Preface

If there is anything that I long to be

It’s the longing to not be

I want to go for a walk

Along the narrow winding roads

Cut in the mountains

Sip hot tea at the tea stall around the bend

Walk some more and

Soak in the air

Soak in the sunshine

Sit by the roadside

With not a thought in my head

Beat some coffee in a blue mug and

Run my fingers through the sunrise

Watch the sun drip out of me

As it melts out of sight

Run my fingers through my hair

And not know it was me or you

See myself melting into the creation

And not know my definition

To be has been breathtaking

To not be will be freedom...

Earth

From soil came form

To express itself, life entered the form

Life was not the form

The form was the vehicle

That sometimes drove life

And

That sometimes life drove

Into trenches

Into pits

Into sand

Onto rocks

Life danced and toiled

In a journey embroiled

Until

It started to uncoil

Life pulled and resisted

And tugged and twisted

It struggled and fought

Its way up

To the top

Through the water

Through the fire

Through the air

Through space

And then into nothing

It blended

Life exited the form

To find itself

And form became soil

For the farmer to till and toil…

1

Ajmer, Rajasthan, 1748

“Sangram!” he screamed in his gruff, thundering voice.

“Sangram Singh!!!” the voice echoed through the thick stone walls of the palace, sounding heavier than the first time, even though the first time too it sounded as if it had no scope of getting louder.

A small, demure looking man with a pockmarked face and a forehead full of sweat beads came running down the ostentatious corridor of the palace. He wore a crushed, khaki uniform and looked not more than 35 five years of age. His black oiled hair was combed backwards and his unshaved, pale, dark skin appeared tired and dull. He clearly had been woken out of his sleep and apparently could not manage to catch up on it to replenish his languishing energy levels.

“Didn’t you hear my voice the first time, you stupid man?” asked the impudent voice, as he saw Sangram Singh approaching.

“Sarkar,” replied Sangram, his hands folded in humility.

“How much time will it take you to take me to Delhi?” commanded the man, standing tall and intimidating, looming especially larger than life next to the puny figure of Sangram Singh.

“Approximately 12 hours, Sarkar,” replied Sangram Singh, with a certainty that Jai Singh was not accustomed to hearing. He understood only servile submissiveness.

The sharp sound that emanated from the sudden and forceful slap that Sangram Singh received on his face almost deafened him. His head swirled from the impact. The slap had burnt his skin because of its intensity. More than the skin, it burnt the man’s
self-respect.

“Nine hours is what I give you. Get the coach ready in five minutes. Go now. Don’t stand here looking like a corpse.”

Sangram walked back through the corridor hurriedly, his head hanging low. He averted his gaze from all who had witnessed the scene, feeling deeply insulted and diminished. He had slept for less than two hours after returning from the last hunting trip, neither had he eaten a decent meal since. His head spun from the combined effect of the lack of food and sleep and from the excess of what he had just borne.

Jai Singh was an intimidating man, in size, stature, and temperament. The palace walls shuddered and transmitted the shudders to its inhabitants when they heard the Master’s voice in its complete ferocity. Being born into riches, he had never given a thought to anyone or anything below his stature. It was not really his fault since he was simply oblivious of anybody being a living entity beyond a purpose that they were to fulfil if they belonged to a status beneath his. He could only look at people and comprehend them with material and physical capacities greater than him. Any other kind of capacities were neither important nor worth spending time on, for if these capacities were not lacking, other aspects to a person automatically fell into place.

He was a descendant of a royal family, the riches of which had grown manifolds since his birth, as pieces of land got added to the Zamindari of the family day after day. His lineage was evident to anyone who looked at him even once. His salt and peppered hair at the age of 45 lent him the look of a seasoned elite. With a height of a little over six feet and broad shoulders to accompany, he was hard to miss even in thick crowds teeming with celebrities. The long moustaches were curled up haughtily at the ends and the thick long sideburns covering a large part of his fair cheeks. The eyes were deep-set and gave the impression of grasping the intricate details of people that mattered to him.

Jai Singh looked very regal in his three-piece black suit and the crisp white shirt underneath the jacket. It gave him an imperial aura that had been studied and perfected over the years. Besides this borrowed attire, he had several other reasons for which to thank the English men who were ruling his country.

The white-skinned people had gauged his receptivity and accorded him with more than adequate flattery and admiration. Their policies had also accorded him with more and more wealth. The districts under his Zamindari kept increasing as the tyranny of the British on the peasants kept increasing.

When the avarice of the Goras increased, and the Posta Dana trade, better known today as Poppy Seed trade, took them captive, the desperation of the villagers increased. There was a direct relationship between their desperation and the loans they needed from Jai Singh. The loans once taken could be repaid only with the land that they had tilled for generations. It was quite simple.

Slowly, the Zamindari of many villages fell into his lap as he lent money to many peasants who were not in a position to return it back to him. The tax that the British charged, coupled with the interest that Raja Jai Singh charged left the villagers penniless. He simply sent his right-hand man, Kunwar Singh, to collect the revenues and the plots of land due to him every quarter and sent the cut to the rulers. Reins of power were in his hands and life had become simple and pleasurable. It left him with a lot of time and money to spend as he liked.

***

“Hira Lal!!”

Kunwar Singh’s voice boomed through the open fields as his well-fed horse, with a shiny brown coat galloped into the village. The rhythmic thuds of the hooves on the dusty brown road of the village alerted the men in the fields. They turned to look at each other, with fear-filled eyes, their turbans hiding the lines of worry and stress on their foreheads. Clouds of dust rose in the air and the birds settled on the nearby trees flew about. Their screechy chirping sounded like a bad omen.

Two men rode behind Kunwar Singh, their beady eyes glinting and their long moustaches curled up identically as if they were part of a uniform they had to wear. Their thick bodies seemed ready to sap out the minimal energy that remained inside of Hiralal’s emaciated body, at the slightest of command from their Kunwar Sa.

The bodies of the three men loomed large and threatening. The tillers shivered with fear and the fields became silent except for an occasional chirping of a bird. It was not their turn today as the name being called out was that of the farmer who worked on that little field at the end of the row of farms to the east. This was not much of a consolation though. It was not their turn today but it might be tomorrow. More than half the village had already been acquired by the Zamindar Sahib.

A short, dark-skinned, skeleton of a man came running out from the east end. He bowed to the man on the horseback. The horse moved back and forth restlessly.

“Your payment to Sahib was due last month. When are you bringing it? Just because no one comes asking for it, you do not need to pay? How can you live such a life? Totally indebted and worthless? Is there anything in this miserable life of yours that you can call your own? I repeat my question. When are you bringing the money?” asked Kunwar Singh in his loud and harsh voice.

Hiralal shifted uncomfortably. His legs were shivering. Sweat trickled down his back. With a lot of difficulties, he managed to speak.

“Maalik, I am penniless right now. I have not even been able to feed my children properly, Maalik,” replied Hiralal in his low, croaky voice, as he dropped to the ground with his hands clasped in front of his head. His body was shrivelled with heat, hunger, and fatigue. Beads of sweat and tears mixed together ran down his dusty cheeks, pushing their way forward across the stubble on his face. He was the face of abject poverty, grief, and self-disrespect.

“Three days,” said Kunwar Singh, exhibiting his complete lack of realization to the reality of another human. His reality was defined by his own self and no one else could invade that. He turned his horse around and galloped away, without taking into himself even the slightest shred of grief that these people and the soil emanated. His reality was limited to his own existence and not an inch beyond that.

“Maalik… I cannot, Maalik… Please listen to me…” cried Hiralal, as clouds of dust blown by the galloping horses blew, soiling his face and clothes further. He fell to the ground, clenching the soil in his fists and sobbing, his muffled cries for help getting absorbed into the soil. Maybe, if he cried enough, the soil that he had spent his life tilling and toiling in, would relent. Maybe, it would give birth to a miracle. So much sprouted out of this soil; it had fed so many generations.

The soil had magic mixed into it, his ancestors had told him. He had grown up listening to stories about the miracles that soil was capable of. It could even throw out gold if it wanted. It was one of the five ingredients that made up the creation: Earth, Water, Fire, Air, and Space. Surely, it had the power to create something that could save Hiralal, didn’t it? Hiralal’s tears fell on the soil, got mixed into it, and were absorbed. The earth drank up the water and the salt.

It had absorbed the tears and it had absorbed the cries. Surely, it could absorb Hiralal too.

The country would gain its independence, eventually. After 200 years of being ruled by a foreign power which would leave it crumbling, weak, and destroyed, it would try to rebuild its backbone with the frugal resources that were left at its disposal, and with the burden of legacies that the rulers’ policies promised to leave behind on its shoulders.

Resources were being sucked dry, and they were being sucked dry, not because a couple of lac of people from The East India Company decided that they wanted to suck them dry, but because the rich and the powerful Indians like Jai Singh joined forces with them, time and time again, in order to grow richer and more powerful at the cost of not only contemporaries but also national pride and freedom.

How dearly the nation’s weak and emaciated would pay, was too evident and too trivial an issue to be reckoned with. The economy would see devastation at the hands of successive rulers. The Mansabdari System, Diwani System under the Mughals, the Mahalwari System, and the Permanent Settlement System under the British, had all kept one thing in mind very diligently – Revenue and profits at the top and levels close to the top; the farmers and tillers simply had to comply or get wiped out under the burden that they could not carry.

Hiralal and his wife’s lifeless bodies were found curled inside an old abandoned well on the outskirts of the village. The pyres were made of wood gathered by the other villagers and the bodies were set on fire by their son, Keshava. Keshava understood that he had lost his parents but the potency had not yet not lodged inside.

The eight-year-old little boy wandered aimlessly and was given food and water by the inhabitants, who knew that a similar fate awaited them and their children too. Possibly someone would feed their children since they had fed another’s. They also knew that food donation was the highest donation that mankind could make. One could neutralize their Karmas by feeding the hungry. Each morsel was precious, and so Annadanam was a revered activity.

Annadanam is one of the most compassionate and virtuous acts of kindness. The people of this fragmented, torn, and beaten land believed that completely. They considered it auspicious to donate food to the Yogis who came asking for Bhiksha. They believed that the fire that burnt in the stomach of any living being was equivalent to the fire of the Yagna that is performed to purify the atmosphere and appease the deities. Satisfying the fire that burnt in the stomach of a human was akin to performing a thousand such Yagnas.

But their beliefs soon got shaken. The belief systems of this land were being torn apart, and confidence in the substance of its culture and heritage was being put to a harsh test. A lot of it was already crumbling under the pressure.

A lot more was to be lost in time, dissipated and destroyed by the relentless attacks over hundreds of years of foreign invasions. The invaders imposed their own beliefs and religions on the unsuspecting or helpless natives. Consecrated spaces were plundered and destroyed beyond recognition. These spaces were built with the specific purpose of calming and uplifting the vibrations of all those who spent time here. The vibrations of these spaces lingered, but the forms that housed these vibrations were razed to the ground.

As the outside beliefs got woven into the local beliefs, what emerged was a confused and weak concoction. Their own unadulterated heritage took aeons to resurface. The confidence in their heritage and the strength of their scriptures became evident to them at a later point in time. This continued to happen even when these people began regaining, not just their physical freedom, but more importantly, their mental freedom. It happened when they got the time to reflect and pursue the truth.

***

Delhi had become a weekend destination for Jai Singh. In the glory of the British Raj, he was inebriated with the relationships that had been mutually beneficial and rewarding. Whatever was happening to the nation was of a secondary concern to him, if at all. What mattered was that he was prospering, while he played the cards that destiny had dealt out to him. He would continue to prosper till he was associated with the men of political weight and stature, and Delhi was a zone of connecting with such elites.

“Why are you leaving for Delhi today? You just came home this morning.” A woman’s voice spoke from behind him.

With irritation, evident in the tightly knit brows, he turned around to look quizzically in the direction from where the voice had managed to emanate. He peered at his wife’s face who quickly downcast her eyes after managing to ask him the question that she had already contemplated would ignite a passionate array of insults hurled at her.

“How many times have I told you not to butt into my affairs? You don’t understand anything, do you? It is inauspicious when you interrogate me just before I am to leave, daft woman!” He howled, in a low tone, angered by her newfound vocal guts.

The rude rebuke was inevitable though, for this had become a non-negotiable part of the relationship that they shared or whatever was left of it. For years she had silently witnessed various acts of vulgar and uninhibited behaviour being played out in front of her. Although these left her bewildered and dilapidated, she had never found a voice strong enough to raise and question him.