When we traveled on the Yamuna Expressway last year in December for a story on the project, we stopped in many villages to talk to farmers who said they felt they had been cheated. A protest had been brewing then. Since I write 20,000 words on an average for a story, these are some of the leftovers from the piece.
Link to the original article Link to the http://www.indianexpress.com/news/on-the-highway-to-agra/562621/0
The Highway Road
Rajmal Singh hopes the road doesn’t come. But he knows it will. Because from his village, he can see the massive pillars, and the noise of the machines keep him awake through the nights. During these long nights, he fears for his future. When they came to acquire the farmland in Salarpur, a village on the outskirts of Noida, Singh became a millionaire overnight. But he doesn’t know what he will do with the Rs. 2 crores that he got for his land. He has bought some land in Mathura. But this is where he was born, and the road full of promises has nothing for him.
And When the road comes, he won’t be here. He would be gone like many others in his village to look for work elsewhere, and learn to live with loss of his past.
He almost wishes the road project is disbanded, the workers are sent home, and then they can reclaim their lands and grow wheat as they once did. Because the money won’t last forever. That’s the truth of it.
“We are not educated. Where can we find jobs?,” he said. “We feel betrayed. They promised us jobs but we have heard nothing so far.”
But Jaypee officials said Abadi Scheme was proposed for those who lost their houses to the project and the company would ensure they were rehabilitated.
“See, some issues were there but we agreed to the compensation that the government set and in many cases we negotiated. We have given handsome compensation but all dreams can’t be fulfilled,” Samir Gaur said. “With progress and development, changes come. But we have schemes for villagers and there are abundant of opportunities. We are coming up with Abadi villages near the residential plots.”
Salarpur’s fate was sealed when the project was conceived around six years ago. Squeezed in between the Formula 1 racing track and the Yamuna Expressway, almost the entire village falls under what the villagers term “acquirement.” Only three houses will be spared because the road that split their lands, and now threatens their homes, is a hungry road with a voracious appetite.
Most of the land acquisition process is over and only in some cases, physical possession of the lands is remaining.
The Allahabad High Court in December 2009 dismissed a bunch of writ petitions challenging acquisition of land by the state government.
But the village itself is in a limbo, waiting, hoping, and yet it knows it doesn’t have options.
Along the “highway road”, hopes ran high once. Dreams came floating on the road.
In Salarpur, they thought they would set up shops along the way, and the exodus wouldn’t have to take place.
But then, all the land is earmarked for development. A sports city is being built; an airport is on the cards, residential plots are already being advertised and sold.
In the evenings, the skies turn pink. It is what they call the steelworks sunset. Pink and blurred. Something to do with welding, smelting, or fixing. But it is no longer how the sunsets were before the road snaked through the farms. In time, more things will change. Just like the sunset, they too come under the spell of the road, charmed, yet slave to it.
Rajmal Singh knows this well. Already he can see the signs of evil. He feels the road is the wreckage of everything, of the past, of the future, of their existence.
“Some bought plots. But that’s just a few of us. Some bought cars, some will drink away the money,” he said. “The road has only brought misery to us.”
The liquor shops are stocked and villagers queue up, angry, frustrated, dejected.
“We didn’t want to sell but we had to. We will die of hunger. They didn’t give us any jobs,” Inderpal Singh, another farmer said. “Now, all we do is play cards and drink. We are just ruining ourselves. Perhaps, when all is over, we will go to Delhi and find construction jobs.”
Inderpal owned just under a bigha of land. He got Rs. 5 lakhs.
The villagers had tried to hold on to their lands. They approached the Bharitya Kisan Union, protested, marched, but now the fervour is sort of dying.
The young are angry still like Sarjit Singh, who is pursuing his computer science degree from a Greater Noida Institute.
“It is a betrayal. They took the land. They should let us keep the house,” he said.
Like his father Rajmal Singh, he can’t resign himself to the inevitable.
Then there are others who don’t know if they should be angry or cry over their fate.
Sixty-five-year-old Shanti Devi came to Salarpur half a century ago as a young bride. They didn’t own land but reared cattle. The expressway authority has quoted Rs. 6.75 lakhs for their house that falls in the zone earmarked for development alongside Yamuna Expressway. With two buffaloes and a bit of money, the family is at a loss for options.
“I will not leave. My son is weak. Where will we go? This is my silent protest. I will die in my house,” she said.
Salarpur and six other villages have been notified. Where they stand, residential plots, the racing track and a university will come up.
The expressway is facing opposition from farmers’ groups. Many of them are openly rebelling against land acquisition saying the compensation is not at par with the market rate. Some are not ready for negotiations even. Last year in August, one farmer was shot in police firing on farmers protesting against inadequate compensation for land being acquired for the expressway. In Mathura, the protests intensified after farmers burnt down the police chowki and the post office in Bajna, Mathura. For five days, the village had shut down.
Risal Singh, a local, said the road divides their village and although they parted with their land, they can’t sit back and let the authority occupy more land. The state government notified more than 1100 villages when the project commenced leaving thousands of farmers in a state of insecurity and fear.
So, a protest is again brewing, and farmers organize meetings frequently. In at least 400 villages in the area, the agitators are distributing leaflets, organizing and mobilizing more farmers to stage dharnas if the authority tries to acquire more land. They have been notified but they were told that the more land would be acquired only if the need arises.
Rajendra Singh, who was shot on the day of the protest, lived in Avalkhera village. Since his death, his widow and his children have left the village. But his death has left the village in a state of shock, including Mukesh Nauhar, 30, who still has to limp. After a bullet hit him in the leg on the day of the protest, he has been “useless”.
“I can’t work on the fields. I don’t know what to do,” he said. “That day there were so many people. Then police came. I thought something hit me and then I saw blood. I still can’t walk properly. My leg has become numb.”
The addiction to growth is catching up, infecting all, permeating to the little corners that could only be accessed through narrow lanes running through the farms.
Finally, the road and development was going to come to them. Land prices have shot up like in Kuberpur where the interchange is under construction at the Agra end for the expressway.
But against the backdrop of development and all its promises, there’s discontent and a sense of loss, of betrayal.
From her primary school in Vas Agaria, Chandni can see the “highway road” and she speaks of her fears. In the village, they talk about the vices that will travel on the road when it is built.
“They say it is bad. It will bring damage. People can go and jump off the road and die. We will become like the city. There will no fresh air,” she said. “We will no longer remain innocent.”
That’s what she heard her parents say about the road.
But until they put in the iron fences, and the set up the tollbooths along the Yamuna Expressway, the mud and fly ash road is their playground. Young boys climb on to the road with their cricket gear and make the dusty road their pitch.
Further up on the road, a yellow truck carrying mud and ash rolls by. On its rear “Global Truck” is painted in black.
On the side of the road, the village waits its turn to be globalized, for malls, apartment buildings, hotels, motels, and displacement.
About the Expressway
* Jaypee Group has also been awarded a concession to develop a 1,047 km long eight-lane access-controlled Ganga expressway between Greater Noida and Ghazipur-Ballia, the largest private sector infrastructure investment in India. Yet another
expressway is being planned in the state called the Hindon Expressway named after
yet another river in the state like the other two projects. The 250-km-long Hindon Expressway will pass through Ghaziabad and
Saharanpur up to Dehradun in Uttarakhand.
* The Jaypee Group is also building an eight-lane 20 km long inner Ring
Road in Agra at a cost of around Rs. 1,100 crores. This will be built
on Design-Finance-Operate and Transfer (DFOT) basis.
* The Yamuna Expressway is planned to be a dual carriageway initially consisting of three 3.75-meter wide lanes in each direction.
* Planned expressway facilities (some of which will involve third-party service providers) include rest areas with parking, shelters and toilets; roadside facilities with fuel stations and coffee shops, restaurants, motels and various other facilities; and plantation and landscaping for environmental, safety and aesthetic purposes.
* Around 9,000 families are allegedly affected by the expressway. Around
Rs 460 crore have been disbursed as compensation.
* Motorists can drive at a speed of up to 120 kmph on the expressway
drastically cutting down on the travel time from Noida to Agra. The
expressway will have no speed breakers.
A look at the compensation rates given to farmers for their land.
*Compensation rates*
* NOIDA: Rs 800 per sqm
* Aligarh : Rs 390 per sqm
* Mathura : Rs 350 per sqm
* Hathras: Rs 350 per sqm
* Agra : Rs 400 per sqm
The Expressway to be developed in Three Phases:-
1. Phase I: Expressway Stretch between Greater Noida and Taj
International Airport.
2. Phase-II: Expressway Stretch between Taj International Airport and
an intermediate destination between Taj International Airport and Agra
3. Phase III: Expressway Stretch between intermediate destination and Agra.
Deadline – Commonwealth Games, 2010.
Quick Facts
Length 165.537 Km
Right of Way 100m
Number of Lane 6 Lanes extendable to 8 lanes
Jaypee Infratech Limited an Indian infrastructure development company engaged in the development of the Yamuna Expressway and related real estate projects. JIL part of the Jaypee Group, was incorporated on April 5, 2007 as a special purpose company to develop, operate and maintain the Yamuna Expressway in the state of Uttar Pradesh, connecting Noida and Agra.
Saturday, August 28, 2010
Sunday, August 08, 2010
The clash of cultures - the village in the city
For a couple of days we tried going into Delhi's urban villages trying to locate the conflict between the city and the villages that have existed for years. In the end, we visited Wazirpur and that's when we convinced the father to show us his daughter's diary. The diary told her story and that's what we narrated, too.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday section of The Indian Express on August 8, 2010.
The battle of identities
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi
Under a picture of Katrina Kaif cut carefully from a glossy magazine cover, Khushboo Nagar wrote her name in blue on the first page of her diary. They said she resembled the Bollywood actress. Her hair was styled like hers, too, streaked and cut in layers, framing her face. She believed in the comparison but the 18-year-old Gujjar girl wanted to go beyond just the resemblance. She wanted to be the cover girl herself.
On the next page, she scribbled “Height – 5.5, Weight- 50 kgs, Age – 18 years”.
Flip through the pages and there are cuttings from newspapers – mostly beauty tips on how to make lips softer, how to improve complexion. In those pages, floating in between the handwriting, and the astrology predictions that she meticulously pasted on the pages trying to score a perfect future, there is an undercurrent of the conflict between modernity and tradition that her life had come to embody.
Khushboo, a Gujjar girl in Wazirpur, an urban village, one of the many in Delhi, near Ashok Vihar in Delhi, dared to dream past the village’s boundaries. That’s where the waves broke and rolled back for others. They could go into the city but when they returned, the “cityness” had to be abandoned at the village threshold.
Not for her. Khushboo wanted to be a model, fell in love with a model coordinator, and eloped with him. She crossed into what they call the ugliness of the other side. But no thresholds had ever beaten Khushboo. Not when she scribbled those aspirations in her diary. Not when she wore what they called “outrageous” clothes, not when she ran away from home in May.
It's been more than two months since Khusboo has been missing from her Wazirpur house. And while they were searching for her, Khushboo's cousin Monica and her sister Shobha were killed in cold blood by the family for defying the unspoken rules of the village, of their community that's struggling to hold on to their tradition in the midst of a city that is lurching forward in its obsession with modernity and with being a world class city where cultures intersect, melt, and everything becomes a fluid identity. At least that's the dream. But on the road from inception and fulfillment of the melting pot dream, there’s a lot of distance to be covered. They were the first casualties in the battle of identities between the village and its wayward child – the city. This was the battle between the core and the periphery.
In the heartland of this city, the national capital that they will showcase this October to the world during the commonwealth Games for which infrastructure projects are being completed at a fast pace, beyond the front row of houses that seem to uphold the melting pot identity, there are urban villages in and around the city that are unwilling to give up on their customs.
The national capital has around 135 urban villages, so called because they are no longer surrounded by farmland. Instead they are in the midst of untamed development.
These are spaces where municipal planning rules do not apply. Basic municipal services like roads, water supply and drainage have not reached them. But cars, amenities, and other such luxuries have.
A spate of honour killings have rocked Delhi and the NCR region. Sangeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl and her boyfriend were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in north Delhi.
According to police, number of couples seeking protection has gone up in the city. Nidhi and Kulbhushan, who married at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi, approached the Delhi Commission for Women seeking protection after the girl stared receiving threat calls from her family.
At the DCW, officials say they now receive one or two letters seeking protection against honour killing daily and at least two couples drop by personally demanding the same.
“After the khap panchayats in Haryana that ordered such killings, we have got at least 20 such complaints from Delhi. Most couples were educated and parents were harassing them. We summon the parents and we do counseling. They usually work. We used to get cases before also. But after the killings in Delhi, the couples are more scared,” a DCW official says.
Such gruesome killings have also been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana where the khap panchayats have openly dictated that such errant youth must be killed in order to preserve their culture and to set an example.
Recently, a youth was stabbed was stabbed to death in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district allegedly by the father and brother of a girl who he was having an affair with.
Lal Singh, Anju's father, has been arrested along with his son Rinku, after they admitted to killing Mithun, 20, a graduation student to protect their family's honour.
As urban way of living becomes more attractive, it also destroys traditional cultures. Anthropologists have pointed out that a city is a social context very different from peasant communities. Robert Redfield, who focused on contrasts between rural and urban life, cities are the centres through which cultural innovations spread to rural areas.
His body was found is Kajipura village in Uttar Pradesh.
The police says they can only take action after the crime has been committed but in most cases, the killings are hailed by the family and the villages as the right thing.
People tend to judge their surrounding world according to their space grounded in ethnicity, gender roles and norms, and that helps them differentiate from right from wrong, good from bad. It is a question between collectivism and individualism, anthropologists say.
In these villages, the individual obeys the tradition. If anyone fails to meet those expectations, or to conform to the “identity” they are taken to be endangering the order of the society, of upsetting the apple cart. That leads to the emergence of urban-rural conflicts and individual freedom. In Villages, everyone is connected. Everyone knows everyone and that knowledge functions as social control.
Therefore urban and rural function as different social systems.
However, cultural diffusion does happen and then caught between two or more social groups, people usually experience an identity crisis, researchers say.
That's what happened to Monica, Shobha, and Khushboo.
Monica married a Rajput boy from the village around five years ago. And Shobha was having an affair with a Muslim boy called Nawab Raja who ran dance classes in Ashok Vihar area.
Five years ago Monica, a Gujjar girl and Khushboo's cousin, married a Rajput boy from the same village. As per the village's worldview, that was a sin. In the 400-year-old history of the village, no girl had dared to do this. Butthey looked the other way. Monica left the village. They were outcasts.
When Monica's cousin sisters – Shobha and Khushboo – dared to cross over to the other side, so they could merge with the city, its diversity, marry it with their own fluid identity, the one they thought came with wearing jeans and shirts at their elder sister's marriage, they had clearly upset the cart. Girls in the village were going astray. They had to be reined in. With the killing they made a statement. A message was sent out. There were no victims. Only heroes that were to be venerated.
Memories of the past, of Monica's marriage came tumbling out of the closet, and during conversations, Mandeep, Khushboo's brother, taunted Ankit that he wasn't able to stop his sister Monica from marrying outside her community. Ankit retorted saying Mandeep too was not able to rein in his sisters. That's when the killings happened. Three in a day, within minutes of each other. Monica, her husband Kuldeep and Shobha whose body was only discovered a couple of days later from a car parked in the locality and only after the stench from the decomposing body gave her away. All of them shot at point blank range in the head by their brothers.
***
Not that these murders are a recent phenomenon. Choudhary Charan Singh Lohmod, a member of the Ghitorni village panchayat in Delhi, recalls an incident in his own village, a village that is teeming with millionaires because of the real estate boom and with teenagers sporting designer wear and driving expensive cars.
More than 15 years ago, the village witnessed its first honour killing. A Gujjar girl was strangulated for marrying a boy from the barber community. No police report was filed. The body was cremated and it was reported as a suicide case.
“The whole village knows about the killing. We couldn't do anything. We didn't interfere,” Charan Singh says.
There was yet another case of honour killing in Dayal Pur village in East Delhi around 17 years ago. That was a marriage within the Dedha gotra, a sin equal to incest because in the village everyone is part of the bhaichara and hence are brothers and sisters. There are scientific reasons behind our tradition of not marrying within the gotra, he adds, a rhetoric oft repeated by the custodians of the village culture.
“They had killed the boy. I don't know what happened to the girl. A panchayat was called, the khap dictated the family must be boycotted. The girl had left the village after marriage but then they found the boy and killed him,” Charan Singh says. “Today the world is changing. Although I don't approve of inter gotra marriages, a murder can't be condoned.”
Charan Singh can see the change. He has been around for long. With urbanization and development, views are changing. Young and educated people don't care much about the tradition, he says.
“In a few years, all of this will crumble and break. In all these killings, there's a desperation to hold on to something that we are losing. Delhi will first witness the dilution of the caste barriers, the gotra barriers because we are living in the city. We have a few girls in the village who married outside caste. The families have severed ties with them but they didn't kill them. The girls have left the village,” Charan Singh says. “Systems are changing. Education has changed a lot of things. We must be ready for the change. All this tradition, codes will break, melt. There are signs. The city has changed us in so many ways,” he says.
Already the villagers, astounded with what the city can do to their structure by its proximity, are blaming the Delhi government for its soft stand on migrants. The population has soared. That’s how the
corrupting winds of change started to howl in their ears. More men and women, those who didn’t cater to their prescribed rules, the ones that have been intact through generations, entered their space, claiming their share, paying rent that the villagers needed to sustain themselves in an inflation-ridden metropolis, but bringing ideas that struck at their very core.
“This has to stop. Crime has increased because of this,” his brother Samay Singh says. “We are traditional people. We have bhaichara in our villages. Villages have rules. The government must stop this infiltration.”
***
Long ago, when the real estate boom took over the city whose boundaries expanded into the farmlands and into the cultures that surrounded the city as demand for space went up, the Gujjars and the Jats, the two communities that had their villages in and around Delhi, experienced the rush, the high that comes with wealth, the transition that it promises.
In Wazirpur in North Delhi, farmers sold their land to the government in the 1960s, built multistory buildings that jostle with each other for space, jutting their necks out for visibility, to show they too are among the “rich.” There was an influx of migrants soon after. But here in this village where the differences between the two communities are starkly visible, the tenants subscribe to the village rules.
There is a wall of silence between them.
They won’t talk about the murders in the village. They won’t disapprove of it. Nor will they approve. They are suspended in silence.
“We have no opinion, no advice, no memory of it,” one young man, who refused to disclose his name, says.
While the Gujjar community says they don’t have Khap panchayats like the Jats, the other predominant community that have followed the same trajectory in terms of social-economic status, they have village elders whose diktat is as good as the word of law. Even on the matrimonial websites like www.Jeevansathi.com , most Gujjar girls, including doctors and MBAs, have listed their gotras in their profiles.
Like hundreds of other urban villages clustered in the heart of the national capital, Wazirpur would have remained an obscure village trying to insulate itself against the city's overtures had it not been for the “folly” of three Gujjar girls from the village who dared to overstep the boundaries their culture imposed.
Cars can't navigate the narrow lanes of the urban village that is not very far from the city's glass and steel structures, the glittering malls, and the Metro. Electric wires hang from the poles, and the drains are overflowing.
A young girl stood in the balcony of her second floor home of a multistory house in Wazirpur. Behind her a older woman stood as if on guard, craning her neck to follow the girls' eyes. About 200 meters on her left stands the house where the two “disgraced” girls lived.
Khushboo left the house on May 25. The family waited until June 3 to file a complaint at the Ashok Vihar police station. Every morning, the family sent out two cars to look for the youngest daughter of the house who had brought shame to the family, to the village and to the community.
But they didn't find her.
The father Jai Singh Nagar shrugs off the death of his other daughter Shobha.
“What's done can't be undone. Those who have died have gone. But I want to know where Khushboo is. Her marriage was a fraud one. This Arya Samaj marriage must be banned,” he says.
He is waiting for his daughter, the one who had long legs, and who danced and loved dressing up, and who he says was misled by an advertisement in the local paper about this modeling agency.
She fled her house on May 25 to marry Ravi, a model coordinator from Bhajanpura.
It's her sister's death and her defiance of the rules that dictate the address to their house. Jai Singh Nagar sits in his grocery store on the ground floor as if nothing ever happened. But what was he to do.
It was the city that corrupted them. How could he, placed as he was in such a setting, the metropolis surrounding him, its evils eroding the layers of tradition, stop it from happening.
He was a doting father, he says. There's an old family picture, one of those black and white framed pictures shot in a studio with the fake backdrop of mountains and blossoming tress years ago that still acquires a place of pride in the family's living room.
There Khushboo sits in her father's lap, the youngest of six siblings – four girls and two boys. Shobha is in the frame, too. They were beautiful girls, the father says.
In the wedding album of their eldest sister Rajni who was married within the community but outside their gotra in December 2008, Shobha and Khushboo wore jeans and sateen shirts. They danced and sang through the night. They were wild, but innocent, he says.
He is a father. He puts up a strong front.
No, they won’t kill Khushboo, the runaway child who doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong. He just wants to make sure she is fine.
But Khushboo, the aspiring model, is under police protection at an undisclosed location. The police says she is doing well and is happily married with Ravi, who her family alleges is a tout.
On June 20, the brothers had planned to kill her too. But Khushboo didn’t call. She was spared the fury that raged within the men.
There’s an eerie silence at the family’s house. Rajni, who is here for a few days, doesn’t know how to react to the mention of her two “wayward” sisters. She steps back, and murmurs she misses them. A tear falls. She turns away.
In this space, it is hard to say who the victim is and who the perpetrator is. That distinction is blurred.
“I don’t know where I went wrong. I was the sort of man that chased away men from the corners of the streets,” he says. “The police says she is fine but at least show her to us even on television, let us see that she is not involved with the wrong sort of a man. I don’t want her to tell me later that I failed her as a father.”
But for a few in the village, he failed Shobha.
But Jai Singh is the product of the village’s social dilemmas, its bid to try to retain its heritage.
"I think we have lost control. I had two lavish weddings for my daughters Rajni and Kajal. I allowed them every freedom. They wore western clothes. But we didn’t see this coming,” he says. “We won’t kill our daughter.”
But daughters had been slaughtered. In the village, and in the city.
Khushboo escaped, The village’s ugliness caught up with Shobha whose body wasn’t even brought to Wazirpur. Her cremation was a rushed affair.
In the following days, the family erased Shobha from their lives. They gave away her clothes, her shoes. No traces, no memories to remind them of the shame.
On the internet, many Gujjar community members have hailed the killings as an act of courage.
“Everything comes with a price tag. Same is the case with development.
The negative change in the new generation is the price we Gujjars are paying as the cost of this development,” a member who identified himself as Gurjar Krishan Kumar wrote on www.ashokharsana.proboards.com, an interactive web portal for the Gujjar community set up by Ashok Harsana a few years ago to discuss the community and its issues.
Others acquiesced. They said it was a classic case of “disruptive urbanization” that upset the social structure of the urban villages, threatening its values as other population marched into their space bringing with them the ills, the sexual liberties, the free mixing between sexes, part of the city's culture with them.
Yet another man posted that the Delhi-based Gurjars had a bad reputation elsewhere because news of Gujjar girls eloping with boys from other communities were far too frequent.
“Very often there is news that some Gujjar boy has done love marriage or yet another Gujjar girl has run away with a boy and Gujjars outside Delhi say that we are not real Gujjars because we can't save the honour of our families,” said someone who called himself 'Hardcore Gurjar.'
The virtual space is rife with such commentary barring a few that cautiously denounce the killings.
Mandeep and Ankit, the killers who are serving time in jail, have been compared to Lord Rama, the mythical hero who abdicated Sita after she returned from Raavan’s entrapment.
“That Rama, the Lord is still worship by the people. If the same thing done by our brother then how it can be termed as crime,” Ravi Kasana wrote in the ongoing thread. “I strongly termed Ankit and Mandeep to be Kalyugi Ram and Krishna and salute them for showing this world that pride is more important than life for Gurjars. Murder is wrong but this (killing) is socially the best thing that has been done.”
Such killings happened earlier too. But they didn’t hit the headlines. Those were hushed killings. The death of a daughter or a sister gone astray would be termed as an accident or a suicide. Penetrating the layers of the village to investigate the deaths would often be a futile chase, a Jat community member said.
Kanwar Singh Tanwar, the former Bahujan Samaj Party member who has now joined Congress and is a heavy weight Gujjar leader in South Delhi, says he is in favour of such panchayats.
“Gotra this is our history. Yes, inter caste marriages have caught up and culture has changed. Now more and more Gujjars and Jats are sending their daughters and sons to schools and colleges. We have doctors, engineers, and not just bouncers,” he says. “Aajkal ke gaon mein ladkiyan hi-fi hai. We have a system. We can’t let go.”
In the battle, the new recruits are a few Gujjar youth who have taken it upon themselves to preserve their culture.
Pramod Mavi, an engineer who set up the Youth Gurjar Federation last year to reach out to the community and focus on education, travels to Delhi’s urban villages on weekends and talks to the youth about their culture, the gotra system and the temptations like smoking and drinking they must resist.
With a group of young people, he is also collecting material for a book on Gujjar culture and tradition listing all the gotras in the Gujjar villages across India.
“We are working on it. We have state level people going into Gujjar villages and taking to sarpanchs asking them about gotras in their villages,” he says. “But it is at preliminary stages. We plan to distribute it free of cost to the youth. I am against honour killings but we are bound by our tradition.”
Ram Niwas Gujjar, of the same organization, says they have been holding meetings in Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan regularly to educate youngsters about the Gujjar tradition.
"Money has gone to their head. We tell them that you need to hold on to the tradition,” he says. “We are against inter caste marriages, and those within the gotra system. This is to counter honour killing so people don't have to resort to such things.”
***
At the point where Ghitorni, another urban village with a predominantly Gujjar population, opens up to the metropolis, a car showroom has set shop.
On display is the dream car – a two-door red Mercedes sports car. Its doors open out in the sky just like giant wings.
Outside, contradictions abound.
Of the around 140 Gujjar villages in the city, Ghitorni is among the ones where money knows no limits. The farmers sold off the prized land to the private builders, to the very rich who went shopping for sprawling farmhouses. Resto bars have come up on the sides of the road.
The blazing red car has already 80 suitors on its list. Many are from the nearby urban villages where roads are not yet concretized, and are riddled with encroachments and potholes.
That itself is proof of the transformation of the urban villages that are still steeped in tradition, in the rigidity of its dos and don’ts but are finding it hard to wrestle the changes that have crept in.
The money that once brought the adrenaline rushing to their brains, the sorts where you feel nothing can escape your fancy, where dreams are one with reality, is now making them realize that money can also make you lose control just like the drugs.
So they are in denial of the mess that money has made their lives.
Youth, with their pumped-up muscles from working out for hours in the local gyms that dot the village landscape, roam around the locality, whiling away time at the property dealers’ outlets. Many sport thick gold chains and tight T shirts accentuating their biceps.
In the evenings, they pack themselves in swanky cars, and ride through the village’s crumbling roads, loud trance and techno music playing, and go to city’s numerous pubs.
Elders say the villages have no rape cases in the village. That’s because boys and girls know that the rules prohibit them to marry within village. So they are all brothers and sisters.
A group of young men turned away when a bunch of young girls from the village passed.
In Wazirpur, at the Natraj photo studio, a young man said village girls came to get their pictures clicked for marriage purpose. But no, they were all sisters. What if fell for one? No, that’s not going to happen.
“You don’t know the rules of the village. I think you are not from here,” he says.
The Pradhan of Wazirpur Choudhury Subhash Kahri says it is the loss of the land that anchored the village people to a lifestyle is the core issue. All of that is gone and has been replaced by inflated bank accounts. They have been rendered rootless, aimless and with a thick wad of crisp notes, they have no option but to indulge.
But this money is not going to last, Tanwar says.
Not many of them have invested in other properties. So, the young people are torn between the lifestyle of the rich, lured and tempted by the freedom of choice, and the unwritten codes of the village.
Riya Lohia, a 12-year-old, studies at the Poorna Prajna Public School, is a product of that conflict. At her age, she knows she has to live within an invisible boundary.
Her friends from school hang out, stay over at each others’ house, but Riya is chaperoned if she has to attend anything outside school.
“They can go out. We can’t go alone for outings alone. So we have different lives,” she says.
Her uncle Kiran Kumar Lohia lives with his four brothers – a joint family setup that the community has not relinquished yet.
Five cars are parked in the courtyard where she sat with her uncles.
“We have women doctors and teachers in the house. We are for education but we can’t let go of our culture,” Kiran Kumar says. “No, we don’t mind inter caste marriages. The only issue that threatens our society is the population growth. Our youth are getting affected. But it is up to us to tell them what is within bounds and what is wrong.”
Riya silently walked back to the house.
The Dishonoured
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl Asha and her 21-year-old lover Yogesh were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in North Delhi. Before they were killed, they were flogged with steel rods for hours.
Sanjeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
In the last four months, in yet another instance of honour killing a newlywed man Rajesh Negi was burnt by his in-laws as he married outside his caste in Kichripur in Mayur Vihar. The entire family of the bride Bhavna Pal has gone into hiding. The two married secretly in January but when the bride's family came to know, they allegedly threatened the couple.
Then, in June again, the Wazirpur killings happened. Monica, her husband Kuldeep, a Rajput man, and Shobha who was seeing a Mulsim man named Nawab Raja were killed din cold blood by the family on June 20. Ankit and Mandeep, who are in jail for the murders, also tried to kill Khushboo, the third sister, but she had gone into hiding.
In Daula-Razpura village in Greater Noida, a khap panchayat sent out a diktat that daughters of all Dalit families will be abducted last month after an upper caste girl from a neighboring village Mandiya Priyanka eloped with Suraj Jatav, a scheduled caste boy from Daula. The panchayat also issued shoot-at-sight orders for the couple who fell in love in college in Dadri. The couple is still absconding.
While NGOs have sprung into action including a group called Love Commandos headed by Sanjoy Sachdev to help the couples that face such threats, a bill on honour killing is yet to be approved. On Thursday, Home Minister P Chidambaram said the government plans to introduce a bill on honour killings in this session of parliament. He said all state governments are being asked for their views and the “murders” must not be condoned but punished with severity. Khap panchayats have protested against the bill and have been asking for amendments in the marriage act to ban marriages within the same gotra.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday section of The Indian Express on August 8, 2010.
The battle of identities
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi
Under a picture of Katrina Kaif cut carefully from a glossy magazine cover, Khushboo Nagar wrote her name in blue on the first page of her diary. They said she resembled the Bollywood actress. Her hair was styled like hers, too, streaked and cut in layers, framing her face. She believed in the comparison but the 18-year-old Gujjar girl wanted to go beyond just the resemblance. She wanted to be the cover girl herself.
On the next page, she scribbled “Height – 5.5, Weight- 50 kgs, Age – 18 years”.
Flip through the pages and there are cuttings from newspapers – mostly beauty tips on how to make lips softer, how to improve complexion. In those pages, floating in between the handwriting, and the astrology predictions that she meticulously pasted on the pages trying to score a perfect future, there is an undercurrent of the conflict between modernity and tradition that her life had come to embody.
Khushboo, a Gujjar girl in Wazirpur, an urban village, one of the many in Delhi, near Ashok Vihar in Delhi, dared to dream past the village’s boundaries. That’s where the waves broke and rolled back for others. They could go into the city but when they returned, the “cityness” had to be abandoned at the village threshold.
Not for her. Khushboo wanted to be a model, fell in love with a model coordinator, and eloped with him. She crossed into what they call the ugliness of the other side. But no thresholds had ever beaten Khushboo. Not when she scribbled those aspirations in her diary. Not when she wore what they called “outrageous” clothes, not when she ran away from home in May.
It's been more than two months since Khusboo has been missing from her Wazirpur house. And while they were searching for her, Khushboo's cousin Monica and her sister Shobha were killed in cold blood by the family for defying the unspoken rules of the village, of their community that's struggling to hold on to their tradition in the midst of a city that is lurching forward in its obsession with modernity and with being a world class city where cultures intersect, melt, and everything becomes a fluid identity. At least that's the dream. But on the road from inception and fulfillment of the melting pot dream, there’s a lot of distance to be covered. They were the first casualties in the battle of identities between the village and its wayward child – the city. This was the battle between the core and the periphery.
In the heartland of this city, the national capital that they will showcase this October to the world during the commonwealth Games for which infrastructure projects are being completed at a fast pace, beyond the front row of houses that seem to uphold the melting pot identity, there are urban villages in and around the city that are unwilling to give up on their customs.
The national capital has around 135 urban villages, so called because they are no longer surrounded by farmland. Instead they are in the midst of untamed development.
These are spaces where municipal planning rules do not apply. Basic municipal services like roads, water supply and drainage have not reached them. But cars, amenities, and other such luxuries have.
A spate of honour killings have rocked Delhi and the NCR region. Sangeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl and her boyfriend were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in north Delhi.
According to police, number of couples seeking protection has gone up in the city. Nidhi and Kulbhushan, who married at an Arya Samaj temple in Delhi, approached the Delhi Commission for Women seeking protection after the girl stared receiving threat calls from her family.
At the DCW, officials say they now receive one or two letters seeking protection against honour killing daily and at least two couples drop by personally demanding the same.
“After the khap panchayats in Haryana that ordered such killings, we have got at least 20 such complaints from Delhi. Most couples were educated and parents were harassing them. We summon the parents and we do counseling. They usually work. We used to get cases before also. But after the killings in Delhi, the couples are more scared,” a DCW official says.
Such gruesome killings have also been reported from Uttar Pradesh, Punjab, Rajasthan and Haryana where the khap panchayats have openly dictated that such errant youth must be killed in order to preserve their culture and to set an example.
Recently, a youth was stabbed was stabbed to death in Uttar Pradesh's Bulandshahr district allegedly by the father and brother of a girl who he was having an affair with.
Lal Singh, Anju's father, has been arrested along with his son Rinku, after they admitted to killing Mithun, 20, a graduation student to protect their family's honour.
As urban way of living becomes more attractive, it also destroys traditional cultures. Anthropologists have pointed out that a city is a social context very different from peasant communities. Robert Redfield, who focused on contrasts between rural and urban life, cities are the centres through which cultural innovations spread to rural areas.
His body was found is Kajipura village in Uttar Pradesh.
The police says they can only take action after the crime has been committed but in most cases, the killings are hailed by the family and the villages as the right thing.
People tend to judge their surrounding world according to their space grounded in ethnicity, gender roles and norms, and that helps them differentiate from right from wrong, good from bad. It is a question between collectivism and individualism, anthropologists say.
In these villages, the individual obeys the tradition. If anyone fails to meet those expectations, or to conform to the “identity” they are taken to be endangering the order of the society, of upsetting the apple cart. That leads to the emergence of urban-rural conflicts and individual freedom. In Villages, everyone is connected. Everyone knows everyone and that knowledge functions as social control.
Therefore urban and rural function as different social systems.
However, cultural diffusion does happen and then caught between two or more social groups, people usually experience an identity crisis, researchers say.
That's what happened to Monica, Shobha, and Khushboo.
Monica married a Rajput boy from the village around five years ago. And Shobha was having an affair with a Muslim boy called Nawab Raja who ran dance classes in Ashok Vihar area.
Five years ago Monica, a Gujjar girl and Khushboo's cousin, married a Rajput boy from the same village. As per the village's worldview, that was a sin. In the 400-year-old history of the village, no girl had dared to do this. Butthey looked the other way. Monica left the village. They were outcasts.
When Monica's cousin sisters – Shobha and Khushboo – dared to cross over to the other side, so they could merge with the city, its diversity, marry it with their own fluid identity, the one they thought came with wearing jeans and shirts at their elder sister's marriage, they had clearly upset the cart. Girls in the village were going astray. They had to be reined in. With the killing they made a statement. A message was sent out. There were no victims. Only heroes that were to be venerated.
Memories of the past, of Monica's marriage came tumbling out of the closet, and during conversations, Mandeep, Khushboo's brother, taunted Ankit that he wasn't able to stop his sister Monica from marrying outside her community. Ankit retorted saying Mandeep too was not able to rein in his sisters. That's when the killings happened. Three in a day, within minutes of each other. Monica, her husband Kuldeep and Shobha whose body was only discovered a couple of days later from a car parked in the locality and only after the stench from the decomposing body gave her away. All of them shot at point blank range in the head by their brothers.
***
Not that these murders are a recent phenomenon. Choudhary Charan Singh Lohmod, a member of the Ghitorni village panchayat in Delhi, recalls an incident in his own village, a village that is teeming with millionaires because of the real estate boom and with teenagers sporting designer wear and driving expensive cars.
More than 15 years ago, the village witnessed its first honour killing. A Gujjar girl was strangulated for marrying a boy from the barber community. No police report was filed. The body was cremated and it was reported as a suicide case.
“The whole village knows about the killing. We couldn't do anything. We didn't interfere,” Charan Singh says.
There was yet another case of honour killing in Dayal Pur village in East Delhi around 17 years ago. That was a marriage within the Dedha gotra, a sin equal to incest because in the village everyone is part of the bhaichara and hence are brothers and sisters. There are scientific reasons behind our tradition of not marrying within the gotra, he adds, a rhetoric oft repeated by the custodians of the village culture.
“They had killed the boy. I don't know what happened to the girl. A panchayat was called, the khap dictated the family must be boycotted. The girl had left the village after marriage but then they found the boy and killed him,” Charan Singh says. “Today the world is changing. Although I don't approve of inter gotra marriages, a murder can't be condoned.”
Charan Singh can see the change. He has been around for long. With urbanization and development, views are changing. Young and educated people don't care much about the tradition, he says.
“In a few years, all of this will crumble and break. In all these killings, there's a desperation to hold on to something that we are losing. Delhi will first witness the dilution of the caste barriers, the gotra barriers because we are living in the city. We have a few girls in the village who married outside caste. The families have severed ties with them but they didn't kill them. The girls have left the village,” Charan Singh says. “Systems are changing. Education has changed a lot of things. We must be ready for the change. All this tradition, codes will break, melt. There are signs. The city has changed us in so many ways,” he says.
Already the villagers, astounded with what the city can do to their structure by its proximity, are blaming the Delhi government for its soft stand on migrants. The population has soared. That’s how the
corrupting winds of change started to howl in their ears. More men and women, those who didn’t cater to their prescribed rules, the ones that have been intact through generations, entered their space, claiming their share, paying rent that the villagers needed to sustain themselves in an inflation-ridden metropolis, but bringing ideas that struck at their very core.
“This has to stop. Crime has increased because of this,” his brother Samay Singh says. “We are traditional people. We have bhaichara in our villages. Villages have rules. The government must stop this infiltration.”
***
Long ago, when the real estate boom took over the city whose boundaries expanded into the farmlands and into the cultures that surrounded the city as demand for space went up, the Gujjars and the Jats, the two communities that had their villages in and around Delhi, experienced the rush, the high that comes with wealth, the transition that it promises.
In Wazirpur in North Delhi, farmers sold their land to the government in the 1960s, built multistory buildings that jostle with each other for space, jutting their necks out for visibility, to show they too are among the “rich.” There was an influx of migrants soon after. But here in this village where the differences between the two communities are starkly visible, the tenants subscribe to the village rules.
There is a wall of silence between them.
They won’t talk about the murders in the village. They won’t disapprove of it. Nor will they approve. They are suspended in silence.
“We have no opinion, no advice, no memory of it,” one young man, who refused to disclose his name, says.
While the Gujjar community says they don’t have Khap panchayats like the Jats, the other predominant community that have followed the same trajectory in terms of social-economic status, they have village elders whose diktat is as good as the word of law. Even on the matrimonial websites like www.Jeevansathi.com , most Gujjar girls, including doctors and MBAs, have listed their gotras in their profiles.
Like hundreds of other urban villages clustered in the heart of the national capital, Wazirpur would have remained an obscure village trying to insulate itself against the city's overtures had it not been for the “folly” of three Gujjar girls from the village who dared to overstep the boundaries their culture imposed.
Cars can't navigate the narrow lanes of the urban village that is not very far from the city's glass and steel structures, the glittering malls, and the Metro. Electric wires hang from the poles, and the drains are overflowing.
A young girl stood in the balcony of her second floor home of a multistory house in Wazirpur. Behind her a older woman stood as if on guard, craning her neck to follow the girls' eyes. About 200 meters on her left stands the house where the two “disgraced” girls lived.
Khushboo left the house on May 25. The family waited until June 3 to file a complaint at the Ashok Vihar police station. Every morning, the family sent out two cars to look for the youngest daughter of the house who had brought shame to the family, to the village and to the community.
But they didn't find her.
The father Jai Singh Nagar shrugs off the death of his other daughter Shobha.
“What's done can't be undone. Those who have died have gone. But I want to know where Khushboo is. Her marriage was a fraud one. This Arya Samaj marriage must be banned,” he says.
He is waiting for his daughter, the one who had long legs, and who danced and loved dressing up, and who he says was misled by an advertisement in the local paper about this modeling agency.
She fled her house on May 25 to marry Ravi, a model coordinator from Bhajanpura.
It's her sister's death and her defiance of the rules that dictate the address to their house. Jai Singh Nagar sits in his grocery store on the ground floor as if nothing ever happened. But what was he to do.
It was the city that corrupted them. How could he, placed as he was in such a setting, the metropolis surrounding him, its evils eroding the layers of tradition, stop it from happening.
He was a doting father, he says. There's an old family picture, one of those black and white framed pictures shot in a studio with the fake backdrop of mountains and blossoming tress years ago that still acquires a place of pride in the family's living room.
There Khushboo sits in her father's lap, the youngest of six siblings – four girls and two boys. Shobha is in the frame, too. They were beautiful girls, the father says.
In the wedding album of their eldest sister Rajni who was married within the community but outside their gotra in December 2008, Shobha and Khushboo wore jeans and sateen shirts. They danced and sang through the night. They were wild, but innocent, he says.
He is a father. He puts up a strong front.
No, they won’t kill Khushboo, the runaway child who doesn’t know the difference between right or wrong. He just wants to make sure she is fine.
But Khushboo, the aspiring model, is under police protection at an undisclosed location. The police says she is doing well and is happily married with Ravi, who her family alleges is a tout.
On June 20, the brothers had planned to kill her too. But Khushboo didn’t call. She was spared the fury that raged within the men.
There’s an eerie silence at the family’s house. Rajni, who is here for a few days, doesn’t know how to react to the mention of her two “wayward” sisters. She steps back, and murmurs she misses them. A tear falls. She turns away.
In this space, it is hard to say who the victim is and who the perpetrator is. That distinction is blurred.
“I don’t know where I went wrong. I was the sort of man that chased away men from the corners of the streets,” he says. “The police says she is fine but at least show her to us even on television, let us see that she is not involved with the wrong sort of a man. I don’t want her to tell me later that I failed her as a father.”
But for a few in the village, he failed Shobha.
But Jai Singh is the product of the village’s social dilemmas, its bid to try to retain its heritage.
"I think we have lost control. I had two lavish weddings for my daughters Rajni and Kajal. I allowed them every freedom. They wore western clothes. But we didn’t see this coming,” he says. “We won’t kill our daughter.”
But daughters had been slaughtered. In the village, and in the city.
Khushboo escaped, The village’s ugliness caught up with Shobha whose body wasn’t even brought to Wazirpur. Her cremation was a rushed affair.
In the following days, the family erased Shobha from their lives. They gave away her clothes, her shoes. No traces, no memories to remind them of the shame.
On the internet, many Gujjar community members have hailed the killings as an act of courage.
“Everything comes with a price tag. Same is the case with development.
The negative change in the new generation is the price we Gujjars are paying as the cost of this development,” a member who identified himself as Gurjar Krishan Kumar wrote on www.ashokharsana.proboards.com, an interactive web portal for the Gujjar community set up by Ashok Harsana a few years ago to discuss the community and its issues.
Others acquiesced. They said it was a classic case of “disruptive urbanization” that upset the social structure of the urban villages, threatening its values as other population marched into their space bringing with them the ills, the sexual liberties, the free mixing between sexes, part of the city's culture with them.
Yet another man posted that the Delhi-based Gurjars had a bad reputation elsewhere because news of Gujjar girls eloping with boys from other communities were far too frequent.
“Very often there is news that some Gujjar boy has done love marriage or yet another Gujjar girl has run away with a boy and Gujjars outside Delhi say that we are not real Gujjars because we can't save the honour of our families,” said someone who called himself 'Hardcore Gurjar.'
The virtual space is rife with such commentary barring a few that cautiously denounce the killings.
Mandeep and Ankit, the killers who are serving time in jail, have been compared to Lord Rama, the mythical hero who abdicated Sita after she returned from Raavan’s entrapment.
“That Rama, the Lord is still worship by the people. If the same thing done by our brother then how it can be termed as crime,” Ravi Kasana wrote in the ongoing thread. “I strongly termed Ankit and Mandeep to be Kalyugi Ram and Krishna and salute them for showing this world that pride is more important than life for Gurjars. Murder is wrong but this (killing) is socially the best thing that has been done.”
Such killings happened earlier too. But they didn’t hit the headlines. Those were hushed killings. The death of a daughter or a sister gone astray would be termed as an accident or a suicide. Penetrating the layers of the village to investigate the deaths would often be a futile chase, a Jat community member said.
Kanwar Singh Tanwar, the former Bahujan Samaj Party member who has now joined Congress and is a heavy weight Gujjar leader in South Delhi, says he is in favour of such panchayats.
“Gotra this is our history. Yes, inter caste marriages have caught up and culture has changed. Now more and more Gujjars and Jats are sending their daughters and sons to schools and colleges. We have doctors, engineers, and not just bouncers,” he says. “Aajkal ke gaon mein ladkiyan hi-fi hai. We have a system. We can’t let go.”
In the battle, the new recruits are a few Gujjar youth who have taken it upon themselves to preserve their culture.
Pramod Mavi, an engineer who set up the Youth Gurjar Federation last year to reach out to the community and focus on education, travels to Delhi’s urban villages on weekends and talks to the youth about their culture, the gotra system and the temptations like smoking and drinking they must resist.
With a group of young people, he is also collecting material for a book on Gujjar culture and tradition listing all the gotras in the Gujjar villages across India.
“We are working on it. We have state level people going into Gujjar villages and taking to sarpanchs asking them about gotras in their villages,” he says. “But it is at preliminary stages. We plan to distribute it free of cost to the youth. I am against honour killings but we are bound by our tradition.”
Ram Niwas Gujjar, of the same organization, says they have been holding meetings in Delhi, Haryana, Madhya Pradesh and Rajasthan regularly to educate youngsters about the Gujjar tradition.
"Money has gone to their head. We tell them that you need to hold on to the tradition,” he says. “We are against inter caste marriages, and those within the gotra system. This is to counter honour killing so people don't have to resort to such things.”
***
At the point where Ghitorni, another urban village with a predominantly Gujjar population, opens up to the metropolis, a car showroom has set shop.
On display is the dream car – a two-door red Mercedes sports car. Its doors open out in the sky just like giant wings.
Outside, contradictions abound.
Of the around 140 Gujjar villages in the city, Ghitorni is among the ones where money knows no limits. The farmers sold off the prized land to the private builders, to the very rich who went shopping for sprawling farmhouses. Resto bars have come up on the sides of the road.
The blazing red car has already 80 suitors on its list. Many are from the nearby urban villages where roads are not yet concretized, and are riddled with encroachments and potholes.
That itself is proof of the transformation of the urban villages that are still steeped in tradition, in the rigidity of its dos and don’ts but are finding it hard to wrestle the changes that have crept in.
The money that once brought the adrenaline rushing to their brains, the sorts where you feel nothing can escape your fancy, where dreams are one with reality, is now making them realize that money can also make you lose control just like the drugs.
So they are in denial of the mess that money has made their lives.
Youth, with their pumped-up muscles from working out for hours in the local gyms that dot the village landscape, roam around the locality, whiling away time at the property dealers’ outlets. Many sport thick gold chains and tight T shirts accentuating their biceps.
In the evenings, they pack themselves in swanky cars, and ride through the village’s crumbling roads, loud trance and techno music playing, and go to city’s numerous pubs.
Elders say the villages have no rape cases in the village. That’s because boys and girls know that the rules prohibit them to marry within village. So they are all brothers and sisters.
A group of young men turned away when a bunch of young girls from the village passed.
In Wazirpur, at the Natraj photo studio, a young man said village girls came to get their pictures clicked for marriage purpose. But no, they were all sisters. What if fell for one? No, that’s not going to happen.
“You don’t know the rules of the village. I think you are not from here,” he says.
The Pradhan of Wazirpur Choudhury Subhash Kahri says it is the loss of the land that anchored the village people to a lifestyle is the core issue. All of that is gone and has been replaced by inflated bank accounts. They have been rendered rootless, aimless and with a thick wad of crisp notes, they have no option but to indulge.
But this money is not going to last, Tanwar says.
Not many of them have invested in other properties. So, the young people are torn between the lifestyle of the rich, lured and tempted by the freedom of choice, and the unwritten codes of the village.
Riya Lohia, a 12-year-old, studies at the Poorna Prajna Public School, is a product of that conflict. At her age, she knows she has to live within an invisible boundary.
Her friends from school hang out, stay over at each others’ house, but Riya is chaperoned if she has to attend anything outside school.
“They can go out. We can’t go alone for outings alone. So we have different lives,” she says.
Her uncle Kiran Kumar Lohia lives with his four brothers – a joint family setup that the community has not relinquished yet.
Five cars are parked in the courtyard where she sat with her uncles.
“We have women doctors and teachers in the house. We are for education but we can’t let go of our culture,” Kiran Kumar says. “No, we don’t mind inter caste marriages. The only issue that threatens our society is the population growth. Our youth are getting affected. But it is up to us to tell them what is within bounds and what is wrong.”
Riya silently walked back to the house.
The Dishonoured
On June 14, a 19-year-old girl Asha and her 21-year-old lover Yogesh were electrocuted by the girl's family in Swaroop Nagar in North Delhi. Before they were killed, they were flogged with steel rods for hours.
Sanjeeta, a Gujjar girl, was killed in her ancestral village in Bargadpur in UP village after she married Ravinder Kataria, a Jatav community member who she had met while pursuing a computer course in Mayur Vihar in Delhi. She was a resident of Noida. On July 13, four months after she had secretly married her lover, her family took her to the village, strangulated her and set her on fire.
In the last four months, in yet another instance of honour killing a newlywed man Rajesh Negi was burnt by his in-laws as he married outside his caste in Kichripur in Mayur Vihar. The entire family of the bride Bhavna Pal has gone into hiding. The two married secretly in January but when the bride's family came to know, they allegedly threatened the couple.
Then, in June again, the Wazirpur killings happened. Monica, her husband Kuldeep, a Rajput man, and Shobha who was seeing a Mulsim man named Nawab Raja were killed din cold blood by the family on June 20. Ankit and Mandeep, who are in jail for the murders, also tried to kill Khushboo, the third sister, but she had gone into hiding.
In Daula-Razpura village in Greater Noida, a khap panchayat sent out a diktat that daughters of all Dalit families will be abducted last month after an upper caste girl from a neighboring village Mandiya Priyanka eloped with Suraj Jatav, a scheduled caste boy from Daula. The panchayat also issued shoot-at-sight orders for the couple who fell in love in college in Dadri. The couple is still absconding.
While NGOs have sprung into action including a group called Love Commandos headed by Sanjoy Sachdev to help the couples that face such threats, a bill on honour killing is yet to be approved. On Thursday, Home Minister P Chidambaram said the government plans to introduce a bill on honour killings in this session of parliament. He said all state governments are being asked for their views and the “murders” must not be condoned but punished with severity. Khap panchayats have protested against the bill and have been asking for amendments in the marriage act to ban marriages within the same gotra.
Sunday, July 25, 2010
The gappers
An edited version of the article appeared in the Sunday Eye section of the Indian Express on July 25, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
Udaipur, New Delhi
All through his school years, Nirmal felt he was sprinting, trying his best to be a student so he too could stumble over the finish line.
But in his head, among the jumbled up calculus lessons and geometrical shapes, strange fish were trapped.
And the fish only got bigger. It was as if his head would burst with those. Nirmal wanted to capture them on canvas before his imagination shorted out. But more school work flowed into his hours, and in those crowded hours where he could hear the sound of pens and papers, the air became still, thick and stifling.
That's when he knew he needed a psychological pause, a break year from school, before moving forward so he could slow down, paint his magical fish, and breathe easy.
So Nirmal bunked off after Class 10 when he was 18. In other words, he became a “gapper”, someone who takes a year off during or after school to travel or indulge in hobbies, a popular idea in the west.
“I didn't like what school looked like, or behaved like. It was too much sitting there for hours, your attention compartmentalized into periods,” he says.
Nirmal is among a growing number of children across the country who are walking out of schools to take a break and indulge in what they like to do. They may either join school later or opt for homeschooling after the break. But in their gap year, time taken off between two stages of life by students - between high school and college - they want to travel and explore their own inclinations free from the pressures and restrictions of formal schools. While it is not a recent phenomenon as there are instances of students taking gap year 20 years ago and even before in India when Rabindranath Tagore left his hometown at 11 years to tour the country and be home-educated in history and astronomy, the idea is now gaining ground with many
parents and children who feel a gap year is important for the child to figure out their personality and get a breather.
In the schools that a few parents compare to factories, where children sit for long hours, their personality camouflaged with the school uniform, constricted almost, the children were beginning to feel suppressed, and they were getting homogenized, they said.
So in the absence of school, Nirmal's days expanded. In those drifting middle of the day hours where he could hear the cars honking in the distance, the occasional breeze whispering through the leaves, he painted his fish.
On his canvas, the bodies of the fish disappear midway and from their intertwined torsos explode elephants' heads with shriveled, shrunken noses. On another one, an elephant's trunk metamorphoses into giant, headless snakes. These huge paintings stacked in Nirmal's little studio overlooking the Aravlis in Udaipur, perched on a hill slope in a housing scheme, were tributes to unfettered imagination itself of a
18-year-old.
Had he remained in school, the fish on his canvas would have remained true to its species, he says.
He wasn't painting like this when he was in school. Back then he learned the art of traditional miniature painting – Ganeshas, Maharajas and beautiful queens from the folklore of Rajasthan. Then they suddenly became grotesque, distorted as his imagination expanded in his little room overlooking the city, and in those hours, free from school, his fish outgrew the limits nature had imposed and Nirmal felt
comfortable with the ambiguities of his paintings as he was with his
own nonconformity.
It wasn't easy convincing the family. They thought it was crazy idea. Who drops out of school to paint, they asked.
It was like taking a step backwards and giving up on the chances of a decent job, his mother argued.
But Nirmal knew that if he looked like he knew where he was headed, the questions would eventually fade out. After all he wasn't saying no to school. He would return when he was done finding himself.
At at an art workshop organized by Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development at Udaipur, which was set up by Manish Jain who left the United States after a stint with investment banking and working on international education policy at UNESCO to move towards de-schooling, or how to de institutionalize the individual in 1998, Nirmal figured others like him were taking such sabbaticals, too.
Shikshantar provided a creative space where people – especially young students could experience a different style of learning that more hands-on and community-oriented.
“You know I wanted to take out my feelings on the canvas. We talked a lot. Manish and me. He never told me to leave school. But you know I never liked school not in the way that it held me back from so many things,” he says. “My family was opposed to the idea of the break. But I put my foot down.”
The gap year was all about the things he wanted. In that gap year, he let his imagination run wild on canvas. He hasn't sold a single painting yet. But what he painted in that gap year, he says, set him free.
Nirmal, now 25, never went back to school. The freedom from routine, from teachers that demanded too much, was addictive. The freedom he had stumbled upon, he wasn't prepared to surrender to the system.
***
The 'Gap Year' concept originated after the Second World War when young people started traveling to understand other cultures. It was encouraged by the states to provide for more understanding of global cultures and as a safety valve against future wars. The world was in tatters after two wars. If only youth could travel, cross over, and learned to adapt to diversity and even accept it, peace would not be so elusive.
So the young Brit hippies headed to the mystery countries preaching love and peace, swinging in the sixties to songs that spoke of a world without bombs, without misery, without differences. They too had walked out – many from schools, a few from other institutionalized structures.
The first gapper took off from the UK, traveled on the hippie trail, and set a trend. Then in the 1960s an educational trust was set up to promote Gap Year Volunteer Placements market where students could avail of student work visas and travel abroad, work, and explore.
Toward the fag end of 1970s, GAP Activity Projects, a UK organization, started facilitating volunteer placements for 'Gap Year' in between school and university and that's how it was introduced to the schools first, the concept of gap year.
A new breed of gap travelers started to traverse the world, lured by exotica, looking to find interesting places, and people, taking a break from schools so they didn't “burn out” and could use an extra year to get mature. It became the “rite of passage” for students.
Then in 1998, the gap year hit the world wide web. Launched by Tom Griffiths and Peter Pedrick gapyear.com, the website that helps students and others with information on interim gap year programs and work visas.
Now, the “gap year industry” is slated to become the fastest growing travel sector in the world, according to reports.
In India too, gap year isn't a such recent phenomenon either. Fifteen years ago, Rahul Alvares talked his parents into letting him take a sabbatical after Class 10.
It was during a summer break in Class 9 at the Pune Snake Park when the idea of a gap year first crossed his mind. He promised his parents – Norma and Claude, both conservationists – that if they let him take a year off, he would work hard and score a decent percent in Class 10 examinations. He scored a distinction. He was finally free from school for a year.
On the first day of his year-long break, Rahul Alvares cycled to an aquarium shop in Mapusa in Goa, a two-room shop off the main road with twenty fish tanks. That's where he would work for weeks, breeding fish, learning to build aquariums, and running errands for Ashok D'Cruz, a college friend of his father, who owned the aquarium shop.
He would cycle to the shop at around 9 a.m. and stay there until lunch helping out with everything – cleaning fish tanks, remove dead fish, feed the fish, and run other errands.
Later in his sabbatical year, Rahul went and spent time at the Pune Snake Park after Neelimkumar Khaire, Director of the Snake Park in Pune, called him for a visit.
Khair's daughters Bany and Lara too had taken a sabbatical after completing school a few years ago to travel across the country.
Rahul kept a record of everything. His diary later became a book “Free From School”, a chronology of his experiences in the gap year, that was published by the Other India Press.
In the beginning, Rahul says he almost felt guilty about the gap year. He kept asking himself whether he was allowed this sort of an indulgence. It was the diary that helped him keep track of his days.
“There was nobody else taking a gap year. But after I took my sabbatical, both my brothers took gap years. That year changed my life,” he says.
“It was like I got my freedom. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to handle snakes.”
That's what he eventually did. Rahul Alvares became a herpetologist.
“In school I wanted to have a decent job and breed fish. Then in the gap year the fish thing went out of the window,” he says. “I learned about snakes without knowing if it was the career for me.”
Rahul returned to school, enrolled in science stream, and then went to college for his bachelor's in science. He again took a gap year after his graduation and went off to Thailand to learn more about snakes.
In “Free from School” he begins with “You must try to understand that when I finished school I was as raw as raw could be. I had never travelled anywhere on my own, never purchased a train ticket ... I had no experience of how to handle money ...”
And he concludes with “And I wish to repeat here, at the end of my book, that June 1995 to June 1996 was the most wonderful year that I can ever remember. I learnt a lot, not only about the things I wanted to learn, but about many other things as well. And best of all I had a lot of fun and a whole lot of freedom to do all that I ever wanted to do. I certainly look forward to another sabbatical! And so, by now,
should you!”
The book has been translated in at least two languages and is still in print. Written by a 16-year-old, its 14 chapters are all about Rahul stumbling upon a rare freedom and making the most of it.
In 2008, Samyuktha, who decided to walk out of her school in Andhra Pradesh, wrote yet another book called “Learning the Heart Way” where she wrote about her experience of creating her “own curriculum” after she opted out of the 'rat race of learning’, out of the labyrinths of “endless tests and scores” and the “endless chase after MBA degrees”.
***
While most students abroad spend their gap year traveling around the world volunteering or working overseas, and in part immersing themselves in the culture and most popular destinations for such experiential travel are India, China and Brazil, in India students mostly travel around the country, helping out with community service in rural areas. A few who can afford it even travel to different countries like Sakhi, a Nashik-based girl, who took a gap year after Class 7 at 13 years. Sakhi traveled to Jordan and Lebanon in her first gap year that she took five years ago. She later decided to opt for homeschooling and returned to formal education in high school three years later because she felt the need to go back to her peer group.
“School was just not giving me time to do things I wanted to do,” she said. “After a point I started not looking forward to going to school. That was when I wanted to get out for a year and explore.”
So in Class 7, when she was 12 years old, Sakhi put together presentation called “Skipping School” where she listed all the things – learning Sanskrit and French, traveling, cooking, art – she would want to do in her gap year from school for her parents.
Her parents – Anita and Nitin – were supportive of their daughter's decision.
“We thought Sakhi should give it a try. Our own belief in the education system was dwindling. It is not as if nobody is thinking about alternative ways of learning and a few silent people full of conviction are charting their own path. People just fail to understand that there are other ways of learning,” Anita says.
Sakhi left college this year after finishing her intermediate to take another gap year.
Earlier this year she was in Delhi teaching English to women from lower income groups who are training to become cab drivers at the Azad Foundation. She also traveled to Canada with her parents to participate in a seminar on young leaders and alternative education.
Her friend, Mukta Navrekar, 20, another Nashik girl who took a break from mainstream education after her Class 12, spent her sabbatical year volunteering for the Indian Red Cross Society and then for the Nirmal Gram Nirman Kendra, an organization run by her parents that works on environmental sanitation in rural areas.
“I was not interested in mainstream education. I didn't know what I would do after school or college. I wanted to find myself and this way I gained experience that helped me figure what I want to do in life,” she says.
Now, Mukta is pursuing her bachelor's in sociology from IGNOU and doing community service.
While many of those who are taking a break year belong to higher middle class segment, the idea is trickling down to other strata of the society too, says Nyla Coelho of TaleemNet, an organization or a facility that helps people to think outside of set norms of learning and is part of the Multi World Network, an international body of thinkers who want to restore the diversity of learning and challenge the prescribed education system.
Last year, a student Minshu Kulkarni from Dharvar in Karnataka visited her facility in Goa with a friend after they decided to take a break from school.
“He took the gap year after Class 10 and came with his friend. Both of them are now traveling in various parts of the country like the Himalayas and this year they will decide what they want to do,” she says. “They thought going from one classroom to another didn't offer much. Since 2000 many children have come to us. It is a tough thing to do but there are a lot of serious parents and children who are choosing to do this..”
***
In the United States, guidance counselors and admissions officers are increasingly advising the high school seniors to explore the option of gap year so they could get a refresher and a primer on life outside classroom and its limited world. In 2009, Princeton University in New Jersey in United States formalized the gap year program wherein, students who have been accepted into the university, will be asked to
go for a year of social work to other countries and those that do accept will be eligible for financial aid. Many companies also offer gap year programs.
In India, gap year is not so institutionalized yet. India's first Gap Year College was founded in 2007 in Kempty in Mussourie, Uttaranchal. The nine-month programme meant for people more than 18 years old offers creative design, architecture, wood art, sketching, theatre, publishing, environment and ecology, among other things. Three years later, Manish Jain set up Swaraj University in Udaipur that offers a two-year learning program for people who are 16 years and older and who are interested in green-collar enterprises and are willing to support local communities.
But barring these two, there's not much recognition to the concept of a gap year.- in the country.
Gap year still raises doubts. It still veers away from the standard. Gappers are still a rare bunch of either “too cool” kids or “loser” ones who didn't quite make it in school. It is considered a luxury that only the well-heeled can afford.
Others, if they fall out of the herd, they will no doubt hit the pits.
Amita Mulla Wattal, principal of Springdales School Pusa Road in New Delhi, says her students belonged to middle and lower middle classes and they couldn't afford such a break.
“The question is who will fund this gap year. This is a luxury of choice,” she says.
That's what the family of Sunny, who also took a gap year after Class 12, argued. They weren't “rich” and Sunny like his brothers needed to get a proper job with a regular income.
But to Sunny, a lean, lanky guy who looks out of place in the neighborhood with his curly hair that frame his face and cool T-shirts, the idea of a sabbatical, a whole year free from textbooks, from anxiety, from routine was alluring, liberating almost.
Three years into his gap year, Sunny, who bakes solar cookies, says formal school only him, he says.
Three years ago when he had first walked out of his school in Udaipur, he traveled to Auroville in Puducherry, Kerela, Maharashtra, Goa , and then worked at a village alternative school called Hunar in a tiny hamlet in Rajasthan teaching children life skills, rain water harvesting, sharing other pieces of knowledge that he had picked up on his travels.
When he got back from his travels, he bought a second-hand solar cooker, and now uses local grains to bake cookies that he also sells on orders. Eventually, he wants to increase awareness about local grains and about solar energy.
“In my break year, I learned about alternative education. I asked a lot of questions, I found many answers and now I know what I really want to do,” he says. “I took a different path and I am happy I chose to be unconventional.”
Sunny too never went back to school. But his family asked him to take open examinations. There was too much at stake. He can't be baking solar cookies all his life, his mother Mangi Devi said.
In the little living room of his house in a housing cluster, his brothers, who have gone on and completed their graduation, are a little unsure about Sunny's choice.
“We felt why was he doing it? We didn't approve,” Mangi Devi, his mother said.
But Sunny counts the names of people, of people who did well in life despite dropping out of school. In his own way, even though the rebel tried to be the non-conformist, he succumbed to the temptation of the system's definition of “successful.”
Even Rama's parents opposed the idea of her taking a gap year. That would hold her back while her peers would go on to complete college in time. But for Rama, school wasn't helping her indulge in passions that consumed her imagination. She didn't want to be a doctor or a teacher, to live out her parent's aspirations.
“I believed I could convince them. I have learned a lot and matured as an individual. I am more confident. I feel as if I could do anything,” she says.
Rama walked out of her government school after Class 10 around three years ago. Armed with a handy cam that she was given as part of a film making workshop in Goa, she is now trying to capture life and its quirks. The first film that she shot was called “Meri Movie” and it told her story, how she left school, and how she has changed as a person.
After she walked out of school, she suddenly stumbled upon lots of open space, space that she needed to fill. There was no routine anymore, no compulsions, only desire, and imagination.
She is now pursuing her studies through open schooling, torn between her own rebellion and her parents' concern for her but she is still making films, her latest being on the only woman auto driver in Udaipur Manju Khatri or “auto aunty” in Udaipur.
There are several other examples like Ravi from Delhi who left school after Class 9 who dabbled in street theatre and has now launched his own organization, NECTAR, to share performance media with street children. Or like Chinmay Futane who quit his distance education programme from IGNOU after his year off from school to do organic farming.
The walkouts also represent a diversity of background like the Delhi-based girl
Aayushi, a student of Class 5 at Apeejay School Noida, who is in the third month of her year-long break.
Her father Sanjiv Pandey said he was not unhappy with the school but with the “rote” education system with its focus on examinations.
“Holistic development is important. Right now, we are exploring, traveling. We will see how it works out and then she can either go back to school or we will decide to homeschool her,” he says.
Whether students find purpose in their gap year, or whether the sabbatical is a trait of those who are bothered with the uncertainty in their lives, it is nonetheless a breather.
As Nyla Coelho puts it “Along the way, let's savor each moment, for life is in the here and now. Having 'walked out', let's walk on…"
Chinki Sinha
Udaipur, New Delhi
All through his school years, Nirmal felt he was sprinting, trying his best to be a student so he too could stumble over the finish line.
But in his head, among the jumbled up calculus lessons and geometrical shapes, strange fish were trapped.
And the fish only got bigger. It was as if his head would burst with those. Nirmal wanted to capture them on canvas before his imagination shorted out. But more school work flowed into his hours, and in those crowded hours where he could hear the sound of pens and papers, the air became still, thick and stifling.
That's when he knew he needed a psychological pause, a break year from school, before moving forward so he could slow down, paint his magical fish, and breathe easy.
So Nirmal bunked off after Class 10 when he was 18. In other words, he became a “gapper”, someone who takes a year off during or after school to travel or indulge in hobbies, a popular idea in the west.
“I didn't like what school looked like, or behaved like. It was too much sitting there for hours, your attention compartmentalized into periods,” he says.
Nirmal is among a growing number of children across the country who are walking out of schools to take a break and indulge in what they like to do. They may either join school later or opt for homeschooling after the break. But in their gap year, time taken off between two stages of life by students - between high school and college - they want to travel and explore their own inclinations free from the pressures and restrictions of formal schools. While it is not a recent phenomenon as there are instances of students taking gap year 20 years ago and even before in India when Rabindranath Tagore left his hometown at 11 years to tour the country and be home-educated in history and astronomy, the idea is now gaining ground with many
parents and children who feel a gap year is important for the child to figure out their personality and get a breather.
In the schools that a few parents compare to factories, where children sit for long hours, their personality camouflaged with the school uniform, constricted almost, the children were beginning to feel suppressed, and they were getting homogenized, they said.
So in the absence of school, Nirmal's days expanded. In those drifting middle of the day hours where he could hear the cars honking in the distance, the occasional breeze whispering through the leaves, he painted his fish.
On his canvas, the bodies of the fish disappear midway and from their intertwined torsos explode elephants' heads with shriveled, shrunken noses. On another one, an elephant's trunk metamorphoses into giant, headless snakes. These huge paintings stacked in Nirmal's little studio overlooking the Aravlis in Udaipur, perched on a hill slope in a housing scheme, were tributes to unfettered imagination itself of a
18-year-old.
Had he remained in school, the fish on his canvas would have remained true to its species, he says.
He wasn't painting like this when he was in school. Back then he learned the art of traditional miniature painting – Ganeshas, Maharajas and beautiful queens from the folklore of Rajasthan. Then they suddenly became grotesque, distorted as his imagination expanded in his little room overlooking the city, and in those hours, free from school, his fish outgrew the limits nature had imposed and Nirmal felt
comfortable with the ambiguities of his paintings as he was with his
own nonconformity.
It wasn't easy convincing the family. They thought it was crazy idea. Who drops out of school to paint, they asked.
It was like taking a step backwards and giving up on the chances of a decent job, his mother argued.
But Nirmal knew that if he looked like he knew where he was headed, the questions would eventually fade out. After all he wasn't saying no to school. He would return when he was done finding himself.
At at an art workshop organized by Shikshantar: The Peoples’ Institute for Rethinking Education and Development at Udaipur, which was set up by Manish Jain who left the United States after a stint with investment banking and working on international education policy at UNESCO to move towards de-schooling, or how to de institutionalize the individual in 1998, Nirmal figured others like him were taking such sabbaticals, too.
Shikshantar provided a creative space where people – especially young students could experience a different style of learning that more hands-on and community-oriented.
“You know I wanted to take out my feelings on the canvas. We talked a lot. Manish and me. He never told me to leave school. But you know I never liked school not in the way that it held me back from so many things,” he says. “My family was opposed to the idea of the break. But I put my foot down.”
The gap year was all about the things he wanted. In that gap year, he let his imagination run wild on canvas. He hasn't sold a single painting yet. But what he painted in that gap year, he says, set him free.
Nirmal, now 25, never went back to school. The freedom from routine, from teachers that demanded too much, was addictive. The freedom he had stumbled upon, he wasn't prepared to surrender to the system.
***
The 'Gap Year' concept originated after the Second World War when young people started traveling to understand other cultures. It was encouraged by the states to provide for more understanding of global cultures and as a safety valve against future wars. The world was in tatters after two wars. If only youth could travel, cross over, and learned to adapt to diversity and even accept it, peace would not be so elusive.
So the young Brit hippies headed to the mystery countries preaching love and peace, swinging in the sixties to songs that spoke of a world without bombs, without misery, without differences. They too had walked out – many from schools, a few from other institutionalized structures.
The first gapper took off from the UK, traveled on the hippie trail, and set a trend. Then in the 1960s an educational trust was set up to promote Gap Year Volunteer Placements market where students could avail of student work visas and travel abroad, work, and explore.
Toward the fag end of 1970s, GAP Activity Projects, a UK organization, started facilitating volunteer placements for 'Gap Year' in between school and university and that's how it was introduced to the schools first, the concept of gap year.
A new breed of gap travelers started to traverse the world, lured by exotica, looking to find interesting places, and people, taking a break from schools so they didn't “burn out” and could use an extra year to get mature. It became the “rite of passage” for students.
Then in 1998, the gap year hit the world wide web. Launched by Tom Griffiths and Peter Pedrick gapyear.com, the website that helps students and others with information on interim gap year programs and work visas.
Now, the “gap year industry” is slated to become the fastest growing travel sector in the world, according to reports.
In India too, gap year isn't a such recent phenomenon either. Fifteen years ago, Rahul Alvares talked his parents into letting him take a sabbatical after Class 10.
It was during a summer break in Class 9 at the Pune Snake Park when the idea of a gap year first crossed his mind. He promised his parents – Norma and Claude, both conservationists – that if they let him take a year off, he would work hard and score a decent percent in Class 10 examinations. He scored a distinction. He was finally free from school for a year.
On the first day of his year-long break, Rahul Alvares cycled to an aquarium shop in Mapusa in Goa, a two-room shop off the main road with twenty fish tanks. That's where he would work for weeks, breeding fish, learning to build aquariums, and running errands for Ashok D'Cruz, a college friend of his father, who owned the aquarium shop.
He would cycle to the shop at around 9 a.m. and stay there until lunch helping out with everything – cleaning fish tanks, remove dead fish, feed the fish, and run other errands.
Later in his sabbatical year, Rahul went and spent time at the Pune Snake Park after Neelimkumar Khaire, Director of the Snake Park in Pune, called him for a visit.
Khair's daughters Bany and Lara too had taken a sabbatical after completing school a few years ago to travel across the country.
Rahul kept a record of everything. His diary later became a book “Free From School”, a chronology of his experiences in the gap year, that was published by the Other India Press.
In the beginning, Rahul says he almost felt guilty about the gap year. He kept asking himself whether he was allowed this sort of an indulgence. It was the diary that helped him keep track of his days.
“There was nobody else taking a gap year. But after I took my sabbatical, both my brothers took gap years. That year changed my life,” he says.
“It was like I got my freedom. I knew what I wanted to do. I wanted to handle snakes.”
That's what he eventually did. Rahul Alvares became a herpetologist.
“In school I wanted to have a decent job and breed fish. Then in the gap year the fish thing went out of the window,” he says. “I learned about snakes without knowing if it was the career for me.”
Rahul returned to school, enrolled in science stream, and then went to college for his bachelor's in science. He again took a gap year after his graduation and went off to Thailand to learn more about snakes.
In “Free from School” he begins with “You must try to understand that when I finished school I was as raw as raw could be. I had never travelled anywhere on my own, never purchased a train ticket ... I had no experience of how to handle money ...”
And he concludes with “And I wish to repeat here, at the end of my book, that June 1995 to June 1996 was the most wonderful year that I can ever remember. I learnt a lot, not only about the things I wanted to learn, but about many other things as well. And best of all I had a lot of fun and a whole lot of freedom to do all that I ever wanted to do. I certainly look forward to another sabbatical! And so, by now,
should you!”
The book has been translated in at least two languages and is still in print. Written by a 16-year-old, its 14 chapters are all about Rahul stumbling upon a rare freedom and making the most of it.
In 2008, Samyuktha, who decided to walk out of her school in Andhra Pradesh, wrote yet another book called “Learning the Heart Way” where she wrote about her experience of creating her “own curriculum” after she opted out of the 'rat race of learning’, out of the labyrinths of “endless tests and scores” and the “endless chase after MBA degrees”.
***
While most students abroad spend their gap year traveling around the world volunteering or working overseas, and in part immersing themselves in the culture and most popular destinations for such experiential travel are India, China and Brazil, in India students mostly travel around the country, helping out with community service in rural areas. A few who can afford it even travel to different countries like Sakhi, a Nashik-based girl, who took a gap year after Class 7 at 13 years. Sakhi traveled to Jordan and Lebanon in her first gap year that she took five years ago. She later decided to opt for homeschooling and returned to formal education in high school three years later because she felt the need to go back to her peer group.
“School was just not giving me time to do things I wanted to do,” she said. “After a point I started not looking forward to going to school. That was when I wanted to get out for a year and explore.”
So in Class 7, when she was 12 years old, Sakhi put together presentation called “Skipping School” where she listed all the things – learning Sanskrit and French, traveling, cooking, art – she would want to do in her gap year from school for her parents.
Her parents – Anita and Nitin – were supportive of their daughter's decision.
“We thought Sakhi should give it a try. Our own belief in the education system was dwindling. It is not as if nobody is thinking about alternative ways of learning and a few silent people full of conviction are charting their own path. People just fail to understand that there are other ways of learning,” Anita says.
Sakhi left college this year after finishing her intermediate to take another gap year.
Earlier this year she was in Delhi teaching English to women from lower income groups who are training to become cab drivers at the Azad Foundation. She also traveled to Canada with her parents to participate in a seminar on young leaders and alternative education.
Her friend, Mukta Navrekar, 20, another Nashik girl who took a break from mainstream education after her Class 12, spent her sabbatical year volunteering for the Indian Red Cross Society and then for the Nirmal Gram Nirman Kendra, an organization run by her parents that works on environmental sanitation in rural areas.
“I was not interested in mainstream education. I didn't know what I would do after school or college. I wanted to find myself and this way I gained experience that helped me figure what I want to do in life,” she says.
Now, Mukta is pursuing her bachelor's in sociology from IGNOU and doing community service.
While many of those who are taking a break year belong to higher middle class segment, the idea is trickling down to other strata of the society too, says Nyla Coelho of TaleemNet, an organization or a facility that helps people to think outside of set norms of learning and is part of the Multi World Network, an international body of thinkers who want to restore the diversity of learning and challenge the prescribed education system.
Last year, a student Minshu Kulkarni from Dharvar in Karnataka visited her facility in Goa with a friend after they decided to take a break from school.
“He took the gap year after Class 10 and came with his friend. Both of them are now traveling in various parts of the country like the Himalayas and this year they will decide what they want to do,” she says. “They thought going from one classroom to another didn't offer much. Since 2000 many children have come to us. It is a tough thing to do but there are a lot of serious parents and children who are choosing to do this..”
***
In the United States, guidance counselors and admissions officers are increasingly advising the high school seniors to explore the option of gap year so they could get a refresher and a primer on life outside classroom and its limited world. In 2009, Princeton University in New Jersey in United States formalized the gap year program wherein, students who have been accepted into the university, will be asked to
go for a year of social work to other countries and those that do accept will be eligible for financial aid. Many companies also offer gap year programs.
In India, gap year is not so institutionalized yet. India's first Gap Year College was founded in 2007 in Kempty in Mussourie, Uttaranchal. The nine-month programme meant for people more than 18 years old offers creative design, architecture, wood art, sketching, theatre, publishing, environment and ecology, among other things. Three years later, Manish Jain set up Swaraj University in Udaipur that offers a two-year learning program for people who are 16 years and older and who are interested in green-collar enterprises and are willing to support local communities.
But barring these two, there's not much recognition to the concept of a gap year.- in the country.
Gap year still raises doubts. It still veers away from the standard. Gappers are still a rare bunch of either “too cool” kids or “loser” ones who didn't quite make it in school. It is considered a luxury that only the well-heeled can afford.
Others, if they fall out of the herd, they will no doubt hit the pits.
Amita Mulla Wattal, principal of Springdales School Pusa Road in New Delhi, says her students belonged to middle and lower middle classes and they couldn't afford such a break.
“The question is who will fund this gap year. This is a luxury of choice,” she says.
That's what the family of Sunny, who also took a gap year after Class 12, argued. They weren't “rich” and Sunny like his brothers needed to get a proper job with a regular income.
But to Sunny, a lean, lanky guy who looks out of place in the neighborhood with his curly hair that frame his face and cool T-shirts, the idea of a sabbatical, a whole year free from textbooks, from anxiety, from routine was alluring, liberating almost.
Three years into his gap year, Sunny, who bakes solar cookies, says formal school only him, he says.
Three years ago when he had first walked out of his school in Udaipur, he traveled to Auroville in Puducherry, Kerela, Maharashtra, Goa , and then worked at a village alternative school called Hunar in a tiny hamlet in Rajasthan teaching children life skills, rain water harvesting, sharing other pieces of knowledge that he had picked up on his travels.
When he got back from his travels, he bought a second-hand solar cooker, and now uses local grains to bake cookies that he also sells on orders. Eventually, he wants to increase awareness about local grains and about solar energy.
“In my break year, I learned about alternative education. I asked a lot of questions, I found many answers and now I know what I really want to do,” he says. “I took a different path and I am happy I chose to be unconventional.”
Sunny too never went back to school. But his family asked him to take open examinations. There was too much at stake. He can't be baking solar cookies all his life, his mother Mangi Devi said.
In the little living room of his house in a housing cluster, his brothers, who have gone on and completed their graduation, are a little unsure about Sunny's choice.
“We felt why was he doing it? We didn't approve,” Mangi Devi, his mother said.
But Sunny counts the names of people, of people who did well in life despite dropping out of school. In his own way, even though the rebel tried to be the non-conformist, he succumbed to the temptation of the system's definition of “successful.”
Even Rama's parents opposed the idea of her taking a gap year. That would hold her back while her peers would go on to complete college in time. But for Rama, school wasn't helping her indulge in passions that consumed her imagination. She didn't want to be a doctor or a teacher, to live out her parent's aspirations.
“I believed I could convince them. I have learned a lot and matured as an individual. I am more confident. I feel as if I could do anything,” she says.
Rama walked out of her government school after Class 10 around three years ago. Armed with a handy cam that she was given as part of a film making workshop in Goa, she is now trying to capture life and its quirks. The first film that she shot was called “Meri Movie” and it told her story, how she left school, and how she has changed as a person.
After she walked out of school, she suddenly stumbled upon lots of open space, space that she needed to fill. There was no routine anymore, no compulsions, only desire, and imagination.
She is now pursuing her studies through open schooling, torn between her own rebellion and her parents' concern for her but she is still making films, her latest being on the only woman auto driver in Udaipur Manju Khatri or “auto aunty” in Udaipur.
There are several other examples like Ravi from Delhi who left school after Class 9 who dabbled in street theatre and has now launched his own organization, NECTAR, to share performance media with street children. Or like Chinmay Futane who quit his distance education programme from IGNOU after his year off from school to do organic farming.
The walkouts also represent a diversity of background like the Delhi-based girl
Aayushi, a student of Class 5 at Apeejay School Noida, who is in the third month of her year-long break.
Her father Sanjiv Pandey said he was not unhappy with the school but with the “rote” education system with its focus on examinations.
“Holistic development is important. Right now, we are exploring, traveling. We will see how it works out and then she can either go back to school or we will decide to homeschool her,” he says.
Whether students find purpose in their gap year, or whether the sabbatical is a trait of those who are bothered with the uncertainty in their lives, it is nonetheless a breather.
As Nyla Coelho puts it “Along the way, let's savor each moment, for life is in the here and now. Having 'walked out', let's walk on…"
Sunday, July 11, 2010
Love story of a former street kid
Last Thursday night I was researching a story on walking tours of Delhi when I stumbled upon an article published in The Guardian four years ago about this Salaam Baalak Trust City Walk ... There were two numbers listed - Shekhar and Javed - if you wanted to book the walking tour through city's street life. It was 10:30 p.m. I just called the number. Asked for Javed. The guy on the other side said Javed had left and now lives in America and was married. I was curious. So I asked to tell me more. Shahadutt now conducts the walking tours and was Javed's friend.
He said an American girl fell in love with him and she came back several times for him and the two got married this year ... I told my editor. He said I must write the love story. So I ransacked the facebook and found Javed, sent him a friend request and a message. He accepted. It was 2 a.m. We spent large part of the night chatting and then called him the next day and I asked if he could send me those firt emails and he said why not. I guess it was simple. This one had me converted.
An edited version appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, June 11. And my editor didn't cut this one at all.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, July 9, 2010
She was the girl who passed by the Salaam Baalak Trust with the little dog. That’s how Cristina Maria Kameika identified herself in the email she wrote a year later to Javed, the tour guide, the man who
grew up on the city’s streets getting high on Tipp-ex and subsequently redeemed himself, crossed over to the other side of the street and was conducting guided tours of the lives of the street children in Delhi.
“I had even thought for a second ‘wow! I think this is the one!’. I felt a strong attraction and connection,” she wrote on October 1, 2007, a year after the two – an American girl who was in India traveling and volunteering, and Javed, a runaway child from Bihar who battled the city’s brutal streets, slept with dogs and other infernal beings, ate leftover food, and later lived in a shelter home run by Mira Nair’s trust founded in 1988 now run by her mother Praveen Nair and three others, and continued his studies.
Javed wrote back ‘I am but anything. You are everything.’
It took Cristina nine more trips to India to figure out her attraction. It was love. Three years later, the two got married earlier this year in Atlanta, Georgia, where she lives with her father, a captain with Delta Air Lines.
Over the phone from Atlanta, 26-year-old Javed’s voice is peppered with a slight accent and he refers to his village as “countryside.” He is adapting to his new life in an apartment next to his father-in-law's place. Now he drives a Honda CRV and is trying to apply to a master's program in a university there. Tom, Cristina's father, is also helping him find a job as a translator with the airlines.
“I have to start somewhere,” he says.
Four years ago, he had seen Cristina walk towards him at the Aasra, a night shelter for homeless kids near Hanuman Mandir. He says he loved her laughter and her short hair. She had a dog – Rocky - and she came looking to volunteer at the center.
A day ago, Cristina, then 23 years old, had gone on a guided tour – Salaam Baalak Trust – City Walk – an walking tour of city's Paharganj and New Delhi Railway Station areas aimed at sensitizing others about street life and street children.
She had seen posters advertising the walk and she came. Later, she landed at the centre wanting to volunteer. Her girlfriend who she was living with at the time was not interested in the things she wanted to do so she came along, Rocky tagging along.
“I liked his smile,” Cristina says. “I had a feeling after 5 minutes of talking to him that he was the one. It was weird. The feeling was in the stomach. And I thought it was a crazy feeling and i thought what the hell I am American and how can I do this.”
But Cristina kept coming back to the night shelter with her dog under the pretext that she brought Rocky so the kids could play with the dog. She would sit and listen to Javed narrate to her strange stories about his life on the streets, how he spent cold nights curled up in a secret attic with dangling electric wires, how the cold bit into his skin and how he once crashed a big, fat Indian wedding and danced and ate chicken wings until the guards chased him out.
Javed, who was studying sociology through distance education from Delhi University, was working as a tour guide for the Salaam Baalak City Walk, an initiative of John Thompson, a volunteer from the UK who spent a lot of time working with the street children in the city. He lived in a one-room tenement at Paharganj and earned only Rs. 4,000.
AK Tiwari, an educative member at the Salaam Baalak Trust, said Javed had emailed all of them about his marriage and how happy he was.
“He was a happy child. But he didn't want to go home. He belonged to a poor family and then we admitted him to a government school. We are all very happy for him,” he says.
Cristina, Javed says, came from a different world. He didn't want to lose his only job by proposing her. Besides, those kind of love stories only played at the Sheila Theater where he watched mushy romance movies with his street buddies. Javed had run away from home at eight years and lived on the streets of Delhi for more than two years before he was rescued by the trust's members.
Cristina was looking for signs. She painted lotuses outside a shop in Paharganj. She called Javed to come see those. He didn't turn up.
But Javed had called the number and the landlord said Cristina didn't live there. She went back to America, broken-hearted.
Meanwhile, Javed hung all the paintings that Cristina brought over his bed at the shelter, and at the trust's office. A few of them still hang there.
But she missed him. So she wrote to him and he responded and she was on a flight back to India, to the dusty, grimy streets.
“My mom said yeah, you should go for your dreams and see if this is real. It was so perfect. I went back nine times,” Cristina says. "It was so much fun."
Cristina's own parents divorced when she was little. Her mother, who stays in Miami, Florida, attended her wedding. She says the family had no issues with her converting to Islam, or with her taking on a Muslim middle name.
"Their marriage broke. Mine won't. I have never been so happy before. I have never met a guy like him. This is a crazy love story," she says, her voice laden with excitement.
She even visited Kalyanpur, a village in Munger district of Bihar where Javed's parents lived. During the week she spent there, locals would climb up their roofs to see her. She was the first white person to visit their “countryside”, Javed recalls.
“She wore salwar kameez and did everything that was in our culture. My mother who was a bit hesitant about me marrying someone outside our religion loved her,” Javed says.
Even Cristina's father flew in from the United States to spend time with Javed.
The couple got engaged in Delhi and then flew to the United States. Cristina changed her name to Cristina Khatoon Kameika and even wore a saree in the small ceremony at their Atlanta house after they registered their marriage at the court.
While Cristina is pursuing her studies from Georgia State University, Javed is hoping he will get a head start in life, too.
Among everything else that he took to the states, he carried the box where he had kept the printouts of all the emails Cristina had ever written to him and her lotus paintings.
Back home, his friends Vicky and Shahdutt hope the fairytale romance comes their way, too.
"It is one hell of a journey from the streets to America, and then marry the girl of your dreams," a friend says.
He said an American girl fell in love with him and she came back several times for him and the two got married this year ... I told my editor. He said I must write the love story. So I ransacked the facebook and found Javed, sent him a friend request and a message. He accepted. It was 2 a.m. We spent large part of the night chatting and then called him the next day and I asked if he could send me those firt emails and he said why not. I guess it was simple. This one had me converted.
An edited version appeared in the Indian Express on Sunday, June 11. And my editor didn't cut this one at all.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, July 9, 2010
She was the girl who passed by the Salaam Baalak Trust with the little dog. That’s how Cristina Maria Kameika identified herself in the email she wrote a year later to Javed, the tour guide, the man who
grew up on the city’s streets getting high on Tipp-ex and subsequently redeemed himself, crossed over to the other side of the street and was conducting guided tours of the lives of the street children in Delhi.
“I had even thought for a second ‘wow! I think this is the one!’. I felt a strong attraction and connection,” she wrote on October 1, 2007, a year after the two – an American girl who was in India traveling and volunteering, and Javed, a runaway child from Bihar who battled the city’s brutal streets, slept with dogs and other infernal beings, ate leftover food, and later lived in a shelter home run by Mira Nair’s trust founded in 1988 now run by her mother Praveen Nair and three others, and continued his studies.
Javed wrote back ‘I am but anything. You are everything.’
It took Cristina nine more trips to India to figure out her attraction. It was love. Three years later, the two got married earlier this year in Atlanta, Georgia, where she lives with her father, a captain with Delta Air Lines.
Over the phone from Atlanta, 26-year-old Javed’s voice is peppered with a slight accent and he refers to his village as “countryside.” He is adapting to his new life in an apartment next to his father-in-law's place. Now he drives a Honda CRV and is trying to apply to a master's program in a university there. Tom, Cristina's father, is also helping him find a job as a translator with the airlines.
“I have to start somewhere,” he says.
Four years ago, he had seen Cristina walk towards him at the Aasra, a night shelter for homeless kids near Hanuman Mandir. He says he loved her laughter and her short hair. She had a dog – Rocky - and she came looking to volunteer at the center.
A day ago, Cristina, then 23 years old, had gone on a guided tour – Salaam Baalak Trust – City Walk – an walking tour of city's Paharganj and New Delhi Railway Station areas aimed at sensitizing others about street life and street children.
She had seen posters advertising the walk and she came. Later, she landed at the centre wanting to volunteer. Her girlfriend who she was living with at the time was not interested in the things she wanted to do so she came along, Rocky tagging along.
“I liked his smile,” Cristina says. “I had a feeling after 5 minutes of talking to him that he was the one. It was weird. The feeling was in the stomach. And I thought it was a crazy feeling and i thought what the hell I am American and how can I do this.”
But Cristina kept coming back to the night shelter with her dog under the pretext that she brought Rocky so the kids could play with the dog. She would sit and listen to Javed narrate to her strange stories about his life on the streets, how he spent cold nights curled up in a secret attic with dangling electric wires, how the cold bit into his skin and how he once crashed a big, fat Indian wedding and danced and ate chicken wings until the guards chased him out.
Javed, who was studying sociology through distance education from Delhi University, was working as a tour guide for the Salaam Baalak City Walk, an initiative of John Thompson, a volunteer from the UK who spent a lot of time working with the street children in the city. He lived in a one-room tenement at Paharganj and earned only Rs. 4,000.
AK Tiwari, an educative member at the Salaam Baalak Trust, said Javed had emailed all of them about his marriage and how happy he was.
“He was a happy child. But he didn't want to go home. He belonged to a poor family and then we admitted him to a government school. We are all very happy for him,” he says.
Cristina, Javed says, came from a different world. He didn't want to lose his only job by proposing her. Besides, those kind of love stories only played at the Sheila Theater where he watched mushy romance movies with his street buddies. Javed had run away from home at eight years and lived on the streets of Delhi for more than two years before he was rescued by the trust's members.
Cristina was looking for signs. She painted lotuses outside a shop in Paharganj. She called Javed to come see those. He didn't turn up.
But Javed had called the number and the landlord said Cristina didn't live there. She went back to America, broken-hearted.
Meanwhile, Javed hung all the paintings that Cristina brought over his bed at the shelter, and at the trust's office. A few of them still hang there.
But she missed him. So she wrote to him and he responded and she was on a flight back to India, to the dusty, grimy streets.
“My mom said yeah, you should go for your dreams and see if this is real. It was so perfect. I went back nine times,” Cristina says. "It was so much fun."
Cristina's own parents divorced when she was little. Her mother, who stays in Miami, Florida, attended her wedding. She says the family had no issues with her converting to Islam, or with her taking on a Muslim middle name.
"Their marriage broke. Mine won't. I have never been so happy before. I have never met a guy like him. This is a crazy love story," she says, her voice laden with excitement.
She even visited Kalyanpur, a village in Munger district of Bihar where Javed's parents lived. During the week she spent there, locals would climb up their roofs to see her. She was the first white person to visit their “countryside”, Javed recalls.
“She wore salwar kameez and did everything that was in our culture. My mother who was a bit hesitant about me marrying someone outside our religion loved her,” Javed says.
Even Cristina's father flew in from the United States to spend time with Javed.
The couple got engaged in Delhi and then flew to the United States. Cristina changed her name to Cristina Khatoon Kameika and even wore a saree in the small ceremony at their Atlanta house after they registered their marriage at the court.
While Cristina is pursuing her studies from Georgia State University, Javed is hoping he will get a head start in life, too.
Among everything else that he took to the states, he carried the box where he had kept the printouts of all the emails Cristina had ever written to him and her lotus paintings.
Back home, his friends Vicky and Shahdutt hope the fairytale romance comes their way, too.
"It is one hell of a journey from the streets to America, and then marry the girl of your dreams," a friend says.
Thursday, June 24, 2010
So, I meet Bunty Chor again
This time he was a free man. So, all crime reporters were waiting for Bunty at the Lodhi Road Police Station on Thursday. I was the odd one out. I had met Bunty a year ago when we managed to meet him in the prison. I had given him my number then.
Bunty walked in. He looked at me. Then he said "chinki?"
I hollered "Bunty Chor"
And that was all that was needed. I spoke to him for a few minutes. He said he wanted to be good again. I said it is good to be good again. He asked me if I had cut my hair. I said a little. He said he remembered me. He asked for my number. I scribbled it on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Maybe I will see him again.
An edited version appeared in the Indian Express on Friday, June 25, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, June 24, 2010
From the futuristic submarine he had wanted to build, the one that would also crisscross the skies last year when he gave his imagination a free run, Bunty Chor aka Devender Sharma, now 39, after he was released from Tihar Jail last week, is now hopping on to the city buses, trying to start afresh. He is a nobody now. From the madman who rambled about having been to heaven and how peaceful it was compared to the cramped quarters of the jail where he thought everyone was out to get him, Bunty is now saner but a worried man.
The lovable, suave thief who ruled imagination, and even inspired film scripts like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, a movie that chronicled his whimsical style, is looking for a regular job, anything that would help him lead a straight life.
“ It's not easy. But at least it is not as bad as jail. I am happy to be a free man again,” he said. “I just need a chance.”
As he walked into the Lodhi Road Police Station on Thursday evening, he didn't look like his former self. At Tihar, when we had met him last year, he had looked shrunken, his collarbones were prominent, his eyes sunken. Here he was in his bleached hair, a red cap and a matching red Polo T shirt and blue jeans. His brother's gift, he said.
But his brother Balvinder Singh said he didn't buy him the clothes. He said he didn't want to keep his brother. Not after the family attempted to try to reform him twice earlier.
“ We can't keep him anymore. He always runs away,” he said. “I don't know where he is staying. Probably at the police station itself. But no, our doors are closed for him.”
Ever since he was released, Bunty, a Class IX dropout, has been coming to the police station hoping the man who nabbed him in 2002 and 2007, the cop who understood him and who he confided in telling him about all his exploits, his weaknesses, would help him lead a straight life. But for the cop, who can't stop talking about the unusual thief, it is like walking on a tightrope. In 2006, Bunty had promised him he would stop stealing and live an honest life. After he was released from jail in 2006, when he promised Singh he would lead a straight life. But after cars being stolen were reported from Defence Colony and Malviya Nagar in south Delhi, SHO Rajinder Singh knew it could be none other than Bunty. He was later arrested from a house in Noida. It had been a dramatic episode. The police broke into the house but not before Bunty had called the Police Control Room saying some goons had got into his house. The two sets of police argued and it took sometime for Singh to convince them how the suave looking man who had pictures of his wife and children displayed all over the house was indeed a conman and the photos were of another man's wife. Finally, Bunty was arrested. He had given the police a slip thrice before.
Singh still swears by Bunty's good and moral character. He said he is not a violent man. When he had arrested him, the super chor asked him not to slap him, he had asked for a chair and like a respectable man, admitted to his wrongs. More than Rs. 5 crore worth of goods were recovered from his instance. Later it was all distributed.
Leaning against the chair in his office, Singh’s eyes wander. He is waiting waiting for Bunty. Earlier in the day, Bunty called him and said he would be coming to meet him. Bunty is now staying with his elder brother in Vikaspuri. His family had first denied him saying they didn't want him to return. His tag of a thief would not rid of so easily.
Bunty was released from Tihar on May 30 and was then taken to the Amritsar Central Jail and released finally on June 14. He had already served three years in Tihar's Jail No. 4, a high security prison, for burglary and theft. He had at least 550 cases against him. Most of them were cases of unusual theft – a parrot, cutlery, a little dog who caught his fancy.
“ Bunty had a typical style. He stole only what he liked,” he said. “Girls loved him. He was in love and that's what led to his mental state. The girl is now married. Bunty when he came back tried to meet her but I guess she refused.”
The clock struck 4:30 p.m. Bunty had said he would be at the police station by 3 p.m.
“ This is his test. But I know he will come,” Singh said.
At 5 p.m. Bunty walked in. He was on the bus. It took time, he said.
“ For a man who drove expensive cars, even owned one that he fitted with gadgets, this is proof enough that he is trying hard to be good,” Singh said.
On Jun 15, a day after he paid the Rs. 2000 fine imposed by a sessions court in Amritsar, Bunty called Rajinder Singh. He wanted to meet him. The same day, Bunty Chor walked in with a little bag. He looked worn out. Singh got him a pair of shirt and trousers, then fed him lunch. For fours hours, the thief and the cop who had put him behind bars spoke about his life, his recovery from the mental illness, and his future.
That night Bunty stayed at the police station. He had nowhere to go. On the following night, he spent the night at his friend's house.
The Lodhi road police station is not new to former convicts staying and helping out with chores. Twenty-one-year old Abdul Wahab ,who was arrested for burglary after he ran away from Gujarat, is now an errand boy at the police station. The police officials are helping the young man with his studies, contributing to pay his fees. In return, Wahad runs errands for them.
But with Bunty, it isn't easy. He is an intelligent thief and you got to be cautious, Singh said.
“ He is trying to reform. But we are watching him. I am trying to get him some sort of a job but it is difficult given his reputation,” he said.
Singh has been approaching his friends, acquaintances, anyone to help out Bunty. He feels he has a responsibility towards the thief who wants to live a decent life.
“ My only worry is that if he doesn't get anything soon, he may turn to burglary again and that would not be good for us and the society,” he said. “I hope somebody would come forward.”
In fact it was Singh who called Bunty's elder brother asking him to give Bunty a second chance. The man was trying to make amends, he said.
All that Bunty had amassed is no longer there. He was duped by his friend, and then his lawyer, Singh said.
“ He has nothing,” he said.
Nobody will confirm where Bunty is staying. Bunty said he is living with his brother and would be helping out with his spare parts business but his brother denies the story.
Bunty had once told Singh he could help out a private detective agency, or assist the police with cracking burglary crimes. Now, he wants to get a passport and drive cabs in Japan. But he can't get a passport or a visa. He is having trouble getting a driving license with all his past records, Singh said.
“ Someone at some point will have to trust the man. Someone will have to give him a chance,” Singh said. “Maybe Dibakar Banerjee should compensate him. At least he could start some business with him. They made a story on his life. The crew came to my office to do research. They even went to meet Bunty in Tihar.”
Bunty said he would like the director to acknowledge him, maybe give him a role in one of his movies.
But then the man's past has already paved his future path with doubts.
“ What is the guarantee? We are extending help. Where is the process of rehabilitation? We think he doesn't want to indulge in crime. But who can be sure,” Singh said.
Bunty walked in. He looked at me. Then he said "chinki?"
I hollered "Bunty Chor"
And that was all that was needed. I spoke to him for a few minutes. He said he wanted to be good again. I said it is good to be good again. He asked me if I had cut my hair. I said a little. He said he remembered me. He asked for my number. I scribbled it on a piece of paper and handed it to him. Maybe I will see him again.
An edited version appeared in the Indian Express on Friday, June 25, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, June 24, 2010
From the futuristic submarine he had wanted to build, the one that would also crisscross the skies last year when he gave his imagination a free run, Bunty Chor aka Devender Sharma, now 39, after he was released from Tihar Jail last week, is now hopping on to the city buses, trying to start afresh. He is a nobody now. From the madman who rambled about having been to heaven and how peaceful it was compared to the cramped quarters of the jail where he thought everyone was out to get him, Bunty is now saner but a worried man.
The lovable, suave thief who ruled imagination, and even inspired film scripts like Oye Lucky! Lucky Oye!, a movie that chronicled his whimsical style, is looking for a regular job, anything that would help him lead a straight life.
“ It's not easy. But at least it is not as bad as jail. I am happy to be a free man again,” he said. “I just need a chance.”
As he walked into the Lodhi Road Police Station on Thursday evening, he didn't look like his former self. At Tihar, when we had met him last year, he had looked shrunken, his collarbones were prominent, his eyes sunken. Here he was in his bleached hair, a red cap and a matching red Polo T shirt and blue jeans. His brother's gift, he said.
But his brother Balvinder Singh said he didn't buy him the clothes. He said he didn't want to keep his brother. Not after the family attempted to try to reform him twice earlier.
“ We can't keep him anymore. He always runs away,” he said. “I don't know where he is staying. Probably at the police station itself. But no, our doors are closed for him.”
Ever since he was released, Bunty, a Class IX dropout, has been coming to the police station hoping the man who nabbed him in 2002 and 2007, the cop who understood him and who he confided in telling him about all his exploits, his weaknesses, would help him lead a straight life. But for the cop, who can't stop talking about the unusual thief, it is like walking on a tightrope. In 2006, Bunty had promised him he would stop stealing and live an honest life. After he was released from jail in 2006, when he promised Singh he would lead a straight life. But after cars being stolen were reported from Defence Colony and Malviya Nagar in south Delhi, SHO Rajinder Singh knew it could be none other than Bunty. He was later arrested from a house in Noida. It had been a dramatic episode. The police broke into the house but not before Bunty had called the Police Control Room saying some goons had got into his house. The two sets of police argued and it took sometime for Singh to convince them how the suave looking man who had pictures of his wife and children displayed all over the house was indeed a conman and the photos were of another man's wife. Finally, Bunty was arrested. He had given the police a slip thrice before.
Singh still swears by Bunty's good and moral character. He said he is not a violent man. When he had arrested him, the super chor asked him not to slap him, he had asked for a chair and like a respectable man, admitted to his wrongs. More than Rs. 5 crore worth of goods were recovered from his instance. Later it was all distributed.
Leaning against the chair in his office, Singh’s eyes wander. He is waiting waiting for Bunty. Earlier in the day, Bunty called him and said he would be coming to meet him. Bunty is now staying with his elder brother in Vikaspuri. His family had first denied him saying they didn't want him to return. His tag of a thief would not rid of so easily.
Bunty was released from Tihar on May 30 and was then taken to the Amritsar Central Jail and released finally on June 14. He had already served three years in Tihar's Jail No. 4, a high security prison, for burglary and theft. He had at least 550 cases against him. Most of them were cases of unusual theft – a parrot, cutlery, a little dog who caught his fancy.
“ Bunty had a typical style. He stole only what he liked,” he said. “Girls loved him. He was in love and that's what led to his mental state. The girl is now married. Bunty when he came back tried to meet her but I guess she refused.”
The clock struck 4:30 p.m. Bunty had said he would be at the police station by 3 p.m.
“ This is his test. But I know he will come,” Singh said.
At 5 p.m. Bunty walked in. He was on the bus. It took time, he said.
“ For a man who drove expensive cars, even owned one that he fitted with gadgets, this is proof enough that he is trying hard to be good,” Singh said.
On Jun 15, a day after he paid the Rs. 2000 fine imposed by a sessions court in Amritsar, Bunty called Rajinder Singh. He wanted to meet him. The same day, Bunty Chor walked in with a little bag. He looked worn out. Singh got him a pair of shirt and trousers, then fed him lunch. For fours hours, the thief and the cop who had put him behind bars spoke about his life, his recovery from the mental illness, and his future.
That night Bunty stayed at the police station. He had nowhere to go. On the following night, he spent the night at his friend's house.
The Lodhi road police station is not new to former convicts staying and helping out with chores. Twenty-one-year old Abdul Wahab ,who was arrested for burglary after he ran away from Gujarat, is now an errand boy at the police station. The police officials are helping the young man with his studies, contributing to pay his fees. In return, Wahad runs errands for them.
But with Bunty, it isn't easy. He is an intelligent thief and you got to be cautious, Singh said.
“ He is trying to reform. But we are watching him. I am trying to get him some sort of a job but it is difficult given his reputation,” he said.
Singh has been approaching his friends, acquaintances, anyone to help out Bunty. He feels he has a responsibility towards the thief who wants to live a decent life.
“ My only worry is that if he doesn't get anything soon, he may turn to burglary again and that would not be good for us and the society,” he said. “I hope somebody would come forward.”
In fact it was Singh who called Bunty's elder brother asking him to give Bunty a second chance. The man was trying to make amends, he said.
All that Bunty had amassed is no longer there. He was duped by his friend, and then his lawyer, Singh said.
“ He has nothing,” he said.
Nobody will confirm where Bunty is staying. Bunty said he is living with his brother and would be helping out with his spare parts business but his brother denies the story.
Bunty had once told Singh he could help out a private detective agency, or assist the police with cracking burglary crimes. Now, he wants to get a passport and drive cabs in Japan. But he can't get a passport or a visa. He is having trouble getting a driving license with all his past records, Singh said.
“ Someone at some point will have to trust the man. Someone will have to give him a chance,” Singh said. “Maybe Dibakar Banerjee should compensate him. At least he could start some business with him. They made a story on his life. The crew came to my office to do research. They even went to meet Bunty in Tihar.”
Bunty said he would like the director to acknowledge him, maybe give him a role in one of his movies.
But then the man's past has already paved his future path with doubts.
“ What is the guarantee? We are extending help. Where is the process of rehabilitation? We think he doesn't want to indulge in crime. But who can be sure,” Singh said.
Sunday, June 20, 2010
Miracle babies
Sitting in the hospital waiting for Bhateri Devi, the oldest mother to give birth to triplets at 66 years, my stomach churned when I saw her drag herself towards the ICU to feed the babies who are premature.
We had been to Jind earlier in the day to meet Rajo Devi Lohan who is the oldest mother in the world to give birth to a girl. In 2008, at 70, she delivered a baby girl at the same clinic.
It is a health hazard for these women. Regulations must be put in place before it becomes a popular trend.
We left for Haryana early morning to track thee women down and to understand why they go for the IVF at such an advanced age.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Express on June 20 in Section 2.
Chinki Sinha
Hisar, Jind
A little plastic baby doll in a swing smiles from the ceiling of the lobby at the National Fertility Clinic in Hisar. It is the sum total of the desires, the aspirations of the couples that walk in tempted by the promise of the IVF – pro-creation. Age isn't a restrictive force here. Motherhood is a limitless opportunity.
It transcends all barriers – infertility, age, situation in life. The plastic baby's arms are stretched out, the smile on its lips is permanent. It seduces the women, the men alike. The dangers, the complications then fade away, they get filtered out. What remains is the urge to procreate, to hold and rock the baby just like the baby that sits and smiles from the swing above. In this space, there is no getting into the right or wrong debate. It is only about demand, and the muchness of it.
National Fertility Centre was established in 2000 in Hisar by Gyanwati Bishnoi, a gynecologist. In ten years, the numbers of couples coming in for IVF has gone up exponentially. From a mere four or five couples, now the centre has more than 100 couples flocking to it per month hoping they can give birth despite all odds.
This is where Bhateri Devi came too. Twice the doctors transferred two embryos in her uterus. But it didn't work. In the third attempt, they transferred three embryos. All of those fertilized. At 66, Bhateri Devi from Satrod in Haryana became the oldest woman to give birth to triplets. She suffered. She went on the ventilator, she bled excessively. But the triplets were born. Complications were forgotten. In her village, everyone is waiting. For years she suffered the taunts, and she lived with the tag of being barren. Now, she proved to herself and to everyone else that she could have children too. Motherhood wasn't going to elude her.
National Fertility Centre is probably the only IVF clinic in the country that has the reputation of being the only centre where women of any age can go and conceive successfully. In its reception area, newspaper clippings adorn the walls. Boastful clippings from local media and national newspapers are everywhere. There's the miracle story of the 70-year-old Rajo Devi Lohan from Alewa in Jind who gave birth to a daughter in 2008. According to Dr. Anurag Bishnoi,Gyanwati's son and an embryologist, she is the brand ambassador of IVF in India. She is the oldest mother to give birth in the world at 70 years. Two years later, Rajo Devi's miracle tale dictates the directions to her village in Jind. There is the happy picture of Inder Devi who also gave birth to triplets at the age of 48 in 2007. Across the waiting area, the is Chameli Devi holding her twins she gave birth to in 2007 at 58. The story in the newspaper charted her painful survival and her miraculous achievement despite high blood pressure.
Almost all the stories about the elderly women trying the IVF as the last recourse to escape the stigma of being barren and not producing an heir, a must for a wedded wife, have a similar narrative. Their husbands married twice, thrice even desperate to get a child. Chameli Devi, the doting mother in the three-column picture, was her husband's second wife. From Santo Devi, his first wife, he wasn't able to produce an heir. So he married again. But Chameli Devi was unable to bear him children too. Then the couple discovered IVF and all was well, the narrative ran.
For Bishnoi, the criticisms that it is a health hazard for women at an advanced age to produce babies and that the doctor is acting immoral by helping them as it produces dysfunctional families where the child might be orphaned after a few years, are baseless. That the baby would be rendered motherless and fatherless too soon is not what is his call. He is only doing what is asked of him.
“That you should ask the families that want to go for this,” he says. “I am doing it because we can and it is what they want. There is a demand for it. We have the technology. We are doing it.”
A social change is in the works and this is what it is. Nothing less of a revolution, a change that is for the good. The IVF is the solution to the ills of the society. The rising numbers of people who are resorting to this technique is an indicator of its success and its relevance, he says. “It is changing the conservative thinking that women should be blamed for the problem. The attitude is changing. Every woman should have a child,”
Bhadur Ram, 60, sat hunched in the waiting area of the centre. He came from Hanumangarh in Rajasthan with his wife and neighbors to the centre hoping for a miracle. Nothing less than that, he said. He married twice but none of his wives could conceive. The second wife Lilawati is much younger than him. But at 40 years, it is like swimming against the tide if you hoped to conceive naturally, he said, his neighbour translating for him. As Lilawati waited inside for the tests, Bhadur Ram was suspended between hope and dejection. He had tried the shammams and the babas who promised healthy children in exchange for sacrifices and rituals, doctors who prescribed pills – red, green, yellow, blue. Nothing worked. Then, he found out how other women in his town had got pregnant despite being pronounced as infertile. It was the IVF. He bought into it. For Rs. 90,000 for the first injection, it was expensive but he would do it.
At first, the IVF when it was introduced in India as the other option was not a popular recourse. But over the years, its success in a society where stigma about childless women in deeply entrenched has permeated the economic stratas, the rural-urban divide, and the inhibition of the people. It has cut through the barriers. It is the the miraculous cure, the best gift of science to them.
“At first they looked down upon the IVF. They thought it was never clear if the father was the real father. But now having read in the newspapers about the older women successfully giving births, I know this is the option for us,” he said. “I don't want to die without having babies. I have to leave something of me behind. An heir, and a name.”
Bishnoi, who joined his mother's centre soon after he finished his medical training, says.
“You know they tell me that panchayats here now tell the man to try IVF when he approaches them for permission to marry for s second or a third time because his wife is unable to bear him children. Now panchayats interfere. IVF is heralding in a change that's positive. This is showing to a man-dominated world that money can be spent on women's treatment and that they should be given a chance before being relegated to the second position. Now the societies are accepting that there are techniques and they are worth trying.”
He says they don't guarantee that all women who come to them will be able to bear children. “We can tell them results are good,” he says.
More than 20 percent of the women that come to the centre for IVF are above 50 years of age. Around 40 percent of them are in their 40s and the rest are less than 35 years of age. Yet another doctor in Hisar where there are two IVF clinics disapproved of the centre's practice. Govind Fertility and Research Centre came up in Hisar three years after the National Fertility Centre was founded. But Dr. Manju Khurana said they never encourage women more than 40 years of age to go for IVF.
“It is about right and wrong. You can play God. There is technology available but with technology there is the question of responsibility,” she said. “What kind of a family it will be. Imagine the child who will have to grow up knowing their parents are not there for long. It is a very selfish thing. It also has initiated a dangerous trend. Complications can happen at that age. The government must intervene, set up a cut-off age, an upper age limit. The guidelines are ready and they will be submitted soon. I guess the age we have proposed is around 45 or 50 years. This isn't healthy. See, IVF is a positive thing like ultrasound. But look at the flip side of ultrasound when it started being used to determine the sex of the baby. Then the government cracked down on the clinics that did it. Something like that must be done with regards to IVF, too. At the bottom of it all, it is a question of right or wrong. You can do it but should you do it. That's the question we must ask ourselves.”
In Haryana, there are around six or seven IVF clinics. In the country, there are more than 150. The first IVF centres were established in Jaipur, Delhi and Mumbai in 1991. Then these centres mushroomed everywhere spanning rural, semi-urban and metropolitan cities. One has come up in Bhatinda in Punjab. But a lot of people desirous of having a child still flock to the National Fertility Centre because of the success stories. There are no regulations for IVF that exist in India currently. This is the baby boom of a different kind.
Anyone can become a mother. The test tube baby has arrived and infertility can no longer subdue their spirits, their being. No longer will they have to live with the tags – barren, infertile, un-woman like, a traitor to her husband and her species. For the women, it is the ultimate dream, the eventual fulfillment. After all they were created for a purpose. That they should procreate is what the God mandated. The technology is only the means to that end. Nothing is without God's will. This is what he has willed, Bhateri Devi's husband Deva Singh said.
“She told me even if she dies while doing it, it is worth the try,” he said. “It was Bhateri who asked me to marry twice. My children are beautiful.” Deva Singh promised Bhateri the world for the children. He bought her gold bangles, he said. “She can ask me for anything,” he said. “She has given me what I yearned for all these years.”
***
In creating life, Bhateri Devi started to lose her own grip on it. Blood gushed out. It just won't stop. Breathing came in spurts on the night of May 29 when the 66-year-old mother gave birth to triplets in Hisar in northern Haryana.
At the National Fertility & Test Tube Baby Centre, they moved her to the ICU for the night. She was on the ventilator but she survived, her husband said.
Bhateri Devi who set a world record for being the oldest mother to give birth to triplets bled through the night and days after.
Yet another operation and she survived. The bleeding stopped eventually. But it took its toll.
As she walked to the intensive care unit of the Java Hospital in Hisar where the triplets weighing 1.2 kilogram, 1.1 kilogram and 780 grams are kept, to feed the babies, she almost dragged herself. Her face , wrinkled and crumpled as rivulets of sweat ran down her cheeks, looked haggard.
Outside in the hospital's lobby, a crowd of scribes and locals had gathered to see her. A celebrity now, Bhateri Devi lashed out at the media. She doesn't want the attention. She already went through a lot.
On the night of the operation, she was moved to the ICU. She had difficulty in breathing and according to doctors, she was on the ventilator. But the triplets emerged one after the other. All three embryos that were implanted in her uterus fertilized. Bhupinder, Isha and Bhupesh are premature babies born one-and-a-half months before they were due. Every two hours, Bhateri Devi goes inside the ICU where the triplets are lying in an incubator along with several IVF babies, to feed her children hoping they gain weight fast and she can return to Satrod, her village, and celebrate. That would also mean more loans. Already her husband took out a loan of Rs. 7 lakhs from a cooperative bank in Hisar mortgaging his land. It was all worth it, he said.
He saw the triplets once. He cried when the doctor at the National Fertility Clinic told him the babies had arrived. He had waited for a child for 48 years.
“We put everything at risk. This is god's wish,” he said, sitting inside the Room no. 104 at the child care centre in Hisar. His phone rang constantly. Relatives had been camping at his house, waiting for the children to come home.
Not that Bhateri Devi didn't anticipate the dangers. The couple knew their third attempt was a huge risk. No, the doctors at the clinic didn't tell them what the operation involved. They conducted the tests, said Bhateri could conceive and that was it. At the same clinic, the couple had tried conceiving twice before. But they weren't lucky. In the third attempt, the doctors transferred three embryos.
God was more than willing, Deva Singh, 70, said.
“Children are important. I hope I live until 100 to see them grow up,” he said.
Deva Singh, her husband, who married thrice so he could produce children, was a little nervous at first.
But the temptation overrode any concerns. At least nobody would taunt him in the village saying the couple was unable to produce children, that they didn't have an heir. Adoption was never an option for them. They wanted their own blood and flesh no matter what it cost – lives, limbs, anything. In yet another village, a 72-year-old woman is trying to hold on to life. The house in Alewa in Jind is a landmark. This is where the miracle happened. A pair of pink sandals with Cindrella's pictures was brought in by the visitors who haven't stopped coming to the house. Upstairs, in a closet, boxes of new clothes and toys are piled up. All are gifts. Rajo Devi holds the little fingers of her 18-month-old daughter Naveena, almost grips them. She isn't prepared to let go.
Rajo Devi Lohan who gave birth at the age of 70 years also went to the National Fertility Centre. But she developed complications. Two months ago, she started to bleed again. The couple went in for another operation recently. The bleeding has stopped but the woman is too weak. She tires too soon. A couple of years ago, a neighbour had brought in a newspaper clipping about the success of the centre. It even mentioned the women who had successfully given birth at an advanced age in Uchana. So Baba Ram, 75, went with Rajo Devi and his second wife Omni who he married because Rajo couldn't bear children, to Uchana. They were convinced and then the three went to the National Fertility Centre in Hisar.
Omni, who is Rajo's younger sister, had high blood pressure so the doctors said she couldn't. But Rajo could. They didn't warn them about the complications that could develop later or during the birth.
“We only go ahead in cases where the women are strong and healthy. We do thorough check-ups and then allow,” Dr. Bishnoi said.
Naveen was born in November 2008. The father sold off his buffaloes, his cart, and mortgaged his land. It cost him around Rs. 5 lakhs. They threw a grand party where guests from neighbouring villages came. Almost 2,500 guests ate at the celebration, Baba Ram says.
“Blood is thicker than anything. I am against adoption. The child is not your own. He will not take care of you,” he says. “I know we are old. But Omni is there. She can take care of her when we are gone. We have relatives who can do that. The child is a toy. We play with her the whole day.”
Two years later, the debt hasn't been repaid. Rs. 50,000 is remaining. But the family is planning on a grand birthday celebration again on Naveen's second birthday. After Rajo Devi's miracle feat, a biological wonder, two other women in their forties also went to the Hisar centre but weren't able to conceive. Baba Ram waited for almost 40 years for a child. Now, he wants to live till eternity. Rajo Devi wanted to go for a second child through IVF. The couple wanted a boy. But then complications developed and the uterus had to be removed.
“We can die sitting here only. The fear of death shouldn't stop you from trying for a child,” Rajo Devi says. “I am happy I could do this before I died.”
The anguish of living in a village where people referred to you as the family that didn't have children was gone. It was a relief. Baba Ram's sperm was fused with an anonymous donor's egg. But it was in her uterus that it began to take shape. It was hers. It emerged from her.
“The baby belongs to the uterus,” Bishnoi says. “This has been happening for years. Only now people are able to admit it because awareness about IVF has increased.”
As the child suckled at her breast, Rajo Devi's face lit up. A few moments later, she collapsed on the bed. The daughter ran around her. But her frail fingers had already lost their grip.
We had been to Jind earlier in the day to meet Rajo Devi Lohan who is the oldest mother in the world to give birth to a girl. In 2008, at 70, she delivered a baby girl at the same clinic.
It is a health hazard for these women. Regulations must be put in place before it becomes a popular trend.
We left for Haryana early morning to track thee women down and to understand why they go for the IVF at such an advanced age.
An edited version of the story appeared in the Sunday Express on June 20 in Section 2.
Chinki Sinha
Hisar, Jind
A little plastic baby doll in a swing smiles from the ceiling of the lobby at the National Fertility Clinic in Hisar. It is the sum total of the desires, the aspirations of the couples that walk in tempted by the promise of the IVF – pro-creation. Age isn't a restrictive force here. Motherhood is a limitless opportunity.
It transcends all barriers – infertility, age, situation in life. The plastic baby's arms are stretched out, the smile on its lips is permanent. It seduces the women, the men alike. The dangers, the complications then fade away, they get filtered out. What remains is the urge to procreate, to hold and rock the baby just like the baby that sits and smiles from the swing above. In this space, there is no getting into the right or wrong debate. It is only about demand, and the muchness of it.
National Fertility Centre was established in 2000 in Hisar by Gyanwati Bishnoi, a gynecologist. In ten years, the numbers of couples coming in for IVF has gone up exponentially. From a mere four or five couples, now the centre has more than 100 couples flocking to it per month hoping they can give birth despite all odds.
This is where Bhateri Devi came too. Twice the doctors transferred two embryos in her uterus. But it didn't work. In the third attempt, they transferred three embryos. All of those fertilized. At 66, Bhateri Devi from Satrod in Haryana became the oldest woman to give birth to triplets. She suffered. She went on the ventilator, she bled excessively. But the triplets were born. Complications were forgotten. In her village, everyone is waiting. For years she suffered the taunts, and she lived with the tag of being barren. Now, she proved to herself and to everyone else that she could have children too. Motherhood wasn't going to elude her.
National Fertility Centre is probably the only IVF clinic in the country that has the reputation of being the only centre where women of any age can go and conceive successfully. In its reception area, newspaper clippings adorn the walls. Boastful clippings from local media and national newspapers are everywhere. There's the miracle story of the 70-year-old Rajo Devi Lohan from Alewa in Jind who gave birth to a daughter in 2008. According to Dr. Anurag Bishnoi,Gyanwati's son and an embryologist, she is the brand ambassador of IVF in India. She is the oldest mother to give birth in the world at 70 years. Two years later, Rajo Devi's miracle tale dictates the directions to her village in Jind. There is the happy picture of Inder Devi who also gave birth to triplets at the age of 48 in 2007. Across the waiting area, the is Chameli Devi holding her twins she gave birth to in 2007 at 58. The story in the newspaper charted her painful survival and her miraculous achievement despite high blood pressure.
Almost all the stories about the elderly women trying the IVF as the last recourse to escape the stigma of being barren and not producing an heir, a must for a wedded wife, have a similar narrative. Their husbands married twice, thrice even desperate to get a child. Chameli Devi, the doting mother in the three-column picture, was her husband's second wife. From Santo Devi, his first wife, he wasn't able to produce an heir. So he married again. But Chameli Devi was unable to bear him children too. Then the couple discovered IVF and all was well, the narrative ran.
For Bishnoi, the criticisms that it is a health hazard for women at an advanced age to produce babies and that the doctor is acting immoral by helping them as it produces dysfunctional families where the child might be orphaned after a few years, are baseless. That the baby would be rendered motherless and fatherless too soon is not what is his call. He is only doing what is asked of him.
“That you should ask the families that want to go for this,” he says. “I am doing it because we can and it is what they want. There is a demand for it. We have the technology. We are doing it.”
A social change is in the works and this is what it is. Nothing less of a revolution, a change that is for the good. The IVF is the solution to the ills of the society. The rising numbers of people who are resorting to this technique is an indicator of its success and its relevance, he says. “It is changing the conservative thinking that women should be blamed for the problem. The attitude is changing. Every woman should have a child,”
Bhadur Ram, 60, sat hunched in the waiting area of the centre. He came from Hanumangarh in Rajasthan with his wife and neighbors to the centre hoping for a miracle. Nothing less than that, he said. He married twice but none of his wives could conceive. The second wife Lilawati is much younger than him. But at 40 years, it is like swimming against the tide if you hoped to conceive naturally, he said, his neighbour translating for him. As Lilawati waited inside for the tests, Bhadur Ram was suspended between hope and dejection. He had tried the shammams and the babas who promised healthy children in exchange for sacrifices and rituals, doctors who prescribed pills – red, green, yellow, blue. Nothing worked. Then, he found out how other women in his town had got pregnant despite being pronounced as infertile. It was the IVF. He bought into it. For Rs. 90,000 for the first injection, it was expensive but he would do it.
At first, the IVF when it was introduced in India as the other option was not a popular recourse. But over the years, its success in a society where stigma about childless women in deeply entrenched has permeated the economic stratas, the rural-urban divide, and the inhibition of the people. It has cut through the barriers. It is the the miraculous cure, the best gift of science to them.
“At first they looked down upon the IVF. They thought it was never clear if the father was the real father. But now having read in the newspapers about the older women successfully giving births, I know this is the option for us,” he said. “I don't want to die without having babies. I have to leave something of me behind. An heir, and a name.”
Bishnoi, who joined his mother's centre soon after he finished his medical training, says.
“You know they tell me that panchayats here now tell the man to try IVF when he approaches them for permission to marry for s second or a third time because his wife is unable to bear him children. Now panchayats interfere. IVF is heralding in a change that's positive. This is showing to a man-dominated world that money can be spent on women's treatment and that they should be given a chance before being relegated to the second position. Now the societies are accepting that there are techniques and they are worth trying.”
He says they don't guarantee that all women who come to them will be able to bear children. “We can tell them results are good,” he says.
More than 20 percent of the women that come to the centre for IVF are above 50 years of age. Around 40 percent of them are in their 40s and the rest are less than 35 years of age. Yet another doctor in Hisar where there are two IVF clinics disapproved of the centre's practice. Govind Fertility and Research Centre came up in Hisar three years after the National Fertility Centre was founded. But Dr. Manju Khurana said they never encourage women more than 40 years of age to go for IVF.
“It is about right and wrong. You can play God. There is technology available but with technology there is the question of responsibility,” she said. “What kind of a family it will be. Imagine the child who will have to grow up knowing their parents are not there for long. It is a very selfish thing. It also has initiated a dangerous trend. Complications can happen at that age. The government must intervene, set up a cut-off age, an upper age limit. The guidelines are ready and they will be submitted soon. I guess the age we have proposed is around 45 or 50 years. This isn't healthy. See, IVF is a positive thing like ultrasound. But look at the flip side of ultrasound when it started being used to determine the sex of the baby. Then the government cracked down on the clinics that did it. Something like that must be done with regards to IVF, too. At the bottom of it all, it is a question of right or wrong. You can do it but should you do it. That's the question we must ask ourselves.”
In Haryana, there are around six or seven IVF clinics. In the country, there are more than 150. The first IVF centres were established in Jaipur, Delhi and Mumbai in 1991. Then these centres mushroomed everywhere spanning rural, semi-urban and metropolitan cities. One has come up in Bhatinda in Punjab. But a lot of people desirous of having a child still flock to the National Fertility Centre because of the success stories. There are no regulations for IVF that exist in India currently. This is the baby boom of a different kind.
Anyone can become a mother. The test tube baby has arrived and infertility can no longer subdue their spirits, their being. No longer will they have to live with the tags – barren, infertile, un-woman like, a traitor to her husband and her species. For the women, it is the ultimate dream, the eventual fulfillment. After all they were created for a purpose. That they should procreate is what the God mandated. The technology is only the means to that end. Nothing is without God's will. This is what he has willed, Bhateri Devi's husband Deva Singh said.
“She told me even if she dies while doing it, it is worth the try,” he said. “It was Bhateri who asked me to marry twice. My children are beautiful.” Deva Singh promised Bhateri the world for the children. He bought her gold bangles, he said. “She can ask me for anything,” he said. “She has given me what I yearned for all these years.”
***
In creating life, Bhateri Devi started to lose her own grip on it. Blood gushed out. It just won't stop. Breathing came in spurts on the night of May 29 when the 66-year-old mother gave birth to triplets in Hisar in northern Haryana.
At the National Fertility & Test Tube Baby Centre, they moved her to the ICU for the night. She was on the ventilator but she survived, her husband said.
Bhateri Devi who set a world record for being the oldest mother to give birth to triplets bled through the night and days after.
Yet another operation and she survived. The bleeding stopped eventually. But it took its toll.
As she walked to the intensive care unit of the Java Hospital in Hisar where the triplets weighing 1.2 kilogram, 1.1 kilogram and 780 grams are kept, to feed the babies, she almost dragged herself. Her face , wrinkled and crumpled as rivulets of sweat ran down her cheeks, looked haggard.
Outside in the hospital's lobby, a crowd of scribes and locals had gathered to see her. A celebrity now, Bhateri Devi lashed out at the media. She doesn't want the attention. She already went through a lot.
On the night of the operation, she was moved to the ICU. She had difficulty in breathing and according to doctors, she was on the ventilator. But the triplets emerged one after the other. All three embryos that were implanted in her uterus fertilized. Bhupinder, Isha and Bhupesh are premature babies born one-and-a-half months before they were due. Every two hours, Bhateri Devi goes inside the ICU where the triplets are lying in an incubator along with several IVF babies, to feed her children hoping they gain weight fast and she can return to Satrod, her village, and celebrate. That would also mean more loans. Already her husband took out a loan of Rs. 7 lakhs from a cooperative bank in Hisar mortgaging his land. It was all worth it, he said.
He saw the triplets once. He cried when the doctor at the National Fertility Clinic told him the babies had arrived. He had waited for a child for 48 years.
“We put everything at risk. This is god's wish,” he said, sitting inside the Room no. 104 at the child care centre in Hisar. His phone rang constantly. Relatives had been camping at his house, waiting for the children to come home.
Not that Bhateri Devi didn't anticipate the dangers. The couple knew their third attempt was a huge risk. No, the doctors at the clinic didn't tell them what the operation involved. They conducted the tests, said Bhateri could conceive and that was it. At the same clinic, the couple had tried conceiving twice before. But they weren't lucky. In the third attempt, the doctors transferred three embryos.
God was more than willing, Deva Singh, 70, said.
“Children are important. I hope I live until 100 to see them grow up,” he said.
Deva Singh, her husband, who married thrice so he could produce children, was a little nervous at first.
But the temptation overrode any concerns. At least nobody would taunt him in the village saying the couple was unable to produce children, that they didn't have an heir. Adoption was never an option for them. They wanted their own blood and flesh no matter what it cost – lives, limbs, anything. In yet another village, a 72-year-old woman is trying to hold on to life. The house in Alewa in Jind is a landmark. This is where the miracle happened. A pair of pink sandals with Cindrella's pictures was brought in by the visitors who haven't stopped coming to the house. Upstairs, in a closet, boxes of new clothes and toys are piled up. All are gifts. Rajo Devi holds the little fingers of her 18-month-old daughter Naveena, almost grips them. She isn't prepared to let go.
Rajo Devi Lohan who gave birth at the age of 70 years also went to the National Fertility Centre. But she developed complications. Two months ago, she started to bleed again. The couple went in for another operation recently. The bleeding has stopped but the woman is too weak. She tires too soon. A couple of years ago, a neighbour had brought in a newspaper clipping about the success of the centre. It even mentioned the women who had successfully given birth at an advanced age in Uchana. So Baba Ram, 75, went with Rajo Devi and his second wife Omni who he married because Rajo couldn't bear children, to Uchana. They were convinced and then the three went to the National Fertility Centre in Hisar.
Omni, who is Rajo's younger sister, had high blood pressure so the doctors said she couldn't. But Rajo could. They didn't warn them about the complications that could develop later or during the birth.
“We only go ahead in cases where the women are strong and healthy. We do thorough check-ups and then allow,” Dr. Bishnoi said.
Naveen was born in November 2008. The father sold off his buffaloes, his cart, and mortgaged his land. It cost him around Rs. 5 lakhs. They threw a grand party where guests from neighbouring villages came. Almost 2,500 guests ate at the celebration, Baba Ram says.
“Blood is thicker than anything. I am against adoption. The child is not your own. He will not take care of you,” he says. “I know we are old. But Omni is there. She can take care of her when we are gone. We have relatives who can do that. The child is a toy. We play with her the whole day.”
Two years later, the debt hasn't been repaid. Rs. 50,000 is remaining. But the family is planning on a grand birthday celebration again on Naveen's second birthday. After Rajo Devi's miracle feat, a biological wonder, two other women in their forties also went to the Hisar centre but weren't able to conceive. Baba Ram waited for almost 40 years for a child. Now, he wants to live till eternity. Rajo Devi wanted to go for a second child through IVF. The couple wanted a boy. But then complications developed and the uterus had to be removed.
“We can die sitting here only. The fear of death shouldn't stop you from trying for a child,” Rajo Devi says. “I am happy I could do this before I died.”
The anguish of living in a village where people referred to you as the family that didn't have children was gone. It was a relief. Baba Ram's sperm was fused with an anonymous donor's egg. But it was in her uterus that it began to take shape. It was hers. It emerged from her.
“The baby belongs to the uterus,” Bishnoi says. “This has been happening for years. Only now people are able to admit it because awareness about IVF has increased.”
As the child suckled at her breast, Rajo Devi's face lit up. A few moments later, she collapsed on the bed. The daughter ran around her. But her frail fingers had already lost their grip.
Saturday, June 05, 2010
The other Delhi
I was invited by friends to take the Ring-rail but never quite made it to the station that's minutes away from my house in Nizamuddin. I didn't know something like this existed. But on Saturday I took the ring-rail service and saw a different city.
An edited version was published in the Real Page 3 section of the Indian Express on June 6, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, June 4, 2010
From the windows of the grimy train of the ring-railway service, a showpiece during Delhi's Asiad Games in 1982, an invisible, embarrassing city unfolds.
This is the city they are trying to hide this October when the tourists come pouring in for the Commonwealth Games. They have built the swanky Metro with its sleek air-conditioned coaches, its shiny metallic body, and there are the new buses. They have fancy stations, modern-day bus stops. That's the illusion of the city.
But a parallel city, the underbelly of the capital, with all its poverty, squalor and vulgarity and numerous slums, spills on to the platforms of the railway line and the train doesn't rush past them. It is not avoiding them. It halts, blows its whistle. People – mostly daily-wage labourers, students, and saleswomen with their sacks – get off. A few get in. Stench from the manufacturing units in Daya Basti, from open-air toilets next to the tracks because in the slums teeming with the poor, private toilets are a luxury, and smoke from the stoves get in too. The passengers don't squirm. They are used to it. It's part of their life. The train is part of their life, too.
The coaches are never full. But the train has retained its loyal passengers like Rajinder Singh who once was tempted with the Metro and hopped on to it once to get to work from Mundka. After changing five trains and then boarding a bus to get to work at INA, he ended up spending Rs. 76. One-way ticket on the ring-railway cost only Rs. 4.
He was back on the sooty, grimy train the next day.
“I have been using the ring-railway from 1985. It takes me an hour to get to Daya Basti and then I take another train to Bahadurgarh. This train has never betrayed me. The city has forgotten this exists because I guess they are uncomfortable to see what lies beneath the polish,” he says looking out of the window.
At Inderpuri Halt, a old man with thick, misty glasses had set up his bidi shop on the platform. The shanties had slowly made their way on to the platform. Tarpaulin sheets and colorful mud walls hid little of the squalor, the crumbling lives, the resurgent spirit. They had all spilled on to the platform. The boundaries between private and public had been blurred. They weren't bothered by the oncoming train. The eyes would rest on them for a moment only. They had an understanding with those who stared out at them. Those eyes were not intrusive. They weren't judging them for their situation in life. The train would go on, show other lives.
“Poverty can't be hidden. On both sides you have slums, you have naked children running around,” he says. “Maybe the tourists should not be told that this train is there. Then they will never know this side of the city.”
On the dilapidated tracks that were laid in the 1970s, the drab train travels around the city, exposing its ugly back lanes, the windows that led into dark rooms, exposed the vulnerability of the walls that had cracks on them because nobody bothered to or afford to fix them.
It's a city that you never see from the steel and metal windows of the metro. The metro never criscrosses its path with the ring-railway. But it can be seen. At one point, the tracks run parallel – one above the ground, the metro train perched on the narrow pillars, the other close to the ground.
There are slanted houses that looked bent with all the people that were sharing the small space, there are threadbare curtains covering up the shame of poverty on the way. But there is beauty, too. In the city that's feeding on aspirations, a journey on the ring-rail is comforting. There are so many who have been left behind in the race.
On the tracks, they are the ragpickers who are busy doing drugs. The train doesn't startle them. They are used ot it. It is always on time.
Rajinder Singh, who works in the Delhi Development Authority, said he likes to look out of the window and ruminate. The train ride takes away all his regrets in life. He thinks of God as the train lurches past the numerous stations. He has done well for himself and his family. He can tell that when the stench from the slums gushes in from the windows.
In the distance, from under a sooty footover bridge, Daya Basti emerges. Kamla rushes in with her two daughters – Aasha and Anuradha. She has been living in the jhuggi for the last 10 years.
She was going home in Gorakhpur and the train would take her to New Delhi Railway Station for Rs. 12 only.
Kamla works at a mobile charger assembling unit in Daya Basti and earns Rs. 3000 a month. That's not good enough, she says.
Everytime she takes the ring rail, she thinks about the metro. It looks enticing. But it is so out of reach. The metro doesn't connect with the ring rail at all. Most of the 21 stations on the circular track are in places that are not connected by feeder services. Perhaps nobody thought of giving that luxury to those who used the ring railway. Maybe she will go on it once, she says.
“But where will I go. It can't take me anywhere,” she says.
Her daughter Aasha craned her neck out of the window and pointed to a little lane. That's where her school is, she says.
A mountain of garbage, colourful with pink and yellow plastci bags, hid the school. Then came the tin sheds at Kishan Ganj and then yet another slum.
The train goes around the city. The life along its tracks too goes around in a circle. The misery, the poverty is a vicious circle too.
There are 12 electric trains on the ring rail and it can accommodate 7,000 people. But many have broken off from the circle and from the ring rail. There's not more than two to three percent occupancy in most electrically maintained units.
There are only four ring-rail services in the day – two in the morning starting at 7 a.m. and two in the evening starting at 4:55 p.m. from Lajpat Nagar station.
The people on it are familiar faces from the city. There are sweaty, tense, and nervous faces. A few urchins squat near the door. Others are quiet, absorbed. Only here you know where they return to when their drudgery in the city of the future ends.
An edited version was published in the Real Page 3 section of the Indian Express on June 6, 2010.
Chinki Sinha
New Delhi, June 4, 2010
From the windows of the grimy train of the ring-railway service, a showpiece during Delhi's Asiad Games in 1982, an invisible, embarrassing city unfolds.
This is the city they are trying to hide this October when the tourists come pouring in for the Commonwealth Games. They have built the swanky Metro with its sleek air-conditioned coaches, its shiny metallic body, and there are the new buses. They have fancy stations, modern-day bus stops. That's the illusion of the city.
But a parallel city, the underbelly of the capital, with all its poverty, squalor and vulgarity and numerous slums, spills on to the platforms of the railway line and the train doesn't rush past them. It is not avoiding them. It halts, blows its whistle. People – mostly daily-wage labourers, students, and saleswomen with their sacks – get off. A few get in. Stench from the manufacturing units in Daya Basti, from open-air toilets next to the tracks because in the slums teeming with the poor, private toilets are a luxury, and smoke from the stoves get in too. The passengers don't squirm. They are used to it. It's part of their life. The train is part of their life, too.
The coaches are never full. But the train has retained its loyal passengers like Rajinder Singh who once was tempted with the Metro and hopped on to it once to get to work from Mundka. After changing five trains and then boarding a bus to get to work at INA, he ended up spending Rs. 76. One-way ticket on the ring-railway cost only Rs. 4.
He was back on the sooty, grimy train the next day.
“I have been using the ring-railway from 1985. It takes me an hour to get to Daya Basti and then I take another train to Bahadurgarh. This train has never betrayed me. The city has forgotten this exists because I guess they are uncomfortable to see what lies beneath the polish,” he says looking out of the window.
At Inderpuri Halt, a old man with thick, misty glasses had set up his bidi shop on the platform. The shanties had slowly made their way on to the platform. Tarpaulin sheets and colorful mud walls hid little of the squalor, the crumbling lives, the resurgent spirit. They had all spilled on to the platform. The boundaries between private and public had been blurred. They weren't bothered by the oncoming train. The eyes would rest on them for a moment only. They had an understanding with those who stared out at them. Those eyes were not intrusive. They weren't judging them for their situation in life. The train would go on, show other lives.
“Poverty can't be hidden. On both sides you have slums, you have naked children running around,” he says. “Maybe the tourists should not be told that this train is there. Then they will never know this side of the city.”
On the dilapidated tracks that were laid in the 1970s, the drab train travels around the city, exposing its ugly back lanes, the windows that led into dark rooms, exposed the vulnerability of the walls that had cracks on them because nobody bothered to or afford to fix them.
It's a city that you never see from the steel and metal windows of the metro. The metro never criscrosses its path with the ring-railway. But it can be seen. At one point, the tracks run parallel – one above the ground, the metro train perched on the narrow pillars, the other close to the ground.
There are slanted houses that looked bent with all the people that were sharing the small space, there are threadbare curtains covering up the shame of poverty on the way. But there is beauty, too. In the city that's feeding on aspirations, a journey on the ring-rail is comforting. There are so many who have been left behind in the race.
On the tracks, they are the ragpickers who are busy doing drugs. The train doesn't startle them. They are used ot it. It is always on time.
Rajinder Singh, who works in the Delhi Development Authority, said he likes to look out of the window and ruminate. The train ride takes away all his regrets in life. He thinks of God as the train lurches past the numerous stations. He has done well for himself and his family. He can tell that when the stench from the slums gushes in from the windows.
In the distance, from under a sooty footover bridge, Daya Basti emerges. Kamla rushes in with her two daughters – Aasha and Anuradha. She has been living in the jhuggi for the last 10 years.
She was going home in Gorakhpur and the train would take her to New Delhi Railway Station for Rs. 12 only.
Kamla works at a mobile charger assembling unit in Daya Basti and earns Rs. 3000 a month. That's not good enough, she says.
Everytime she takes the ring rail, she thinks about the metro. It looks enticing. But it is so out of reach. The metro doesn't connect with the ring rail at all. Most of the 21 stations on the circular track are in places that are not connected by feeder services. Perhaps nobody thought of giving that luxury to those who used the ring railway. Maybe she will go on it once, she says.
“But where will I go. It can't take me anywhere,” she says.
Her daughter Aasha craned her neck out of the window and pointed to a little lane. That's where her school is, she says.
A mountain of garbage, colourful with pink and yellow plastci bags, hid the school. Then came the tin sheds at Kishan Ganj and then yet another slum.
The train goes around the city. The life along its tracks too goes around in a circle. The misery, the poverty is a vicious circle too.
There are 12 electric trains on the ring rail and it can accommodate 7,000 people. But many have broken off from the circle and from the ring rail. There's not more than two to three percent occupancy in most electrically maintained units.
There are only four ring-rail services in the day – two in the morning starting at 7 a.m. and two in the evening starting at 4:55 p.m. from Lajpat Nagar station.
The people on it are familiar faces from the city. There are sweaty, tense, and nervous faces. A few urchins squat near the door. Others are quiet, absorbed. Only here you know where they return to when their drudgery in the city of the future ends.
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