During the early '80s to '90s, I remember at times visiting Patna which is the capital city of Bihar, from Bokaro Steel City. The place was Gardani Bagh and the choicest of the people from the Bihar Secretariat use to stay there. My maternal grandfather was also working at the same State Government Office, but as it is well known that once you have enough money the children become more flashy and so does their children. So, he has four sons and three daughters including my mother Kiran Bala Devi.
They were always in awe of their father's premier job and considered everyone else to be very small or negligent before them which could be found in their talks and way of living which use to look flashy as everything from the home furniture to the home utensils was provided by the people who use to look for the high scale Government job under the maternal grandfather.
Fortunately, being class one officer he was just a rubber stamp authority and immediately use to pay for any small or big deeds done by anyone but could not provide anyone a job. The maternal grandmother has many people around her to look after and hordes of servants use to accompany her. Still, my mother learned the hard things of life when she got married to my father who was working at Bokaro Steel Plant at Steel Melting Shop and then has to cook food for us and also wash utensils. So, she learned the constant murmuring but I saw everything in life from the time when people use to have the "Dhibri" at home and the power failure was a norm of the day at Patna. The city had a very bad police system and at night when the Rickshawpuller uses to carry people they have to light a "dhibri" even in the rickshaw and there was no dynamo in the rickshaw.
The Bihar Police use to wield lathis at Rickshaw puller on the instance of no lights on rickshaws and nobody use to care for it. I was barely five years old and when returning one night with my family which was of my father, mother, me and my sister Sweta the rickshaw walla on whose rickshaw we were riding was asked by my father to lit up the dhibri on the rickshaw. But he said , sahab abhi railway crossing ka phatak upar hua hai, phir 5 minute baad close ho jayega kyuki dusri mail express aa jayegi...and while he moved two steps suddenly a policeman emerged from the dark and gave him two lathis on the back. Unfortunately, he could not do anything and we did not even cry and then we could hear my mother and father saying abhi bole the na...ki jala lijiye light...then he sobbingly did so.
The moment if I remember those days I think we live in the better world and certainly India has moved from Dhibri (crude kerosene lamps) to LED bulbs and still the same thing could be seen by those people who forget the days when as a kid they always use to plan about killing me on every occasion from Saraswati Puja to any other happiest occasion so that they could reach my beautiful sister. Thankfully I know that they don't have the courage in themselves to report about the incidents when they use to plan my murder and I always laughed it off by saying "Jaane do Abhi to mai Zinda hoon"!
No comments:
Post a Comment