Last Diwali I visited Mathura after a long time. I was born in Mathura in an ashram named Gayatri Tapobhumi and my grandparents still live there. So I was a bit excited about the visit. And as I was visiting Mathura alone for the first time, mistakes were bound to happen. So I ended up sitting in a bus that moved only after one hour after the moment I sat there. And when I realised that the bus is taking more than the two hours my dad had promised, the bus stopped for lunch and I got down to see 'Mathura Depo' written on the front of the bus which meant that the bus would stop at all possible stops between Delhi and Mathura. Then the voracious driver took almost an hour to eat his lunch. And the guy sitting to my right was an elderly citizen who took more than the one third of the seat sending me and the other guy in a frenzy of adjustments at every speed-breaker. The young guy sitting on my right(who was on the verge of falling from his seat) kept nudging me to tell the old man to "shift". And when the old man didn't listen, he started making loud comments about old people. Now and then his phone would ring up and he would very heatedly tell them that he was going to be a little late. He then told me that it was his sister's wedding in the evening and it was important for him to reach in time which was going to be unlikely owing to the "depo" bus. Apparently I was not the only fool.
I reached Mathura in four than the two hours I had thought. I came out of the bus, not disgruntled, to my own surprise, and found dad waiting for me. He was amused at the fact that I boarded the "depo" and told me that I should have looked for other buses there. Though I had assured Dad that I would reach all by myself, he had come. I would have loved to reach all by myself. We hired an auto and moved. I had never visited Mathura by a bus so had some difficulty in identifying the roads and streets. But then came the Janmabhumi and I could recognise everything and eagerly looked for the railway track running in the middle of the road and yes, that track was operational! From there I could relate everything to my childhood. It was then that I realised that how less Mathura had changed over the years. There were the same shops, same roads, same streets and the same line of shops that never opened. I was amazed at how little development this place has seen in the past few years.
We reached the Tapobhumi in about 10 minutes. The Tapobhumi is kind of fortified with the walls bearing quotes of the founder Shree Ram Sharma Acharya. Dadi was very happy on seeing me. Like everyone else she said that I had grown up a lot in these years and that I had grown very thin. She also commented on my "long" hair. Though they were nowhere near what is called long nowadays, she had always seen me in short hair. So, after turning a deaf ear to my protests of no-hunger( I never feel hungry after or during travel ), lunch was served and I then sat to chat with my sister who was bursting to talk to me from the moment I had arrived. She had been running around me, staring at me and others to quieten her impatience. So, I talked (or rather listened) to her about all the things that 14 year olds have to say. There is a thing about talking to my sister. She immediately makes me forget about other things and it is the next thing to food that makes me feel home.
In the evening I accompanied Dad to the Chowk, the local bazaar there. We reached the Tapobhumi gate and waited for rickshaw. A rickshaw came whose rider was a thin frail old man with clothes ragged and extremely dirty. His limbs were like two black bamboo sticks and there was a look on his face that disturbed you. The man was not in pain but yet the look made you feel pity for him. He came and stood in front of us. He agreed to go to Chowk for 20 rupees. I wondered, Chowk was almost a kilometer from here, and the guy was charging a meagre amount. And then I was very much displeased when my Dad bargained with him. We sat and the man began to pull and when the rickshaw gathered speed he climbed and started pedalling slowly increasing the force and moving his limbs in rhythmic movements. The roads were bad but made worse when observed from here when each bump and pothole tried to put his efforts to vain. I observed the puller as he pedalled and shouted as people tried to come his way, as he tried to avoid potholes only to fall prey to another. Then came a slope where the puller got down and started to pull the rickshaw by hand. And I sat there like an idiot. Then Dad told me to get down and walk this part of the road. I got down. To this the rickshaw puller told me not to do so, but I nevertheless got down. It was maybe against his dignity. He then started to pull faster. The roads got narrower. And I saw his face again and there was the same look that troubled me. It would never leave him. Had it become a part of him? Then the slope ended and I climbed up again. We passed a school that my bua used to attend when she was young. Then we passed a police station where cops were sitting outside the ancient building which they had for a police station in their vests and beating the heat with handmade fans. I suddenly felt a sense of deja vu and looked around to see the a tea shop and everything came in a rush. The street, the ancient houses that looked like that lie ahead, the shops, and another school in which I had never seen any student. I remembered the drains running below the narrow roads. I remembered the drain covers and how the rickshaw used to rattle when they came across. And then I remembered the Chowk, with it's numerous streets crisscrossing each other at various intersections. Where wise is the one who is not in a car. Where children naughtily hang at the back of rickshaws without the puller and blew crackers in the middle of the street. I looked at the grocery shops, the bangle shops, the clothes shop and nothing had changed. I looked at the Mosque standing in the middle of the Chowk and towering everything around it. And I realised that nothing had changed here. Absolutely nothing. There were the same shops selling the same goods as they had been selling for years. There were the same kind of people moving around. There was no shops selling computers. The people here were untouched by that technology. There were retail stores of branded goods except Bata. Grocery shops still used the same beam balance and stones as weights to replace the lost weight. Mobile phone is the only tchnology that has trickled down successfully. Then we moved onto the sabji mandi. Vendors were sitting on ground with their vegetables laid around them. Cows and buyers moved alike among them, the only difference being that cows were treated with slaps by the vendors . Cows would moo their disapproval at this behaviour. My dad moved around them and some of the vendors recognised my dad. I was surprised. It had been 23 years since my father had left Mathura and still there were the same vendors. They had not moved on. The only change now was that they had their son sitting beside them. Then there was a vendor who gave us half a kilo of pumpkin without weighing. When we asked him to weight he snorted and weighed. It was exactly half a kilo.
As we moved on we saw a man on a cycle draped with the poster of a man giving a very fake modest smile and a very big loudpspeaker loaded on the handle of the cycle. It was for the campaigning for some local elections. The name of the candidate was Arjun Singh which reminded me of the cabinet minister of the same name who is not very popular among students.
And as we walked through the market, more and more of these rickshaw campaigners moved around us. Although nobody showed any interest in them I tried to hear whenever one passed by. Hearing all the falsehood being projected so loudly made the situation even more sarcastic.
I always heard that UP has a hopeless government. But hearing and experiencing are two different things and latter creates a more larger impact. As my eyes moved around I could actually feel the gravity of the problem, of the future repercussions this situation may have. What do the people of this city feel when they see other cities, other people. But then the people of Mathura have always been very religious due to it's history. They are happy with what they have. But then they are being decieved. They are not being given what they deserve. I suddenly started seeing the futility of my education. What am I doing? I go to some classes. I watch some critically acclaimed movies, big deal. What use is all that? People at college lay so much stress on enjoying life. It all seemed so sarcastic at that moment. All my study seems fruitless when I see all this. But what can I do? Do I join politics? No, I don't want to do that. No one wants to get their hands dirty. But my inactiveness would also not calm me.
It was now time to go back and on my insistence we hired an tempo, as they are called here, on a shared basis. I kept thinking the same things on the way back with no conclusion. On reaching home, I tried to divert my mind. I sat down in front of the TV. I remembered that only a few years back there was no TV here. I remembered how I used to spend time playing and drawing when I used to come here as a child. I used to play with the children in the neighbourhood, who went to Hindi medium schools and had never watched TV in their life. Earlier I used to bond with them so well. Now I feel a wide gap between them and me. My English education had, perhaps seperated me from them.
After a few days I remembered that there was a small cluster of mudhouses behind the Tapobhumi. The maids and all used to come from there. I also remembered some farmlands around the houses. I went to the window to have a look at how much they have changed. and I was in a for a surprise. There were no mudhouses. There were small tenaments and three or four of them were proper tenaments. And they were decently decorated for Diwali. And as I saw I could remember that the last time I had seen this place there was some definitely some construction going on. But still I had never thought that the mudhouses would be replaced by tenaments. I saw a small girl in a nice salwar lighting diyas on the boundary wall of her house. Some small boys were lighting crackers in the pre-diwali enthusiasm. There was also a car outside one of the houses. I saw a women going across to their neighbours to gift some sweets. I don't know how they had managed to move ahead in these years considering that they were not very highly educated. I just knew that what I was witnessing was the fruit of a man's hard work.
And as I happily sat down on a chair I could again hear another one of those rickshaw campaigners proclaiming that a certain Uma Joshi had won the elections and will fulfill her promise of a developed and properous Mathura.
