From Punjab, with love

The smell of fresh earth mixed with oxygen-laden air, plucking fruits off trees, the sight of homemade butter melting on hot aloo parathas — Shivya Nath brings you a slice of rural life writing in The Hindu

  

As a kid, I’ve often heard my grandmother talk about growing up in our native Punjab. I pictured little boys and girls running across big fields, plucking sour fruits and wild flowers, returning home at noon to the aroma of curries made with veggies fresh off the farm and paranthas laden with home-made white butter. I never imagined waking up to these images someday, given how they seemed only to be romanticized in the memories of people I knew.

In a desperate attempt to break the monotony of Delhi’s city life, we’ve impulsively decided to board a train to Abohar, a small town in Ferozepur district of Punjab, a town that Google could tell us almost nothing about. Eight hours and a short drive later, I’ve found myself in the midst of a 400-acre fruit farm. I now sit by a gurgling stream, watching the first rays of sunrise through the white, thin barks of Eucalyptus trees. I extend my hand towards what look like snowflakes dotted on dark green shrubs, only they don’t melt at my touch. I am in the most fertile cotton belt of the country and November happens to be the plucking season.

The smell of fresh earth mixed with oxygen-laden air reminds me of A.R. Rahman; this must be the aroma of our soil he refers to in his music. Just like in my grandmother’s stories, a whiff of freshly cooked aloo parathas and homemade butter floats in the air as we approach the farmhouse we are staying at. Our host Kishan, from the nearby pind (a village in the native Punjabi), ensures that we have a hearty breakfast. Heftily built with a thick Punjabi accent, he was a little intimidating at first, but breaking the ice came naturally to him. After greeting us at the Abohar train station, he immediately offered that we drive his jeep to the farm, which, for the sake of survival, our half-asleep selves politely declined!

As we busily devour the yummy parathas, Kishan rolls his long moustache and invites us to dinner at his own house in the pind. We’ve all heard stories of Punjabi hospitality, but to experience it first hand is different altogether.

We walk along a narrow clearing with tall Eucalyptus trees on either side, past ripening guavas, brown fields of Basmati rice, bitter gourds hiding away in their roped enclosures, water chestnuts growing out of mucky green ponds, and women in saris expertly plucking cotton off the shrubs. I am tempted by the half-ripe kinnows that glow with an orange-green tinge atop short trees. Kishan, as though reading my mind, plucks a few and tosses them towards me, only to smile as he sees me cringe at their tanginess.

That night, we make our way to Kishan’s house in the pind. I have been to villages in other parts of India, but Punjab is different. Kishan’s house might be very basic, but it is soothingly airy and spacious, much more than the cramped little flats of Delhi that I’ve grown used to. Kishan offers the men drinks, while the women pass around a bottle of Coke, and conversation begins to flow at a homely pace. He talks about life in the pind, the future of his two sons, his romantic encounter with his wife in Jammu, and captivating tales about his extended family.

A few drinks later, Kishan’s wife, who had slipped away into the kitchen after exchanging a brief greeting with us, announces dinner. Laid on the table are saag and baingan ki sabzi, made from veggies fresh off the farm, and an assortment of other vegetables and lentils. In less than five minutes, we have forgotten our city manners; we are licking our fingers, sharing our plates, gossiping about people we barely know, and laughing at a friend who can barely understand Kishan’s alcohol-tinged Punjabi accent. While my friends struggle with the language, I am glad for bits of it I’ve subconsciously picked up while living in a Punjabi household, perhaps my only surviving Punjabi trait.

Evening turns to night, and as we part ways, Kishan offers to accompany us to the Indo-Pak border at Sadqi the next afternoon, with some homemade lassi for the way. He also promises to invite along his friend who lives close to the border and would make a good guide for all our questions. A single weekend in Punjab has convinced me that we, city-people, have much to learn about egalitarianism from our counterparts in rural India.

I suddenly understand what my grandmother meant when she said that living in Punjab is like being part of one big family, and I long to live in the world she grew up in.

The author specialises in digital marketing for rural tourism initiatives in India.

Punjab, 1940s

India-The Punjab, a silent teaching film distributed by Encyclopaedia Brittanica Films Inc about the undivided Punjab in the 1940s

I may be reborn as a human in Punjab

That I may be reborn as a human in Punjab,

to this very land I may return

To this hacked, chewed up earth,

in a modest home

Of a modest caste I may be known

On a leafless tree an unlucky bird

I may sing that very song of separation

On the moonless night I may visit His Pond of Nectar*

On the full-moon night I may bathe in the river Chenab of

love.

*Amritsar (lit. pond of nectar) – Sikhs’ holiest shrine

-Harbhajan Singh
(Translated by Madan Gopal Singh)
photograph by Amarjit Chandan





Bengali brides for Punjabi men

Men from Punjab's Malwa region, notorious for its skewed sex-ratio, are bringing girls from Bengal to marry, for a payment, reports Jatinder Preet in The Sunday Guardian

Nishabar Singh of Lehra in Sangrur district paid Rs 50,000 to arrange for a bride from Kolkata for his 35-year-old son Dulla. Tek Ram from the same village, who arranged the match, insists this does not amount to purchasing the bride. The money was for arrangements on weddings and other expenses, he claims. Among other expenses he includes the money that has to be paid to the person arranging the match in Kolkata.

Known as Teku in the area, he himself is married to a girl from Kolkata. Teku says he is just helping others who cannot find suitable brides in Punjab.

Take the case of Dulla, he explains. Dulla was a drug addict and was known to be a petty thief. His father Nishabar Singh, knowing well that he would not find a match for his "ageing" son in Punjab, approached Teku. Teku, who has his wife's family in Kolkata and has the experience of arranging many such inter-cultural matches, found a girl for Dulla.

"There is so much poverty there," he observes when recounting his first trip to Kolkata 15 years ago as an assistant to a truck driver. "It's not only about Dulla, I also helped a needy family who could not afford to spend on their daughter's marriage," he says.

A girl from another poor Bengali family was brought to Punjab by Mithu Singh of Lehragaga when his first wife died at childbirth. 35-year-old Mithu refuses to talk about it.

Puran Singh from village Khokhar found a Bengali bride after he could not find a suitable girl here. Similarly, another girl, Rinki from Kolkata is married to a truck driver from village Jawanda. Her sister Tikli is married into another Punjabi family in Malerkotla.

Teku says he has arranged around 25-30 such marriages in the area. There are many girls ready to be married to anybody who can pay for it, he claims. Teku talks of a girl in Kolkata whose family has approached him to look for a man in Punjab to marry her off. All he knows of the girl is that she is fair and is around 22-23 years of age. "It's my responsibility," he says, vouching for the girl as he cites his own marriage as a successful experiment.

His wife Pinki plays down the scope for any problems because of cultural differences. She was married to Teku 15 years ago and like any other girl who adopts her husband's family and their ways, she too has adapted herself, she says in fluent Punjabi. She asserts that she is happy here and adds, "Men are alike everywhere."

Searching for narrative in a photograph

PAKISTAN. Lahore. 1948. Women's camp. (MAGNUM/Henri Cartier-Bresson)

There they undergo medical examinations (to control epidemics). A woman taken there from the time of the August '47 troubles has been reunited with her husband but is detained pending verifications before she can leave prison. Camp has 800, but they come and go continually. This woman was separated from her husband for 10 months. They found each other with aid of Indian organization set up for purpose when Pakistan sent these women to India.

This is the description that follows the photograph in Magnum collection, one of the very few in public domain of the period encompassing partition and the events thereafter. This is also rare in the sense that unlike the pictures depicting the general narrative of the times, this photograph tells the story of particular - a particular individual. Of all the people in the frame the photographer is interested in the perspective of the 'detained woman'. He is, in fact, standing inside the facility with bars to keep others out. On the other side is, we are told, her husband, from whom she has been separated from ten months. The overwhelming moment has her hanging both her arms around the man through the bars, slightly hunched forward but not close enough to embrace fully. The accumulated pain coupled with the relief at seeing someone she seems to be writ large on her face.

The story, however, remains tantalisingly hanging there. The picture doesn't tell much. Who is this woman? How was she separated from her husband and where was she for ten months? What became of her ultimately? Did she go back to her family ultimately? We are not even sure if she is a Sikh, a Hindu or a Muslim.

There are no clear answers, at least not in this photograph and the description.

We have a context though, well documented, mostly in writing and some through films and literature. Women were the worst sufferers of the mindless violence perpetrated across the divide against each other. "Nationalism and communalism were the two most significant ideologies during this period, and both of them placed women at the very heart of their discourses and actions," according to Furrukh A Khan, who did a research based on the oral narratives of women from the Indian subcontinentwho survived the Partition. He wrote "The women who suffered during this time period were later considered to be social outcasts by their communities and, in a number of cases, by their families. It was because of such treatment of these women victims that it was deemed acceptable for women to kill themselves or to be killed off by their relatives in order to escape being abducted or sexually molested by men from the other communities."

"Throughout the chaos, both planned and random abduction of women were carried out, particularly in situations in which large numbers of refugees -disoriented and inadequately protected - had assembled or were on the move," writes Bina D'Costa in Nationbuilding, Gender and War Crimes in South Asia, as she cites the heart-rending testimonies of survivor women she interviewed.

'Recovery operations' were launched by governments on both sides soon thereafter with establishment of Military Evacuee Organisations. District transit camps were set up in Lahore and Jullundhur for non-Muslim and Muslim women, respectively, informs Bina D'Costa. Camps on both sides of the borders where 'recovered' women were kept were visited by the men who had abducted them earlier,in order to persuade the women to return. D'Costa emphasises it was not that all women were captives and wanted nothing more than to be rescued by the state. In fact, there are clear instances of women who refused to be 'recovered' on both sides. "Some women were happy and settled in their locations." writes Urvashi Butalia in her essay Abducted and Widowed Women: Questions of Sexuality and Citizenship During Partition. She quotes Social workers such as Kamlaben Patel and Damyanti Sahgal who worked in the Central Recovery Operation, speaking eloquently of the women who did not want to return.
According to Amrik Singh, quite a number of these women had got married (though forcibly), and after the initial turmoil adjusted to that life and as such were not willing to migrate. Amrik Singh writes in The Partition in Retrospect, the cases of recovered women fell under two categories: (1) Women who did not object to being evacuated and were called ‘indisputable’ cases and the other group called ‘disputable’ cases involving women who refused to be evacuated for one reason or the other or where the abductors refused to surrender them or where the disposal of children created emotional or legal problems. Many of them got pregnant and a few having met good persons were not prepared to leave their ‘husbands’ for an uncertain future. So, when they were forcibly evacuated by the police and brought to the transit camps, a number of them escaped.
Butalia cites public records to suggest the number of Hindu and Sikh women abducted in Pakistan was roughly 33,000—although some estimates put this figure at 50,000—(this did not include women from Kashmir and it was felt that if these were added the figure could well have reached 50,000). Lists received from Pakistan showed the figure of Muslim women abducted in India to be around 21,000.
The sad story continues with men employing same tools with similar tragic consequences in the name of religion as evidenced in Delhi and some other parts of India in 1984 and Gujarat in 20022. D' Costa could well be talking of 1984 or 2002 as she writes, "Horrendous as they were, such experiences of women were regarded as little more than a product of the chaos of the times, as an abnormal occurrence in a society that had been undergoing severe temporary dislocation for decades. yet this prescription ignored the socially embedded nature of gendered violence."

Andrew J Major agrees wholeheartedly. In his book ‘The Chief Sufferers’: Abduction of Women during the Partition of the Punjab he wrote, "... it would seem to be quite wrong to regard the rape and abduction of Punjabi women in 1947 as a product of anomie of the times, as an abnormal occurrence in a society undergoing severe temporary dislocation, for that would ignore the fact that violence against women is embedded in everyday relationships in this society."

                                                                                                                                                         -Jatinder Preet