Men from the
East
By Rajbir
Deswal
Whenever I hear these lines—Mehmaan jo hamara hota hai wo
jaan se pyara hota hai—from a Raj Kapoor movie of yesteryear, my faith in
my land and people gets reassured. Being someone’s guest amounted to being in
his care. But more than the aspect of security, what a guest was entitled to,
was all that which was not only spareable and sharable at the command of the
host, but also that, which was even beyond his routine reach and stretch. Also
in the same number is a claim, which now unfortunately seems a boast—Ye
poorab hai poorab wale har jaan ki keemat jante hain!
Let me tell
you about a settlement that flourished at some distance from my village Anta.
It was called ‘Poorabiyon ka dera’. Those men and women came from ‘Poorab’—Eastern
UP in this case. They did not stay in my village, not because they were
unwelcome there but because what they traded in was bootlegging—brewing country
liquor. People from my village routinely visited them to fetch a bottle or two.
Collectively
they were referred to as ‘poorabiyas’. They visited our village often.
Their womenfolk generally was confined to indoors in their Dera but on
festive and other occasions they made a conspicuous presence in Anta. Their
stamp was typical. They were all generally short of stature. Men wore short dhotis
with short angrakhis—vests. They had a secret pocket sewed under the
armpit. Also they wore a semblance of the Gandhi cap. They flaunted uncut
moustaches a la Ganga-Jamuna’s Dilip Kumar. Their womenfolk wore cholis
and lehangas unlike their Haryanvi counterparts who sported huge ghagras.
The Poorabiyon
ka dera was not fortified in any way though it remained tucked between the
main canal and one of its distributaries, almost in an inaccessible swamp.
There were scattered kacha houses and hutments and no fierce dogs
guarded them. Why am I saying all this is to underscore their sense of security
in an alien land being surrounded by an altogether different people. But then
the communities had not been bitten by the bug of bigotry in as much as that
tolerating one another despite different backgrounds, culture, religion, caste,
creed, occupation, dressing, eating, dwelling and languages was concerned.
Well, if you
ask me about the Dera and its habitants’ ultimate fate, I am afraid they
aren’t there anymore. But they weren’t ostracized, hounded or driven out. They
weren’t even made to feel outsiders. The Dera being accessible due to
road-network as a result of a later day development scenario, made its
habitants decide to return back home, own their own, since their moon-shining
no longer seemed to stay beneficial. And who told me all this? Sita Ram, the
orphaned poorabiya, who remained a bachelor all his life and who reared
our herd till his death—at our place, in Anta, which became his place too.
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