Mamta Kalia

was cooked at home, we all got very
excited. Our bodies felt energetic after
imbibing this hot drink.
There were Julahas’ homes near our
neighbourhood. During the marriage
season when dal and rice were cooked
in their homes, the children of our
neighbourhood ran there with pots in
their hands to collect the mar. Thrown
away by others, the mar was to us even
more valuable than cow’s milk. Many
a time the Julahas used to scream at
the children to go away. But they stood
there shamelessly. The desire to drink
the mar was more powerful for them
than the scolding. The mar tasted very
nice with salt. If once in a while gur
was available, then the mar became a
delicacy. This taste for mar wasn’t brought
about because of some trend or fashion.
It was due to want and starvation. This
thing that everyone discards was a means
to quell our hunger.
Once in school, Master Saheb was
teaching the lesson on Dronacharya. He
told us, almost with tears in his eyes,
that Dronacharya had fed flour dissolved
in water to his famished son,
Ashwatthama, in lieu of milk. The whole
class had responded with great emotion
to this story of Dronacharya’s dire
poverty. This episode was penned by
Vyasa, the author of the Mahabharata
to highlight Drona’s poverty. I had the
temerity to stand up and ask Master
Saheb a question afterwards. So
Ashwatthama was given flour mixed in
water instead of milk, but what about
us who had to drink mar? How come
we were never mentioned in any epic?
Why didn’t an epic poet ever write a
word on our lives?
The whole class stared at me. As
though I had raised a meaningless point.
Master Saheb screamed, ‘Darkest Kaliyug
has descended upon us so that an
untouchable is daring to talk back.’ The
teacher ordered me to stand in the murga
or rooster pose. This meant squatting
on my haunches, then drawing my arms
through my inner thighs, and pulling
down my head to grasp my ears, a painful
constricted position. Instead of carrying
on with the lesson he was going on and
on about my being a Chuhra. He ordered
a boy to get a long teak stick. ‘Chuhre
ke, you dare compare yourself with
Dronacharya . . . Here, take this, I will
write an epic on your body.’ He had
rapidly created an epic on my back with
the swishes of his stick. That epic is
still inscribed on my back. Reminding
me of those hated days of hunger and
hopelessness, this epic composed out
of a feudalistic mentality is inscribed
not just on my back but on each nerve
of my brain.
I too have felt inside me the flames
of Ashwatthama’s revenge. They keep
on burning inside me to this day. I have
struggled for years on end to come out
of the dark vaults of my life, powered
by little besides the rice water. Our
stomachs would get bloated because of
a constant diet of this drink. It killed
our appetite. It was our cow’s milk and
it was our gourmet meal. Scorched by
this deprived life, the colour of my skin
has altered.
Literature can only imagine hell. For
us the rainy season was a living hell.
April-June 2010 :: 23