Milchar
January-March 2002 issue
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To
Slavery Born
...
Bansi Nirdosh
(Last year
saw some talented members of the community left us. One of them has been
Bansi Lal Wali - Nirdosh. He has been contributing in a big way in Kashmiri
prose during last forty years. We are reproducing the English translation
by Dr. Neerja Mattoo, of one of his short stories. - Editor.)
This
was the last day. After forty years of slavery, Sansar Chand would be free.
He had been beaten hollow. The pulp gone, only the shell remained. And
he did not want the shell to receive more beatings.
How he had
waited for the day when his son, Kundanji, would get a job. That
would mark the dawn of his own freedom. Unemployed for three years after
graduation, Kundanji had finally found a job in the Accountant General's
Office. Sansar Chand felt like a king. Joy overflowed from his heart as
if his son had not just become a clerk but scaled some hitherto unconquered
peak of glory. The day his son received the letter of appointment, he gave
a month's notice to his employer, the city merchant. He would quit at the
end of the month. God had heeded his prayer - his son had found employment
with a salary of six hundred rupees. With his own pension of two hundred,
it would add up to eight hundred, quite enough for the family of four :
the old couple and their two sons. He had already married off his eldest
child, a daughter, around the time of his retirement from Government service,
six years ago. Since then he had been working at the shop along with the
rest of us. He did not call it 'work', he called it 'servitude'. Not that
he had anything against private service. For him, life itself had been
never-ending slavery. He would often say, “Look at me - a born slave! I
began life as the Government’s slave and now I am the Seth’s slave. I was
a drudge then and I am a drudge now - the yoke has never been lifted.”
But now
at last he was convinced that the days of his slavery had ended - his son
had found a job and he had nothing to worry about any more!
Today
was the last day of the month. Sansar Chand was happier than he had ever
been in his life. His son Kundanji was bringing home his first pay packet
- six hundred rupees. He himself had been paid four hundred by the Seth,
and with his pension of two hundred, it too added up to 600. But the six
hundred his son would bring home seemed an enormous sum to him - more like
6000 or even 6,00,000! I can not believe that he could have felt as elated
at the sight of his own first pay as he did today at the thought of his
son’s. My own pay was not more than Sansar Chand’s - just about four hundred
but I felt rich - I could spend it just as I pleased. The house was run
by my father and elder brother. Since I wasn’t married yet, hardly any
responsibilities burdened me. There was a world of difference between my
situation and that of Sansar Chand. In spite of a hand-to-mouth existence,
he had given his daughter not only a substantial dowry, but fulfilled every
demand put forth by her in-laws. He had even got into debt to ensure her
happiness.
In order
to run his house, educate his two sons and feel somewhat secure economically,
he had been forced to work for the Seth. But now, after years of
running between pillar and post, appeasing God only knows how many devils,
one of his sons had found employment. This was the moment Sansar Chand
had been waiting for all these years, during which he must have told me
at least seven thousand times, “Do you hear, Majid Bhai, the day Kundanji
gets a job, will be the day of my release - too long have I been nothing
but somebody’s slave.
Sansar
Chand was very good at his work. Our Seth had never got along with those
of his employees who understood the business of accounting, but Sansar
Chand had been able to win his trust. In spite of having become well acquainted
with all his business dealings - black and white - he quietly followed
all instructions, keeping the accounts without questioning Sethji’s ethics.
He would justify it thus: “The Seth is responsible for his own sins. I
only follow orders. We just happen to be his employees, no better than
slaves and therefore already serving a sentence of penal servitude. Aren’t
Want and Slavery punishment enough? How we cringe and bow before the Sales
Tax and Income Tax Officers, begging them to overlook discrepancies - and
that too not for our own sake, but only to provide comfort and cheer to
the Seth - is this not a curse? Are we not serving a sentence rigorous
enough? And what do we get for all this? Just four hundred rupees on the
seventh of every month.
But on
the seventh of the month, he would still touch his eyes with the four hundred
rupee pay packet, kiss it and put it in his pocket, saying, “Majid Bhai,
why don’t you plead with your God to let my Kundanji find a job fast? And
then I shall stretch my limbs and relax to my hearts content. I have never
had a night’s peaceful sleep, even after my retirement. First it used to
be the fear of reaching the office late and annoying the Boss and now I
keep awake with the worry that the shop must have opened - the Seth must
have left his home . . . .”
I knew
that tonight for the first time Sansar Chand would sleep through the night,
in peace, in freedom. Now he was nobody’s slave. I myself had no experience
of working for the Government, but I agreed with Sansar Chand that private
employment, particularly working for the Seth, was certainly worse than
slavery, with any ‘rights’ existing only in the imagination. The employee
is not supposed to be an individual, his only identity lies in the fact
that he belongs to the Seth, body and soul - not only he, but all his ancestors,
his family, even his neighborhood - all must consider themselves the bonded
slaves of the Seth. Throughout the day, he is subjected all sorts of humiliations,
forced to listen to remarks questioning his pedigree, character, ability
- “Where the hell have you sprung from? Don’t you have the least sense
of how to deal with a customer? You eat enough for two or three, but your
output? Zero! Which dumb mohalla bears you as its curse? Good for nothing!
Fit for nothing at all!”
But to
tell the truth, our Seth was not that bad. He did not ill-treat his employees
all the time. He was a much-travelled man and once or even twice every
month, he would take a trip to Delhi, Bombay or Calcutta. He had a broader
outlook than most others, but even then he thought nothing of putting the
employees at his shop on domestic chores: collecting the ration, fetching
the gas cylinder, escorting his children to school and back, paying his
electricity and water bills. It was having to do these household errands
for the Seth that I hated the most - it was like death. But the others
at the shop did it willingly. Sansar Chand too. He used to say that once
you become the Seth’s servant, how did it matter whether you worked at
his shop or his house? If there was no work in the shop, he would extract
it elsewhere.
It was
winter, cold and frosty, a drab heavy atmosphere, under a brooding sky.
The roads were puddles of snow and water, the bazaars empty like people’s
pockets. There was nothing fresh to be seen anywhere, no new face, hardly
anything to distinguish one face from another. Their heads bound in helmetlike
woolen caps, clad in thick pherans or coats and overcoats, everyone looked
tired, weary, worn-out - just like Sansar Chand. But no, he looked different.
For the past one month, Sansar Chand’s face had acquired a glow - the month
since his son Kundanji had got the job. In his son’s job, he had seen mirrored
the dreams of a secure, happy old age and now they were about to become
a concrete reality. Today was his last day at the shop. My heart felt somewhat
heavy. During the past few years, a strange bond had been forged between
the two of us. But at the same time, I was rather happy too: at last he
was going to be free. How long could he have dragged his old body thus?
For the past forty years, it had been one long tale of drudgery. Surely
he deserved rest. If his son did not provide it, who would? Sansar Chand
met all his fellow employees, bade them good-bye and left.
“Sansar Chandji, do keep in touch and drop in occasionally, will you?”, I said
and walked with him up to the main road. God knows whether we would ever
meet again, I wondered for a long time that night before I went to sleep.
Sansar
Chand turned up at the shop as usual the next morning, creating a flutter
of surprise among us all. He went up to the Seth straightway and said,
“Sir, I want to withdraw my notice.” All the employees were pleased - the
seth most of all. But I Wasn’t. Taking Sansar Chand aside, I asked, “But
Sansar Chandji, you were going to rest and enjoy your leisure. Didn’t you
have to make up for all those forty years of toil? Didn’t you say that
you wanted freedom from this servitude? Then what happened? Didn’t Kundanji
get his pay?”
“Oh yes,
he got it alright”, the words seemed to be drawn from him with some effort.
“So then?” “Well, he did get his pay. But before reaching home he spent
it all. On his clothes, shoes and other stuff. What he said was quite right
though. In my selfishness, it is I who had lost a sense of proportion.”
“But
what did he say?” I asked impatiently. “He said that he also had his needs,
his personal expenses, his own commitments and why couldn’t the house run
as it had all these years, without his pay?” I found it hard to meet Sansar
Chand’s eyes. Shame suffused my whole being. I could hardly say a thing.
On the
seventh of the month when I received my pay packet, I handed every paisa
to my father. He could hardly believe his eyes - he almost collapsed at
the sight of the money.
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