The Lost Village: Candid Stories from Rural India

By Ashok Kabisatpathy

As a child and a young adult spending summer breaks in my village, I had no shortage of excitements, fun, and life altering experiences. Life was enriched by the unconditional love of my grandparents, innocent friendship of village buddies, and shy looks from girls. Running around the yards, taking a dip in the river, playing on the swings, and riding bullock carts to and from the bus station while stepping on cow poop were routine. The cultural richness I gained during the village festivities was inspirational. Year after year, I experienced the traditions, and rituals in the simple setting of my village.
People grow up. They seek opportunities and change places. I was no exception. Weeks after receiving the great news about an opportunity to pursue higher education, I lost my grandmother. Far away from my village and without my grandmother, contacts slowly eroded and in a few short years became non-existent. Some twenty-five years later, during a road trip, I took a detour through my village and a nostalgic feeling for the place and its people emerged. It was difficult to fathom why my soul was still drawn to the village where the house I played in had turned into a pile of rubble and most of the people I knew growing up were gone. I guess, sometimes we love to live in the past.
After the trip, returning to the hum drum of life, I started reminiscing. I recalled the fire that burnt the village to ground, the flood that isolated it from the outside world and the animal sacrifice ritual that was performed to satisfy a goddess. On a personal note, I remembered the ordeal in which I almost lost my mother to a snake bite, the hardship while recovering from a rabid dog bite, and my mother’s pain after losing my sister to fever.
It was not all bad. I had some great memories especially of my grandmother. I realized how much I cherished her influence as I was growing up. What she taught me cannot be found in a school curriculum. Her gift of unconditional love is worth much more than everything I could own and earn in my lifetime. Her presence in my life was priceless and timeless. She is and will be cherished forever. I truly miss her love and affection.
I have come to realize that the village I grew up in is now lost. The manner in which I experienced the rural life in this remote Indian village will never be replicated. The world is changing, where children are still growing up and becoming adults. Their life experience will be different compared to mine. Yet, I am compelled to tell my stories as a reference point in history full of twists and turns. I hope your reading of my candid story telling will be as exciting and funny as it was for me writing it.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ashok Kabisatpathy
• Release date: Apr 8, 2013
• ISBN: 9781301637867

Ashok Kabisatpathy

Ashok was born in a very small town, Badagaon, India in 1956. His father Satchidananda (Sat-chi-da-na-nda) Kabisatpathy was a lifetime educator and mother Rukmini (Ru-k-mini) was a stay-at-home mother. After growing up in the steel city, Rourkela, India, about 70 kilometers away from his birth place, he came to the USA to pursue his graduate studies in chemistry. Subsequently, he entered the world of academia and has been there ever since. He strongly believes education facilitated by technology will eventually make the world a better place. Yet, in a technologically engaged world uneducated will be marginalized the most. Throughout life people do get sick, get into accident, get a scare here and there, and struggle through human relationships. Growing up Ashok had his fair share of it. He struggled through a rabid dog bite, a typhoid fever, at least five serious accidents, and two operations with potentially negative outcomes. Through it all, for him life continues to happen with many great people around. After research and teaching in chemistry for over three decades, the value of education has taken the center stage in his life. As an educator he received couple of state and national awards. He continues to pursue next generation pedagogy through individualized learning methods. In the mean time he has been passionate about writing and over the years through many reflective sessions he has found several accounts of personal and candid moments to share. Convinced that writing is a great way to connect and educate, he feels that time has come to tell the stories.

Book preview

The Lost Village

Candid Stories from Rural India

By Ashok Kabisatpathy

Copyright Ashok Kabisatpathy 2013

Smashwords Edition

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Preface

As a child and a young adult spending summer breaks in my village, I had no shortage of excitements, fun, and life altering experiences. Life was enriched by the unconditional love of my grandparents, innocent friendship of village buddies, and shy looks from girls. Running around the yards, taking a dip in the river, playing on the swings, and riding bullock carts to and from the bus station while stepping on cow poop were routine. The cultural richness I gained during the village festivities was inspirational. Year after year, I experienced the traditions, and rituals in the simple setting of my village.

People grow up. They seek opportunities and change places. I was no exception. Weeks after receiving the great news about an opportunity to pursue higher education, I lost my grandmother. Far away from my village and without my grandmother, contacts slowly eroded and in a few short years became non-existent. Some twenty-five years later, during a road trip, I took a detour through my village and a nostalgic feeling for the place and its people reemerged. It was difficult to fathom why my soul was still drawn to the village where the house I played in had turned into a pile of rubble and most of the people I knew growing up were gone. I guess, sometimes we love to live in the past.

After the trip, returning to the hum drum of life, I started reminiscing. I recalled the fire that burnt the village to ground, the flood that isolated it from the outside world and the animal sacrifice ritual that was performed to satisfy a Goddess. On a personal note, I remembered the ordeal in which I almost lost my mother to a snake bite, the hardship while recovering from a rabid dog bite, and my mother’s pain after losing my sister to fever.

It was not all bad. I had some great memories especially of my grandmother. I realized how much I cherished her influence as I was growing up. What she taught me cannot be found in a school curriculum. Her gift of unconditional love is worth much more than everything I could own and earn in my lifetime. Her presence in my life was priceless and timeless. She is and will be cherished forever. I truly miss her love and affection.

I have come to realize that the village I grew up in is now lost. The manner in which I experienced the rural life in this remote Indian village will never be replicated. The world is changing, where children are still growing up and becoming adults. Their life experience will be different compared to mine. Yet, I am compelled to tell my stories as a reference point in history full of twists and turns. I hope your reading of my candid story telling will be as exciting and funny as it was for me writing it.

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Chapter 1

I was searching "Latadeipur" in Google, and there were as usual more than 86,000 hits. Mind you, the place is not that big; rather it is a remote village with minimal access to the outside world. On the map, I could locate the general area. When I switched from map view to satellite view, the geographical layout of the area became visible. Using the zoom feature, smaller and smaller areas became clear. Soon, the name of the temple in the village appeared on the map on the side of a large river. I knew Latadeipur had a temple and was on the bank of this river. So, I zoomed further along the bank of the river. I saw a group of houses and was not sure of the location. There was a familiar landmark. It was a gently curving road along the side of the river – it was named Mala Bandha, literal translation Necklace (Mala) Levee (Bandha). Until today, I had not seen this manmade object from space. Thanks to Google Map and Google Earth, you can virtually travel around the globe, and if you know the place, you cannot help but have a nostalgic feeling. This was no exception. I had an immediate flashback into the past. During the visit to my village, especially during the summer, I had walked on this levee many times. Before the levee was built, floods used to engulf thousands of acres of land around the village. For the last forty years or so, the levee has been protecting a large swath of the fertile farmland. Since then, annually the land has been yielding two crops out of this rich soil.

On Google map, I kept scanning west and the road made somewhat of a southwest turn. I followed the road about five hundred feet south and soon the houses in my village could be identified. When I was in school, I was fascinated with map reading. I liked to visually imagine the surroundings of a place. This included the terrain around the area, the body of water nearby, and the road leading in and out. Old habits die hard. Now powered by Google Earth, I zoomed in further and remembered the first house belonging to an uncle. His dad and my grandfather were cousins. I scanned along the main street of the village and tried to remember all the houses and people those belonged to. I carefully navigated to the location where our house used to be. After my grandparents passed away, without upkeep, the house made out of mud and straw had slowly collapsed. Over time, the straw roof had succumbed to the elements of nature, and the mud walls had become a mound of rubble. I did not see all of this while scanning the Google map. I saw the pile of rubble when I visited the place a few years back and experienced it firsthand. It was quite a surreal experience. Imagine your grandfather and father’s place in ruins, and you cannot even recognize where the house started or ended. As people moved out of the village one by one, I wondered if it would become a ghost village. You know the sort of place where ghosts of the past would try to tell stories and there would be no one to listen.

I continued to scan the map and followed the road on the side of the village. It took a sharp right turn into the center of the village before making another left turn out of the village. As I followed the road, about half a kilometer outside the village a large pond appeared on the left. I remembered the name of the pond. It was called "Makara Pokhari – literal translation Crocodile (Makara) Pond (Pokhari)". During my childhood, before the levees were built, the river used to flood. The floodwater used to engulf the pond and crocodiles from upstream would end up in the pond. One year, during a flood, a crocodile came to the lake and killed a water buffalo, cow, and man. I heard my grandmother talking about it with the other women in the village. I was scared and remember asking my grandmother where the crocodile came from? I cannot remember her answer.

I was scanning west and I located the neighboring village on the map. It was very familiar to me. It was almost twice the size of my village. I used to walk with my grandmother through it to go to her parent’s village across the river. We walked straight, swung right, crossed a creek, and reached the bank of the mighty river Brahmani. During the summer, the river was almost dry. We would walk through ankle and sometimes knee deep water to get to the other side. A kilometer or so walk from the river brought us to my grandmother’s parent’s village.

During the rainy season, it was a different story. Each year, after a couple of strong rain falls, the mighty river swelled up. At this time of the year, the river always seemed very angry to me. Standing on its bank, all you could see was fast moving muddy water. The rushing water used to make an intimidating sound. I was told that no one ever tried to cross the river by swimming. People did not cross the river for fun. They did it because it was necessary. Everybody crossed the river on a handmade boat. It was all very scary. I did not know how to swim and was scared even more.

On the bank, people gathered before eight in the morning and boarded the boat around ten in order to ride across the river. As people arrived, they sat on the ground and waited. Sometimes two people who knew each other talked. They usually started with the reason why they were crossing the river. One person was going to attend a marriage. Another talked about going to see a relative on their deathbed. Those who talked gave their reasons as to why they would risk taking the boat to get to the other side. Sometimes, the muddy water would be rushing fast and you could feel the wrath of the river. It was as if it was cautioning everybody to think before making the trip. You could also feel that people were anxious, as if they knew the intention of the raging river. Everybody became quiet as soon as the boat left the bank. Sometimes, you could hear loud prayers by some elders hoping to satisfy the river Goddess.

This boat was handmade and hand operated. There were no motors attached. To a child, the boat appeared very large. There were two boat operators. Each carried a sixteen-foot bamboo pole that was about four inches in diameter. Before we started, the main operator would ask people to go into the boat and get evenly distributed. Some went to the left and others to the right. Some stayed at the front end of the boat while others walked to the far end of it. There were no fancy seats available. There were only planks of wood, may be a foot wide across the width of the boat. Each was wide enough for one person to sit. There were not enough seats for everybody. Some would have to squat on the floor of the boat. The empty boat was three to four feet above the water. As people started to sit, their weight would lower the boat into the water. There was an imaginary line that only the boat operator knew. When the boat went down that far into the water, they did not allow anymore people on to the boat. There were no figures for maximum number of people allowed or maximum weight allowed for a boat ride. It was all in the chief operators head. For generations, they knew what they were doing. I have not heard of any boat capsizing and people drowning at that river crossing.

I was often scared to get into the boat. Each time before stepping into it, I would see water on the floor. It was not just wet wooden floor planks; there was water slushing. I felt as if the boat was leaking, and before we could reach the other side of the river, it would sink midstream. I always wanted to ask my father if that would happen. However, I could not muster enough courage to ask. I wanted to warn the operator, but did not know how. Often during the ride, I used to stare at the water inside the boat for a long time. At times, I was convinced that the water level was rising. It was never a comfortable feeling and I always remained fearful. I wish someone would have clarified the fact that the water in the boat was not from a leak and that everything would be all right. I knew no one could read my mind.

Children grow up with similar fears every day. Sometimes, adults help to reduce or remove the fear. Other times the child has to mange alone. I cannot imagine the life of a child living in constant fear.

When the chief boat operator decided to stop loading, generally, people stopped, for they knew the consequences of an overloaded boat ride. From time to time, the newspaper used to write stories about a boat crossing that went foul. People often died. The capsized boats were more like twigs floating in the raging rivers during the monsoon. Yet at times, someone would plead to be on the boat due to urgency, and the chief operator would have to make a life or death decision to take a passenger or not. Sometimes, the elders on the boat would grumble and ask the chief operator to stick to his decision. Generally, the chief operator’s decision stood, and preparation for the trip started with an offering to God. Many of the passengers chanted their own mantras. I did not know any mantras and was glad when the adults chanted. I was hopeful that the chanting would help. I never heard my father or grandmother chant. I guess they relied on the experience of the boat operator. By now, an element of seriousness blanketed the entire boat.

Slowly, one of the operators would stand on the boat, and place the sixteen foot bamboo pole into the water. As soon as it touched the river bed, he pushed it with all his strength. The boat, along with all of those people, would start to move a little. As a child, I was always amazed at how a little boat operator