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. 13th 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
