Happening Haryana hidden in the hinterland
LINEAGE DEFINES EXISTENCE IN HARYANA’S VILLAGES SO S/O IS MENTIONED IN RIGHT EARNEST. DETAILS SUCH AS ‘LATE’ ARE ADDED WHEN THE TIME COMES
Off the state highway and onto a dusty drive through Haryana’s heartland the other day brought me up, close and personal with scores of buffaloes and mounds and mounds of dung cakes. I took a long breath, hoping to inhale a whiff of idyllic village life but dropped the idea midway and rolled up the window. No, it wasn’t the flies or the smell of the dung that ended the olfactory adventure abruptly. Rather, it was a herd of buffaloes running in my direction as though they were straight out of a Wild West classic.
I held my breath as the driver jammed the brakes of the car on the edge of the dusty path and let the boisterous bovines with tails up in the air have their way. It was around 10 in the summer morning and we watched dumbstruck as they galloped to the muddy pond on the outskirts of the village. The still waters seemed to have a soothing effect on them and they slid into it one after the other. Soon, they were transformed into serene bobs of black.
Village women, veiled in the anonymity of colourful bandhani duppattas, following them were quick to get down to the business of scrubbing them. Eager egrets waited to take their pick of ticks as some unattended bovines sailed away, ears flapping, eyes closed. How do the masked women know which buffalo to scrub and which ones to watch over? They all look so similar, the buffaloes that is.
It’s amazing to watch the women go about their chores like making neat pies of dung with practised ease. Patting them into perfect circles, they line them up in rows or simply slap them on walls for drying. The air hangs heavy with the smell of dung and, in a matter of hours, everyone smells of it, too.
By afternoon, the men, almost all in muddy white kurta-pyjamas, lead the shiny black beauties from the pond back to their sheds for the evening milking routine. Every village house can boast of buffaloes tethered inside much like the pride city-goers take in cars parked in their driveways.
Every village house sports white tiles that announce the year in which it was built, besides declaring the name of the owner. Lineage defines existence in Haryana’s villages so s/o is mentioned in right earnest. Details such as ‘late’ are added when the time comes. It’s difficult to ignore the coincidence of the same surnames in a village. If it’s Lohan then every second house in the village wears the same surname. Some houses, however, leave passers-by guessing with an ambiguous Lal or Pal. It’s intriguing that all names are inscribed in chaste English.
The fascination for the foreign language spills over to Haryana’s highways, where private English-medium schools with fancy taglines have come up to catch students from adjoining villages, giving a tough competition to their staid sarkari counterparts. The motto of a private school, for instance, reads: “Dream your child, we will cherish,” leaving much to be desired on the grammar front. The principal looks more of a gym instructor with bulging biceps and a square jawline than the regular guy with a receding hairline and thick glasses.
Whoever said Haryana isn’t happening sure needs to take the highway through its hinterland. The dhabas may not be as appealing as neighbouring Punjab’s Havelis but the buffalo belt can certainly throw up many an adventure for any bumbling visitor.