Bakshiwala

Our joint family home has always been in the village of Bakshiwala. This is a small village in the northwestern state of Punjab in India and is four miles west of the city of Rajpura. As far back as I can remember we have called it home. This village sits in the middle of many other similar hamlets, all in the business of farming. Agriculture, hence, has been the back bone of our family whether we settled down in the cities or stayed in the village. Papa Ji, my father, worked for the Finance Ministry in the Indian government. He would get transferred to a new city every three or four years but often managed to circumvent these orders so we moved less often than we normally would have. Home, however, remained in the village where we went every chance we got. It was the only destination of all our holidays and if we visited other cities it was because they happened to be on the way to the village.

Bakshiwala was a mile from the main road. A small dirt pathway connected the village to this road. The dirt pathway rode on the bank of a neher (a small canal) that came to our fields from the Bhakra Dam, and took us to the main road known as the GTroad (Grand Trunk Road). Our village was on one side of this pathway, and our fields were on the other side, with the neher in between. To catch the bus to the city we had to go to the GT road. Most people walked, carrying any load they had on their heads. Usually the items to be carried were wrapped and tied in a piece of cloth. Men occasionally used a bike to ease the load. Bikes were expensive and only a few villagers had them. It was common to borrow the bikes when needed. Children loved to get a ride on the bike.

I lived for the days we spent at our home in the village. My mother, Biji, absolutely did not. She was a city girl through and through and never learnt to like the village life. Of course being the daughter-in-law had a lot to do with it. She liked being at her parents home in Chandigarh, a clean, orderly city just twenty five miles from our village. There she could relax and temporarely put down the day to day burdens of a housewife. To me though Chandigarh seemed like a clean, luxurious resort that lacked the interest of a buzzing, vibrant, rooted community.

Every summer we would arrive at Rajpura station on a bus or train and be pulled out through the windows into the arms of our chacha jis (uncles; dad's younger brothers) who could not wait for us kids to exit through the doors. After ruffling our hair they would admire our clothes and comment on our rapid growth in height and then get busy helping Biji and Papa ji with the luggage. The buses and trains stopped for a short while only and our arrival was always a hectic affair. After chachajis hugged and did pranaams to papaji and biji (touching feet as a form of respect to elders) we would come out of the small station and out into the familiar air of Punjab. Rajpura was a small agricultural town and most people knew our family. We always stopped by the lassi wala's cart and had big glasses full of creamy, foaming lassi (sweet yogurt drink). Then we would visit the Bedi (our namesake) cloth shop on the GT road where we would be offered tea. While the adults enjoyed the tea and visited with the owner we kids would wander (and be instantly pulled back) on the road. Rajpura was full of dust and flies but no one other than Biji noticed it. It had a distinct earthy smell with components of cow dung, fried pakoras and the sugar factory near by. From there we would take a local bus and be dropped at the pathway to our village. Another frenzy of unloading the luggage and counting us kids would commence, then bus would depart with loud crumbling sounds from its old frame and we deposit us on our homeground.