Reminiscences about red tape
ASHOK LAVASA’s article ‘The lure of maximum government’ (The Tribune, September 25), prompted me to take a walk down memory lane. I was born at Majra village (Dubaldhan), now in Haryana’s Jhajjar district. As we didn’t have calendars or a system of record-keeping then, my father somehow related my birth to the Quit India Movement. August 10, 1942, got recorded as my date of birth; the system worked on the basis of trust, as when I was taken for admission to school. My only memory is of the cockroach that jumped out when the teacher opened the admission register.
Our post office was at Beri, five miles away. The only connection was through a bullock cart dirt track. My father would go to Beri every quarter to collect his accumulated military pension of Rs 260 per month, which also included his gallantry award grant. He travelled on horseback and carried a revolver since he had to pass through a wooded thicket called the bani. It was frequented by outlaws carrying locally made weapons. These bandits were called farairee, derived from the Urdu word faraar.
Today, Beri is a tehsil, replacing Jhajjar, which, in turn, has been upgraded to a district, but the working of the bureaucracy continues to be mysterious — perhaps more than before. Our family has since moved out of the village, but we are still rooted there. We wanted to donate the haveli — where we were born — to the government for use as a dispensary or post office. I would write to the CM, from where my letter would travel to the department concerned, to the DC and then to the Tehsildar before it was given a quiet burial. ‘More government’ moves more lumberingly. Finally, I gave up; a forced gift has no value.
I visit the village annually to distribute prizes among meritorious students on behalf of a trust run by my family. Travel is now breezy on tarmac roads. I make it a point to walk through the streets and visit the haveli built by my father in 1932. I stand and reminisce in the dark corner where I was born on a string cot. The village midwife was the only ‘doctor’; she used ash as a disinfectant. The birth of a boy was welcomed by clanging a thali. Peepal leaves were hung on a string outside the door, indicating a happy event. It was believed that they also served to purify the air.
Mud houses lining the streets are all replaced by brick and cement structures. Dogs still abound, perhaps of the seventh generation from the time I walked these streets barefoot to the district-board middle school. The school had no toilets; there were enough open spaces around. A pitcher of water with a tumbler was kept in one corner of the compound. We drank with cupped hands. I am unsure if the neem tree in the centre is the one under which we sat in classes I and II and parroted arithmetic tables. Promotion to Class III was a big event since we were allotted a room, albeit without brick flooring.
