Buddhipind Village

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Home Sweet Ancestral Home,

This past few days has been an emotional journey. Truthfully speaking, I wanted to put the visit to my father’s villages off until I had overcome the culture shock here in India…and so this is what I have done. The last thing I wanted was to be shocked at the conditions of the poor in India and transfer this to the plight of my dad in the village. I was extremely fearful of this and reluctant to visit the villages too early in my journey before I had desensitized myself to India in general. I have been coaching myself for this part of the trip for many, many months. I have been reminding myself that my emotions are true and I can express them, yet I need not have an attachment to them. I let them go through me, feel them with the intensity that they arrive, and then watch them drift away… like a leaf on a river.

My deepest, deepest thanks goes out to Uncle Saroop who did some great detective work. He phoned around to one of my father’s villages of Moranwali, to my Uncle’s in Canada and narrowed down where I needed to visit. In the spirit of helping me understand my roots and with love and affection, knowing the importance of this visit for me, he helped me beyond my words of gratitude can express.

To start, we had a nice drive to Jalundhar, thanks to Charanjit, the police officer driver. We stopped off at Saroop’s sister’s to pay a short but emotional visit. Powerfully, the whole cosmic play of the circle of life was to dance in me in the next two days. It seems that Saroop’s sister is quite ill with cancer so it was a sad visit in many ways as she is bed ridden and weak. Her condition was very reminiscent of my fathers’ when he was ill, so it hit me unexpectantly especially on this particular day when I was headed to my father’s village of birth. Prior to seeing Saroop’s sister, many thoughts and feelings were running through me about my dad and his life and death. And synchronistically, tomorrow I will be celebrating my dad’s life in his childhood village on his and his twin sister’s 77th birthday. Many symbolic and meaningful happenings have occurred to me during my journey in India thus far which solidifies my unwavering knowing of the divine order of things. I really was meant to be here now…not earlier, not later, but now.

We started the journey to the village of Budhipind,(village of the old lady) where my father was born and where my grandmother (my father’s mom) was from…the Chohan side of the family. We stopped off at a nearby village about 2 km from Buddhipind to visit my Uncle Bali’s new home he is just finishing. We were met at Tandi the bigger town a few kilometers away by a distant cousin of mine. He escorted us to my Uncle Bali’s new home. Uncle Bali lives in Toronto and decided to buy property, build a nice home and run a small farm here near Budhipind. The house is a beautiful white home that has all the amenities one could ask for. I am excited to have seen this dream of my Uncle’s. I know he always had a special place for India in his heart and this venture has made it possible to make his connection to India a reality. My Uncle Bali was always one of my favourite uncles. He was always so fun and playful. He loves kids and used to play with us whenever we saw him. This love of kids is evident as he was an elementary school teacher in Ontario and a darn good one I imagine. I will come back to stay here for sure.

After a wonderful greeting lunch (paneer pakoras (deep fried cheese) , samosas, barfi, (milk fudge) and chai )from the workers at Uncle Bali’s farm, my distant cousin and the builder of the house my Uncle Bali hired… we headed off, up the road, to Buddhipind. While driving up to the village, I was struck by the beautiful tree lined road and lush fields of rice and sugar cane. I also noticed the clean country air and the absence of garbage…what a nice change. I like a city adventure, but at heart, I am a country girl…even in India. We pulled up to a rather nice home…the Chohan home of course. Well, one of the Chohan homes, as a lot of the villagers are Chohans. In the courtyard area in front of the house, there lay two oxen under the trees, getting reprieve from the heat, along with the family dog who decided the shade under the tractor was the best escape from the mid-day sun. The home is a one level concrete structure with about 4 rooms. There were simple furnishings, a fan for the heat and a nice front open air patio. On the front patio there were corn kernels drying and cobs waiting to be piled for fuel. Across from the home was another outbuilding for equipment, storage, sugarcane, grain and fodder processing and cooking.

I met a distant relative, older man, whose name escapes me (terrible I know). Immediately I liked this man whose immense smile and bright eyes were a welcome mat for me, a not-so-stranger from the west. My uncle introduced me and this man knew exactly who I was related to…and then the tears started…he knew my family…and yes it was true, it turns out I am from India! In some weird compartment of my being there has always been a floundering, unrooted energy that could not find a familiar place to embrace. I could never grasp where I had “sprung” from or at least hold it for too long. This elusive energy seemed to immediately disappear with meeting my distant relatives and with setting foot, literally on the ground where my father was born. I was happy and absorbing all I could. I met my relatives, wandered around, and tried to envision what the place was like 60 or 70 years ago…this was not hard for many of the farming practices remain timeless.

We all walked across the alley to where the original family home was located. Although the dwelling had changed from a mud home to one of concrete, the layout was similar and evidence of daily life…with laundry hanging, a small tandoor oven in the corner, an area for the family cow or two, plus the larger area for farm equipment and fodder cutting wheel and blade, was as if it hadn’t changed in decades. Of course, there were a few peacocks who greeted us and watched over us in some guardianship way.

The whole time I was imagining all my relatives who have come from the villages. Nowhere could really be further from the amenities and conveniences of North America. I can completely understand why there has been a desperation for many to seek life abroad, yet I also felt that life here in the village has a remarkable and unique simplicity and innocence to it which eludes our more complicated lives in the west. Perhaps I am romanticizing village life, and given the heat, hard labour involved in subsistence farming and the sparse living conditions, I can see the cultural sacrifices that were made to venture out in hopes of a “better” life. Part of me has harboured some resentment that I have had nowhere to call “home” culturally and wondered why anyone would leave behind family ties and rich cultural roots that helps create a grounded sense of self. Seeing the village has sparked some forgiveness in me towards those who leave and start families in the west despite a potential identity crisis that looms in the glamour and glitter that the west offers as a poor substitute for “culture”. All in all, village life, nowadays, is not so terrible if one is satisfied with a simple, non-materialistic life. I would much prefer it to the Indian city. Now life in the villages 60 or 70 years ago would have been far more harsh and if I had to endure such a lifestyle, I may have escaped at any given opportunity also.

I sat for a bit with my women relatives and they showed me some antique cabinet/armoires that had been in the family for over a hundred years. She insisted I take photos as she was sure they were here when my dad was alive. Although the language barrier posed some difficulties, all of us felt a connection to each other. I knew I would be more than welcome to spend as much time there as I would want to. It was a nice feel…a definite family feel. This certainly was a great and unbelievable day! Tommorow Moranwali.

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