The cross of debt

Satyawan Malik

NOTHING irked my father as much as smoking, lies and unscrupulous loans. A headmaster in the 1970s, he would quote Pt Lakhmi Chand’s verse: ‘Le ke dede kar ke khale, us tae kon jabbar ho se; Nugra manas aankh badal ja, samajhdar ki maer ho se’ (If you work hard and honestly pay back what you borrow from others, no one can be stronger than you. If an ungrateful liar turns hostile, it will be a tough time for the sane). 

My father, a postgraduate in maths from Panjab University, read a lot, wrote a lot, taught a lot, and yet loved agriculture work. I wonder if the days were longer or life was slower, or both — such was his efficacy in whatever he undertook. 

One Sunday afternoon we were returning home from our fields, when we saw our neighbour in the village riding a punctured bicycle with unusual speed. He was panting hard, making it difficult for him to tell us what was the matter. ‘Jeep’ is all he managed to utter and dashed away. My father, giving me ‘walk the sum’, began his algorithms about the neighbour, Mr M. ‘Half of the eight acres have already been pledged, at no rates, to pay off only the interest to one of three moneylenders. Total pendency is nightmarish. Still the hubristic drunkard defies penitence. The eldest son has gone awry...the anaemic wife is never short of breath in wanting him to mend his ways. They have two young daughters to marry off. His land-and-house distribution dispute with the elder brother knows no resolution. The fields have been left unattended...no books for the youngest son... the house is crumbling. Yet he thinks no one wiser...no compunction, no scruples.’ My father would add that studies and agriculture demanded austerity and discipline. 

Soon we found a bank jeep stopping near Mr M’s house. Four bank officials were holding loan-ledgers; accompanying them were two policemen. But the jeep would bring no surprise to Mrs M, who didn’t know how to hold her tongue. The bank men stood no chance against her. When they proposed the auctioning of a buffalo and a cow, she pounced on them, warning: ‘Gau ko haath mat laga dena, mere bhai ne di thi!’ 

The eldest son, when asked about his father, defiantly retorted that he was away for a week. It didn’t work as my father’s over-simplistic view of the truth came out. The son and the mother instantly coalesced into a laconic grudge: ‘Aap to sarkari naukri mein ho, aap kya jaano garibi ki maar’ (You have a government job, so you cannot know the curse of poverty). 

Unimaginably, some people have suffered so much hunger, depression, defeat and the burden of debt that it is hard to live without succumbing to the temptation of becoming a fugitive. Wouldn’t the Shakespeare of Haryana, Pt Lakhmi Chand, choke on the elegy written on the fight, plight and flight of the not-so-simplistic agro-sociologists?