If you think Malda (pronounced Mull…daa) is some exotic place in the wilds of the West Indies, you are grossly mistaken. I refer to a quaint, small village in the countryside of India, so small that even a Google search fails to locate it. To reach there from Balrampur (another small place in north India, you will have to take a loop-line train to Pachperwa (wherever that is) station, from where you could use a bicycle, or a two-wheeler, and take a muddy road to the village, a little over six miles from the railway station.
And no, it has nothing to do with the famed Malgudi village of the great RK Narayan. For the last thirty seven years (that is the farthest my memory of the place goes), it has remained without electricity and water. And let me share with you, no one seems to complain (I know, I know…there is another debate right there!). It then had about a 100 farmer-tiller families, somehow eking out a living. The roads inside the village would remain muddy and filthy most of the year. People of Malda were poor, as poor as one could get, barring a few exceptions in the local shopkeeper or the goldsmith. Time seems to have frozen in these villages, and when I last visted the place last, nearly a decade ago, they were just as poor and miserable.
Why Malda? I guess because in many ways my brother Sandeep and I started our life’s journey there. Our forefathers had left us some sixty-odd acres of land in the village and we had to make the arduous journey every once in six months to see how the affairs were taken care of by our man Matai (pronounced Ma…ta…ee) who was a caretaker of our lands. The lands were loaned out to the poor in chunks of an acre each, they were to invest their labor, and if needed, borrow money from the local money lender for the seeds, wait for the monsoons and then share half of the harvest with the landowner, in this case my father. To supplement their meager income from the land, the villagers had to find some back-breaking work as daily wage laborers.
It may sound dreadful today, but believe me, the system of batai (pronounced ba…ta…ee) meaning sharing of half the proceeds, is still prevalent in a very large part of India, especially for rain-dependent lands. And even though Dad took fifty percent of the proceeds - Matai ensured it - he was highly respected, almost like a demi-God!
In the early years, my father and his elder brother owned an elephant that lived in the village and was fed on whatever vegetation the village had to offer. Whenever Dad or his brother had to visit Malda, the elephant was brought to the station, and we boarded the beast for a somnolent and painful two-hour journey to the village. I used to hate it because the perpetual shaking made me queasy and nauseous, and would often insist on my dad to hire a bicycle from the nearby shop. (To be continued...)
