Here There and Everywhere Read online

  He was talking to me in English with an Indian accent.

  ‘How come you speak English like us?’ I asked in surprise.

  ‘My name is KeTsang. I was in India for five years. I studied at Loyola College in Chennai. Now I run a restaurant in Lhasa. People here like Indian food and movies. I accompanied my grandmother for her pilgrimage. She was thanking you.’

  ‘But for what? I have not done anything for her!’

  ‘That is true, but your country has. It has sheltered our Dalai Lama for so many years. He is a living god to us, particularly to the older generation. We all respect the Dalai Lama, but due to political reasons, we cannot express it in public. You might have seen that there isn’t a single photo of his in any public place in the whole of Lhasa. He is the fourteenth, but we have paintings, statues and pictures only up to the thirteenth.’

  I still did not understand the old lady’s gesture. The grandson explained, ‘She said, “I am an old lady and don’t know how long I will live. If I don’t thank you before I die, I will never attain peace. Let anyone punish me for this, it does not matter. It is a gift that I met an Indian today and was able to thank you for sheltering our Dalai Lama. Yours is truly a compassionate land.”’

  Her words eerily echoed Maya’s from many years back. I could only look down at the wet spot on my hand and smile.

  9

  Bonded by Bisleri

  The 26 January horror of Kutch in Gujarat is well known. Without any warning, Mother Earth opened her mouth and engulfed the people and their belongings. Overnight, rich people were reduced to the streets. But the spirit of the Kutchi people is admirable. They faced this disaster bravely and are still fighting to restore normalcy.

  The media has to be congratulated for its role in the relief efforts. Within hours of the tragedy, all newspapers and television channels had zoomed in to cover the disaster and broadcast it all over the world. Along with India, the rest of the world participated in helping these unfortunate people. After all the rush of the TV crews and media people, hordes of NGOs and government officials landed up in Kutch. People started picking up their life from where they had left it. Life started to return to normal at a slow pace.

  I went to visit these areas after some time, when the dust of propaganda had settled down, in order to see actual life. After all, the emotions had drained off and reality had become the priority.

  Several small villages deep inside Kutch, away from the main road connecting Ahmedabad and Bhuj, had been badly affected by the earthquake. I was visiting these remote places in the deep interior when one of the tyres of my jeep went flat. Getting it fixed would take some time. My driver went to get this done.

  I was alone and bored. I saw a few tents nearby. They were temporary sheds covered with blue plastic sheets. They were temporary houses, schools and health centres for the people residing in that area. Later, I heard that there were tent hotels as well.

  Life was busy and people were getting on with their chores. As it was monsoon season, men and women were busy in the fields. It was very strange. For many years there had not been much rain in Kutch, but that year it had rained abundantly. Farmers were having a bumper crop. I suppose nature has its own method of justice. On the one hand she takes away something and on the other she gives something in return. Small children were playing in the dust happily.

  I peeped into one of the nearby tents. A young girl, about fourteen years old, was cleaning grains and preparing to cook a meal. When she saw me, she rose with a smile and said, ‘Please come in and sit down.’

  As I wanted to see how they lived, I entered the shed. She gave me a charpoy to sit on. Inside the tent it was clean and neat. There was a thin partition made of an old sari. I understood from her conversation that her family was not from Kutch.

  The girl offered me a glass of water. Though it was the monsoon season, the sun was hot, but I was a little hesitant to drink the water. Many thoughts flashed across my mind. If the water was not sterile, then I was at risk of contracting diseases like dysentery and jaundice. If I refused to accept the water, however, I knew I would hurt the girl’s feelings. So I took the glass but did not drink the water.

  The girl had a younger sister who might have been around twelve years old. There was a little boy sleeping in a home-made cradle. Outside, there was a temporary open kitchen where sabzi was being cooked. The elder one was making dough from wheat flour.

  ‘It seems from your language that you are not Gujaratis. Where are you from?’ I asked.

  Smiling, the younger sister answered, ‘We’re not from Gujarat, we’re from Mumbai.’

  ‘Have you come here to visit your relatives?’

  ‘No, we don’t have any relatives here. This is our house. We have come here with our parents.’

  I was very surprised by this answer because, normally, people flee areas afflicted by calamities, whereas these people had moved in. ‘What is your father doing here?’

  Both girls were eager to give me information. The elder one replied, ‘My father used to beg in Mumbai at Mahim Creek, near the church. My mother used to sell candles at the church entrance.’

  ‘What made you come here?’

  ‘One day, we saw the news on TV and came to know that there had been an earthquake here. It was shown every hour on TV in the corner shop. My father said “Let’s go” and we came here.’

  ‘Who paid for your train tickets?’

  ‘Nobody. We came here without tickets. The whole train was full of people. There were many people like us who have come. The entire station was heavily crowded. There was no ticket collector.’

  ‘How did you come from the train station?’

  ‘We didn’t know anyone. But there were plenty of buses running between the station and Bhuj. There were many foreign volunteers. The buses were jam-packed. We also got into one of the buses and landed on the main road.’

  ‘How did you come to this particular area?’

  ‘There were many jeeps going from the main roads to all interior villages. On the main road, there was a convoy of trucks full of different relief materials. They used to unload materials on either side of the road. People who did not have anything would pick them up from the roadside. We also picked up some.’

  ‘What were the materials on the roadside?’

  ‘There were food articles, apples, biscuit packets, clothes, blankets and many more items. My father told each one of us to pick up what we could and we collected a lot. We had never seen so much in our life in Mumbai. Everything was in plenty.’

  Children are innocent and they always tell the truth until they become adults and lies creep into their lives. One lies to boast, to show what he is not. But children are so confident. They never pretend to be what they’re not. Naturally, the Mumbai beggar’s daughters described the whole scenario as if it was a very memorable event.

  The elder one said much more than that. ‘There were people crying, some of them in pain. Some had lost their children or parents. It was very sad to see. But there were plenty of people to help also. There were doctors working overnight. There were swamijis working like common men, distributing medicines. There were army people digging to build houses. There was no difference between day and night, the rich and the poor.

  ‘Our position was better. We did not lose anybody, nor did we lose any material, because we never had anything to begin with. People who have something have to fear losing it, but people who don’t have anything to lose have no such fear. My mother and father helped people and someone said that inside the villages there was nobody to help. There were jeeps constantly travelling between the villages and the main road. So we got into one of the jeeps and landed in this village. Some organization was giving bamboo, camping materials like tents, and other roofing materials, free to all those people who had lost their houses. As we had no home, we also got all the materials. Sometimes we got double because my mother was in one queue and my father in another.’

  ‘What all have