India, My India; 4; Yet Another Harvest

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My journey to the past was coming full circle. 17 years of exile in England had ended, and now my pilgrimage back to India was nearly over. . Ganga Maya, Mother Ganges, Bharatmata, Mother India. . In the social and religious life of India, Mother Ganges and Mother India are one and indivisible. . On the morning of my departure, I watched India wake by the banks of the Ganges at Patna. The Ganges is the river of India, part of a geography, part of a history.

At the beginning of each day, men washed their bodies and cleansed away their sins in its sacred waters. At the end of each life, the ashes of the dead are scattered upon them. The Ganges is Mother Ganges, not a mere expression, but like Mother India, a belief and a way of living. Towards the end of my journey, I came to Patna, the capital town of the state of Bihar, to seek another mother and a family. My sister, Janna, I had last seen her as a young woman in 1947. The year I had left India. Janna and I were the children of another age, a special time before causes and independence, before partition and exile. When India was divided in 1947,

we had lost touch with each other. I had gone with my family to live in England. Janna had left her studies and come with her husband to Patna. 17 years later, I had found her again, this companion of my childhood, now herself a mother and already middle-aged. Her house on the banks of the Ganges, an old colonial-style bungalow named Riverview. It once belonged to an English family who actually made India their home. Janna had married into the family of one of the old navab's partners. Unlike son, they had succeeded in adapting themselves to the new order. Her husband Mumman, the younger son,

now drove to his insurance office each morning. The eldest son, a lawyer, occupied another section of the house. Fortune had deprived him of his inheritance, but something of the old navab lingered on. Elsewhere, the other women of the house gossiped away the time of day. My sister's mother-in-law, her husband's aunt, and her sister-in-law. The ladies talked and prepared the pan, a green leaf, eaten with lime, dried green nut and other spices. Taking pan is very much a social custom in India,

like tea drinking or snuff-taking. Quite naturally, I too was received into this large family. A family I had never known, but I was my sister's brother, and that was enough. The children packed off, husband and brother dispatched, ladies of the house settled, orders for the daily round issue. Now it is my sister-in-law's turn. When the old social order began to crumble in India after independence, my sister went back to her studies to become a teacher.

Now she taught passion in the local university college in Patna. My sister Jannu, now running a large home and bringing up her own family, and finding time to be a teacher in this new society. Patna is one of the truly historic cities of the world, two and a half thousand years of recorded history, one civilization piling up upon another, the imperial city of ancient Hindu emperors, the capital city of a Muslim kingdom, and one of the great centers of English culture and commerce. Patna's famous granary,

built in 1770 after the terrible famines in West Bengal by a special decree for the perpetual prevention of famine in these provinces. Two and a half thousand years, a period of glory longer than any Rome or Athens, revealing still the many contrasts of its confusing history. The Monument to the Seven Martyrs, seven sons of India who fell outside the assembly buildings in 1943 in an attempt to haul down the British flag. In the Patna Cemetery with its weird mixture of Hindu and Christian architecture

and obelisks to other heroes, sixty British soldiers who died in 1763, fighting the old Nawab's Bengal, so that the Union Jack might fly over India. And the Scott family, whose house was now my sisters, one of the few English families to accept India completely, to live here and to die here. A Monument to a time almost before time, the well of Ahsoka, the great Hindu Emperor who reigns 300 years before Christ with all the spender of the ancient world and with more humanity than the modern. Nearby, a Hindu temple,

where they worshiped the goddess of smallpox. Once, it was her task to heal the disease. Now, she heals the source left by the marks of the vaccination needles. From where the Emperor Ahsoka evangelized the eastern world for Buddhism. Where the goddess, Sita, once cured but now instead forgives those who accept the faith of modern medicine. Patna Bada Ganges, in the great sweep of its history,

almost to miniature India. How fitting that my own sister, in herself so much that in modern India, should have chosen to make her life here. I had come back to India when the winter was nearly over, when the season was setting to hope, and the promise of harvest. Now, at Bhagawan Farm near Charkare, the farm of my younger brother Acho, the crop was ready for reaping. In the endless open fields of Bundelkhand, where I had once played as a child, the harvesters from the villages were settling in for the long task. The beginning of the festival of holy,

a great Hindu festival, which heralds the gathering of the harvest. In Hindi, holy means it is all over. The season and the year, the differences in the rivalries, symbolically burned with the first years of the harvest. Holy, the festival of forgiving and thanksgiving. Holy, it is all over. In the town of Jaipur, at the home of Satish Chandra,

my colleague from Allahabad University days, I was caught up in the mad excitement of holy. For me, it marked the ending of a return, and the beginning of a departure. During holy, the Hindu people let themselves go, one day of celebration, when all the cares of the year forgotten. The three essentials of holy are rung, rust, and rob. Color, dance, and song. Holy is described as a satan area, during which servants forget their duty towards their masters. Children, their reverence to parents, men, their respect for women,

and women all notions of modesty, delicacy, and gentleness. Breakfast, ridiculous, but always generous. The spirit of holy overflows in the homes, and in the gardens, in the fields, and in the streets. No one is allowed to escape. Neither Prince nor Papa, Brahman nor Harijan, Hindu nor Muslim. And I, a Muslim, came to celebrate holy at the home of my friend Satish, a Hindu. I had returned to India at the end of Ramadan for the festival of Eid.

In my own hometown, I had celebrated that great Muslim festival with my Hindu friends. Now, my journey almost over, I joined my Hindu friends again in their own annual festival of holy. Ramadan and holy, festivals of different religions, Muslim and Hindu, but shared in India, my India, by all. Holy, it is all over. And to my part, it was nearly over too. Holy, it is all over. The holy dance,

recapturing the spirit and character of holy, recalling the meaning of the season that had gone. Coming back to my native home of Charkhari, after 17 years in England, coming home to my family, to my brother, to my mother. I remembered the people of Charkhari receiving me more as a hero than a prodigal son. Extending the same affection I had known as a child. The face of a refugee child,

I met the slums of Lucknow. In Ali girl, my own sister, for whom freedom and independence meant emancipation and dignity. And the streets of Bombay, throng now with the women of New India, dignified, free and independent. A young boy toiling by the banks of the Ganges, the eternal lot of eternal India. The face of my old and honored teacher from Charkhari's school, now a member of parliament for Charkhari, House of Commons, free India. And the face of the new generation at our old school, a generation for whom this struggle for freedom and independence

was now in old tale, and the future in other world. The Indian Military Academy, and the memories of my own youth and future during the Second World War. Like the echoes of Allahabad, my university, that future was now the past, but the voices in the deeds of that time are India's present now. At Bhagwan Farm in Charkhari, they gathered yet another harvest. In the manner they must have done for centuries, to the rhythms of the old harvest songs of Bundelkhand

and to the notes of the Ramthula, the harvest form. It would take a good two weeks to harvest the 300 acres of land and would give work to over a hundred hand-picked labourers from the neighbouring villages. By the time the harvest would gather and the threshing done, it would be springtime in England, and the apple tree in my own garden would be in bloom. Before my brother had sowed his crop and paid off his debts, I would be back with my wife and children in England. My family might never really understand the debt that I owe to India,

the land of my birth, but they would welcome my return, knowing that the promise had been redeemed. The morning light aches with the pain of parting. Oh poet, take up thy flute. At Palame airport in Delhi, my whole family turned up to bid be farewell

on my journey back to England. They gave me garlands, and they tied on my arm, the Imam Zamin, a sort of Muslims in Christopher. They came from the four corners of India, brothers and sisters, husbands and wives and children, a truly Indian fair way. No embarrassment at expressing emotion for this is India, where it is natural for families to travel thousands of miles to say goodbye. They came to ensure that my last glimpse of India

would not be the airport buildings, to assure me that although my own family awaited me in England, I belong to another family in India. Let me remain the last of all your pilgrims said the poet to go. They come from all sides to ask for gifts from your hands. Let me wait till they all have had their shares. I shall be content with the last remnant. From India, my mother India.

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