To me still that looks golden….

                                   Past life’s minute observation

 In the ‘composition of writing’, the big role is played by the experience and microscopic observation of the writer. This role, resulting out into a perception of the writer can not be ignored. And, if such  content is supposed not to send a thrilling sensation, at least, some interesting outcome it ably may generate. May be, at the bend of life when you happened to observe, experience or encounter some incident or event, being yourself young in age, you were green to express that so impressively.

But the virtue of your microscopic observation of surroundings, can not be ignored. Since on coming to the ripe age, you would be able to jot down that as an anecdote in a distinctive format. The main element of experience based description is, its vividness. In contrast, a fiction endeavor is successful only when the fictional drive is very high. Up to a notable period of life, I mean up to my good youth, I was blessed to live a life saturated with pastoral experiences, as a part of the rural backdrop. The lifestyle of the so called “upper”, “middle” and “lower” class of the rural ecosystem, I observed to a close proximity.

The minor modes of happiness of that ecosystem may seem ridiculous to the urbanized people. But the factor of animation, in that pastoral life, cannot be ignored. Indian village life had always been an agricultural economy. There, “class” of a villager was always had to be determined by the measurement of arable holdings he possessed. He might be a man with big arable holding living a life in a tattered condition but an indirect impressive “status” ha carried.

                                              Bizarre facts

  Very interestingly, sometimes, a kind of turmoil occurred amid the owners of ‘big holding’ and ‘small holding,’  This used to occur, when any one of them got harnessed with “petty facility” to facilitate his vocation. I am talking here about the decades of 1960 and 1970 of the last century. It may sound bizarre to the present generation, the facts I am going to relate. But we should remember that it too was the part and parcel of our “social history.”

That were the time when all village main roads and side roads (i.e. lane, narrow path etc.) were roughly hewn. In the summer season such roads were filled with ankle deep dust heavily. People often walked bare footed, and when a person happened to tread on such road, a trail of dust followed him. This made other denizens guessed from distance that some one is coming.

                                                          Rainy season

Meanwhile in the rainy season, same dusty roads were doomed to transformed into muddy sludge. The outgrowth of roadsides’ fence’s wild shrubs, covered the major portion of the road making any person invisible walking on the road. It was hard to judge who came in and left out the village. No electricity was there in villages and in the long cold wintry nights, to water the agricultural land, people had to obtain the irrigation water through aqua ducts connected to local canals.

In those pitch dark nights, farmers according to their “class” tried to manage the lighting facility. “Lower class” farmers generally kept on burning the old, rejected vulcanized Tyre of bicycles, that were given to burn slowly but emit an effective light. The “middle class” farmers depended upon the light emitted from the Kerosin oil lit “lantern”.

                                                   Torch light

Whilst “upper class” kept himself harnessed with dry cell ‘torch.” At that time “Eveready” and “Geep” were the known brands of “torches”. This “upper class”was given to the tendency to throw the “beam” of the torch light from his distant holdings to towards cluster of houses of village and to wave that beam intermittently. This was done on purpose, so that all villagers might come to know what kind of advanced facility he was in possession to irrigate his lands.

Again in this “upper class” there were further categories of torches, meant, stratum of farmers. The so called affluent farmers had had the long torch with a battery of six dry cells to support the light. other “medium class” had torch with four dry cells and “lower class” simply a torch with two dry cells.

                                  Owning a radio set, meant something

Likewise in a village as such, merely two to three families owned radio transistors with dry cells. Up to that time the small radio sets with two dry cells had not been introduced in rural side. So the financial status of the family was counted with the number of the dry cells supporting the radio set i. e. four cells or six cells. It implied that the high volume of sound generated by the radio-set, marked the high social position of the family. As on today, generally people prefer only two bands radio set i. e. short wave and medium wave. At that time such radio sets were available with two,three, five and seven bands to determine the social position ( though numbers of radio stations were limited).

There are so many things that may sound “trivial” as on today, but not in that scenario of that era. Some other anecdotes later on. Penned by—Vinay Pharasi