Hey readers,
Please go through the following story;
JOURNEY OF A COMMONER – PART ONE
Formative Life
You are walking on the rain and often falling in mud. It is quiet on the road except for the squelching of mud sticking to your shoes. You tell she has to walk when the mud is firmer but straightway you hear a plop when you turn to see that she has fallen and awkwardly holding herself up with a prop of one hand in the mud. You lend your hand to pull her up but her foot slips and the dirty hand which had been holding her up smears mud all over her. You insist she really need to take off her high heels. She starts crying miserably and plonks herself right into the mud.
You say. “Come on. You’re a bit dirty, but that can be fixed up; there’s a house ahead and you can have good wash there.” But she refuses to go on.
This is woman. You say. They want to go travelling in the mountains but don’t want any hardships.
You say it’s not all scenery in the mountains, there’s also wind and rain, and she’s already here so she shouldn’t regret having come.
She says. “You’ve tricked me; there isn’t tourist anywhere on this damn Mawphlang countryside.”
You say. “If its people and not mountains you want to see, haven’t you seen plenty on the streets in the cities? If you haven’t, you can take a trip to the departmental stores where there’s everything a woman needs, from cakes to cosmetics to sanitary napkins.”
She covers her face with her muddy hands and starts crying again like a child. You can’t take anymore, pull her to her feet and help her along.
You say. “You can’t just stay in the mud and rain, there’s a house up ahead and if there’s a house there’ll will be fire, and if there’s fire there’ll be warmth; and you’ll be feeling at home and not so alone. You’ll be more comfortable there.”
You know well this area as you’re posted here a year back and looking after the pipeline survey and levelling job entrusted with the preparation of contour map for a big dam site. The leaches, the grass bushes, the weeds –everything are so familiar for the Civil Engineer in you. Someone in the Engineering College of yours observed rightly that a Civil Engineer makes a resolute land look advanced as a wonderful residential complex with all infra-structural support; and once that is over he leaves for another resolute area. And you exactly know that fact as you’ve experienced for past couple years during your short stint as a graduate trainee in various sites in and around Mumbai while working in M/s. Cemindia Co. Ltd. You’ve overseen the piling operation in Vasi Reliance Textiles and in Walkeswar’s Vikas Apartment, the tallest building to be constructed in the metro then. You’ve not forgot the night shift duties in Nasik’s MIDC foundation works as you’ve enjoyed the on-shore and off-shore diamond drilling on Bombay High posting at Uran and Alibagh area. You’ve not forgot the night duties you were put in as a final site in Gujarat’s Anand to look after the diaphragm walling there for three months to protect the Electricity Board’s land to be protected from the tidal grasps of the Arabian seas.
***
You know that behind the crumbling wall in the incessant rain here in Mawphlang, the stove is in ruins and the pots have rusted away long ago. On this hillock, there are no weeping women ghosts among the clumps of bushes of behind the graves decked with paper streamers. At the very moment you dearly wish to find a house to change into some clean clothes and clean and refreshed, to sit by the fire on a bamboo chair, a bowl of hot tea in your hands, looking at the fine rain drizzling under the caves outside, telling her a children’s tale which has nothing to do with her, you, or the chaotic human world. She would be like the good little girl of a family on this lonely mountain, sitting on your knee and snuggled in your area.
An excerpt from Yudhajit's Autobiographical write
