The Displaced.
Merely two decades old, the city of Madhuban has swollen itself from existing nowhere to this grandeur. Just like, the river erodes its banks, the city gulfs up the surrounding villages. A lot many villages dissolved in this city of Madhuban, some by land acquisition and the displacement drive; the government is committed to industrial development. And others as usual in the natural process of urbanisation, which man always aspired for a presumed better life. In the city, the air now looks dusty and dusky all the time. The visible pollution bears the invisible poisons with the intolerable pungent smell. The atmosphere is hot. The rich and the noble, have tried air conditioners to get relief but in vain. The have-nots, who wish not and can not afford these luxuries, make the majority. With the guaranty of a livelihood, they don't bother for their living condition. They too don't bother their smiles in the dream, turn grimaces in reality.
And a prototype is found in Danei Das.
His sorrows are now dead. He too lives a life of other common people, the accepted living of a poor. Dreaming a dazzling colourful urban life, the multitude of people from all over the state of Odisha has thronged into this young industrial hub. They are Katakias, Sambalpurias, Ganjamias, people of Puri, from west, south and north; crowding this place of eastern part of the state. People from all over India also have rushed to exercise their special skills; the Biharis, Bengalis, Telegus, Jhadakhndies, Chhatshgadies and we can't leave any of the states. A branded native, like Danei, no more thinks Madhuban to be his own place or he has an extra right and duty to guide outsiders.
Those are things of the past only.
The metamorphosis, evolution or changes whatever it can be named that took place in the last two decades, just in front of Danei, is quite comparable to an anthropologist or archaeologist's study of million years. All are his own experiences happened to him, his family and villagers.
A state-owned steel plant in Madhubana was established more than two decades back. It became successful and profit making. It naturally attracted a plethora of corporate tycoons, to do a beeline to sign the memorandum of understanding with the state government to establish heavy industries.
There were many reasons; the government encouragement, provision to get the lease of mines of almost all mineral ores available nearby, the river Brahmani running adjacent, the express highway lying with its breast open to carry all products to the port of Paradeep and the tracks of mighty east coast railways adjacent; as if everything people discovered all at a sudden. And the single most important factor was the availability of hundreds of acres of government land. Docile native villagers were expected not to protest much, against their displacement for the purpose of progress.
Standing on a point on the highway from where once upon a time it looked as if the green canopy of his village was bearing the load of the blue sky on its own head, Danei dispairs in frustration. The exact place is now turned to the biggest ash pond of the industries, and the raised chimney nearby looks to bear its own sky of hell.
Most of the villagers then welcomed the displacement with the attractive offer of inflated compensation for their land, good buildings in place of thatched houses and jobs guaranteed to the displaced. Most of the landlords were dependent on non-profitable leased cropping as they were in other lucrative earnings at distant places. They now got relieved and got heavy cash to invest elsewhere in the business, transport, contracts of supply of logistics and labourers, in allied small industries. Some also invested their money in the modern-day democracy.
Danei did not belong to them. What did the small cultivators, the land sharing peasants, the illiterate labourers and similar groups get? The landless were cultivating enough land of other owners to have unending grains and pulses year round. They lived happily, observing thirteen Odia festivals twelve months. These shadow owners did neither get compensations nor did they have minimum qualifications or skill to get jobs. They got buildings no doubt but nobody valued their surrounding customary gardens those yielded year long vegetables like drumsticks, papayas, brinjals, plantains, roots and greens. The natural yield of fish, poultry, cattle yield or from another animal husbandry; they lost too. These unseen benefits were taken to be granted like water or oxygen or the cool breeze under the shadows of trees. Who could cost a river or a big public tree providing oxygen in plenty? Even if it was done, who should be given such compensations and how? The Displaced had not enough intelligence to beg for these values lost. The middle class mostly the non-resident villagers delightfully pocketed the heavy compensations. They brainwashed the poor and illiterate in favour of displacement for better employment and living in the future, in nutshell called 'progress'. They guided them to leave their ancestral land and to move like cow herds. Yes, this happened without any protest or negotiations.
Danei felt for their disturbed daily routine which otherwise was so streamlined and stereotyped for good.
Danei's joint family of ten members, from children to his grandfather moved to this new colony in silence. Their silence was hard to comprehend, just like it was for other villagers, it was rather an inarticulateness of unknown uncertainty, a step forward without knowing where it fell, a journey towards an unsure destination.
Danei Das' family was the milkman not only by caste but also by profession. And one day, his grandfather the family head, his father, mother (Bou), elder brother and sister in law(Bhauja), two sisters Reema and Reena, two children, and their cows moved to the colony.
Danei initially was very optimistic and filled his eyes with dreams of rainbows of only golden hue. They received one lakh and twelve thousand rupees as compensation that looked very high at that time to the milkman family earning a few hundred in a week. His eyes begged to protrude whenever he imagined the fortune upcoming.
In their village, all of them used to remain engaged in one or the other requirements of the cattle. Mewing and cleaning grasses in the river, feeding them a cooked meal of rice bran, pulse wastes and cakes of oil extracted seeds, cleaning their shed, at times bathing them, taking them to the veterinary care providers and making their excreta as ready to be fuel and manure, used to kill all their time. In addition, preparing the home task of children, sending them to school on time, and growing up a kitchen garden; all they did collectively. They said to have no time for leisure but still, they managed to play cards for an hour or two in the afternoon. His father visited the village noble's house in the evening to know the happenings in the state, nation and world. He too ventilated his one or the other idea.
During the pre-displacement period, the cunning people dissolved their joint family to nuclear ones and even sons not attending legal age of marriage, forged their age certificates and got married to get a separate house in the colony. His grandfather of orthodox outlook did not allow so. He furiously objected to breaking his joint family. They did not like to come out of the simplicity of the village living of milkmen.
In the colony, the same grandfather could not find enough room and provisions and his biggest problem was to find his room or place of worship, to place his holy books 'The Bhagabata' and tiny photographs of Kanehiya, the little cow shepherd.
He cried in disgust, “Where is the cowshed?".
Danei Das had to share the central common house of the colony in the night. He found many of his friends going through the same fate. Nights became too long and sleep scarce, the question of dreaming did not arise. If at all, he dreamt demon furnaces with tall horns of chimneys those puffed out thick smoke just to tan his face and charr his delicate eyes. At times he shouted deliriant.
Reema, Reena, Bou, Bhauja, nephew and niece adjusted themselves in the refugee camp like condition in the colony. Unlike the temporary refugee camp, this would not be coming to an end. All the displaced people accepted the difficulties, presuming fortune to rise on the horizon and they would be getting a job in the plant.
The cows unaccustomed to a new place mooed loudly in a bizarre manner. Nephew tried to calm down them, searching meadows nearby, there were not too many. Neither he nor his cows knew the address of grazing ground in the new place, where they felt awkward. The native villagers did not allow the new animals free roaming and sharing grounds, which they assumed as theirs. How can they share the nature, they made captive by themselves with these rich people having heavy amounts of cash compensation in their pocket? The people not affected by displacement became jealous of the displaced people with chances of getting jobs, an unfortunate paradoxical presumption. To add to their envy, some of the displaced people could fetch the down-payments to the financers and purchased trucks easily. So the question of sympathy from the non displaced people did not arise. Their half-fed cows yielded less, affecting owners' livelihood.
Danei's father was pragmatic enough to take notes of the situation and proposed to sell them. Who cares for grandfather's objection? His voice had strength in their ancestral land and house. This house they got because they are living beings, uprooted and displaced from the ground. And it is their compensation not inherited from ancestors. Let the money from the sale of the animals come, the elder son should start a new business. They hoped, very soon Danei would be getting a job in the plant. The normalcy in the family will reboot itself. Hopes are always brighter than the sun and sober than the moon.
Suddenly grandpa realised his own place in the change of their fate in which he happened to be an unwanted attachment, a useless extra to the small house.
There was a reason for the octagenarian's sensitive response. He was skilled in many types of handicrafts used in traditional rural life. He could make such delicate threads from jute that children used it to make the kite fly. He made various types of ropes used in agriculture and animal husbandry. He made many kinds of fishing traps. Villagers brought their unfinished similar products to him for a finishing touch. Umbrellas of his make lasted for a generation. Poverty was so high and for many begging was a routine. Attending them was a divine duty in a village culture. Grandpa served them with empathy. His workplace was the outside verandah from where he attended them taking a break from his work. All of them were not beggars in the true sense. Monks, traditional preachers, entertainers, ordinary magicians who showed the skill of rare pets, the nominal vendor cum beggar and so on, in addition to the real beggar, came to the village lanes, almost integrated to village life. Some of them loved to sit with him on an armed long bench on the verandah for sometimes. It was time for rest and gossip. For grandpa life was as lively as life only. He was full of joyful life. He prayed for a long time in the morning and in the evening. One could listen to his noisy prayer for each member of the family, for the village, for his caste, for the state, for the nation, for the universe and he even prayed for his Gods to remain in peace and wellbeing.
Now he had not a space for his Bhagabata puja what more he could expect, no, nothing. Doing so much work in the village even, he considered himself a load to the family consuming unearned food. The man felt indebted and now he wished not to exist.
If handicrafts were the physical exercise of the old man, the connection with fellow men, reading the Bhagavata and praying was a mental exercise. He kept going on these ladders to the world beyond. Villagers' love was his propellants. He reciprocated enquiring everyone's day to day affair, consoling, counselling and noting a point of philosophical or practical utility from his long experience since British rule.
All at a sudden deprivement of these social lifelines grossly depressed the old man. One day he fell down while reading the Bhagabata.
With his death, a new problem raised its head for the first time in the colony.
Where to perform the last rites? The nearby villagers objected to the movement of a funeral procession towards their villages’ crematorium, which had to pass by the temple and the lane of the priests. Unacceptable. The youth mass guarded their playgrounds.
The Sarpanchas of two adjacent panchayats paid no ear for a solution. None of them knew, to which Panchayat the new colony belonged and whose potential voters they were. They could not solve the problem.
The sand bed of the river, used for cremation was more than ten miles from the new colony. Danei imagined the power plant of the industry is established on the ground where the last rites of generations forefathers they performed.
Finally in a corner of the small courtyard grandpa was buried.
The problem was solved afterwards but not to the best of their liking.
Danei's family had already sold the cows. There was not the smell or filth of cow dung that they used as fuel, manure, as a coat over the earthen wall and floor and as a holy item of Hindu religion. Danei tried to smile in vain. The facial muscles had stopped cooperating since long. His house looked clean, no smell or sight of cattle excreta, what to tell about the dairy product.
Father was an always content silent worker, walked like the arms of a clock, steady, punctual and never exhaustive. He loved remaining under the shadow of his father. But at this crucial juncture, the roof of his shed passed away. As the new family head, he now feared, suddenly discovering himself as old. There was no work of loading the cycle with canes of milk, butter, yoghurt and cheese. What new work he might start at this age, which private work anyone would bestow upon him! He really looked, old, weak and invalid.
The industry's promised job to his children not yet settled.
A strange new situation of hard-working people turned idle, earning nothing.
Until date, the money from sold cows fetched their living. The rituals of grandpa exhausted half of that cash, the rest of it was fast drying up.
Idle men might consume as much as a vast sand bed of a river.
The original purpose of starting a small business with this cash for the elder brother shattered.
A fear of severe poverty doomed on the horizon. Panic-stricken father searched grooms for the daughters in the traditional way. In the future, it might be more difficult. He tried to find the right choice bridegroom No one understood the inner story of the displaced. The potential bridegroom and his father came forward with the secret motive of getting a handsome dowry from the cash-rich displaced. Reluctant father after several futile attempts of negotiations finally bowed down to a final bargain of forty thousand rupees as dowry. With a function as simple as the family, the total expense came eighty thousand. In no way, it was a small amount. Their poverty precipitated now.
Younger daughter Reena, the most beautiful girl with a gracing look of a deity, they believed would be eligible for a dowryless marriage. She was educated, skilled in household work, smart and progressive. She planned to join a school of education aiming to be a trained teacher but was waiting for the family setback to be over first. The father too waited for the same.
Is it so, the astrologer's prediction that the Goddess of wealth Laxmi blessed Reema with the fortune? After her marriage, they could not afford a proper two-time meal for the family. For the first time, the father could not purchase a saree for his daughter in law, in Raja, the festival of monsoon.
He could not digest this sorrow.
The monsoon brought rain, with the month of Ashdha from fifteenth June. Peasants started harvesting water in their fields. Cultivation, the occupation of the vast majority got momentum except for the displaced, landless colony people. Someone from the colony went to work as a daily labourer in the nearby village. Only after getting better curry for two days, Danei and family discovered that father is also selling his labour, secretly in a distant village to feed the grown-up sons. It was a very depressing news for Danei's brother that the oven fired with the old father's manual labour. He had little education had no option other than working in the plant as an unskilled labourer. He got work. What work that made his look so exhausted and the colour of the skin tanned or partially boiled with heat?
Danei is educated, his name is enlisted in the plant's register. They hoped for a good job for him. His father and elder brother did not allow him to join in ordinary unskilled jobs.
Elder brother told, "I am earning, father too. You need not be so hasty or else the company may cheat you. Keep patience. Your small stomach will not remain hungry".
The family that once upon a time flooded with milk now thrived with pieces of unripe mango, dried chilli, dried fish and they themselves dried up revealing the prominence of skeletons. The body that grew up with milk and cheese was not expected to look young with malnourishment. Father now looked, too old, a less preferred labourer. Old cattle find the lane of the butcher. No one called the old man to work, a wastage only.
There arrived a savour of this situation in the growing young town of Madhuban. Madam! Madam established a modern beauty parlour for women and also for men, integrated with a training centre for local women in beauty and fashion technology. Women's skill, need and labour she tapped. Trainees got wages for their labour and time spent during the training period. The soft-spoken madam became the new name and fame of the town. Why should the family object to Reena's joining in the course? After all, the words and phrases like bridal makeup, looking presentable, toning of the skin, manicure, pedicure were nothing new to the youth. Elders acknowledged it to be an essential profession in modern society. The subconscious approval for Reena's earning being needed for the desperate family remained submerged. She trained for the better. Reena the most beautiful, became very very special for madam. She loved this student too much and rather used her as the presenting model of her institution. Trained her in a quicker mode.
Reena too learnt with attention and affection to the profession. She became well skilled to take care of the feet, skin, hand and its nails, the face and did the ultimate hairdressing. After madam, she became the most wanted care provider for the customers.
Of course, madam treated Reena very special and different from other pupils.
Reena was not ignorant about the other side of madam. She was aware of the happenings of late evenings in the back side air conditioned luxury saloons for gents, the new breed of immoral rich and affording folks of Madhuban. Some of her friends earned a lot. She knew how did they do it. Madam did not force anyone to do things accepted as wrong in the society. Reena pleaded in favour of madam not to be guilty.
The girls within their conscious decision, forced by their poverty and hoping to come out of that, to help their family, under the pressure of a growing urbanisation having no foundation, to meet the need of a society hitherto unknown to them, executed their personal freedom and offered themselves as dices on a board, as if doing a duty.
Madam considered, finding sin and living piously was a middle-class priority. The poor wanted to live a life of food, shelter and cover, in that order. When food was at stake shelter and the cover was meaningless. Anything done for food was legal. The upper class wanted to enjoy every moment. They needed no connection to the three basic requirements available by default, yet as the human had the right to exercise to overcome the unfulfillment and unlimited wants of the human. Chastity was never their priority. Making the match of the need of either group with the participants' informed consent was acceptable for madam. Reena pretended her loyalty, as madam advocated for her flawed philosophy that ignored the exploitation of helplessness of the desperate. She made her immune to others judgement. The poor woman very easily believed herself to be a consumable product without investment in the consumer-driven society. It was convenient for all parties to forget the old-fashioned norms and morality, at the loss of which everything was said to be lost.
Reena no more had any confusion in this regard. She waited for a nod from madam. Madam kept her well protected like her diamond-studded gold ring in its velvet case, within the locker of her secrete treasury, placed in the most secluded space closer to her heart. Madhuban had not the capacity to pay for her priceless catch. For madam, she was not an item for thousands or lakhs of rupees but for a purpose that did not arrive yet. The price she imagined to be more than that of a rainbow.
The family of Danei Das lived better now. The discomfort of the father living with the earning of a daughter he digested in the pressure of the prevailing situation. It was a release. His body no more could do heavy labour. The elder brother worked in the most difficult and dangerous point of the plant. He told himself that he and his nuclear portion of the family were living with his own earning, not consuming the sister's money. She was earning as per her own sweet will, let her do that until she got married. A girl is not a permanent member.
Bhauja cautioned Reena at every suitable time. She became concerned about her, as gossips about madam's activity behind the curtain of her gentle personality were doing rounds in Madhuban. Reena easily diluted those superficial cautions with her smiles bloomed over her beautiful face. Bhauja caught the naughtiness and satire of the smiles but refused to recognise them. She understood Reena's feet stood on moving sands underwater. Bhauja sighed with despair.
The nostalgia of the native village came back. Reena was a toddler when she came to the house. She was very fond of Neta, the calf of the black cow and this fairy doll Reena. Her milk-woman career started with Neta and motherhood started with Reena well before she became a mother. When Neta was sold, she wept for long holding Reena within her arms. Losing Reena looked imminent well before sending her to her sweet in-law family. For two weeks, neighbour's young daughter in law accompanied Reena for training in madam's institution. Bhauja thought too much to get nauseating vertigo and fell down. Reena splashed water to revive her senses. She came back to life but was dead as a milk-woman and dead as a mother.
It did hurt Danei Das. His age was like that, blood was hot. At his age, he could have broken rock walls. Father and brother always consoled him. He was educated, enlisted in the company register that ensured him a job. Whenever his friends passed comments on Reena, he felt to kill them, to drink their blood to chop their tongue and to extract their eyeballs but he managed to refrain. The promised job remained in promise, did not convert to reality. The job was not a fruit on the company's tree. In the era of management, they became judicious to extract more work from less number of employees, or else any industry became a sick one. The communists lured him to bear the red flag, he did not move. He knew the strength of them in Madhuban is so weak. The particular company that acquired their land had taken enough employees and had closed their employment window. However, they still offered a job of a labourer to Danei whose education had no industrial orientation. Outsiders having required skill occupied all posts of importance. Danei had no strength or intention to complain.
Danei no more liked to come back to his home. He worked to maintain the stock store status of cement godown on the Madhuban squire. The small earning he managed to live with.
Earlier he was in a relationship with a distant sister in law of his brother that broke up in the prevailing situation, without any tussle on either side. He tried to forget his duty towards his father, elder brother and the joint family in general. Why should he constantly remember his incapability to earn in the town that progressed in jet speed? Sometimes this haunted and disturbed him. At times depression tried to inroad.
And finally, Danei the man once supplied milk to the community was seen enraged, intoxicated. Inebriated Danei shouted everything he wanted to tell about the displaced. The sensible milkman died inside the body of a drunkard, the new Danei Das.
In another tragic twist, he dropped the bottle when the oldest doctor of the area visited him personally to inform the most dreadful news. Daktarbabu looking at his brother's non-healing skin ulcer suspected it to be malignant. Danei got a syncopal attack. He rushed with his brother to a good hospital arranging some money from his old friends.
His diagnosis got confirmed. The company did not pay attention. Brother was working under a labour contractor and was not included in the regular payroll. There was no time to fight against the cheating that always shook hand with progress. The labour union made slogans making this an issue which did not stop his lesion increasing in size. Bhauja wept and prayed, mother became sick and bedridden after realising his elder son's problem. Father begged from door to door without knowing the amount of money required for treatment. The insurance card could protect only to initiate the treatment. Danei wanted to snatch away from the rich who earned a lot at his own native place because his family gave land for the progress. He knew the underground people who did a crime network in Madhuban, doing, burglary, killing for money, kidnapping, fixing deals, trafficking human and drugs and so on. He thought, he right now could do anything and everything to solve the immediate problem which the so-called progress offered to his family.
But he was a poor displaced milkman not only displaced from his native land but also from his family profession. His cows were snatched away in the situation. He remembered his grandfather, his Bhagabata, the photo of Kanehya the little cow shepherd. He got the strength of a very different kind.
He approached one and all; friends, several plants management, noted people. One old uncle counselled him to accept the labourer's job. His qualification must be considered at a later date. He did that but as a regular employee, unlike his brother. He now had a better begging capacity and fetched more money for brother's treatment. All expenses they did not reveal to his brother but he could know, by guessing and by asking other patients. Radiotherapy they did in the government hospital. Then the chemotherapy round started. With all possible arrangement too it was not affordable. After completion of one round of treatment, the next round was a more daunting task. All possible helping options exhausted.
This turned out to be the weakest moment for Reena. The soft sands under her feet started receding. She knew she was drowning, remained attached to madam as her shadow. Madam understood, her priceless mare got ready for the betting race. Drops of tear rolled down, madam soaked them with her sympathetic anchal, and gently caressed her hair to bless her and to show her love.
Reena in a few days earned a huge amount, lost in the ancient darkness of the black and blind lane of the most primitive beast in the human. The core of her inner mind became still and steel solid. She concealed herself within the showcase of never-ending artificial laughter soaked with perfumes imported from the other world.
Brother's condition worsened, not responding to treatments. All of Reena's tireless earnings did not help the situation. Danei could not make an eye contact with his loving sister who tied savour’s thread around his wrist on the day of Rakshya Bandhan, every year. He could not save her.
It became intolerable for the brother. The mental agony was more difficult to withstand than the physical pain. He secretly slipped out and jumped in front of a running train.
Time killed brother; it also killed the brother's love for a sister. The living corpse Reena left Madhuban for Mumbai.
Danei got a message from his old beloved, who tried back her love. It was easy for her to reconnect being a cousin of Bhauja. Earning Danei had no interest to knit again from torn threads of relationship. He knew he had to remain as a labourer forever. There worked many labourers, more qualified than him from the earliest days of the plant without getting a promotion. He guessed to have no chance. He avoided all persuasion for his marriage. He thought to take care of his nephew and the niece. With limited earning, he found the art of being content, being a man of utility. He thought it to the right way of living not a struggle at all.
Time passed, father is now too old, widow Bhauja is happy with elder son graduating in metallurgy. Niece does well in high school. Rest of all is lost in the storm of the progress, displaced to places too distant. Those are things of the past. they now live in the condition of the post-storm calmness, the lives running with normalcy. Others in the colony also have reconciled with the change of ways and means of time and are living with happiness.
What else if not happiness!
Danei has accepted a way of living just like his grandfather. He gets peace reading the Bhagabata in the early morning and in the evening. He prays for all for hours.
But at times he becomes philosophical to say, “The price of the land can be compensated, the livelihood can never be. Who can compensate the lost nature, the peaceful daily routine of his grandfather? He even exclaimed how at all they can compensate for the time he spent to bath the cows! How can they measure such compensation, in which scale and in which way they can pay for it? Looking at the smoking tall pipes of so many plants from the high way, he laughs, as the wheels run on the road, vehicle pass by his side. Yes, wheels on motion are symbols of progress. Movement is the image of progress. The chariot of progress has crushed many, mostly the displaced ones. But he now does not care. He lives like other five families in scarcity.
