Finished dreams, and their unfinished house

Archit Watts     

 Tribune News Service

Shekh (Muktsar), January 21    

Cement bags have been placed one above the other as a protection against the chill entering Jagmeet Singh Juggi’s half-built house. There is no money left to buy bricks, no desire too. Juggi’s gone, his room-for-each-one project along with it. Why the 25-year-old borrowed Rs 7 lakh to construct it defies logic when he knew he could only repay with the earnings from his 4-acre cotton crop. The crop failed, Juggi’s big plan as well. So, why did he borrow?

    The answer to that I don’t know. The counter to that, I do. Why should Juggi not have dreamt big? What is wrong with dreaming, especially at 25? Is that not how the urban economy functions? Is that not how the RBI Governor’s rate cut, and its effect on loan payments, makes headlines?

Juggi’s under-construction house is located on the periphery of Shekh village in Gidderbaha sub-division. Juggi was 24, full of life, filled with a desire to uplift the way his family — he, his younger brother Ranjit Singh and mother Sukhjit Kaur — lived. Eight months later, and having attained the milestone of 25 years under the sun, Sukhjit Kaur’s son hanged himself from a tree, the debt just too much for him to handle.

Sukhjit Kaur only mumbles now. She has little to say. When Ranjit, two years younger to Juggi, speaks, his voice trembles. “He was hanging with the same cloth that he used to tie around his neck or on the head,” says Ranjit, recollecting the painful scene.

Their neighbour Kulvir Singh consoles him: “Ranjit and his mother are unable to get financial help from the government. They fear the police may go after  their relatives, who lent them money and wanted it  back.”

“Both the brothers were good natured. We never heard of any wrongdoing by the elder one. Even the younger one is just like him. Both used to be happy with their work,” says a villager.

The elder one had started working as a carpenter and the younger as an electrician, in addition to farming.

The family has two buffaloes and a bull. “One buffalo has almost dried up and the other is out of lactation. They only get a litre or two milk a day,” says their neighbour.

Sukhjit Kaur, whose husband Baldev Singh passed away about 10 years ago, prefers to remain confined within the four walls.

“We own 3 acres; 1 acre we brothers had got on contract from our grandfather, for which we pay him. He lives with my tayaji,” says Ranjit. The two families are apparently not on talking terms.

The road ahead? Ranjit has no answer. Why did Juggi have to commit suicide? Again, no answer. Even if it was a momentary lapse of reason, it still does not make sense. Why would suicide cross his mind at all? Why has suicide become a convenient arragement in rural Punjab?