I remember a particular incident in Kodai. Ankit and I were sitting on
the bench near the Main Gate. I had a used, defunct Uniball pen in my
hands. I think I was trying to get some ink out of it. At some point,
I got frustrated and threw it violently towards the road. It hadn't
even completed it's second bounce before a man (in a lungi, if I
remember correctly) intercepted its path towards the busy junction,
took a short look at it and promptly pocketed it. A Uniball was a far
cry from his humble five rupee Reynolds.
My trash. His treasure.
That's probably the last time I will ever recount that story because
Vengampalli was full of little things that reminded me that I come
from a wasteful, ungrateful, excessive lot.
I noticed an old man. He sported an unkempt handle-bar mustache and
walked with a slight limp. His glasses (which looked like they were
from the turn of last century) were held securely between his eyes by
a worn-out piece of thread that held them to his head. I would've just
replaced them. In fact, if I had specs, I would replace them when I
got bored with the way they looked on me.
I asked some of the kids in the CDC if I could see their pencil boxes.
In the midst of old rulers that had lost their centimeter gradations,
stubs of what used to be pencils, I saw in one little girl's pencil
box a twisted, almost empty ball-point pen ink refill. That was what
she used to write with. I've lost three pens in the last week itself.
Most of my school-days in Kodai began with a trip to the stock-room to
buy a pen which I would either chew out or lose by the end of the day.
This little girl clung onto an ink refill till it was physically
impossible to use it.
And then there was Mercy. She sat next to me in church, clutching the
innards of a digital watch. At some point, it had belonged to an
assembly that resembled what we would probably recognize as a cheap
digital wrist-watch but here it was now, stripped down and defunct in
Mercy's little hand, flashing 12:00. You could see from the way she
held it that it was her prized possession. It was the one thing that
set her apart from everyone else. It was her life. However little,
however menial, it was hers.
We, on the other hand, have learnt to live so little with so much.
---
When I imagined how my experience in Vengampalli would be like, I
expected the landscape of rural India to touch me and reach out to me
the most. The spareness. The randomness. The huts. The cows and goats
and chicken. The cow-dung smeared courtyards and open-fires. My
experiences of rural India so far have been anchored to how the
landscape looked and smelt and felt.
What defined my experience of Vengampalli today, however, has been its people.
And I think it has something to do with the stars...
I had the privilege today of seeing a moonless starry village sky. The
sheer magnitude of those luminous points of lights in the night sky is
mind-expanding. We urban-folk don't get that. Our cities, our
billboards and our street-lights drown out the light from the heavens.
Village-folk, however, like the inhabitants of Vengampalli, see a
spectacular sight that I witnessed today, every night.
Perhaps seeing into the universe every single night gives them a sense
of oneness with the cosmos. A sense of belonging beyond their obvious
physical affiliations and relationships. A depth that city-dwellers
like ourselves just don't get because in the same way our over-lit
cities overwhelm the stars, our over-cluttered lives prevent us from
seeing past our superficial selves.
The people of Vengampalli have a inner gentleness, kindness and
generosity that I, and I say this with a certain degree of sadness,
have not experienced anywhere else.
I think more of the world needs to see an uninhibited starry night
once in a while. It'd solve a lot of our problems.
---
The village of Vengampalli has a peculiar Sunday morning ritual. The
children of Vengampalli congregate at the entrance of their
thatched-roof church with song-books, an accordion and percussion
instruments. They then proceed down a flight of stairs and walk
through all the narrow streets of Vengampalli, singing all the way.
Muslims have the muezzin to call the faithful to prayer. Hindus have
temple bells. The little village of Vengampalli has its children.
I figured this would make excellent footage so I followed them. We
walked past the house of Ajit, a boy whose father had run away with
another woman. He, his mother and his sister stay in a tiny, circular
hut that has so little space that Ajit has to sleep in a neighboring
hut he shares with a cow. We passed the house of Karunya, who has
bright but sad little eyes. Up until a year ago, her father was a
drunkard, so steeped in alcoholism that he was rarely at home. We
passed the house of a young lady whose mother had recently committed
suicide because she couldn't afford the dowry required to get her
daughter married. As we walked through the streets of Vengampalli, we
passed scores of people. Hands calloused by long hours in the
sugar-cane fields. Dusty, worn-out feet. Joyful, yet tired, weary
faces.
I asked Magesh, later on, what the lyrics of the song they were
singing meant, the song these young children filled the streets of
poor, backward Vengampalli with. I fought hard to hold back tears when
he told me:
We have seen many a hardship.
We have struggled.
But we do not fear.
For we are His.