Villager

Our native is a miniscule village in salem district. And from there my great-grandparents moved to salem leaving their fields. They were one of the first set of people moving out to cities which had became a trend those times. They ended up working in collectorates, railways and post-offices which were run by Britishers.

My ancestors settled around 'Fort' area in salem and many of them worked as clerks in collectorate. So their children had their education in schools in salem. Invariably schools were run by christian missionaries those days. There were subjects like british history, domestic economy..etc (I peeped into the grade-sheet of my grandpa last week.. It was dated 1930-33).

A few of those educated lot ended up working in services. Few got through ICS (Indian Civil Service). Few of them turned rebellious against british raj and went on to work in tamil dailies.

And most importantly few went back to villages to work as tahsildars(VAO).
For those tahsildars, it was a kind of home-coming. They perched into the lands of their ancestors , and with solemn authority given to them by the raj they governed and dominated the village.

Time passed by and there were a new generation of people coming. These people were the first sons (and daughters) of independent India. They worked in banks, telephone exchanges, PWD bords. And a considerable lot were left jobless(who were sons of so called tahsildars).

This jobless lot turned to the most primitive occupation of mankind - agriculture. They produced corns,rice and sugarcane from their meagre lands. And devised their lifestyle to meet with the meagre earnings that they got.

When the world went crazy with the information revolution in late nineties. They were immune to that.Their only view of urbanised India is through their visits to their relatives whose ancestors had preffered to stay in the city.

With every visit they carry the innocence and ignorance of villagehood. I met one such person last week.

He was carrying a two dozens of banana and a bag full of maize (all produced in his farm). His language is so different from that of city-dwellers. He showed a lot of attachment to people which is so uncommon among urbanised people.

He would refer to the name of a distant relative (whom we can barely recollect) and say that he has twelve cows in his backyard. For him its like having a hefty back-balance.

He wanted me to take him to a movie, a recent block-buster in Tamil. At first I tried avoiding that by telling that tickets wont be available. But he was determined.
Inevitably I took him to a theatre which was jam-packed with people. I was crushed and calcined before I got the ticket. And that too I managed to fet only the front row tickets!

I have never seen a movie sitting in front row. And you cant simply do that when it comes to tamil/telugu movies. There were only buckets of mud with the word 'THEE(fire)' written on it between the front row and the screen.

Everything seemed to happen in high magnitude. So far , the balcony seats had offered me a nice asylum for staying back and enjoying the movie. But now.. I am in the thick of the action. I felt like being in the middle of the gang which was thrashed by the hero, the hero was staring at me and his eyes occupied two thirds of the screen.
Never ever sit in a front row and watch the movie.It sucks big time. After all this.. I turned to see how my counterpart looked like. And to my surprise his face glazed with the sense of amazement. He felt it was previlage to sit in front row and watch a movie.
After the movie was over and we started to move, he got my hands and said "It’s the greatest honour in my life. You made me to sit in front row".

I didn’t want to shatter his belief that he was honoured by me. After all life is all about those moments when you feel you are honoured by others.

Wiedersehen