Reminiscing Suhas

He always started his class participation with the preamble “in my village.” Whenever the village is ever mentioned it always reminds me of him. We met at the great Institute of Rural Management, Anand, in 1981. IRMA, as it was known in short, was set up to supply professionally trained men and women in the art and science of rural management for the farmer's organisations. More importantly, the graduate professionals were supposed to have a soul for the countryside brethren.

Modelled along the much-revered Harvard teaching school but tweaked for meeting its vision, class participation was very much given a weightage in the overall grading. So, there he was Suhas “In my village” started his class participation be it statistics, economics or marketing.

Unlike him, I never had a village exposure till I joined IRMA when the exposure happened in the first of the field work. I did not understand the implication of another friend’s request not to disclose his caste to the village people where we were camping at a school. A bunch of us were hosted by a person from the ‘Thevar’ caste. The village itself was zoned along caste lines. It was then the implication of my friend’s request revealed itself. The caste he belonged to was the lowest in the pecking order and had it been known he would not have been able to partake food along with us. At the festival of the demi-god following the tradition, a goat was sacrificed and I was seen relishing the lamb curry, there was a bit of suppressed grins for I was a boy born in the Brahmin caste. But for my birth, I had shed the cloak of the Brahmin when the first thing in college hostel was to remove my sacred thread and hang it on a nail. You could say I nailed my caste with the very act. During rest of my college life where I learnt what they don’t teach in colleges ensured that the last semblance of the Brahmin mould had been cast away. 

The village life itself was different from what I had imagined. Brought up with seeing Tamil movies of Bharathi Raja who’s many a hit carried the signature of the rustic country side, the village where we did field work was a dust bowl of sorts. They were no streams where the village belles could sing songs enticingly for us males to fall in love. The only romantic moment I had was carrying my class girl, now my wife since many long years, in the bi-cycle in the carrier at the back. Our class group had picked up a song sung by the women in the paddy fields and we had presented the same back at IRMA and perhaps was one of the reasons our group walked away with the best presentation prize.

It was a few years later I met Suhas near a place called Idar in the north of Ahmedabad. I recall spending an evening with him when he had rolled out rotis for me and offered cauliflower cooked in Sesame oil. I still recall I had the best cauliflower in my life. Perhaps it was a combination of my hunger and his good natured haath ka swaad, the dinner is still etched in my memory. Suhas somewhere during his career re-invented himself in his village. My wife recalls that Suhas had once borrowed the book “One Straw Revolution.” Perhaps he wanted to start a revolution in his village. Last year he went to sleep one fine night but never got up, an end I dream of. I consider him lucky not to have experienced winters of his life, the cusp of which I find myself.

As I took to some philosophy in my late middle- age I came across J. Krishnamurthy who said often in his teachings “you are the world.” I wonder if Suhas had read his teachings. For Suhas, his village was the world itself and perhaps he saw himself in his village brethren.

As I hear Kishore singing “panthi hoon mein us path ka, ant nahi jis ka” makes me more melancholic as I philosophize about life thinking of Suhas and other friends who already seemed to have reached their destination. “aas mere hai jis ki disha, aadhaar mere mann ka” I end with some hope.