No greater love than this. . . .

 

 

It happened on an unexpected eve. When I was working with Radio One, I had the honour of interviewing Smt. Ganubai Hanagal. I had gone to Huballi and was returning to Bangalore through Train. Smt Gangubai is 90+. But she gave a good interview and even sang a song for us. After boarding on the train, I was very overwhelmed by this great opportunity that I was blessed with. I was almost in tears when I touched her feet and asked blessing as I departed from her. It was not that I had been a great fan of classical singing or any sort. But leaving in the confused times of growing Bangalore I have been cursed to have the first hand experience of witnessing the great deterioration of our aesthetics and was a mute helpless spectator. I know her human time is clicking & even she will leave us & then the drought is going to extend. So I felt I was lucky to see her. But this is not the story of me or Gangubai. It is about the two unknown passengers I encountered in my journey back to home.

 

I was sitting on the window seat of the train. Now they have converted it into seaters. Earlier there used to be berth. Now they have seats like in bus. Two old, fragile couple boarded the train and for some reason came and sat in the seats next to me. There was plenty of space elsewhere but. . . .They selected me. I had put on the earphone and was listening to the excerpts of the interview and was enjoying the process. The couple sat and spoke among themselves. Then the old man looked at me and asked “Walkman?”. I said no and I explained that it was recorder and I had come to Hubballi to interview Smt Gangubai Hanagal. When I said that the old lady exclaimed!

“Oh her! I had listened to her when she sang before Mahatma Gandhi. Of course, she was not ‘The Gangubau Hanagal’ then. She was small girl. Even I was a small girl. Only later when they mentioned that she had sung before Bapuji, I could relate. My father had taken me to the ‘jatha’. I was small girl. But I did see Mahatma Gandhi. I remember that day very well. Later when they wrote articles about ‘Gangavva’, I knew that school girl who had sung the prayer song. So she is still alive!”

 

I couldn’t believe my ears! More than the coincidence, it was the ‘fact’ that if she is telling the truth, then this woman should also be 90+. At this age people can hardly walk! And this couple is traveling. I felt ashamed at my youth. But as our conversation went on their story startled me.

 

The women in her teens, as she said, started liking the man whom she was with now. The girl was rich, super rich. They had crores of wealth then and her father wanted the British to go, because he did not want to pay any taxes! He hated Gandhi because he loved untouchables, but knew that Gandhi is the only means to drive the white sahibs away. The girl’s advances were reciprocated by the boy in similar fashion and they went to a Maramma temple in the hills and pledged to marry one another. The woman said she was 12 then!

Her father found out. Now the boy was an untouchable. And guess what. He was of the worst caste. Those who clean human excreta in the houses of the rich. His mother used to clean the rich landlord’s toilet. In their region her family was the first, and for many ears the only family, to have built a latrine! It was a status symbol! Now when the mother came to clean she brought her son so that he doesn’t join the congress force and go against the will of the police. But things got more complicated, and the rich girl and the untouchable boy, at the age of 12 started to like each other!!!!!

 

Her father on knowing it, sent his men, the boy ran from the house. The men entered his house caught his mother and as the boy came to find out in later years, raped her one by one for giving birth for such a son! The boy’s father threw his wife away from his house for becoming “dirty”! She hung herself from the tree and committed suicide. It doesn’t stop there! The Chandal’s who are responsible for performing last rites of any body, didn’t accept to do the last rites and her body was thrown in the jungle. It’s believed that she was eaten by the hyenas and wild boars. The boy, after becoming affine young man, returned after 17 years and found out all this.

 

Meanwhile, the girl was married the next year and was sent to Vizag. She hated her husband. He used to drink, beat her and had a ‘chimna’ (a whore) in his farmhouse. But the worst of her experience was, he used to force her open her mouth and piss inside it and used to make her drink it. If she refused, he used to hit her. Once while his fury was high, he kicked her so hard that their first child was miscarried. She bore her first child when she was 15!

 

The agony doesn’t stop there! Her father is killed by his brother over a property dispute and her mother disappears. She is just gone no one knows where. None of her brothers and sisters visit her. Her husband doesn’t send her to her father’s funeral. So she turns all her love to her children. Her three sons. So do the sons give her some peace?

No!!!!

The first son at the age of 15 starts visiting his father’s whore!!!! There is a fight between father and son over her. The son is sent to some college in the city. She doesn’t know where. The other two sons (Twins) who were born a year later, start sleeping with the house maid. The enraged mother sends the maid away! The two fight with their mother and swear never to talk to her! Her husband’s sexual perversions continue, and even his violence. He gets anew whore for himself aged 14-15 and brings her to the house. Now this is a clear attack on her ownership. But she has no choice. The boy who went to city, to be in college, is arrested for raping a nun! And her husband does nothing to get him out because he wants to avenge the insult. His son had slept with his keep and so he wants to make the score even. Once when her husband was away, she found out that, one of her sons was banging his father’s new whore! She went into the room and shouted. The son gets angry pulls his mother by her hair, calls her names, kicks her, hits her, and goes back to the room, locks it and continues his job.

 

Then one fine day, after some 22 years of her marriage, the boy, whom she had pledged to marry, comes to her house! Tells her husband that he is from their village and has brought a message to his wife. The husband allows him to enter the house and goes to his work. Now the two meet, recognize each other, cry, and leave the house without telling anyone! Just like that. Freedom was only walking out. The boy who ran from his house, joined the coolies and started working on the railroads. He worked hard and became contractor. They ran away went and started to live together. They are not married but have stayed together for nearly 60 years now.

 

And for past 20 years, they have been visiting all the holy places, to thank god for at last giving them some peace, by bringing the lovers back together! And also so that, if they die on the way, they would die in a holy place. And the best part of their story was that, their son is a professor in a university, and daughter is a human rights activist in Delhi. They are married and have children.