Surendra Gautam
Dhan Bahadur’s check of happiness is still bouncing as usual. It’s seems that his dream of justice is mere a myth. The disparity becomes hislifelong privileged. Still, the blood of Dhan Bahadur remains blemished. Dhan Bahadur, a farmer, a tailor, and a carpenter is the byproduct of his snatched identity. He and his descendants’ identity became the ball of someone else’s in the name of social reformation. History has pulled off him and thrown him into the vast ocean of humiliation. He was made a beast of burden, became a doormat, and shedding his sweat’s blood. Society had thrown dust to his eyes and left no stone unturned to subjugate him. A society marked a solid line of discrepancy with the biased ideals and impenitently swells with pride. With the indictment of an ‘inferior caste’, Dhan Bahadur yielded for his appetite. He doomed to throw in the sponge as his subsistence has no other serendipity. He could only seek justice by dampening down the appetite of his family. His bankruptcy prompted him not to be woebegone for the extremity shown by society. He always dashes in quest of earning his livelihood.
It was late July, the month of the seedling. Dhan Bahadur had got a call to plow the field from the landowner next to his village. He had gobbled stale bread and hurried to the house of the landlord. The landlord, a Bhramin, already proceed to the field. When Dhan Bahadur reached the Bhramin’s house, Swaswat, the son of a landlord, was alone in the home. He was sitting near the hearth and arranging the wood to fuel the fire. In the meantime, Dhan Bahadur gave a call from outside. When Swaswat came out of the kitchen, he greeted the child with respect. Swaswat replied hesitantly without shown any humility to that person whose age was resembled his grandfather. It was not surprising since he stemmed from the same hierarchical ideology of ‘superior caste’. It was the social trend that was blueprinted to each Bhramin child’s psychology.
Poor Dhan Bahadur sat on the floor as if he was a beggar. He looks as though he was none other than a human skeleton. His wrinkled cheeks, cracked feet, and palms, the attire he wore represents that he was a man attached to the ground. Swaswat ran his eyes on his physics and felt sorry about his ill-fortune. The old plowman pointed to the newly woven bamboo he just put on the floor and said, “It was the one which your mother asked me to bring?” A smile was evident on his face.
Swaswat served him a cup of tea and said, “My parents told me to send you to the field as soon as you came.”
“That’s fine. I will.”
Dhan Bahadur rose from the floor. He tightens his red scarf around his waistline. He moves straight to the tap and rinsed the cup. He placed the cup on the ceiling of the goat’s fold to make it drier. Dhan Bahadur enters the barn and picked up the farming accessories. As he strode shouldering yoke and spade, Swaswat peculiarly gazed at him. Perhaps, his raw mind astonished by the agility shown by Dhan Bahadur for the work despite his old age and weakness. Swaswat’s soft mind started to ponder about the ill fortunes of Dhan Bahadur.
“Why his legacy was convicted with untouchability?”
He usually observed him slumped outside in a disrespectful way when his mother had served him dinner. He had observed him while cleaning the crockery after he was served the meal. He remembered his mother’s order to not carry inside those utensils unless they become dry. Swaswat had heard from his parents that he is lower in caste than them. His child psychology was shaped in a way the family imprinted.
“Why in the earth god became angry when we allowed the lower castes people inside our kitchen? And, why society didn’t consider it’s a sin to allow him to go into a granary to deposit the grains?” Swaswat was musing over the ill practices of the society. Once, his child psychology desired to experiment with the socially forbidden idea. He asked ‘Dhan Bahadur’s son to touch a bucket full of water and he examined its color. To his surprise, the water remains intact without any change. He told this to his mother and had got a tight slap in return. His soft mind etched with the ink of caste disparity at that very moment.
Shwaswat thought that Dhan Bahadur is a tutor who taught how to live. Not only Dhan Bahadur but all those people who were tagged as ‘inferior caste’ taught to live a diligent life. They are the plowman, carpenter, builders. They are an artist, a craftsman, a smith, and a farmer. But, why don’t people paid respect to them?
While having lunch, Swaswat asked his mother, “Isn’t the idols made by smith are impious? Why did we keep them in Lord’s Table?” But, the mother scolds him and replied, “You atheist dog! How could you come up with such a question? These idols are of God’s and they were sanitized with the pious water of Ganges after the smith gave it to us.”
The mother threw cold water to the credulous child psychology. Anyway, Swaswat put off his unanswered thoughts and hurried towards school. Still, the image of poor Dhan Bahadur kept on him alert all day long. Swaswat reflected on the learning he had got from the school. Thecourse book, the speech of his teacher caught his eye. “Human discrimination was done away with until last seven decades.” However, his teacher’s eloquence was furtive. As soon as Swaswat caught his teacher red handed when he behaved in an untoward manner in social practice. The idea of books, the teacher’s alleged all gone opposite. Swaswat was not eligible to comprehend the core concept of social practice and the theory he learned.
At the dawn, Dhan Bahadur came back to the field a little bit earlier than Swaswat’s parents did. He had tied the oxen and collapse on the mat with exhaustion. Swaswat was perching on the chair. His curiosity erupted again and asked, “How did you put up with such discrimination? Are you not fed up with such hierarchy?”
“Why do I cry over spilled milk? The legal system already issued the cheque for caste equality. Haven’t you known, yet?”Dhan Bahadur replied hesitantly.
“‘Why did your breed impious? Was there any hard and fast reason?”Swaswat hit the nail on the head.
Dhan Bahadur exhales and answered, “Umm! It’s a history. The history itself is an ideology. I guess, you will get through the ideology once you grown up in adulthood.”
Swaswat, being a curious and desultory child, thought out of the box. But, the society had already made up to his landing. As Swami Vivekananda said, “This caste system had grown by the practice of the son always following the business of the father” Swaswat, and his kith and kin, would practice in the way what social ideology alleged. And, what’s more? The trend of being ‘superior caste’ is transmitted like a ‘gene’ and ‘legacy’.
[Surendra Gautam is a Nepali writer from Baglung.]