villages

August 7, 2018 · 4 min read · essay, villages

I often notice that, whenever I first say to my friends that I am from a village, they tend to imagine a neat row of huts near a mountain with the faintly peeking out warm sun and birds and farmlands. If the conversation continues they’ll even mention that, life must be super peaceful there, devoid of the city noise and the pollution and whatnot. While that’s not too far off. It’s not the actual story either, and life is anything but peaceful.

Most people don’t really know that Butterflies live barely a week. They spend almost their whole lives as a caterpillar and pupa. Going through the agony of turning themselves into liquid and rebuilding from scratch. Just, to live for a few days in glory and die. It’s not the end couple of days that make up the butterfly. But, the unending struggle to live and near deaths and the coincidental luck. Only one in every five lives to become a butterfly. We don’t think about the dead caterpillars when we are admiring the beauty of the butterfly’s last parade. We tend to do the same when we are considering the lush villages.

Unlike what people would like to believe, villages are not always a show of lush vegetation and uncontrolled growth. But, rather one of poverty and bare minimum tools of survival. It’s mostly never lush and barely green. Poverty and debt are unwelcome, but an unavoidable guest in most homes. A lot of people are always in neck-deep debts and they tend to pass on across generation, like a curse. And also it is not necessary that everybody in a village is a farmer. There are lots of people who aren’t able to own a land.

Heavily torn dresses are normal for kids, slippers are an extravagance. The new dress that they most eagerly wish for the whole year, is from a street vendor, whom you’ll never consider for your opulent wishes. With whom, their parents had to strike a hard bargain to make it happen. Being unable to get even the basic things that their kids wish to have. Now, Your mind might bring something like, everybody has something that they can’t get. well, just try not to equate you wishing an iphone, with the little girl wanting a couple extra bangles.

Children are mostly undernourished. And the living condition is not exactly what you would call hygienic. There are places with still no toilets and people just litter out in the open. Though it should be said that the government is taking immense measures in and has been able to improve lives in this aspect. It’s not that the people aren’t ready to be hygienic but that they are unable to afford hygiene.

There is no such thing as a holiday, that we people tend to take for granted. Sundays, don’t necessarily mean holiday. There’s no holiday to living, So there’s no holiday to working. The reduction in work time, that Karl Marx dreamed, sadly has hit a stasis just at the middle class. For it to be delivered to these people, it will take quite a few generations more. There are people around here who work more than 12 hours a day. They have to, there is no other option available.

When we moved into a city, I remember wondering ‘why these people play every evening?’ It was so weird to me because, you won’t be seeing kids above 14 play much, because they have to start working with their family. Playing a game (such as cricket) is something that happens maybe thrice a year. Children even though can’t do the heavy lifting of the works, are expected to run around helping their elders. So play just seems so implausible. Which reminds of David Attenborough’s narration about Dolphins near the coral reefs of Australia “…Food is in abundance. And less time searching food means, more time to play.” I have seen plenty of people stop their children’s education and ask them to work with them in the fields because they could really use the extra pair of hands.

For the city dweller who has only viewed villages from the viewfinder of landscape porn images, it might seem that villages are these beautiful scenic places with an awesome healthy lifestyle. The sordid drudgery and misery of the people are masked in those images. It is when you live in it, that you feel its actuality.