A World Within (7 page)

‘We witnessed our homes, villages and centuries old town and its pristine charm vanishing into the depths of Gobind Sagar Lake: Old town had temples going back to seventh and eighth centuries. Temples of Rangnath-ji and Murli Manohar were so grand and beautiful.’

I have heard it all before. This part of his life is intact in his memory and he remembers it minutely.

‘Raja’s palace and the Rang Mahal were majestic with its
sheesh mahal
[hall of mirrors] and murals and artistic splendour. You know Bilaspur was a planned town? At that time it had different areas earmarked for the bazaars, public residences, palaces, offices, gardens and other institutions. There were so many peepal, mango and jamun trees. There were huge gardens with beautiful flowers. Satluj flowed near the groves of fruit trees and vast paddy fields on either sides of the river.’

12

31 May 2010

Today Dadoo again remembered his ancestral home.

‘Chaunta was the most beautiful place in the world till the dam came into being. The land was so fertile that even gold was cheaper in comparison. But you know your grandfather sent me to Bhanoopli to study at the age of four. I had to stay with my mama-ji,’ he said lost in his thoughts.

‘It was good, Dadoo,’ I say trying to pep him up.

‘What good? I was so small, only a baby when I was sent away from my parents. Since the age of four I did not get their love and affection. That time there were no schools in my village. ’

‘Dadoo tell me something about your school,’ I ask interested.

‘My first day at school …,’ he paused and then continued, ‘I had to go alone and I was terrified, you know. I thought that someone will take me to the school on the first day just like when I had gone to the fields in my village for the first time and I had held my father’s hand. But my mama-ji simply told me, “Look, the school is quite near from here and other children are also going, you just tag along with them.”’

‘Oh,’ I murmur as I see the fear in his eyes, the fear of a four-year-old.

‘I was terrified at that time, I really did not know what to do, where I was going, what was happening, what exactly the school is going to be like and I tremblingly followed the four other kids going to the school. There were kids walking behind me too but they were all in a gang, they knew each other, I was the only lone guy travelling to school.’

I had started feeling guilty as it dawned on me that school was a traumatic experience for him. Before I could change the subject he said, ‘I remember when it rained very badly and I was drenched to the bone, shivering in cold, I would dream to get a small glass of hot milk with freshly cooked food upon reaching home. I longed for something hot and warm, but then a dread settled that it should not happen the way it happened yesterday, or what happened every day. Whenever I reached home and asked for food, I was curtly told, “Is this the time for food? No one has eaten yet!” The look in their eyes was not inviting at all and my hunger would instantly die, and once everyone had finished eating, they would serve some stale maize rotis – must have been two-days old,’ he paused.

‘It was dry and hard, I could barely eat it. They used to give me some pickle with the rotis, but it would only have the masala.’

I recalled he told me that Dadi would always serve him a soft, hot maize roti – fresh from the chulah with a blob of white butter – and forced him to eat an extra roti every time.

Now I badly wanted to change the topic.

‘Day after day, I always felt that I did not get enough food to eat in that house, I was always hungry. Every day was a struggle because every day your stomach asked for food,’ he whispered.

‘But, Dadoo, when grandfather came—’

‘—Yes,’ he interrupted, ‘whatever joy I got was when my father came to meet me, he brought pinnis and other eatables made by my mother like khoya and kachori. He would also give me money and buy me little things. But he only stayed there for a day or two.’

‘Dadoo, he had work to do …’ I add.

‘Those were the best days, I would get to eat the desi ghee pinnis, ladoos, panjeeri, mathis and other homemade delicacies including pickle, but the bag of pinnis vanished as father went back, I never got the snacks later.’

I am confused, Dadoo definitely did not have an exciting childhood, he had education but with it there was a separation from his family. He told me that whenever there was a holiday of two-three days he waited for his father to come. He waited every Saturday for someone to come and take him away to the village, he was too small to travel on his own, but no one came. He wanted to run away but was scared of his father. If he ran back to his village and reached home, his mother would be so happy to see him but his father would be angry, and scold him – so he stayed there, sad and lonely.

His father came two or three times in a year to see him and once in a year at the time of annual vacations to take him home. But for him every week was traumatic and every Saturday was painful, every Sunday a torture. He had to stay put, help in the house – bring water, clean utensils, help in cleaning the house, carry chopped woods and do other sundry jobs. Sunday was also the day when he had to hear his cousin’s scathing comments. They made fun of him, ridiculed him. He cried when he was alone, but in front of others he always put on a brave face as if nothing mattered to him.

I am quiet, I have nothing to say. His mind shifts and he speaks highly of his father who educated him.

I retort, ‘How great was your grandfather who made your father an engineer in the year 1920!’

He nods understandingly, ‘For a few years your grandfather had worked in Lahore. He had done his engineering from Lucknow.’

‘Why did he leave the job?’ I ask.

‘Family circumstances – my grandfather died at a very young age, his brothers were also very young. So he had to come back and become a moneylender like his father.’

I am glad he remembers his past clearly.

13

3 June 2010

‘I want you to read this,’ Dadoo says to me.

‘What?’

‘This,’ he hands me a photo copied piece of paper.

‘From where did you get this?’

‘It was in my files.’

I nod and read, ‘Bilaspur lies in a spacious valley through which the Setlej [
sic
] winds its long and fertilising course, while, in the distance, high and waving hills crowned with villages, stretched for several miles, the snowy peaks of the Himalaya being distinctly visible on the horizon. The valley is extremely fertile and every tropical plant flourishes in richer profusion here, than in most other parts of Hindusthan [
sic
], as if the great author of all nature has lavished his gifts on it without any reserve. The sun was sinking when I first gazed on this beautiful scene; the river rolled proudly on beneath the garden where I stood, surrounded on every side by a treasury of fragrant flowers, among which, rich orange and citron-trees entangled with jasmines, and groups of magnolias, wafted their exquisite perfume around, in the descending dews. The stars and moon rose one by one, not a breath was felt; the lofty palms rustled, and gently stirred their leaves, as if some spirit breathed upon them; the tress were lighted up by fire flies, and within their deep recesses was heard the soft twittering of the birds and shriller tones of a kind of mantis, which has its dwelling in citron trees; in the distance bright lamp shining through the night pointed out the temple, where loud voices and noisy drums were sounding to the prays of their idols; the fantastic costumes, the dreamy air, all combining together, might well have inspired the coldest spectator to exclaim, as he gazed. This is the very India of which I have dreamed!’

I look at the paper again, it is from
Travels in Kashmir and the Punjab
by Baron Charles Hugel, a German traveller. He had visited Bilaspur in 1838.

‘How many places do you remember of your past, Dadoo?’ I ask.

‘Una, Bhanupli, Daroli, Anandpur Sahib, Bhabour Sahib – I have relations in all these places. Your grandfather did matric from Una.’

We are quiet again and then he says, ‘Sometimes, I feel that how could I be a good man when I was not even brought up by my parents but always stayed outside in peoples’ houses, at relatives’ homes.’

‘You are a good man, Dadoo.’

He shakes his head, ‘I had no shoulder to cry on and no one to love. In the boarding school during my tenth, I ate clay and limestone. There was no one to tell me that this was wrong. At my mama-ji’s place many a times I was ill-treated and given leftover food.’

I feel sad and give him a hug.

‘I miss my parent’s love and wonder how life would have been different if I had lived with them as my kids have lived with me.’

I don’t know what to say, I keep quiet.

A little later, I try to soothe him and tell him that his parents had done a good job by sending him out of the village because they wanted to educate him.

He looks at me. His eyes full of tears, ‘You will not understand.’

Something snaps in me and I blurt, ‘Dadoo, will you forget us?’

He looks at me in shock, ‘It is not possible to forget your children, one cannot forget one’s children even if one forgets everything else.’

I am deliriously happy.

But this turns out to be an illusion.

14

This is what the experts have to say about Alzheimer’s, ‘This is a disease, an irreversible progressive brain disorder that occurs gradually resulting in memory loss and unusual behaviour, personality changes, and a decline in thinking abilities and these, above all, are all related to the death of cells in the brain and also to the breakdown of connection of these cells, the course of the disease varies from person to person as also does the rate of decline.’

So one day he will forget me too. There is no escape from it. But may be science will find a cure. Recently they have found that it spreads through the brain from the first brain cell affected to the one next to it and then to the next. It damages each connected cell along a predictable path eventually destroying a person’s ability to think and remember.

This disease is changing him everyday. He was so full of life and used to be such a happy person who laughed boisterously. He loved company but now he has restricted his company to his wife and children.

He was always surrounded by friends. After retirement he lost touch with them. Did this hasten the onset of this disease? I wonder.

He asks me innocently when I ask him about his friends, ‘If I do not call them, why do they not call me instead?’

He replies to his own question, ‘May be it is not important for them.’

Though in the last couple of years he has started to call up his long lost friends, tells them to recall old times and invites them to come to his house. But probably it had become too late, too large a gap to be filled.

Dadoo was known for his sense of humour, the house was always filled with laughter, and his wit infected all others in the family. His colleagues, neighbours and friends would often say ‘
yeh
bahut mazakiya hain’
(he is so witty). He knew how to laugh at himself. But all this has now disappeared; now there is no laughter. We have to make an effort to make him laugh.

Many times I feel as if this is a different person and not our Dadoo.

When I plead ‘smile Dadoo’ he replies, ‘What for?’ He has stopped cracking jokes. Occasionally he makes fun of Mamma’s lack of education or her brother’s attitude.

How we all long for such moments, even Mamma, who used to be so angry at him earlier, now wants him to tease her. We are afraid that this too will stop one day. Just to see him laugh, just to hear him joke is a pleasure but at the same time it is scary. We always feel that it is the last time.

He is becoming oblivious of things around him and we are bystanders.

15

Loneliness is the dominant fear that he has, even though he is forgetting everything. The hopelessness that comes when he feels lonely and scared makes him look so pitiable and pathetic that I just want to close my eyes and shut my mind. It kills me.

We often hear him say, ‘Everything is over. There is no one. What will happen?’ When he says this my heart goes out for him. Sometimes we ignore him, sometimes we lie and at times we snap at him, which is the worst.

Vikram tells me that he sometimes pretends or fakes things just to get attention. I have lost count of how many times during recent months he has called me on the phone and pleaded, ‘
Main udas hoon, dil nahin lag raha, tu aaa jaa
. [I am sad, I am feeling bored, please come].’

Is this the insecurity of childhood coming back or the trauma of being displaced by the dam that haunts him and makes him a nervous wreck, I do not know but it explains why he always wanted people around him. He has felt insecure since his childhood.

I think that Dadoo created a surrogate family to kill his childhood fears and scare of being uprooted. He felt that he never got the love and affection that he should have received during childhood from his parents and near and dear ones. He was an outsider wherever he went and that weighed on him. Even his brother and sister considered him an outsider. This disconnect remained with him throughout and he tried to fill the void by having people around him.