|
|
The middle son Rajpal, an arts graduate from a rural college,
after having lost all hope of getting a job, joins a faction of
the Kisan Union and remains busy in peasant politics, holding
dharnas and gheraos in Chandigarh. The third son Gura in weaned
away from farming by the ‘glamour’ of pop singers of
Ludhiana. He becomes a second-line singer and a Bhangra performer.
Vizir Singh’s daughter Bhupi who had some college education,
in utter disappointment with the family’s penury, elopes with
her boyfriend never to be traced again. Vizir Singh caught in
the debt-trap of a worst kind commits suicide like many
desperate farmers who recently went the same way.
Another well-to-do
Jat farmer Dasaundha Singh Gill, who was known for his
arrogance, has become a pauper and now works as a labourer in
the village. When Bhagtu, repatriated from Turkey becomes a ‘sadhu’
and constructs a ground hut by the grace of ‘Sangat’ at the
‘samad’ (tomb) of the village elder Buurh Singh, Dasaundha,
now Desu, starts working as a ‘dera’ menial going from
door-to-door begging grain for the ‘dera.’ Rajpal, after his
father’s death is left with four kanals of land and now plans
to make both ends meet by selling milk. In the end he is going
to sell vegetables in the Kisan Mandi which his Bihari tenants
have grown in the four-kanal ‘farm,’ as they themselves had
to go to their ‘des’ in an emergency. Vaisakha Singh, his
grandfather, watches everything like Teresias in the ancient
Greek legends. Desu, in his penury goes to beg grain and Rajpal,
in the same condition goes to sell vegetables on behalf of the
Bihari growers. What an irony the grain-givers have become
grain-beggars. On the other hand, the sons of ‘Artias’
(commission agents-cum-money lenders) geometrically multiply
their businesses with each new generation. The four ‘bania’
sons now own four trading establishments but the four peasant
sons have one-fourth of a holding each, throwing them into a
bottomless abyss since they do not know how to diversify and
multiply their sources.
This novel dilates
on the problems of Punjab peasantry in a focussed manner—the
problems associated with their perpetual pauperisation, dowry,
drugs, foreign mania, ‘mandi’ and ‘dera’ culture, their
vulgarisation and indebtedness made worse by the indifference of
the ruling classes. It is a story of absolute decline and fall
of the peasantry in North-West India which is truer than the
truth itself—the Punjab peasantry is only a point of
departure. All politicians, bureaucrats, economists and social
reformers must read this novel if they are really interested in
understanding and alleviating the problems afflicting the
largest segments of our society.
|
WITH
seven collections of short stories and seven novels, Baldev Singh
from Moga has now emerged as an important writer of popular themes
in fiction. Lal Batti, his unconventional novel about life in
Kolkata’s red-light area was well received by the Punjabi readers
and social reformers. Baldev made a mark as a writer of sensitive
prose with his three-volume Sarhaknama (the road narrative),
a series of creative writings about the life of truck drivers in
India.
