The Tekeli of Curd

The tekeli* of curd

I was young, too young to know about what corruption meant. Now I am in my mid-30s, old enough to know the meaning corruption and its evil tentacles and tendrils in our society.

The locality I grew up in was a safe and secured area. We rejoiced when there was a power-cut, because power-cuts were very few and far between. I am referring to Dispur Capital Campus, the bureaucrat’s colony, where officers both IAS, ACS lived with the other staff of Assam Secretariat.

Let me mention about the two drunkard uncles first (though this has nothing to do with corruption). One was an uncle from UP, I think and the other was a Bengali (the former an IAS and the latter an ACS). To protect their real identities let me name them Mishra uncle and Bhattercherjee uncle respectively.

We, the gang of girls of our neighbourhood, numbering 5-6, would celebrate Jullan-Jatra in the month of August, a festival to worship Lord Krishna and his consort Radha’s milan. The gang of girls would always go from house to house collecting donation. It was in the mid-80s and Rs. Two was what we received on an average from most of the families. Those uncles and aunties who had only son(s) but no daughter would give us Rupees Five since the organizers were all girls. They somehow trusted us- the girls more than the locality boys.

Once my friends elder brother suggested that we should post ourselves near the Post Office since that’s the place where people carrying some money in their pockets and purse flocked to (other than banks). I remember, an old uncle (didn’t know his name) clad in dhoti and kurta gave us a Five paise coin. This he took out very miserly from his kurta pocket. We accepted his offer but from that day onwards we named him 5 paise uncle.

Now let me come back to the two uncles whose love for the "bottle" was more than any work was known to one and all in the locality including us. The gang of girls would split in two groups and would twice collect money for the festival from both of them. In their intoxicated state they could never guess that the girls belonged to the same organizing group. And lo! They in a high state gave us Rs 20 to Rs 25 each. Without these two uncles it would have been difficult for us to celebrate the festival.

Excuse me for diverting from the main point which is corruption. In my growing up years corruption was a task done “under-the-table”. Now in my growing old years I see it as a task done blatantly “over-the-table”.  Perhaps when I was a child there was not much traffic in the city but now with Guwahati’s traffic moving at a snail’s pace I see traffic policemen openly accepting money in broad daylight from truckwallahs and lorrywallahs in the national highway. Now, why won’t the prices of fish, chicken, eggs and other essential items increase if the businessmen had to shell-out money from their pockets at every check gate and traffic point?

Magh Bihu is a time when the prices of everything skyrockets because it is the festival of feasting. In Assam, Magh or Bhogali Bihu is celebrated in mid-January to mark the end of the harvest season and when the granary is full in every household. 13^th January is uruka­­ or Bihu eve, when youngsters are seen building meji (thatched huts made out of bamboo and straw). Since we lived in a colony it was not easy to get bamboo fences and straws. However, we did manage to steal from those houses which were not occupied for a while or from those houses whose family members went to their native places for Bihu. This work of stealing required a lot of plans a month or so before the festival.  First, we had to spot the house which was empty. Once we figured out the house, we would rise early at the crack of dawn, equipped with knife, hammer, spanner etc.

Once we went to steal bamboo fences from a house just near the post office. The house belonged to an aged Bengali couple. Our friend Bhonti (aka Hitler, named so by the neighbourhood boys because her father kept a moustache like Hilter’s) came with the information that just two houses from hers, the Bengali family had gone to the Zoo for a picnic (picnic was so common during December-January in those days). The gang of girls immediately swung into action. We lost no time to collect the equipments to cut the wires and to uproot the fences. It was evening time; dusk had not yet set in, when we were busy with our job. We were so engrossed in our mission that we failed to see the white ambassador halting right in front of the house. Suddenly we heard a man’s voice thundering, hey, hey ki korisa (what you are doing?). All the gang of girls was swift in running (we always won prices in the athletic competition in Ronagali Bihu). We ran from there with the speed of lightning before being caught except Bhonti. She just froze on the spot. Since stealing during Magh Bihu is not a taboo (people steal vegetables, fowls and ducks in the villages in uruka in Assam) she escaped from any harm.

I neither remember the exact year, nor the person or family to whom this incident happened. I came to know from my friends while strolling in the evening (evening walk or cycling was a regular activity for the gang of girls). This family (let me name it as family XYZ for the sake of my reader’s convenience) was a denizen of DCC. The head of the family may have been a corrupt officer (I am writing ‘may’ because I have only heard it; it never made it in the local newspapers). He may have accepted bribes from candidate(s) with the promise of giving a sarkari naukri (government job). I don’t understand why the Assamese community has a fetish for government jobs. No Axomiya father would give his daughter’s hand to an Axomiya businessman in those days. This young government job-seeker hailing from the village may have sold his valuable piece of land in his village which he must have inherited from his father, who in turn must have received it from his father and so on . . .). The officer must have given this fellow the assurance that he would get a job, until a year or two had passed and no job saw the light of the day. However, the job-seeker didn’t lose hope. He would visit the officer’s house in DCC with whatever he could procure from his farmland- pure milk or ghee one day, the sweet-scented joha rice the other, jur the next and so on. The officer’s wife must have also accepted these little offerings from the humble and rustic young village lad.

Once, the same boy brought some home-made laru-pitha (rice-cakes), gur (jaggery), chira (flattened-rice) and a tekeli of sweet doi (curd) during Magh Bihu to the officer’s house. His wife, a home-maker, gladly accepted the boy's Bihu offerings. It must be mentioned here that giving home-made laru-pitha, gur, curd, puffed and flattened rice etc. to relatives and friends is a traditional custom in Assam during Magh Bihu, so is inviting people at home for feasting.

The officer’s wife took out the eatables the next morning for breakfast. People generally eat chira-doi with gur for breakfast on the day of Bihu. The lady of the house kept the tekeli full of doi in the dining-table. They were munching chira-doi when a very strange smell hit their nostrils. The lady went to the kitchen in search of any dead insects mainly mouse but found nothing there. She opened the fridge but only the smell of food emanated from there. The gluttonous husband was merrily feasting when suddenly he threw out. Out came from his mouth the different-coloured stuffing which should have been the white and sweet curd. There was a mixture of yellow in between. When his wife scooped the tekeli, to her utter surprise, she found a layer of yellow s*** hidden below the doi in the tekeli.

When my friends narrated this to me I felt liking puking. Now that I reflect on this incident (which can happen to any person accepting bribe) I can only laugh out loud and say to myself- serves him/ her right, right?

*Tekeli- earthern pot

Life in a boarding

Aditi is unable to connect to her mother on the phone. It’s her and the boarders’ phone call day. Every Thursday and Sunday the boarders’ of Gulmohar call their parents, 4 minutes on Thursdays and 8 minutes on Sundays. She (and K. Padmini, both from Gangtok) is the only one out of the 28 boarders who didn’t get the line. The rest all signed in the phone call register.

The SA 1 examination is going on. Hence, some of the girls study till late night while the others are fast asleep. Aditi too fell asleep thinking she would be unable to speak to her parents.

I get a call somewhere between 10:00-10:30 pm. Generally I don’t pick up calls from boarders parents after 9:30 pm. But today I did when the office phone buzzed and “Aditi’s Ma” appeared on the screen. I went to room no. 4B. Her bed is no. 3, in one corner facing the window (in Gulmohar we call it facing DPS Guwahati). She was fast asleep.

When the rouser call rings in the morning at 5:30 am almost everyone wakes up on time except Aditi. When I take a round to check if everyone is awake and brushed their teeth, she would still be sleeping. I would go to her bed and wake her up gently. Once I was in such a round and as expected she was fast asleep, all curled up in bed. “Wake up, Aditi. Wake up, Aditi”, I told her. She opened her little eyes. I sternly commanded her to get up from bed and go. She was still in a half-sleep-half-awake state when she replied “Go where, Ma’am?” It was for the PT/ Yoga classes I meant. Even though I acted as if I was angry with her for asking such a question when she ought to know her daily schedule followed in the hostel, deep inside I was not. Her question only made me smile from inside.

She spoke to her mother first and asked her why she didn’t keep the phone with her. She told her mother that her tuck was almost over and asked her to come from Imphal to Guwahati to meet her and bring her the special Maggie cooked by her mother. In the hostel, most of the boarders eat uncooked Maggie as they eat Wai-Wai ­- raw.

She asked her mother about her father’s health, if the lump in his face has subsided. In all her innocence she beseeched her mother to pray to the Almighty to cure her father. She was crying when she spoke those words. Hope the one above us sees her tears and listens to her prayer. She later spoke to her father in Hindi and asked him about his well-being. Her tears stopped immediately as she started the conversation with him, as if she didn’t wish him to know that she had cried a moment earlier. I could sense a grim in her face as she spoke to him. She asked her father to “kick that doctor”- the one who was treating him.

I must have waited for more than 4 minutes by her bed. Shabana, Aditi’s roommate got up from her bed and climbed on to Aditi’s bed when she became emotional. Krishna, her other roommate who was sleeping peacefully until then too woke up when she was on the phone. Donu Kena, her Arunachali roommate had just entered the room after studying in the study room when I was about to leave their room. I wished all the 4 roommates good night.

Aditi is a very sweet girl even though she doesn’t spend much time in studying. She was in Sanskriti- The Gurukul, Guwahati before joining Royal Global School, Guwahati. She was my nephew Jonathan’s classmate in her previous school. She is in grade VI A now and seems to know her lessons well since she had already studied in class IV and V in Sanskriti (under ICSE) what she is studying now in grade VI in RGS (under CBSE).

The next day she had her mathematics examination. I went to see if all the girls had assembled in the corridor of the hostel before going down for breakfast. She saw Ginima, the security personnel, making pleats in Ritika (the youngest boarder of Gulmohar) and Shabana’s hair. She too requested Ginima to pleat her hair. While I was watching Ginima arranging Aditi’s hair I saw that Aditi’s left hand had some cut marks. I asked her how she hurt herself. She narrated: “Ma’am, while I was taking out the paint bottles from the rack under the study table, I hand accidentally hit the edge of the table and . . .” She made some strange sound like ‘dharang’ to express what happened later to her. I understood what she meant to say. She never came to me crying seeking some comfort or to ask for medicines to Hemlata, the resident nurse. “Had it happened to delicate girls like Urvashi from grade VII, she would have come writhing in pain, with tears in her eyes and even if it was just for a very minor scratch”, I laughed while saying this to her and the other boarders who had assembled there one by one. “I am a strong girl, Ma’am” was her straight yet simple statement. As she spoke this I looked into her face and squeezed her cheeks as if to praise her. Imagine a girl of only grade VI making such a strong statement. Perhaps I was not that strong when I was of Aditi’s age, with so much of shield against difficulties, sorrows and pains from my parents and siblings and living in a cocooned world. Aditi’s remark set my thoughts rolling- I wondered what had made her say so- her ailing father or her circumstances at home. Life had taught the young girl about “life” at a very early stage. I only wish all my girls- the remaining 27 boarders’ of Gulmohar to be as strong a girl as Aditi, to face life with a smile when they grow into beautiful young ladies even when they face adversities.