Head Held High
Ravi Ranjan

 

Part 1: Videsh (Foreign Country) 1. Burma(Myanmar) "This is Burma, and it is unlike any land you know about." Rudyard Kipling, 1898 Burma, as it was called in those days, is a big and beautiful country, spread over six hundred thousand square kilometers in Southeast Asia bordered by Bangladesh, India, China, Laos and Thailand. It has a typical tropical climate. The geographical area Burma encompasses today was settled through Panglong Agreement which combined the Lower and Upper Burma along with some Frontier areas. It can be described as a character having high monsoon influences resulting in high humidity and a considerable amount of sun all around the year. The whole setup makes the human existence, at times, quite uncomfortable. Except the climate, the country holds fascinating Buddhist cultural treasures, unspoiled landscapes of green and blooming with wildlife. Forests have a dense tropical growth and are abundant with Teak and bamboo trees along with rubber, which has a lot of commercial curiosity. A long shoreline and plenty of freshwater patches due to rainfall also formulated for a thriving fishing business. Fish has also been an integral part of Burmese diet since old days. Also, the conditions are very good for a bumper paddy farming, the prime crop in Burma since ancient days. The arable land was rendered by slash-and-burn method, also known as swiddening, which involves setting fire on the forest to create fields. These fields are cultivated till the nutrients are completely exhausted, post which the land is abandoned to grow freely, until the next slash-and-burn. The land is full of the impermeable subsoil, which can hold water well, much-required necessity for paddies. This grand agricultural opportunity attracted many people who had an inclination to farming and who understood it�s potential. The British Raj, commonly referred to Raj was all over the place from Afghanistan, current Pakistan, and Indian subcontinent all the way till Myanmar and Singapore. The only exceptions were small pockets of Goa and Pondicherry. This governance method called the Raj and area of annexation referred as British India was enforced on 28-June-1858 after the first Indian rebellion of 1857 which lasted till 1947. Burma fought three Anglo-Burmese Wars between 1824 till 1885 before succumbing to Raj, which brought the social, economic and most importantly administrative changes in the country. Burma is notably referred to as �Scottish Colony� as Scotsmen played a vital role in colonizing and administrating the country. James Scott was one prominent Scottish bureaucrat who helped a lot in colonial rule and also introduced football in Burma. The last Burmese monarch, King Thibaw Min, was abdicated after the last of Angle Burmese wars and was exiled to India, carried out of Mandalay on an oxcart. During the colonial era, many Indians shifted to Burma as field workers, construction workers, civil servants, soldiers, and traders. They along with British, dominated the civil and commercial life of Burma and became the controlling power of region�s economy. The British called it �Further India� and subsequently named the country as Burma in honor of Barmans, the dominant ethnic group. The Burmese called it "myanma naing ngan" which happens to be the source of its current name Myanmar. The British "imperial tongue" struggled and stumbled over Myanmar and adopted Burma, which is similar to the name Birmania given to the country by Portuguese traders who came to this region much before the British. Rangoon was the capital city of Burma, literally meaning "End of Strife� is located at the convergence of two rivers, Yangon and Bago in Lower Burma. Later the capital was shifted to Naypyidaw in March 2006. The city is about thirty kilometers away from Gulf of Martaban. A notable fact of the place in context to India is that it served as the capital of Azad Hind, the provisional government established in 1943 in occupied Singapore and supported by Japan and Nazi Germany. The name of the city was changed to Yangon by military leadership which was ruling the country in 1989. The city was founded in the eleventh century as Dagon and since then, has been the most important commercial center of Burma. The city was burnt to the ground by a fire in 1841 and was left to rumbles in World War two. The city in its colonial times was known as �the garden city of the east�. Burma was granted independence in 1948 after more than a century of colonization by the British with Sao Shwe Thaik as its President and U Nu as Prime Minister. It remained independent until March of 1962, when General Ne Win did a coup. This lead to a brutal military rule which completely ended as late as 2011. But despite the colonialization, the gruesomeness of military rule, revolution and civil wars, Burma survived and maintained its cultural richness intact. The Buddhist monks in their saffron attire smile peacefully, which confirms the fact that people make places as they are. Burma brims with beauty, even till today. 2. Aarambh (The beginning) Dumraon currently is a sub-division in Buxar district in the Indian state of Bihar. It is also one of the oldest princely states of India. As the princely state, its boundaries were defined by rivers Ganga and Son and it extended till Uttar Pradesh, another state in independent India. The state is famous for a peculiar case which was escalated till the Privy Council in London, the case identifies as �the heir of Maharani Beni Kuwari�. Maharani Beni Kuwari was teh widow of Maharaja of Dumraon. She allegedly adopted a boy from Jagdishpur Riyasat but died within a day of adoption. As per the then prevailing British law, the Riyasat was accepted as legal heir and hence the new ruler. But a member of Maharaja�s family, Sir Keshav Prasad Singh, disputed this notion and claimed the throne for himself. There was no way to verify the alleged adoption, even the main witnesses in the case went missing. He was none other than Harish Singh Ji, who was Tahsildar (Revenue collator) and very close aid to Maharaja and subsequently Keshav Singh. Some of the other witnesses never turned in the court or favored Keshav Prasad Singh in their testimonies. Despite Riyasat�s appeal to Privy Council, Singh was appointed as Steward of Throne. So were the ways of princely and rich families, they are not concerned about society. That arrogance and ignorance still remain in society. The lesser known fact in this incident is that Harish Singh Ji was given a land of five hundred acres near Rangoon in Burma against the silence he kept over the matter. This also explains his sudden disappearance from this case and no whereabouts since then. Harish Singh saw the potential of sugarcane as well as rubber farming in Burma and grabbed the best bargain of his life and shifted there. The sugarcanes in that area were twenty feet tall and were in abundance. In a couple of years, he established himself as the landlord with a steady flow of income through sugarcane farming and supplying the yield to sugar factories. He thought of expansion of business as he saw profit in other ventures like teak, bamboo, rubber and rice. Realizing that he won�t be able to handle things at such large scale, as a lot of his time went in womanizing and drinking, he contacted his friend in his native village Manikpur, currently in Bihar. The friend was Dhanushdhari Pandey who was looking after the property of Harish Singh in India, which he sold off before migrating to Burma. His entire family died in Japanese attack in 1942 when he refused to retreat from his karmbhumi (place of work), a place he toiled for forty years. Dhanushdhari Pandey was a close friend of my grandfather and they studied together before going into the ancestral occupation of agriculture in their respective lands. Despite the distance and lack of mode of communications they kept in touch. Once Dhanushdhari Pandey got the money minting opportunity, he thought of bringing my grandfather as a partner in crime and Baba agreed. They left for Burma on July 10, 1901. After three years of relentless efforts, my grandfather established himself as a rich sugarcane farmer. He also bought a mango orchard spread in fifteen acres and started trading the fruit in yielding season. He called the whole family in 1905 and established a suburb. He named it Choubey Tola and it is known as such till date. Situated forty-five kilometers from Yangon or more affectionately and popularly Rangoon, the biggest city of Burma, was this establishment, literally meaning �Choubey�s community�. The new century came with an opportunity, which would turn into a liability in times to come. But highs and lows are the way of life, isn�t it? My father Ram Adhar Choubey, was born a year later in 1906 in Choubey Tola. He was the eldest and my two uncles were born with a gap of a year among them. Once he came of age, he was sent to Rangoon for studies. After his schooling, he went on to study Law in Rangoon College. This was the only college in Burma and was established in 1878. It was later named Government College in 1906, the same year my father was born and currently referred to University of Yangon. He started practicing in Sub Divisional Court in Rangoon as a barrister. The Sub-Divisional court was above Township court and below District Court in grade. It had a jurisdiction of up to five hundred rupees, quite a sum in those days. He got married to my mother in 1936. She was a sweet and loving women, short in height but large at heart. She was the only one in our family who spoke fluent Burmese. She was the daughter of one of grandfather�s friend who was a Judge in the High court and my father and mother were promised to each other within years of their birth by both friends. The arranged marriage, just like most of them in those days, lasted a lifetime and the union gave the world with a new life form, me. I was told that my grandfather danced just once, and it occurred in my mother and father�s marriage. My mother brought small idol of Ganesha with a big and bright ruby on its belly with her that became a family jewel and was passed on to the eldest daughter in law of each generation. Currently it lies with my grandson�s wife, waiting for its time to exchange hands again. I was born on August 21, 1937. It was raining heavily and continuously from last three days and everyone thought that flood was on its way. The flood never came, I came instead. Mother told me that she was in labor for eight hours and she was scared that she might die giving birth to me. Unlike these days, babies were born at home with the help of a midwife, normally an elderly woman with enough experience of child birth which could put the best obstetrician-gynecologists to shame. The rain stopped within hours of my birth. Both my father and grandfather were in Rangoon due to some work and didn�t see me for next four days. I am told that my grandfather (Baba), a very strict and stern man, had a glint of moisture in his eyes when he cuddled me for the first time. Father, or Babuji as we called him, told me that the first word Baba said was his features resembles mine. He was very happy and a full day leave was given to workers with a festive atmosphere lasting a couple of days. Though I was of a very tender age, I can still recall the home we stayed. It was a wooden two-story house, a huge and magnificent structure on top of that. The lower level was used as accommodation for cattle and we stayed on the first floor. As we Indians are schooled with traditions, our home was built in the same way as any other home. We had a big aangan (an open area at center of the house for sunlight and other domestic chores). Each side had four rooms, total of twelve rooms on the first floor. The roofs were slanted for the abundant rainwater to slip by. We also had balconies in two east facing rooms, own of which had a rocking chair used by Baba had and in his absence, by us. The kitchen was in east and there was a mud fireplace where grandmother and mother cooked on wood and cow dung fire. The wooden walls of the kitchen were black and glossy, perhaps due to the soot of charcoal coming out of smoke. I remember finding a snake in the cow dung pile in kitchen, Babuji killed it but we were scared going near the place for a long time. The next time I saw a snake again was years later, and I was the one who killed it then. I slept in the northeast room with my father and mother where there was a window which let the first morning light creep in and bestow its illuminating charm on my face as soon as it could. I even had the privilege of having a separate cot, all for myself in those days, the luxury I couldn�t afford for next seventy years. Ours was the only house which had two floors. The view from all around through the translucent glasses was mesmerizing. We had green fields of Sugarcane and Rice all across the north and east view. There was a mango orchard of seventy trees in west, which ditched our intentions of looking till the horizon by its impregnable growth of green but served us well with its fruit. We kids pelleted our physical efforts summarized in stones on those trees which were meant for dislodging its successor seeds in the form of fruits. This action often produced results as well. Mom used to make mango pickle of different flavors. One variety was made with mashed mango pulp and sugar and chili flakes, it was my favorite. The south was the establishment of workers, in the shady mud and straw laden thatches burdening their weight on the cylindrical outpost of unbaked mud bricks. That direction also swelled up the stench of feces due to the nonexistence of toilets, which, alas, my country still bears, even after around a decade of advancement. Mother always asked me to let these windows closed. No one wants to see the suffering adorned by the fellow people, I realized it long back and fought it till today. I was called �Chote Sarkar� by the peasants, I didn�t like it, but despite my rebellion of asking them to call out my name, they never changed. They feared, and at that time I didn�t understand, now I do, but it doesn�t matter. The whole house made a subtle screech of stretching wood columns under the pressure when any of us walked around. The sound was distinct for every step and for each of us. We ignored it. Despite the ignorance, I feared that the house will collapse on us someday, sometime. Fortunately, it never happened till Chaubeys stayed there. That was our home for half a century and it was robust to serve us well for the time we needed it. Thank you, house. I still run my wild imagination of the state of my house today, if someone else is living there, if it is standing there at all. It was the best house I had, and finally when I made one for family in my village, I tried to recreate the same ambience as it was in Burma. I guess the effort failed. My grandfather�s study was an out of bound place for me and Kamala Kant, my younger brother, who had just got himself promoted from crawling to walking. It was an elaborate room in northwest side of first floor, the biggest in house which served as my grandfather�s office as well as his place of solace. It was filled with work related documents and books in red leather jackets which were losing their battle with time and turning black slowly, each day. It didn�t serve me very well when I, after learning some tricks of origami from a Burmese worker, tried to create with newspaper sheets in his office. I spoiled around twenty sheets of the Kesari, a newspaper in those days edited by none other than Bal Gangadhar Tilak. The newspaper was a prized procession my grandfather had, it was mailed to him from Calcutta and reached a week after it was published. That incident, leaving my cheeks and bum (an undisclosed fact) red, taught me a great lesson. He took me to the nearest paper factory next day and showed me how much labor was consumed in creating paper. I saw the laborers sorting rags according to the varying grade of quality and strength, cutting them into smaller pieces, retting the rags for fermentation. Further exploration revealed the Hollander beater and Diderot Encyclop�die stampers with bronze tackles running on waterwheels. I also saw Vatman, coucher and layer at work along with workers drying the loft in a separate airy room. This instilled the importance of efforts and I carried it throughout my life and passed in on to my sons and grandsons. I tried to give them perks only after they have �earned� it, and that is something I am proud of. The gardener we tended the mango orchard and small garden which had red roses, the same color of famous rubies had a bicycle. It was a general black cycle, similar to the one which is produced by Atlas now a days. He was very possessive for the cycle, but never used to say anything to us due to fear of Baba. It was too big to ride so I rode it scissor style. I held the handle with my left hand and body bar by my right and then slide my body under the bar to reach out to the pedals. I used to take it for a long ride across country side, with my left hand giving the direction, legs pushing the pedals down creating power to forward and body swirling sideways to create the balance. I think learning to ride the bicycle was one of the most difficult things I learnt. It seems strange that how easy it was once I mastered the trick. This used to be my favorite pastime. Ironically, I never bought any vehicle for my use in my whole lifetime. Not even a bicycle. I remember herds of cows and buffalos. Once I learnt counting, I got to know they were thirty in all. They were raised and traded as commodities, but they were still part of family. I remember my grandfather feeding them with first few rotis (Indian bread) which were cooked in morning before having his breakfast. There was one peculiar cow Anandi I still recall, she was born as a calf the same day I was born as I was told, she was flawless white and became my companion when I took her to fields to graze. I kept her bounded to me with a rope, the setup I ceased after she panicked by a dog barking at her and thought running was her best defense. I slithered with her on a good distance when the rope gave up and I loitered in the grass with my white pajamas transforming into colors of red, green and grey. The perfect combination which blood, grass and earth can create. My mother thought otherwise. I was tendered with iodine based ointment and it all healed up, just leaving a scar on my right knee. I feel the tingling as I recall that moment, buried over eighty year of experiences. As there was a lot of water logging in paddy fields, there were a lot of fishes around. We used to create small puddles of water and then tried to put all the water outside the puddle and catch those small fishes and fill in the glass bottles. We used to feed them with flour but however hard we tried they died. We buried them in the mango orchard. We though fishes were good manure and they would lead to better fruits in the next season. We never knew if that worked. One day I managed to catch a big fish and it bit me on my finger and it bled. Angry and furious, I beat the fish on ground and tore its body with my nails. Unknowingly to me, my grandfather was watching the whole episode. He called me afterwards and tended to the wound. He also explained me that biting was the second nature of fish when it felt threatened, but as human, we need to control our anger. He supported this fact with some stories from Ramayana, all giving a lesson on how anger fails you judgement and destroys you. I was too young to understand this theory but it registered in my unconscious mind. I used to get this flashback many times when I felt angry and believe me, I was angry as hell at times. Baba had very little time to converse with us, but whenever he did, we used to learn a new lesson of life. He would also refer to verses from Holy Books which were in Sanskrit and then translated them in Bhojpuri so that we can understand. I always admired him for the fact that he never went to school but learnt how to read and write by his own. He read a lot and passed on his passion to me, I passed it on to my grandson. Someday he would thank me for this. The ideology of my life is mostly carved by grandfather, and he did an astonishing job there. The only thing he failed to instill in me was my belief in God, I remained atheist throughout my life, and reason for the same would be recollected later in the book. I recall one of the incident Baba told us when he was in playful mood. One of my uncle Paras Nath Choubey was an opium addict. He used to smoke a lot. As he feared Baba, the whole act used to happen in complete secrecy, normally in mango orchard. It was harvesting time and the crops were tilled and dumped collectively in field, ready for further processing. Paras Nath was to stand guard a night as there was risk of theft and animals. Unfortunately, his opium stock almost got over as he reached fields. Now, in order to buy more, Paras Nath left his duty, tidied an ox-cart and started for Rangoon in middle of night. Unluckily, Baba came on a round and saw no Paras Nath, no cart, no oxen. Surprised, he followed the track of the cart and after an hour or so he saw the cart standing in the middle of road. On reaching near the cart, he smelled the opium smoke and heard Paras Nath singing Saber ho gail, uth ja Bum Bhole (Lord Shiva, wake up, it�s morning). Baba shouted Paras Nath�s name in stern voice. Paras Nath, after realizing that he was caught, leaped of the cart and ran in the darkness. In the process his dhoti got tangled in the cart and was left behind. Baba got the cart back to fields. Paras Nath, however, came back after three days post his disappearance, in the same underpants he fled. I remember little me and my brother laughing with our tiny palms closing our eyes when Baba told the dhoti part. Everything was going on well for our family and then Hitler planned to plunge humanity to its lowest form. He, with Germany worshipping him as demi-god and his Axis partners which included a tiny peck of land named Japan started a conquest of the world in 1939. The same feat was attempted earlier by many madmen, the most prominent one were Napoleon and Alexander the great. None of them was successful, but Hitler didn�t learn from them. The world war two was the bloodiest war in human history, yet the reference seems blown out of proportion as only thirty countries participated in the fighting. Burma, away from Europe, the major theatre of war was still not under its influence. Japan was actively involved in the war and it knew that if they won Burma, they would be able to disrupt a critical supply link to China. Also they intended to deny access of rubber supplies from South East Asia to United States. Rubber was a vital military resource and US was not self-sufficient in its production. So in January of 1942 Japan decided to attack Burma from Victoria Point, almost the most southern part of Burma. This move from Japan was least expected and hence there was no force to contest any retaliation. Japanese Imperial Army also had support from Thai forces and Burmese insurgents who felt the need of overthrowing the colonial British from their land. Lieutenant General Thomas Hutton was the commander of Burma Army, he had only the 17th Indian Infantry Division and 1st Burma Division to defend the country. The garrison was headquartered in Rangoon. Burma was neglected militarily as Allied strategists never took the threat of Japanese invasion seriously, considering Burma as military �backwater�. Despite the small numbers, General was optimistic about the support coming from the Chinese Nationalist government under Chiang Kai-shek. The help from Chinese was too little and too late, resulting in total annihilation of British in the region until the end of war. Adding to British trouble was coup like uprising by Bamar community who were concerned about Indian moneylender�s impact on economy and attrition of traditional culture due to importation of Indian labor. So when Burma was under attack, Bamar didn�t contribute to defense, rather they joined endeavors which helped the Japanese. On 7 March British and Burma army evacuated Rangoon after applying scorched earth plan, under which they destroyed the Rangoon port and blew the oil terminal. The whole city was on fire when the allied left. This was fall of Rangoon, and along with fell the hope of many Indians who thought the war could be won or averted. Gen. Hutton was a friend of my grandfather and few days before 7 March he sent a messenger to him stating the fact that Rangoon�s fall is inevitable. He requested him to vacate the land and retreat to India till things are settled again. My grandfather was grim that day. He was not ready to face the truth that he has to abandon his life�s work. He discussed the matter with my father for a long time. I was in bed and was excited about the war, the Japanese and the talks in community. I heard loud argument between my grandfather, the landlord who wanted to stay and my father, the barrister who wanted to go to India. At the end, barrister won the argument. Years later we realized that it was for good, as we came to know that once we vacated, the workers robbed our house and took away all the procession. Also a week after we left, Japanese invaded the community and shot everyone dead. There were six hundred people who died in hands of Japanese that spring in Choubey Tola, and there was no one left to grief. I imagine the monstrous short Japanese solider menacingly looking for targets with almost closed Mongolian eyes under the steel tetsukabuto (Steel Helmet) featuring a yellow sun with the barrel of his Type 99 long rifle moving to and fro like a horizontal pendulum. The imagination was created by the brutal stories I heard all along the way to India. My father wrote a letter when he went back in 1948 that he found a human carcass in one of the room�s closet, holding one of the chandeliers he might would have tried to steal in his hand and a hole in his head. Karma, definitely is a bitch.

 

 

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