by Asif Masood
Behind each face is a story, and behind each story are hopes and dreams through which you can find a different facet of the society and country they come from.
Getting behind the line, Sher Khan finds himself at his maternal grandfather's home. There was a very loving uncle who would daily, without fail, give him a bicycle ride in the courtyard and take him to his school with him. Those were the lovely days, and the people around were very caring. There were wall to wall smiles, and smiles of thanks to each other. There were so many of Sher Khan's cousins around, some his age, some younger and older. He used to play and go to fields to cut fodder to feed cattle. There were fruit gardens from where he used to pluck oranges, lemons and melons.
There was a tube well gushing forth a cool, fresh stream of water where he used to bathe. There were flowers all around and green trees. In summer he used to take shelter from the scorching heat and pluck fruit to eat. One must ask children and birds how cherries and strawberries taste. There the birds sing, the snow melts, the rose unfolds, the dawn whitens behind the stark shapes of trees on the quivering summit of the hill. There was a small stream of fresh running water where he used to go with his mother and aunts to wash clothes. There were no washing machines those days.
There were buffalos, donkeys and horses. There were sheep and goats, dogs and cats. In the evenings the mothers and aunts used to milk cows and buffalos, drinking the unboiled fresh milk. It had a lovely taste and Sher Khan liked to add sugar, something rare in those days. Sugar was a luxury for patients or the privileged. But near his grandfather's home, sugar cane grew in abundance and he would cut it from fields, peal it with his teeth and squeeze out its fresh juice.
In the evenings he used to sit with his cousins and engage in all sorts of talk. One evening he was sitting with his cousin discussing,in their specific dialects, goats and sheep. One of their uncles laughed with enjoyment at their serious dialogue. The evenings were so sweet; and there were games. He would sit in a quiet corner with one of his uncles and enjoy the games being played and the fuss and enjoyment.
He liked to go to the nearby railway station to see trains arriving, picking up passengers and leaving some. Oh, what a scene it was! It was fascinating. Engines burnt coal and exhaled thick black smoke--Sher Khan and his friends took delight and pleasure from it. There was a particular smoke smell that people loved; whereas today they hate to smell the smoke. There was no concept of pollution. The thick smoke spewing from the train turned the scene into a picture postcard.
There were small boxes on the railway station that were filled with dry grass and used railway tickets. Sher Khan and his friends chose ones to play with later. They were lovely toys.
Eventually, Sher Khan left that memorable place and the loving uncle, moving to his home town where his father lived. But he never left him behind. He asked his mother to leave Sher Khan with him,\; but how could a mother leave her son? She told him he is too small to be left behind. He said he will feed him with buffalo milk.
His memories stayed with him. His uncle died a sad and painful death while still a young man. Sher Khan could not attend his funeral, as travel was long and the means of travel were poor. Only his mother went. And there she gave birth to Sher Khan's brother, who was named after the uncle. She told him the story of his sad and painful demise, his poor medical care and the pain it caused him. His eyes used to rain and he would let the heart do the talking.
Sher Khan remembered the long summer journey home by train, a very enjoyable one. His mother and few of his uncles were with him. They were all very loving and took great care of him, letting him have a lot of things to eat and drink. It was an age when one enjoys eating all sort of things without being careful about hygiene.
He finally arrived in his lovely and fascinating native village, surrounded by lovely hills with bevies of rock lovelies. This was where he was to be raised and educated, in the lap of Mother Nature. It was such a fine place, green and open. So many birds, animals, green crops and fine people. Here he lived in a cozy cottage in a peaceful country setting.
After a few years he attended a village school surrounded by big trees and wide green fields. It was a pastoral setting with rolling fields and grazing sheep. All around were simple, loving and genuinely friendly people, leading a remarkably frugal existence. There were two very simple but learned and expert teachers there. The children were also straight forward and simple. They took their buckets to the nearby Persian wheel to fetch drinking water. Birds chirped all around on the trees and buildings. Then a brick kiln was built near his school, leading to a new age in the village. For many people from all over the country, with their many accents and dialects, were drawn to the village kiln for work.
He stayed there for six years and then moved to a middle school a bit far off. He would go there by public bus with his peers, often hanging behind or sitting on the roof. It was a joyous ride as the wind tousled his hair. It was a town setting, and the students and teachers there came from the surrounding villages. Sher Khan was a pure villager and would sit quietly in the classroom. Here there were different teachers for different subjects. They would come and go at the strike of the bell. Then there would be a long continuous bell, which meant the end of school day. All the students would run out of classes and head home, some on foot and bicycles and some by busses.
After school Sher Khan went straight home. On arriving his mother handed him a piece of bread and a ball of sugar or an onion for lunch. He ate it on the way to fields where an uncle or aunt grazed cattle. He then took care of the cattle so that his uncle or aunt could do house chores before sunset. Later he herded the cattle home as the sun spread a golden sheet on the hills. His duties done, he played a game with his peers until the dark replaced the golden light of the sun.
My mother or aunt would prepare dinner to be served before sunset, because there was no electricity in those days. After dark, snakes and scorpions took their night strolls. Hence it was important to finish dinner before sunset. For dinner there was hot bread, curry and fresh cow or goat milk, unboiled. And sometimes there would be dessert, rice boiled in fresh cow milk. Sher Khan loved it. Then everyone sank into a delicious slumber.
It was summer vacations that Sher Khan enjoyed most. It was a free time, with harvest yet to come. All the animals grazed freely, without care takers. So Sher Khan was free to play games and ride donkeys with his cousins. In summer there were plenty of donkeys set free to find food for themselves. Sher Khan along with his cousins would ride them and run races.
In this season the donkeys were very active and energetic. When someone rode a donkey it ran at full speed, trying to throw him off its back by a quick turn or running underneath a low thorny tree. Sometimes the rider was seriously injured. Noor Khan was a cousin, about thirty years older than Sher Khan, who told the younger cousins how to ride a donkey successfully. He told stories of riding donkeys in his boyhood. The boys listened to the stories carefully in order to avoid the incidents Noor Khan had been through. And in time they discovered their own ways to control the donkey's, and were able to tell the elder cousin how they did it. He would laugh and say, "You are my teachers!"
Sher Khan and the cousins would catch birds with a long net or with other traps and snares. They hid the snares in dust with a bit of food to lure the birds, When a bird tried to eat it, the snare operate caught the bird by its neck. The birds would start chirping in high tones indicating that one of them had been ensnared. It was a joyous moment for Sher Khan and his company to take the bird out of snare before it died of suffocation or was taken by a predator.
Sometimes they trapped a 'quill, using a long and wide net. They put the net in a corner of a long field of crop and then went to the other side with a long rope, with two men at each end slightly pulling it to make the crop move and produce noise. The quill is a beautiful bird with many enemies; it prefers running to flying. The quill would run ahead of rope in fear and run into the net at the end of the field. It was an awe inspiring and wonderful scene as the quill fluttered in the net, trying to escape. Sher Khan caught hold of it and clipped its wingsbefore taking it out of the net, making it impossible for the quill to fly away. Often a flocks of quills would be ensnared in the nets.
When it rained, Sher Khan waited for the rain to pass so he and his companions could make clay toys. They collected wet clay from where water was stored for cattle or for domestic use. They made sure the clay was free of sand. They normally brought it home, where they prepared it on a clean hard surface to avoid impurities. Sand in the clay made the toys brittle and they would break. When the clay was ready, the boys moulded it into different toys. The wet clay toys were put in the sun to dry. The boys liked to make tractors, because tractors were rare in those days and they were fascinated by the ones they saw. They tried to copy of what real tractors did. They used their tractors to plough small fields and toy trolleys to carry heavy loads. They even ploughed fields of friends in exchange for paper money that they made by tearing pages from their notebooks. Sometimes they were rebuked by elders for doing that. Kher Shan and the boys were not much bothered and kept doing whatever they liked, without care or concern for what elders said. Perhaps that was the blessing of pure freedom.
Every new clay model was changed and improved. For example, they eventually discovered a way to enable their toy tractors to pull trolleys and ploughs. Ploughs often broke on hard surfaces, so they started using wood and iron to make them stronger and longer lasting. Wheels would fall off until they improved the axels.
There used to be fairs and Friday bazaars where they went to shop and to see cock and quills fight. At other festivals bulls were made run and there were dog fighting competitions. Fascinated by these events, Sher Khan and his companions tried to copy them using stray donkeys and dogs. They tried to mimic anything they saw.
Harvest season was the toughest, but it had a certain charm of its own. Children cut and curshed the crops alongside their parents and brought them home on donkeys. Sher Khan hated loading things on the donkeys; but cousins, aunts and uncles helped to get the crop home.
Time passed slowly in those years and it seemed ages had passed before Sher Khan completed grade five and moved into middle school, and three years later to high school. Sher Khan was hungry for knowledge. When he finished grade ten, he went to college, graduated with admirable grades, then entered university.
Sher Khan's first school was a humble adobe house made of terracotta, with only two rooms and a verandah. Nearby was a Persian wheel for drawing water from a huge pool. Every day the children had to bring buckets of water from the Persian wheel to the school. Persian wheels are normally pulled and moved by cattle; but the school children had to push the wheel themselves and fill the buckets. Then they put a long stick throught the bucket's handle for carrying it on their blameless shoulders to the school.
Farmers came with herds of cattle, goat and sheep to drink deep in the scorching heat. They usually came late in the day. However, if they arrived early one of the cattle could be used to move the wheel. This saved so much time for the children that they were able to play before the teacher's arrival.
The humble schoolhouse was a place of friendships for barely three blissful years. During one summer break when the rains were heavy, the school floors needed repair. The students and one of their teachers cleared the debris and removed the school’s valuables to store them in a nearby house. The teacher along with the families who relied on the school chose to rebuild it with their own hands and resources, since the school administration was not willing to act quickly and was reluctant to challenge higher officials. In those days, people believed in self help; there was no Jeeves for Bertie Wooster.
Some people brought shovels and picks and wheel barrows. They dug soil from the school quad, and brought water from the Persian wheel. They mixed the water and clay to make made adobe bricks. They dried the bricks in the sun and used them to rebuild their school. The teacher acted as a mason and Sher Khan and his friends as labourers. They succeeded in raising four walls in a rectangle. It took about three weeks to do this much, because they worked only during school hours. Next, they had to cut trees from the nearby forest to use for the school's roof.
They completed the new single room school in a month. They returned to the school the things that were put in storage: two wooden chairs, a table, two steel boxes for stationery, two blackboards, and water glass for two great teachers, two clay water pots and an earthen drinking cup for students. They sat under trees with their teachers in sizzling summer and freezing winter, in sympathetic autumn and “Let’s party!”spring. As Robin Williams says, “Spring is nature’s way of saying, “Let’s party!”They moved inside the schoolroom only when the rains were heavy.
The excavation in the school quad created two oversized ditches, like dimples in a blushing cheek. During the monsoon, they filled with water, making a lovely lake that overflowed its banks. Birds quenched their thirst and sang merry songs beside the lake. The children floated paper boats on it and washed their writing tablets in it. It was were a few daredevils first learned to swim. The lack was a flood of happiness. At this time, spring stood before them in new and luminous robes. Life seemed eternal. The single room school lasted almost two decades, providing a learning place and refuge for Sher Khan and his companions until they were grown up.
Leaving behind his first school was a heart breaking move. Sher Khan had a deep emotional attachment with two great teachers, the schoolroom itself, the two dimples in the school quad, the trees, the birds, the green fields, the Persian wheel and the simple people who lived all around. But now it was time to part and they were sad. Thus they let the hearts do the talking. But tend not to make it public as grief is something immensely personal. And then speak in a murky tone, sorry to be leaving but not unhappy. What a huge deprivation?
