20 May 2010
It is a bright morning, I am looking at the flowers blooming wondering whether it will be the last season for the feast of flowers in our garden in Solan. Dadoo seldom does gardening now.
After watering the plants, Dadoo comes and joins me.
‘Kaam theek chal raha hai [is your work going on well]?’ he asks.
‘No,’ I mumble.
‘Why? What is the problem?’ he asks anxiously.
‘I am not able to do my work.’
‘Because of us?’
‘No, it is just that I don’t do it.’
‘Is it a new book?’
‘Yes.’
‘On what?’
‘Bilaspur.’
He looks at me blankly.
‘On you,’ I add.
‘Me, what about me?’ he asks bewildered.
‘On your life, your lifestyle and culture of your village.’
‘Oh you will have to go there, stay there, and talk to the people. Only then will you be able to write anything. What are you doing sitting here, go there and do some research,’ he says.
‘Tell me something about Bhakhra Dam,’ I ask suddenly.
Dadoo, almost instantly starts narrating, ‘We got land in Kuljar after the submergence of Chaunta, our original home. Raja Anand Chand, the ruler of Bilaspur state tried his best to save the ancient town of Bilaspur. He wanted to lower the height of the dam to a level, which would have saved the town. It was a beautiful city on the banks of Satluj, with famous plains of Sandu, palaces, temples and well- planned residential and market areas. The plain of Sandu was a huge flat grassland of about one and a half miles in circumference. Submergence started in 1954 and thirty-six villages went down in the waters of Satluj. This led to dispossession of people but the process has not stopped. We are still homeless. The feeling of being uprooted ends only when one dies, not before that.’
‘Bhakra Dam gave electricity,’ I try to cheer him up.
‘Yes, but to whom? People have to pay for it, it is not free. Those who lost their homes could never settle again. You have been born in good times and have seen good life. Life at the bottom of the society is very different. People who beg in the streets, they too have a life. You have not seen that. That time almost everyone in the villages was poor.’
‘What has this got to do with Bhakhra Dam?’ I ask confused.
‘We were uprooted and got land somewhere else. It is very difficult to resettle and build a new life after being displaced like this. The land allotted to us was barren. It was so difficult for poor people,’ he says wistfully.
‘But you were rich,’ I persist.
‘We were moneylenders. We were better than them but many times people did not have anything to repay the loans, so we filed cases against them. It was a profession, we lent money on interest and if the person failed to repay we filed cases. That was all.’
I am intrigued, ‘Did you torture people who did not pay, as we read in stories and watch in films?’
He looks at me in shock, ‘No, not like that. It was not like what you see in films, the bad moneylenders. Fifty years back there was lot of poverty. We helped people.’
‘Oh, could you explain, Dadoo?’ But his attention is diverted.
‘I played bansuri [flute] on the banks of streams near our house in Chaunta. We used to take bath in the stream, I learnt swimming there. Soap was only provided to men; even we weren’t allowed to use it everyday. Women used rakh [ash] to clean themselves up.’
‘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.’