One evening in my teens as I returned home from college, I was surprised to see a visitor at home very different from the usual circle of our friends and relatives to grace our home. This visitor, a gentleman, looked faintly Indian but his accent and clothes placed him as a westerner. He looked well past 60 yet exuded strength and vitality through his gestures, his deep voice and the shock of grey hair beneath which were humorous twinkling eyes. He was preparing to leave when Id arrived and so I couldnt manage to speak much with him. Yet of the few minutes of conversation I did have, I remember being deeply impressed by his forceful personality, his iron will, his obvious pride at his achievements and his desire to do more in life. After hed left us, I couldnt contain myself and asked my father about him. What I heard about the gentleman left a profound impression in me which remains to this day. The gentleman was from my fathers village and their family lived in the next street. In villages, families live together perhaps for centuries and have strong personal bonds. So even though the gentleman was many years senior to my father and had rarely interacted with appa, being from the same village meant Appa knew all about him. And this is his remarkable story. It was the 1930s, and this gentleman was a bright young science student in college. His brother was a few years older to him and both were very close to each other. In keeping with the custom of those years, the older brother was married off to a young girl still in her teens. Misfortune struck within a year or two of marriage; the older brother was afflicted with and succumbed to typhoid. This young boy on the cusp of manhood was filled with grief on two counts: One, at the loss of his dearest friend and brother. The second, for the bleak future of his brothers wife who would have to suffer a life worse than that of a domesticated animal. She would have her hair shorn off, given one single piece of cloth to cover herself with, sleep on the hard flood, eat food without any sweet,spice or salt, have no time or life for herself; in short would have to spend her whole life without a single comfort. Being a teen, it meant a long, horrible life full of suffering and sorrow for no fault of hers. Perhaps his own dying brother had instructed him so, or maybe it rose from his own sense of righteousness fresh from the inputs of the great social reformers of those times, whatever it be, the young man soon got up to suggest the rehabilitation of his bereaved sister-in-law through marriage and to the shock of the assembled relatives and villagers, offered to marry her, himself. Pandemonium broke out in the grieving but peaceful village. This was sacrilege! the elders said. How dare this young boy speak with such impunity! The boy wasnt fazed and stood his ground. The girl, both his and her family had little say as the village and its traditions took over. The boy was threatened with dire consequence but he didnt blink. He believed in what he meant. He was abused, vilified and trashed to an inch of his life. Then finally his family, fearing for his life, disowned him and he was thrown out of the village, discredited, and out-cast. The teenage boy was left to fend for himself. Wherever he went in the region his reputation and act preceded him and he was shooed away. Tired and distraught he hid in a steamer bound for foreign lands at the Madras port and found himself many weeks later on the strange shores of Denmark. He had nothing on him, not even a stitch of extra-cloth. Nobody knew him and he knew nobody. That itself was a great advantage for him as he began life afresh. With nothing but hard-work, intelligence, enterprise and righteousness on his side, he began his life anew. Forty-odd years later, he had established for himself a successful business entity in a foreign land. It was only then that he decided to visit his estranged land and family. And on the last leg of his journey, he had visited us. Sometimes misfortunes give rise to new opportunities. This man as a brahmin boy would never have been permitted to cross the seas, his education would have prevented him from starting a business and familial ties would have prevented him from adopting a foreign culture. But here he was, a model of success in decades of stagflation. Of course he deserved it all. Mostly because he had the courage to offer to do the right thing- marry a widow. More than anything else, it was his righteousness and purpose that had decided his success in life. A few years later when we visited our ancestral village, we also visited his estranged family in their house. Lying pale and forgotten in one corner of the house, her eyes shut to suffering was a old, very old woman. Her shrunken size, yellowed coarse home-spun cloth could barely cover her tired, weak body and her bald head. That old lady with no hope in her eyes was the lasting legacy of a cruel tradition. The only other image of this story that till today is imprinted in my mind.
Posted on: Thu, 16 Oct 2014 06:09:59 +0000
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