. I felt difficulty in breathing. He carried me carefully to our bed and laid me out on the covers. By now it’s an endless stream of tears flowing from my eyes.  I try to keep them inside, because I know that my husband hates to see me cry. He sat down next to me, wiped my tears and started consoling me. It took me few hours to get back to normal and to realize exactly what had happened to me. When I asked him later how miraculously I escaped from that terrible shock, he gave me an answer so vivid and so simple that I will never forget it in my life.

He said, “I was sitting on the sofa and putting shoes on his legs. The time I heard your loud squeal in a strange manner, I was sure that you have got an electric shock because I knew that you were getting ready for a bath and was warming the water with an immersion heater. I jumped off the sofa, took a small dive to the main switch board and cut off the power supply before rushing towards you. Simple”.  And that is the reason, I thought, how I have been able to pull free of the circuit in a couple of seconds time. I was in his deadly clutches for, may be, two seconds.  I didn’t ask him why he put off the main switch first, instead of rushing inside to see what had happened to me when he heard my shriek. Still I believe, it’s his persistent training on reflex actions and years of experience in the elite SPG saved my life on that day. I won’t argue, and iam sure many civilian, may be with little training, act in an identical manner under similar situation in the same speed, but then I have to say, it is for them the word- exceptional-already there in the dictionary. 

After that incident, few questions still remain unanswered. Why my husband took a leave on that day? , Why he returned back for a pair of woolen socks for my kid? What would have happened if he went alone leaving behind my tiny tout inside the house? Why my father at Trivandrum, miles away from Delhi got a tremor in his chest matching the time when I had the shock and called me later to see everything is fine?  I know these questions will remain unanswered forever. People often say, life is an experiment and everything happens for a reason.  That day I will never forget; A day that still haunts me. Iam just beyond grateful that it was not my time to leave my loved ones and that iam able to share my story with few of you.  It has been a long time since the incident has happened but  the tremors of that violent shock still emanates from my right hand when ever iam into writing about it. I am happy that I could complete it this time. God bless you all. 

                                      Chithra Nair.

Just a minute…...  I  have few points to those who think that meddling with electricity is funny.

1.   When your body is moist, there is a radical drop in resistance. When water is present in the environment you should exercise more caution.

2.   Suddenly tensed muscles can throw your body across a room hard enough to break bones or cause concussions.

3.   Medium range currents (in our home appliances) are more dangerous than low currents or high currents because medium current trigger heart fibrillation.

4.   People who receive an electric shock often get painful muscle spasms that can be strong enough to break bones or dislocation. This loss of muscle control often means the person cannot let go or escape the electric shock. The person may fall or thrown a distance.

5.   For more details you can log on to several sites available. One such is http://www.osha.gov/.

P.S:- I salute those great men who translated the bulky and thick volumes of Russian literature represented by the likes of Tolstoy, Dostoevsky, Gorky and Pushkin in English. My Salute….!

STORY OF A SNAKE BITE

STORY OF A SNAKE BITE


News resonated in the air. Wind took it directly into the ears. “Ajan is bitten by a snake”. “Poisonous….?” …”Yes of course…” “Is he serious..?”…..” No….but under treatment” ….
Just wait before you start your celebrations. This incident dates back to almost twenty five years when I was a 10th class student preparing for the final SSLC board exam at my home town, Trivandrum. Now that you have started calculating my age, don’t waste time. You’ve got it correct.  Iam not a young man anymore!

 

Saw-Scaled Viper (Churutta)





Any way, it was on that day a stupid snake, a saw- Scaled Viper, commonly called ‘Churutta’ or ‘Travancore wolf snake’ found in abundance in our part of the world, bit me in the middle of my right arm. Even though they belong to the much poisonous Viper family, their bites are often not deadly when compared to other venomous snakes in Kerala in the likes of Indian Cobra, King Cobra, Russell’s viper, Kraits etc. The venom they inject through their stings are often too less to kill an adult person.  But of course, what I have been told by some experts is that, it depends on how agitated they are when they bite and how vulnerable they feel.

That was an ambush; a word much familiar in my day to day work with a depiction goes like “the aggressor by taking advantage of the concealment and element of surprise, attack an unsuspecting enemy from hidden positions” (military language). But here it was a naive ambush as he was neither an aggressor, nor Iam his enemy.


More often it evokes greater interest among audience to know the whereabouts of the ill fated person who has been bitten by a snake just out of their inquisitiveness. Normally there wouldn’t be any spectacular reason for a snake bite, apart from “Caught in the wrong place at the wrong time”. But in my case I have something fussy and funny to tell you as to how this snake has bitten me when Iam in the right place at the right time.
When we were in school, we used to get two months of study leave to prepare our self for the final board exam, a battle which would ultimately decide our future. As Iam aware that I’am in no way near the competition for a rank or even for a more reasonable distinction, my ultimate aim was to score as much as possible to get a first division. Baffling valence bond theories and periodic tables in Chemistry along with trigonometry and algorithms in Math’s were enough to make me feel mad and I was seriously thinking about scaling down my target to a pass mark. Though I'd always remained an average student and had nothing much to boast about my schoolings, my parents always had high expectations on me. I sincerely apologize to them.

 
It was almost one month of my study leave had elapsed that, this incident happened in a fine morning.  I was alone in my house as my parents, both of whom were in government service, would leave for their offices and my siblings to their schools. I was quite startled to hear the sound of something falling on my roof and then rolling around. It took me less time to envisage that it would definitely be a satellite in the ‘love orbit’ that had fallen into my terrace. How could I be very sure about that, has got a reason.  On either side of my house were two houses, one was that of an Ex-MLA, a palatial house huge enough to be called a castle and the other one that of a teacher, with no comparison to the former. Ex- MLA had a male servant in his house whereas the teacher had in work a female. Both were teenagers and were in love.   In those days, when  Skype or Yahoo chat lines were not even heard of,  hapless lovers used to send their heartful  love letters through small children or by paper rockets or through library books under normal circumstances.

 It's true that nature always played a vital role in love affairs. At the same time it played a vital role in its ethics too. Otherwise, just imagine if these mobile phones and SMSs were available at a time when the whole earth was  beaming with natural elegance apt for love and romance, can we just imagine an arranged marriage happening somewhere? Sorry for this stupid wisdom.
Now that these hapless servants were not so intellectual to deal with  library books and also that they were separated by a distance a paper rocket would find it difficult to hit, they had conveniently innovated an incredible idea to express their burning love. And this very idea was in fact made me exasperated enough to learn a few “Metro Politico Thesaurus” (MPT) words in Malayalam literature and also groomed me in giving someone an earful to my satisfaction.

No...Iam not at all against anything wchich is practical love.  Earlier, I genuinely believed that, if your love shrugs are causing annoyance to others, then it’s a matter of grave concern  until it was proven otherwise later on in my life.



Material evidence , re-created


 At this juncture my real concern were the guava fruits, yes “Guava fruit”, the love innovation they successfully put on orbit through which they communicated each other.  This smart guy would throw guavas across my house and straight into the hands  of the gal with love messages inscribed on it. The guava tree, the service provider, was also much annoyed with this guy for that, he never allowed a single fruit on its branches to get fully ripe. Whenever this guy gets  off- balance while hurling this ‘love guava’ towards her, it lands straight into the roof of my house like a misguided missile and caused a thud sound which invariably led to a severe blood rush feeling in my head.
When I got so sick of hearing this, I would immediately recollect some MPT words and ran towards the roof for giving an earful to him (note the point-“HIM” because “HER” was much faster in skulking) in pure Malayalam.  And this was going on and on and on like a prime time Malayalam serial in Asianet until that fateful day in February when I got that ultimate enlightenment and wisdom that to not to meddle with passionate, hapless lovers.
I was just about to open the door that steers into the terrace than I felt a sting; I never saw it but just felt that intense sting, on my right arm, something akin to a staple pin going in.  Looked around in search of that potential reason, I could not spot anything particular.  But that prickly pain and inflammation in the area raised serious doubt in my mind that I had been stung by a nasty wasp or a centipede.  Strolling around the terrace, I forgot everything about guava and other love related events. Now I was searching for a trace to know what exactly happened to me and when I literally found one, it turned to be a shocking sight. It was a snake shed skin which meant a snake is somewhere around.



Snake shed skin



Running back to the door for an on the spot investigation, a terrible feeling beyond description engulfs me when I factually found a snake, a saw scaled viper, in a fissure between the wall and the door frame, hiding in there coiled and stable.

 His large eyes were glowing and was vigorously flicking its forked tongue and staring at me as if he got the thermal image of my body.  So now that I know I had been bitten by a venomous snake, I said myself, “Any way Iam going to die soon, why I shouldn’t make a try to keep myself alive till I see my father?”



The Villain


Lingered on my mind were lesons my biology teacher taught me on first aid steps for a snake bite.“First and foremost, the  tourniquet.Ok.. Running down the bed room I found a hand kerchief of my mother. I knotted it with my teeth and left hand and tied a tourniquet around my arm just above the sting mark. Ok that’s done. Now comes the most difficult act; making an incision on the area to flush out the impure blood (these are now outdated first aid measures shown to be of no value and can be quite dangerous. But those days we were taught like this). Any ways, I made up my mind to perform that surgery as precisely as possible.  A sharp blade from my father's shaving kit would be my standard incision blade for an “X” cut. My shivering left hand failed miserably the first time when I made an attempt with my eyes closed tight.  It wasn't deep to extract any blood.  I said myself,  “if you want to be alive, do it”. This time with eyes wide open I made two terribly deep cuts and there goes a lot of blood.  Now a stupid idea crept up in my mind. How my parents would be knowing the reason for thier elder son's premature death inside the house?. So i need do some thing. I thought, by chance if I die, my parents would be wondering how it had happened. Few milligrams of blood in a tea cup that found it's place on the dining table will eventually tell them the story. I thought.
Suddenly a strange sense of hatred towards the snake started creeping in my mind. “How can he do this to me?  Come what may, I will kill him before I die.”  I found a wooden piece in my courtyard, thin but strong, to take up the revenge.   Steps were scaled with heavy legs, eyes burning, hands trembling....Tan da daaan.... “Yesss he is very much there…. Waiting for a hapless lizard to come his way…Now, gentleman you have to pay the prize for the biggest mistake you have committed which will cost you your life...Take that”.
My first thrust right through the cleft was aimed at his head. It missed the bull’s eye due to my raging anger but landed somewhere on his middle body.  I could see him biting the shaft with his small head again and again. Soon I was like a crusher machine hitting several blows per second all over his body. The snake was gone in no time. “Good bye you cheat…have a nice day”.
Ok, now that everything had been settled well, I thought about the last step in the first aid list,  Reaching the nearest hospital. A full sleeve shirt would hide the tourniquet from the anxious onlookers and neighbors. Still I wonder why I took it as an embarrassment to tell someone that I had been bitten by a snake than preferred to act all by myself.
It didn't take much time for the autorikshaw to reach the Trivandrum Ayurveda College where my father was working. I had in my pocket enough money to pay the auto rickshaw driver, which was later on reimbursed from my father, penny to penny. I walked across the corridor, reached his room and called him from behind the wall outside. So surprised to see me there at that odd time, he came out in a flash with a face full of questions. I tried to act as composed as possible though i was racing with emotions inside. I wet my lips and with an expression on my face similar to that of something funny, I told him in a soft and mellow voice by folding my sleeve up,
 “I think I have been bitten by a snake” and looked at his face.
In a micro second time his face was reddened with shock and awe. “WHERE….??? And HOW??”  His thunderous shout was plenty powerful enough to compel few of his colleagues to rush out from their seats. When I showed them my hand which was by then turned grayish, may be due to the unprofessional tourniquet, all of them had a face like “Oh…hooo.”
I saw one among them running towards the gate to be returned with a Taxi.  Few others took me up and heaved me inside the car. Several got in and the car with all the paraphernalia of a make shift ambulance rushed to a nearby clinic of a doctor who specialized in snake bite. The doctor  after examining me with his gadgets took away the tourniquet with his scissor.  “You made a nasty knot my boy and few more hours and it mean the loss of your limb” he said with a smile on his face. He examined the area with a single lens microscope, sighed and resumed:  “He made a mess of it. Several cut marks and nothing else” this time it was to my father.  There after he examined my blood pressure, eyes, heart beat etc and said everything is normal. To be surer he asked me to remain in the observation bed for few hours for a regular monitoring of events.
 Doctor sat on a chair. “The bite has not broken the skin… It was just a dry bite made out of fear.  Many small snakes cannot break the skin with their tiny fangs. It will be like a sting of a wasp” the doctor gave us a brief lecture on snake bite. According to him it's the fear and panic which causes most death than an original snake bite.later, he gave me some medicines and an ointment to apply on the wound before let me go once the five hour observation period was over. And there ends a dilemma which put me and many others on tender hooks for several hours.
Incidentally this snake bite had resolved a long time dispute in my family. My grandmother who was not having a good terms with my parents due to some petty old family issues had send a messenger with a request that she wants to see her grandson immediately. When I went to see her as per the advice of my father, it was an emotional reunion after almost three years of detached life. My poor granny burst into tears, and while she was thanking me for comming back to her, she could not refrain from expressing her remorse for keeping herself away from us for so long.
And at the same time, I have learned an all important lesson on that day. Never interfere with a chaste love affair or in that amtter hurt any lovers in the world. Encourage them and stay away from their innocent cackles.  Even if you hear the thuds on your terrace simply smile and forgive. Collect those guavas and see that if there is any love messages written on it. If yes politely give it to the recipient. If not, then enjoy few guava fruits which are rich in dietary fiber, vitamin A, C and folic acid. 

Wish you all a very “Happy women’s day”.

POLICE TEACHERS OF SOLIDARITY EDUCATION PROGRAM - Part-2

POLICE TEACHERS (Part-II)

Click here to read the first part, "Ek Jawan - Sow Kissan".

 “Today, what we are going to do?” I have asked the children as they stood up and said “Good Evening Sir” to me.

 “We are revising the multiplication tables” said Lakshmi a seven year old girl in our learner group who walks across two miles of derelict ground to get to our camp and always reaches as the first one. She comes with her two younger siblings who play around with others as they are too small to study. There are some thirty other children that day in the class which is a much lesser strength, as some times it goes upto sixty.

“Who can say the multiplication table of twelve without error?”

I was surprised to see several small hands raised in the air. Just a round of face scanning and I spotted the smallest among them and said “Aap Boliye”.

Police Teachers

And here comes a small boy Chandu, in a sudden surge sang the multiplication table like a lullaby in one breath in his mother tongue Telugu, by standing with arms crossed across the chest, a body language customary here while standing in front of a teacher. When it’s finished, I turned towards Mr. G, the translator to see whether he said it correctly.

 “Yes sir, he said correctly..”  He nodded his head with a smile. It did give him a deep sense of satisfaction that the small boy didn’t forget what he teach him the other day. Mr. G is one such constable in my company who takes tuition to some forty odd children regularly attending the classes we organize for them inside our camp. These “police teachers”, as soon as they done with their regular duty hours would attend to these children in their education with dedication and austerity.



I took a fifty rupee note from my pocket and gave it to Chandu as a cash reward amidst a hearty round of applause from all other students, he coyly accepted it and said, “Thank You Sir”. A gleam of elation emanates from his otherwise weary eyes.   

Probably the only thing that makes Lakshmi, Chandu and several other children living in this part of the world different from their counterparts in cities is that they are the perfect example of an ordinary “Koya” tribal life in this border village at the Andhra –Orissa region. There are many such villages here in this area encircled by dense reserve forest where effects of illiteracy and to an extent malnutrition, are taking a heavy toll on the children of their age. They are all having a childhood without basic rights.

While on tolerant about mistakes made by me in understanding the intricacy of the state of mind ubiquitous among adults in this tribal belt, as I narrated in the first part of this story, my target has now been shifted to offer `tuition` to smaller children living in these areas which we named "SOLIDARITY EDUCATION PROGRAM" for that it's an initiative by one of the largest Para Military force in the world helping the poor farmers. A solidarity betwwen kissan and Jawan.



Innocent faces

 



This time it has been a new lesson for me that children, as they have nothing to hide, are less afraid of police. Before we started our campaig towards our new mission, we drew up an extensive programme on how we would conduct the classes with the children’s as well as their parent’s best interests in mind. Once we settled down with the curriculum, it turned to be a fascinating experience for us as we gradually gained confidence of the children as well as their parents. We told them that we too belong to a society in which they are there as members.

The children turned up in huge numbers (went up from 15, the first day to 68 now). Initially they came with their poor parents for them to see what their ward doing inside a CRPF camp area. But soon they started coming all alone without any sort of fear or apprehension and made it a point to spend their late evenings inside our camp. It has been a fantastic combination of play and work for them. Our men took keen interest in helping them doing their home work and to revise the lessons they learned in their schools the same day. Patriotic songs are being taught to  make them chauvinistic and loyal to the country. Occasional cash rewards from me or someone else for properly reciting a poem or telling a multiplication table decisively by anyone often acts as motivational factor for the rest. We have even arranged a small library for them to develop their reading habit and to make them more exposed to the outside world.

Gate way to the outside world

 All of them, though coming to our camp only for few hours, would wear their best cloth on hand and also remains late in the evening to prevent themselves being beaten up by their drunk fathers who would by then get into bed when they are back home. There are few others who are orphans abandoned by their divorced parents and attached themselves to their deprived grandparents or uncles. They are too small to explain to us why their parents have left them. My heart aches when I see their faces.

They are now the part and parcel of our otherwise monotonous life. We are just serving a desperate, hurting community with grace and affection within our limited resources. All festivals are being celebrated together with utmost zeal and enthusiasm. Any happy moment in our family at home is an event to be celebrated together with them by distributing sweets or study materials. Sometimes somebody distributes school uniforms to them voluntarily and sometimes books.  To an armed force member who spends less than three months in a year with their family, these children are like their own family members. Their ecstasy and amuses are like a rejuvenation therapy for all of us which makes us free from stress and strain largely associated with this job.  It’s almost one year now since we started this programme and the progress these children made in their education and also in developing a good rapport among the police personnel is indeed mind blogging.

Work while you work- Play while you play

I simply don’t believe that providing tuition to these children will make them excel in their studies or in that matter make them secure top ranks. But it would be a happy moment for me if I see that a child who fails every subject till yesterday,  gets a pass mark and qualify for the next class. Iam sure the environment they are being put into inside my camp will definitely prevent them from joining a miscreant gang or to any armed resistance movements which are causing devastation in these areas.

There was little resistance from certain quarters when we started this programme due to obvious reasons. They cannot be blamed for that. This hesitancy probably resulted from a general perception among public that police men are to be kept aloof and feared of.  These fears were only exacerbated by well meaning parents who said things like –you never know what those policemen are teaching your kids inside their camp, for which we have a sound reply “any way it is far better than what militants teach them in their hideous  training camps”. Few minutes inside the police camp is not going to harm them in any way as they, at least a huge majority, will never be a potentially lost generation and are at a risk of moving into a life of crime. The last thing I want inside my camp is someone shivering by the sight of our uniform. Protecting a child’s faith and getting a smile in return is what we demand from them.

News came in a regional news paper

Our constant interactions with them took us to a level of understanding the difference between those who “have’ and those who ‘have not’ in our society. We have that instinct in us to think that the poor are solely responsible for what they are. What to say on this?. Iam always bothered about how malnourished these children are and how it will affect their performance in school. It will reduce the child’s capacity to learn when compared with their well-nourished peers. A malnourished child is more likely to fall sick, may take longer to recover and has greater chances of dying. Though the government is doing some excellent work in this area by providing them afternoon meals, is that enough is a question normally being propped up.

Some times while spending my evening hours with these children, I often think, in a society where people judge you by where you live and how many cars you have and where your child is having his schooling, the lives of these children have no value at all. For many from the elite class this may not be an issue as important as others. Even the policy makers, who sit in their air conditioned cabinets and analyses the basic requirements of these downtrodden, wouldn’t be able to judge the profundity of the situation.

This post is neither to poke the conscience of the nation nor to boast what we are doing for these children here in our camp. In our mechanical life it is indeed necessary to stop a while and see few among us belong to the same genetic material are living a life like this, so that we may at least tell our children to not to waste their food. They should be taught that, those left over food in their lunch box could save a few children of their same age group whose childhood has been robbed from them and are dying. And more importantly, to see if there is anything you can do even in a small way like donating clothes, damaged toys of your kids and other waste items which may potentially helpful for them. Those would be few luxury items in their houses.

Iam not an authority to analyze the reasons for poverty and illiteracy I don’t even know whether this is one of the fruits of capitalism or the product of socialism but these children are your future generation and always will be. If these small steps help to elevate their standard of life, then what else we could do better as humans. In an era where the gap between the rich and the poor is widening day by day, will there be a horizon nearby for us to say with our head high…..there is no child sleeping without a meal…?

EK JAWAN - SOW KISSAN

EK JAWAN- SOW KISSAN



(POLICE TEACHERS-( Part -1)}

Let me take the liberty of splitting this story- Police Teachers- into two parts. First part deals with an initiative taken with high aspiration but remained as a shattered musings of a botched endeavor whereas the second one is of a modest attempt turned out to be a huge success. Right now you are reading the first part of the story which happened almost a year ago in a place where many of you might not have even dreamt to pay a visit. I have my limitations to tell you the name of this place which is in either way has no relevancy in this story. But to have a general idea, let me say that; this village is in the Andhra- Orissa border far away from the main land encircled by dense reserve forest. To those of you who have a little acquaintance with the present security scenario prevailing in the nation this is enough to understand how am I associated with this story. And to those who are not, it is important to know that this place is a part of the so called ‘red corridor’ region which is highly infested with Maoists. My CRPF Company is stationed here in this area with a police station functioning inside, (in other words the police station is being encircled by the CRPF) for conducting anti naxalite operations. It’s almost a year now since this story had its origin.

 A sudden boisterous commotion outside the police station was what I heard while getting out of my camp office for a customary jogging session that early morning. There were lots of threatening abuses, frightened families, and scattered onlookers and of course these hapless police men controlling the crowd from getting into attacking each other. Since we, the Central Police men are used to such scuffles happening in the premise of the police station almost every day, for us this was just another incident of domestic abuse where members of two tribal families involved in a petty issue of chicken theft or something similar.  All the time the poor policemen respond to allegations of abusive words, liquor aberrations, family disputes, kids fight etc and waste most of their time to this and hence never get a minute to tackle the problems the government and the society likes them to do. The station house officer often told me with a stooping head that these people never take responsibility of their own loved ones and that of their property instead foist it on to the police and later blaming them if anything goes wrong. What a plight!.

‘Koya’ tribal community predominant in this area is synonymous to illiteracy, illness, alcoholism, premature death, disturbed families and all other such deprivations not even heard in a place from where I belong to.  Notwithstanding the measures taken by the government in improving the living conditions of the downtrodden tribal populace in this area, illiteracy and alcoholism among villagers are still acting as a major hurdle to negotiate.




(Rally on Anti-Tobacco Day)



When the local S.H.O requested me one day to lead an ‘Anti-Smoking’ rally which they proposed to conduct as a part of community policing, I was extremely pleased with that and readily agreed. It was a graceful function which went on well with the participation of local populace and a few tiny school children. A casual interactive session with the senior villagers, once the function was over opened before me an appalling account of how pathetic is the living condition of the tribal inhabitants existing in this part of the world. Apart from several complex issues of basic entitlements and exploitations, these people are seemed less exposed to the outer world. In order to find a solution to this problem we summoned a few senior members of the village and tried to convince them the need to become literate to avail government subsidies without getting exploited by the middlemen. They were convinced and together on that day we took an oath to support a noble mission to educate old age farmers and labors who are totally illiterate and are hailing from poor background. CRPF took the responsibility and thus a new literacy program organized by Central Police, not even heard at least in this part of the world, got its ignition.



    

Well educated Telugu speaking men of my company who have previous teaching experience were shortlisted and motivated to accomplish this task. We had given a slogan -“Ek Jawan - Sow Kissan” expressing the aim and nature of our programme which means one soldier will educate hundred illiterate farmers. Our endeavor was not just to educate them but to assist them in all their ventures in life. We were totally aware of the practical difficulties that may come up when the police and the public work together for a common cause. But as a welfare measure to the public and also as a part of developing a better police-public relationship we decided to go ahead with our project. 



"The Class Room"



 A small shelter in our camp was earmarked as the ‘class room’ which we named as ‘Solidarity Hall’ for it being a place where Kissan and Jawan show their camaraderie. Mandal educational officers and Sarpanch of the village offered all assistance from their side. Iam always in the opinion that the armed forces and other central police organizations that are deployed in every nook and corner of our country could be used to contribute effectively to the task of nation building in a collaborative way by providing their sheer man power strength in rural areas, particularly in agricultural sector, during peace time. They can even help the hapless farmers who are facing acute labor problem to harvest their corps and thus could prevent the bumper crops being rotten in the agricultural lands itself. This will give a new energy in this sector.

Pamphlets were distributed among the villagers and lecture classes were conducted on holidays thereby encouraging the illiterate farmers and daily labors to visit our camp and participate in our literacy programme.  We apprised them the importance of education and our willingness to make them literate by placing huge banners and notice boards outside. A list of approximate population living in our area of responsibility (AOR) and are illiterate had been drafted. Provision for distributing tea and biscuit from our own sources to all those ‘students’ attending the class was taken care of. Wide publicity was given through the state police machinery as well. A leaflet thus drafted by me in this dimension has given a new slogan-“Ek Jawan- Sow Kissan” which was made in the shades of one of the most chanted slogan-“Jai jawan-Jai Kissan” by the then great prime minister of the nation Shri. Lal Bahadur Sasthri in the year 1965. We were ready by all means to bring about this new initiative with utmost zeal and verve. But destiny wills otherwise.

  (Jai Jawan-Jai Kissan.......Ek Jawan-Sow Kissan)   All our actions in this regard went futile as nobody turned up to attend the literacy class regardless of constant perseverance by my company personnel. The main reason was alcoholism. The labor class tribal men who are addicted to liquor, after a daylong hard work in far off construction sites were unable to spare a few hours after dusk for a reason which has least relevancy in their priority list. That was a huge disappointment for me. It was not that Iam unaware of my limitations in implementing such a programme in a place where the living conditions of the inhabitants are as complex as a hard puzzle. But as a person who often goes by intuition, I was highly optimistic about the success of the programme. But I do feel sorry for them that I could not make them literate and thus elevate their living condition. I feel exasperated when some people think that this ill-fated community could never be resurrected. Iam not naïve and I know this is possible. Let me try once more…some other day….. Part -2 follows……..