Edited by Tanvi Singh
I’ve lived in this village my entire life. My mother is a seamstress and my father works in the fields. We don’t have a farm of our own, but there is a rich landowner who pays the villagers to till his soil. The rich man lives far away in a city, but my father and some others grow crops on his land. The rich man used to live in the village before he left. My parents say he understands our struggles; he is a kind rich man, and he pays my father well.
My house is big; I have a room of my own, and so does my elder brother. My sisters share a room since they are small, but soon my brother will go to the big city, and we will all have rooms of our own. My parents share a room as well. We have a garage, and inside that mother mends clothes for other people for a small sum.
My grandparents live in a similar house down the street. My grandfather is one of the village elders and he has a say in all major matters. My grandmother used to be a teacher in the village school, then she became the principal before she retired. Now she sits under the jacaranda tree near the pavilion and spends her days chatting with the other grandmothers.
Life in the village is monotonous sometimes, but it’s also fun. During the day I am forced to go to school, and in the evenings I play with my friends in the street.
I hate going to school and I can’t understand why I need to be educated. My father never went to school and he’s a successful farmer. I am going to be a farmer just like father. In fact, I help him out in the field even now.
My cousins are visiting from the big city—they are amazed by life in my village just as I am fascinated by life in the city. They do not pluck mangoes from the trees and eat them as it is; in the big city they buy them from grocery stores and wash them before they can eat them.
On weekends they go to eat in a restaurant instead of heading over to the pavilion for a community dinner. Life is different in the city—I think my brother loves the sound of it—he has started packing despite him leaving nearly three months later. I don’t like the way city life sounds. There are no community among the people, and there are no roots tying one to the land on which they live.
Along with my cousins other people came to our village too. None of us know them, but they claim to have ancestral ties to the village. They say their great-grandmothers and great-grandfathers lived here several decades ago—but none of the village elders can recall.
Still, our village is welcoming. The elders laugh and say their memory must be fading, and they welcome the newcomers.
I don’t like the newcomers. The ladies are mean looking and they don’t contribute to the weekly village dinners. They turn their nose up at our food, at our culture, our traditions and customs. But they claim it is their ancestral land, so isn’t it their culture too? Shouldn’t they appreciate it?
The newcomer kids are annoying as well— there’s one in my class and he calls all of us vermin. He says we are gross and uncouth, and that he hopes we will be gone sooner rather than later.
There are more and more newcomers arriving, there is a constant influx of them. They have bought houses and land from other villagers. Some of my friends have moved away already. This week alone, four families moved out of the village. They seemed unwilling to go and it made me upset. I’m going to miss my friends, I do not know if I will see them again.
The newcomers are becoming more and more demanding.
Earlier they used to be respectful of village elders and the other people and places. Now they act as if they own it all. My grandfather tries to reason with them—he says you are welcome here as you have nowhere else to go, but this is our land. You cannot take it all.
But they do not listen, and they do not care.
I wake up one morning to a big commotion. Disaster has struck the village! The ancestral jacaranda has been torn down! Through grandmother’s sobs and hiccupping explanation I realise that one of the newcomers cut down the jacaranda tree because he thought it was encroaching into his farmland.
The village elders are livid. “They say this is their ancestral land as well, and yet they have destroyed the jacaranda. How can they claim to have descended from this land when their actions show nothing but disrespect?”
My sisters and I can tell that mother is very upset. So, we go to school with no complaints, and when we come back, we eat the lunch she has prepared with no comments as well. We try to make her life as easy as we can, and yet I keep hearing her cry in the confines of the garage.
The rest of the week passes in a blur, and there are several pressing matters the adults are tending to. They are secretive and most conversations between them now take place through whispers. My elder brother is included in some of these mysterious discussions, but neither I nor my sisters are told anything. So, I keep wondering in private why father has not gone to the fields all week. It is finally my brave little sister who asks.
“Baba, it is the season to plant crops, isn’t it? So why are you at home when you should be in the fields?”
Baba’s reply is curt, which is unusual in itself because he favours my sister more than anyone. He tells her that the land has been bought by someone else and he can no longer farm it.
I may not know many things, but I know with conviction it is the newcomers who have done this to my father.
Over the course of one more week several events seem to weigh my parents down. If father cannot earn, we cannot live in comfort. Mother’s earnings are simply not enough for five people.
I am not entirely shocked when I wake up one weekend and my mother has torn apart her and father’s bedroom. My father is working on the garage. They tell us to pack all our belongings in the trunks, and to leave behind what we do not need.
“We are moving to the big city with your brother. Perhaps we will come back soon, but we might not. Pack everything you need, and what can be bought will be purchased in the city. Hurry up.”
I pack my things and leave behind a big sack full of old toys which can be given to the school. I help my little sisters pack, because their scared little faces strike something deep within me. Whether I like it or not, I will have to protect them, especially in the big city. I cheer them up with jokes and promise them a good time in the big city.
I don’t know what I’m saying but I can see that everyone is scared, and we must fake our cheer until it becomes real.
I bid grandmother and grandfather a teary farewell. They are staying behind despite mother’s desperate attempts to convince them to come with us. They say they are the true descendants of the land, and that since they were born there, they shall perish there. It makes my mother wail, and I half expect her to tell us to unpack.
But she has already sold many of her gold ornaments for a fortune, and my father has sold his bicycle. We will take the cart till the bus stand, then the bus till the railway station. From there we will take the railway to the big city. My brother seems afraid. My mother is still crying, and father is holding back tears trying to bid farewell to the house he built from the ground up several decades ago. My sisters hold on to grandfather’s pant legs and I hold grandmother’s hand.
I do not know if I will see my grandparents again, or if I will visit my childhood home again. I feel as though I should be more upset, that perhaps I am not understanding the gravity of the situation. Perhaps the big city will be a new adventure, and that I will come to love it.
But I feel as though I will never truly belong, because my roots are in my ancestral land, and I have been forcefully uprooted.