-Bageshwar Jha
Hi, I am back to the
national capital after a nearly two-month long sojourn to my native village in
Bihar, perhaps the longest stint there since I left the village for studies in
a high school in 1954. Believe me, during this period I missed you all, all the
time. The purpose was to get constructed my house as after partition with
brothers, I was given a vacant piece of land reducing me to the status of a
person without a roof on his head. But the stay was eventful in many ways.
In fifties, only a
counted few had shoes or woollens. Today you cannot see anybody without a chappal
at least. The colourful pullovers put on by males and females of all ages has
added colour to the life of the community. Previously every landlord, big or
small had bullocks to plough the arable lands. Today, about forty tractors have
banished the oxes. Labour being costly and scarce due to their flocking to
Punjab, Haryana and Maharashtra, the landlords have stopped cultivation. The
people of lower rung of the society have adopted the agricultural work on the
condition of getting half of the product (bataidari). As a result, the
landowners have started disposing of their land to maintain themselves and
neglected lot are purchasing them. They call it ditch being higher than the
dam. Moreover, the distribution of foodgrains by the government on highly
subsidized rates has helped the beneficiaries to avoid hard labour oriented
work.
The village has
metalled roads and electricity is available for nearly twenty hours a day. The
economically stable families are owning TV, fridge and other electronic
household gadgets. The most encouraging development from the Sulabh point of
view is that the houses being constructed are invariably provided with
lavatories. Attendance in schools has unprecedently gone up as the students get
bicycles, mid-day meal and cash for dress and study materials. Moreover, provision
of toilets in schools has reduced to the minimum the drop out syndrome,
particularly of girl students. People of all shades appear trained in
parliamentary system and they have become cunning enough to teach a bitter
lesson to non-performing politicians. The new crop in politics has realized
that they cannot exist without delivering. The erstwhile downtrodden have
turned so self-respect minded that even the affluent ones cannot dictate terms.
Are not these small things indicative of India having progressed during last
over six decades of independence?
Yet there is one more
point, I would like to mention here. I have been attending Vidyapati jayanti
celebrations in different cities of India either as an audience or an important
somebody on the dias. However, I had never an opportunity to attend this
function at Darbhanga, the heart of Mithila. Being a small time writer with
publications in Maithili, the literary people there know me. So I was invited
to attend that 3-day function on the second day, viz Nov.5, 2014. It was a
national seminar in which I was to make a presentation on the history of
Maithili dramas in and around my native village. Some other forty scholars had
also made similar presentations which were all published in book form and
released there by Justice Dharni Dhar Jha of Patna High Court. We also spoke on
the theme before the august audience.
In hindsight, thus I
realize to have missed a lot on account of this disconnection with my birth
place. Did I do so deliberately? I would like to quote a sher of a famous
Pakistani poet: ‘duniyan ne tere ishk se begana kar diya, tujh se bhi dilphareb
hai gam rozgar ke’.
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