A DAY IN THE LIFE
Morning is dark and I struggle to waken up. The
room isn’t exactly cold but it’s warm under the blankets and the dreams are
slow to fade, like water lapping on the shores of a breeze-blown pond amongst the rushes.
Sadhana Hojai visits us in a flat she has lent us early in the morning while the city wakens slowly to the ubiquitous sound of horns from the traffic outside. She is the head of the Directorate of Welfare of Scheduled Castes in Guwahati, the capital city of Assam. Being of the scheduled Dimasa caste herself, she is tall and stately yet elegant wearing a silk sari. Being a childhood friend of Fulmaya’s, she has offered us a flat to stay in while here. Sadhana seems busy with little time for much around her, fleeting here and there, explaining briefly how the flat works.
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| SADHANA HOJAI OUTSIDE HER OFFICE |
Sadhana takes us in her
government car to her office. We sit
there and a little old lady brings us black Assamese tea on a tray while
Sadhana has her staff box some books and seal them noisily with brown sticky tape. She has a clipped, commanding voice in what
seems to be a variety of languages as the staff are busying themselves around
her.
Yesterday, we visited her
and her husband in the railway managers’ enclave on the outskirts of the city,
a well-maintained suburban village with armed guards at the gate and pretty
bungalows surrounded by trees and flowers.
During our conversation on the porch, Sadhana told me that scheduled
castes are socially and economically backward.
She is very precise in her figures – six
point eight five per cent of the population are considered to be scheduled, she tells me.
Sadhana has held the post
of Director since April 2010. She laughs
as she tells me that she had to sit an exam for the job, But what I studied in my graduation came in the exams.
There is twenty-four staff
on her team. Sadhana’s job is to
implement the policies of the government within the limitations of the
guidelines. I think, in the context of
Indian administration machinery, how difficult that must be where every stage
in the process must be confirmed by clerks and civil servants working with
processes set up by the British, insignificantly changed since partition in 1947
I notice that around the
office are brown, cardboard files, but although there are plans to computerise
the data, Sajhana tells me that this will take some time. They [Hyderabad]
are far ahead of us, she says.
Then on to Sri Sri
Thakur’s temple compound in our hired auto-rickshaw. Thakur is a sect that Fulmaya used to follow
in her younger days in Assam. Since the
death of the founder, his son, Sri Sri Dada has taken over and, as with the
tradition of dynastic rule in India, he wants to expand his temple complex.
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| SRI SRI THAKUR'S TEMPLE |
Around the compound are signs attached to low railings in English, Assamese and Hindi. There are some very strange sayings which require a few semantic somersaults: KNOWLEDGE THAT DOES NOT KNOW TO APPLY IS A DIZZLING IGNORANCE; A DISTURBED OR DEPRESSED MIND IS An INDICATION OF IRREGULAR FUNCTION OF PHYSIC; CHASTITY SPECIALLY DEVOTES FEMAILS BECAUSE THEY CONCEIVE. Each sign is attributed to Sri Sri Thakur.
After this head-spinning assault on the mind, we jump in our auto-rickshaw and take off for another of Fulmaya’s childhood friends, Basanti.
After the preliminary cups of tea and the sharing of Indian sweets bought in a shop on the way to Basanti’s house, I notice that the old man sitting facing me and talking away in Indian English is not Basanti’s father but her husband who, at 76 years old, is at least twenty-years older than her. We have a desultory and rather depressing conversation about how he has become old and has only the TV and the newspaper to read now while the ladies laugh and blow the gaff in the kitchen while they prepare a meal.
With the sun glares behind him,
his white hair gllistenes and the wrinkled skin of his hands hangs like empty sacks. On the wall behind me is a photo with his
name inscribed on the bottom: Captain Shantimoy Bhattacharjee. Jeez, he looks so young and cavalier in his uniform
compared to this old man sitting in front of me.
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| CAPTAIN SHANTINMOY BHATTACHARJEE (RETIRED) |
He tells me he was born and brought up in East Pakistan (later to become Bangladesh) but after partition in 1947, being a Brahmin Hindu, his mother decided to leave for India. After his stint in the army which he didn't like, he left and joined the Indian police force and was posted to Mizoram, a troubled state in North East India. He continued to regale me about the political situations with what sounded to me like unpronounceable names of ministers and officials. I was appointed Gazetted Deputy Supervisor of the Police then after that I retired in 1999, I think.
He went on to tell me how
he had to deal with malcontents. Sometimes they would come to my house. He would say to them, You are also my brothers – containment –
some of them were misguided. They would
come with a gun and automatic rifles to my house. I was not scared of them, I just offered them
tea, etc. and some food also. They
asked, what to do? What is your
advice to us? You give up all these things.
You are in a democratic country, so democratically, you try to solve the
problem.
Shantimoy told me the hostiles were Mizo tribals. Mizo
people, all are Christian, he told me.
They all went to church on a
Sunday carrying their bibles.
By the time lunch was
served, we sat at the table and I had a kind of respect for Shantimoy. His first wife had died and he had had two
children to take care of. He then
married Basanti and had a further three-children, two-boys and a girl. He aplogised for the humble meal set before us, rice, daal and some vegetables.
After food, we thanked
them and left on the auto-rickshaw waiting outside for us. At the flat, we relaxed and watched some
silly movies on Sky, went to bed and thought of the next day’s events with
Fulmaya’s brother, sister and sister-in-law from Kathmandu.
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| PHOTO OF A YOUNG FULMAYA (ON THE LEFT) FROM BASANTI'S ALBUM |
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