Sunday, January 13, 2008

Jan 8-12: The story till 12th! (part 4 of 8)

This lad, Manmohan Lal Patel, and me ride in the dark to his village.
This village, Daabri is 3kms away from the highway. Turning away from
the highway is good. The highway is under construction, which means
that it is a mass of stones. This makes riding hell, and turning away
to the rural mud roads provides the sore butt some relief.

We soon reach his house. They are Khushwahas, which seems to indicate
that their job is growing vegetables, pulses, and farming in general.
Manmohan's father is a small farmer and owns about 5-6 acres of land.
The big house(hut) is shared by four families – they are all his
brothers. He grows wheat, channa, mooli, sugarcane, potatoes, brinjal,
chillies, etc. He is a simple man, and leads a simple life, right from
brushing his teeth using neem twigs to eating food at night after a
prayer. He keeps abreast of what goes on in the outside world by means
of the small black and white TV. He has two sons and a daughter, and
he is making it a point to educate his kids. This is heartening to see
in Daabri village, where only 5 kids goto school out of a 100 or so
families!

Our meal at night is simple, but filling: wheat chappaties, tomato and
brinjal curry and papad. I love the mango pickle! The papad is extra
due to the presence of me as the guest. He calls this 'gareeb ka
kaccha khana'. I had observed that a hotel in Sagar had advertised
'kaccha aur pakka khana milta hai' and had wondered what 'kaccha
khana' meant! Turns out that 'kaccha khana' means the regular means
without anything fancy! 'pakka khana' is the goodies like samosa,
kachori, jilebis, etc. I sleep in my sleeping bag on the mat, not
wanting to trouble these guys. They seem to have extra blankets, but
why trouble them to wash it ?

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1 comment:

Gauthaman said...

I am happy to see that there are many humble and kind people in India who are loving and caring towards travellers. They are large hearted beings. :-)