18- Chachaji

18-Chacha ji

Everyone has a Ma. Every one has a Pa. Many of us have an in-between generation Uncle or Aunt with whom there is a genetic and non-genetic sharing of mind and time.
My Father lost his real sibs and father early in life, he, independently took care of his Ma.
He was Mentor to the rest of the larger family and his youngest cousin Sushil, a decade older than me, became ‘that’ person.

He was in and out of our home through life.
Father himself a man of Finance, was also ‘bit’ by the ‘doctor bug’ and tried each Gumthala born after him to learn the Physics, Chemistry and Biology of the human body.
Well, Chachaji became a Doctor of Plants, studying Botany. He would bring some exotic Plant species from the Pusa Institute and teach us ‘Plant Classification’.
He then went to Madison, Wisconsin, USA for his Doctorate and thesis in Pathology in the ‘Potato’ and I guess many other Doctorates of life one does in one’s Youth.

On return after 5 years he was very Americanized, telling us tales of people, places, countries with jest and enthusiasm no one can match. That happened 40 years ago. He still narrates those as if it happened yesterday with nostalgia and a seething romance with another culture on the other side of the world.
He married Subodh and bought Land at Dhampur at the basin of River Ganga, ironically again becoming a ‘Farmer’ of sorts, growing Potatoes and storing them in a Cold Storage. He also had an Ice making unit in the Summer, a Rice shredding Mill, cattle on the farm and a sprawling Bungalow with loads of Gladioli and exotic Roses in the front lined by the tall Royal Palms and fruit trees at the back with broad leafy Teaks interspersed.
Sabina, Gesu and Gaurav, the offspring mostly schooled in Hostels in Cities and later settled with their spouses in the Corporate life of Bombay.

2 years ago Subodh had been seen for an Angiography at AIIMS. She had collapsed and shifted to the ICU. She recovered but expressed the one wish that Gorav be married while she was alive with or without the by-pass. Little did one believe that the count down had begun and this was not to be. She took treatment but her heart gave way suddenly.

We drove to the ‘Chautha’.
The house stood the same, sort of deep into and away from the main road. Some cars in the driveway, tent slightly blowing in the wind, dry earth, of the mid-afternoon Sun.
Some familiar and some strange faces, familiar with their expressions yet, accumulated unspoken emotion different than earlier exuberant times. We had reached late having taken the wrong turning. Nirman and his wife came to ask for Lunch. The people were ready for the ‘Pagri ceremony’. We politely asked to continue. Chachaji came and gave a soft hug, to Jhai, and me, again not saying ‘What’.
I sat amongst the ladies. We went through the rituals. Gorav was ‘Pagried’, seemed strange. Remembered the pudgy 6 month old who barely could sit steady in the center of the big ‘aangan’ where he later would play Table Tennis beating every one hollow.

The evening Sun was setting in the distance behind the leafless trees.
The crimson hue colored the barren earth, which had been dug out two days before. The potatoes lay in heaps uncounted, un-weighed and unbagged--- I could sight no Peacocks on land or on the Eucalyptus trees, just occasional chirping of some lone bird---.

The chowkidar came and wanted the attendance marked for the last 3 days. The laborer girls had been coming but leaving ‘un-reporting’ as Subodh was not there any more. Chcchaji picked up the register, opened a fresh page, drew a line for names and another for date and asked for their names. From now on they would have to report to him, some smiling bashfully, others with ‘no care’ in the world. I had my digital camera to catch the glimpses of the living farm. All showed interest and posed graciously in lines to be clicked.

‘The men’ had been around but actually it was ‘the women’ who seemed to have been sowing, nurturing, watering, watching, digging ------. While Sushil Uncle was around too, it had been Subodh who seemed to account for all and sundry. Although her own kids Sabina, Gesu and Gorav had moved to hostels after kindergarten, she was the ‘Mata’ of those who stayed on the farm.

She belonged to a family of Politicians of UP and I suppose there was some logic to owning and working on a farm by the Ganges if you are truly part of India, which as they say is 80% agriculture and farms. When she married him, he had returned from USA. After having tried his luck in Delhi and Calcutta where my father was posted he took up a job at the Punjab agricultural univ. Ludhiana and had a short posting at Abohar a small town not catering to the fancies of a foreign return Desi. He, we, had lands, not so fertile in Haryana, so the final decision of disposing them to move to Dhampur.
Of course she had also been actively involved in the Indian women’s organization and had formed the Dhampur chapter where a lot was being done.

Post the ‘Chautha’ my mother and I stayed on with the family of which we have always felt a part of. Things were in low-key, Sabina trying to get into her Mom’s shoes and taking care of the indoors and Gorav trying to ‘bond’ even stronger with the Dad and the farm clan, Gesu the middle sib unsure of her duties and emotions as was the Dad, of present, near or distant future.
The present was, this farm, forlorn without Subodh, without electricity for 10 hours a day, without grown children all products of high-tech management Schools, working high tech-jobs and settled in high-tech and high-rise Mumbai.

His life got amputated without Subodh. The future was a question mark?
“I feel forlorn and despondent. Gloom has engulfed me. Ambience deflects unbearable sadness. Nimbus overcast, Saturated Breeze, Seclusion around”.

We tried to communicate more often. He began to marvel at the way I had busied myself in my life living alone. Every time I met him I found, the gregarious fun loving guy in him was dwindling. “Evening is fast gliding into night on wayward roads. The last stretch is rather desolate for the forlorn recluse. Pensiveness sways me”, he wrote.

When I was small I began commuting to school on his bike in Kanpur. Now he saw me as the grown-up to commute with, to help find the meaning of remaining life.

He decided to dispose off the farm at Dhampur and move to Mumbai, nearer his kids and grand kids. I noticed he was walking with a slight limp, said his knee was getting Osteo-arthritic, had never been so before. Well I believe him but also believe that he will limp back to LIFE, his gregarious Fun Self again.

Veena