Subrato Bagchi: The Castaway
From among the many mails that I receive from readers of Times of Mind, there is one to which I cannot reply: it came by post, without an address and unsigned. The reader wants to ensure that he leaves no traces and remains in the shroud of anonymity. This anonymity is a penumbra that protects him from thousands of years of social stigma. The letter is written in impeccable English; the nice handwriting clearly indicates both good education and cultivated writing skills. The writer says that he is a self-made man, very well placed in life and happily married to someone he found himself. The only issue haunting him is his past, to which he was not a signatory when born into this world. Having lost his parents as a child, he was raised by his relatives in a remote village in a southern state. Being educationally gifted, he earned several scholarships, and eventually left the village and came to a big city. More successes followed and eventually he met his wife, herself a professional. When he left for the big city, he had left his past behind. Suddenly, at the time of taking the most important decision of his life, it returned. Her relatives wanted to know what caste he belonged to. In a moment of helplessness, he suppressed the truth. The truth is that he was born to a man who worked in a cremation ground, because that was what his caste ordained.
A cremation ground in India is a very unusual place. It is difficult to conjure the experience to one who has not been there; words cannot describe the ethos. Central to the rites conducted in such places are the men who earn a living there. They set up the pyre; they tend to the body by repeatedly stoking the fire from all sides, poking the burning flesh with the only instrument of their trade, long bamboo sticks. Finally, after all is over, they collect the remaining bones and hand them over to the relatives. They do this under the burning sun and in the dead of the night; they do it in the pouring rain when the smoke from the pyre engulfs everything, emanating the smell of flesh and fire, wind and water. Every dead body takes a good six hours to be fully cremated and, even when relatives go away before that, these men cannot. The pyre has to be cleared afterwards and be kept for the next one who must be given the passage to another world. What happens, though, to the progeny of such men? They can roam in freedom if they embrace their father's profession; if they step out of the perimeter of their caste, the past will haunt them such that they must, as in the case of my reader, live suspended between the world of the living and that of the dead.
My reader feels guilty and ashamed. His erudition make his wife's family think he is a brahmin. His wife of many years thinks so too. In the deepest corner of his heart however, when he dialogues with his own soul in silence, the seemingly comfortable shadow of the "don't ask, don't tell" principle, scorches him. The pain follows him everywhere. The more professionally successful he gets, the more life showers its goodness on him and, ironically, the more loved he becomes – the more the pain reminds him that his past is alive. It is like an alien creature that lives inside him and, he knows, will never go away. This man is not the only one in this country of a billion people where "the clear stream of reason" does lose its way, into the "dreary desert sands of dead habits". Every day.
It is only a few days ago, newspapers reported that Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar was aghast that in several police barracks, there are separate kitchens for people of "lower castes". But it's not just Bihar. Even today, I know well that when bureaucrats try to ascertain the credentials of their colleagues, if someone has come through the so-called "reserved quota", that information heads and trails every other byte of data on the individual. Since the nationhood of India, in the intervening six decades, two new generations have been raised who did not have to be shackled to an inglorious past. How much longer, I wonder, before my nameless reader will be able to stand up to say, "Look, I am proud of my father and his profession."
To him though, I want to say right now, "Though my brahmin parents gave me birth, it is only in the hands of someone like your father that I will receive my final deliverance. Thank you for what he does for all of us."
A cremation ground in India is a very unusual place. It is difficult to conjure the experience to one who has not been there; words cannot describe the ethos. Central to the rites conducted in such places are the men who earn a living there. They set up the pyre; they tend to the body by repeatedly stoking the fire from all sides, poking the burning flesh with the only instrument of their trade, long bamboo sticks. Finally, after all is over, they collect the remaining bones and hand them over to the relatives. They do this under the burning sun and in the dead of the night; they do it in the pouring rain when the smoke from the pyre engulfs everything, emanating the smell of flesh and fire, wind and water. Every dead body takes a good six hours to be fully cremated and, even when relatives go away before that, these men cannot. The pyre has to be cleared afterwards and be kept for the next one who must be given the passage to another world. What happens, though, to the progeny of such men? They can roam in freedom if they embrace their father's profession; if they step out of the perimeter of their caste, the past will haunt them such that they must, as in the case of my reader, live suspended between the world of the living and that of the dead.
My reader feels guilty and ashamed. His erudition make his wife's family think he is a brahmin. His wife of many years thinks so too. In the deepest corner of his heart however, when he dialogues with his own soul in silence, the seemingly comfortable shadow of the "don't ask, don't tell" principle, scorches him. The pain follows him everywhere. The more professionally successful he gets, the more life showers its goodness on him and, ironically, the more loved he becomes – the more the pain reminds him that his past is alive. It is like an alien creature that lives inside him and, he knows, will never go away. This man is not the only one in this country of a billion people where "the clear stream of reason" does lose its way, into the "dreary desert sands of dead habits". Every day.
It is only a few days ago, newspapers reported that Bihar Chief Minister, Nitish Kumar was aghast that in several police barracks, there are separate kitchens for people of "lower castes". But it's not just Bihar. Even today, I know well that when bureaucrats try to ascertain the credentials of their colleagues, if someone has come through the so-called "reserved quota", that information heads and trails every other byte of data on the individual. Since the nationhood of India, in the intervening six decades, two new generations have been raised who did not have to be shackled to an inglorious past. How much longer, I wonder, before my nameless reader will be able to stand up to say, "Look, I am proud of my father and his profession."
To him though, I want to say right now, "Though my brahmin parents gave me birth, it is only in the hands of someone like your father that I will receive my final deliverance. Thank you for what he does for all of us."
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