My India 5 - 1950-55

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Before this thing degenerates once again into utter rambling, let me recall the whole 'Point' of this Series: "To recount the 'Progress' made by Me and My Free India during the past 60 years step by blessed step".

I am as entitled to do this as any other street-corner Joe.

Moreover, like it or not, I did 'progress' as I said yesterday from a 'lower middle class' rural urchin to a 'mildly middle class' city-slick pensioner on my way.

And I do identify myself with Free India, in the sense that neither of us ever invaded any other country except in physical or intellectual self-defense, and had never any intention of abandoning it. Indeed I loved my country so deeply that I declined to even visit any other country......not that I had many 'invitations'.

To start with, our Family's morning ablutions as they progressed from 1950 to 1955:

1950: In my village, all cooking and heating was done on charcoal-fire and occasionally firewood. So, there was never any dearth of coal-ash. This was neatly preserved in tins. Every morning, the females of the family would 'drop' a little of this ash on their left-palm (if they are right-handed), push the right fore-finger into the ash mound, and brush away their teeth till they shone like jewels.

My father was rather fastidious about his teeth; indeed he died at 80 with all his 32 teeth intact and strong without any cavities, never having visited any Dentist (let's not talk of my teeth or even worse, my son's). There were stacks of neem sticks available in the Village Market, but he wanted fresh ones. So, he would wake me up at daybreak and we two would go on our morning walk to the Village Pond. When we reached our street-end- neem tree, he would give me a leg-up and I would climb like a monkey and crawl like a squirrel and break a rather juicy branch and drop down (dropping down is easier than getting up, some Physics there!) on the sand below. He would then pull out his pocket-knife (he always wore a shirt sans banian and had a pen and a pen-knife in his shirt pocket; I do have always a pen in my shirt pocket, mostly for the use of borrowers in queues who are too shy to return it; but my son has neither pen nor even pockets on his shirts: he borrows pens from senior citizens and brings them home, I mean the pens). Father would then cut out two sticks, shave them and chew their ends and give one to me and one to himself. Then the fun starts; I making faces and he cheering me on to stick with it till the juice turned sweetish; then I would refuse to give it up till he pulls it out from my mouth, and throws the two worn-out sticks into the Pond before commencing the next bit of necessary ablutions.

1953; By now, the 'Monkey-Brand Black Tooth Powder' pouches are available in our Village Market. The entire family took it easy and would pierce a hole in one corner of the pouch and use it for brushing. The ingredients looked like the same coal-ash, a little grainy to get a grip on the teeth, with salt added to spice up our mornings.

1955: Father used to buy and fetch from Nellore 'Colgate Tooth Powder' in tins with caps revealing hexagonal hole-fills which can be pierced with safety pins (for which women-folks' help is needed). The powder was too soft and too white as an advertisement to how our teeth would eventually shine. Just sprinkle it on one palm and get going. But to me it was too soft after the neem sticks and the Monkey Powder and the foam used to stick to the innards of teeth and tongue. I could foresee that this gimmick would next lead to a Paste of the same Brand. The principle is the same: once it is let out you could never push it back, whether Powder from its hole or Paste from its neck: 'irreversible' flow of visco-elastic fluids.

We now come to bathing our beauties:

1950: There was a Well in our courtyard, with a pulley, and a bucket to which a coconut-fiber- rope was tied. My father would work the pulley and get the bucket of water out. All the kids present from 2 to 7, would stand as naked as the very Heavens in a queue on strict first-come-first-served basis. My mother would stand with an excuse for a 'towel'. There was a tin with 'powdered' home-made dal, admixed with a variety of dried and ground leaves like Tulsi, neem, lemon etc, whose 'formula' was a family secret. This would be rubbed by my father onto our tender bodies and my elder sister would do the rest.

1953: The first 'bar-soap' arrived in the Village Market, sans smell, sans froth, and sans anything but that it would dissolve in well-water leaving a bubbly foam. Everyday, my father would cut just the required 'piece' of soap with his pen-knife and the drill would otherwise be the same, except now there was a ramshackle tin 'wall' around part of our well; and the girls would have a slip of 'knicker' to cover their shames, but I was FREE.

1955: Rexona and Lux soaps would be ordered and fetched by my father from Nellore. There was now a 'bathroom' with a hint of a roof and a 'steel' bucket into which father would pour well-water and mother would haul the bucket into the 'bathroom', and we each were left alone. I had an aversion to early morning baths, so I took advantage of the 'secrecy' by repeatedly howling and throwing water from the bucket with the mug with its holes onto the tin walls of the enclosure, and coming out with just a few droplets on the face and arms. And, my father would then pour one more bucket onto my head in front of all, as a 'punishment' for dereliction of duty. I don't know about my sisters; we never discussed this private affair in public. The Rexona soap would last forever, however.

Lunch and Dinner:

1950: Mother would mix boiled rice with sabjees and dal etc and we would all gather around her and she would 'pass' morsels around till we quit.

1953: Leaf-plates, made of dried sal leaves stuck together with broomsticks would serve as plates for each of us. Mother would serve the items on each plate, father would shape them into morsels with ghee as the lubricant and we would gobble them up amidst stories told by father to divert out attention from the inevitable excesses of mother's cooking: the 'dishes' were made to order for father who loved a bit of chilly and salt, but no amount of ghee could kill their pungency.

1955: We each had 'iron' plates with 'ceramic plating', with floral designs. And we were able to fend for ourselves. But, the ceramic plating would soon peel off in bits and pieces here and there. No problem: we never had 'iron deficiency' nor anemia.

Father used to eat in the 'Silver' plate (with a Gold flower at its center) that he got as part of his dowry, and mother would use the same after father's belly was full, as part of the family tradition: one valid reason why my mother revolted and turned later into the Family Feminist.

Another decade to pass till we got 'Ever-Silver' plates: a 'hyperbole' for 'stainless steel'; I am told that its inventor threw this vexed product of his innumerable experiments in the night into the gutter as not the 'Gold' he wanted, but next morning he found it as silvery as ever and took a patent on it.

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As I said, I identify myself as part and parcel of Free India. One may say that I am an observant particle of sugar on the periphery of the sugar 'ball' that is Free India.

As it rolls, so do I, along with it.

Now this image is very relevant in this sense:

Ants, a hundred of them, find the sugar ball and crowd around it with the noble intention of rolling it towards their destination, viz. their anthill. All of them surround it. They roughly know where to go and the 'least path' to it. But, by a quirk of Nature, ants can only 'push' but not 'pull'. That is how their anatomy is. So, they gather round it and each one of them pushes with all its might and determination, which are proverbial. The ball wouldn't naturally move a bit, by virtue of the 'polygon law of equal forces' or whatever. Then they would instinctively redistribute themselves by trial and error to so push that the 'Resultant' of their 'pushes' roughly does the job.

India is the sugar ball.

Politicians are the ants.

Their destination is their common good, not necessarily the good of the aam admi.


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