Sunday, July 24, 2011

Of heritage, cows, a canal and a graveyard

A visit to rural Punjab comes with two revelations (a) load shedding is really as bad as reported by geo news although most of rural folk apart from the more well to do seem to be least bothered about it and (b) most of us including myself sitting in Islamabad and Lahore are totally disconnected from daily reality of a majority of our people. I recently visited my maternal village (if it can be called as such) after a gap of a number of years. The village was the same as i remembered with a square having a mosque, a few shops, stray dogs and charpoys under banyan trees. The rest of the village surrounds it, a mix of brick & cement and brick & mud houses with open sewers running in between them. And lots of cows. The most prized of possession in a rural economy and the target of most of the theft incidents. You come to realize why the Hindus so exalted their status into something divine. This leads to another realization that the quality of life of cow there is arguably better than that of a human; they live in the same space, do nothing, are fed and washed and never beaten like the donkeys are.
While there a visit to the village graveyard was a must, where a number of relatives are buried including my grandfather, grandmother and mamoon. And for the first time in my life i was taken to my great grandmother's grave who had died a number of years of me being born. My great maternal grandfather had came to this new village around a hundred years back from India after the British had dug a huge canal (the lower bari doab) through the plains of Punjab and were giving away 12.5 acres of land to every adult who could take up the challenge of planting these barren lands. My great grandfather had three sons. The progeny of the eldest (my grandfather) did relatively well over the years while the others not so and seem to be stuck now in the vicious cycle of rural poverty. If i would explain the divergent paths despite a common heritage it would boil down to a few years of education, a few decades of good health and no untimely deaths to de-rail things.
Back at the graveyard, after heartfelt fatehas and apologies for not visiting earlier on all the family graves we could identify, it was time to head back.
P.S: The grave of my Great maternal grandfather has disappeared with time (apparently it was in an earlier graveyard which no longer exists). May he rest in peace. Thank you for your side of my heritage and to give the devil its due thanks to the British who built a canal which has nurtured his family for over a hundred years.

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