Baliah was a young child when, after burying his dead mother, his father left the village where they had toiled for generations and sought a job as a labourer. Had they remained in the village, their fate would have been no different from that of countless other Dalit families. However, his father got a job in the Railways, and Baliah found a mulla who was willing to teach him to read and write. Knowing his letters didn’t enable him to get a job better than that of his father, but it ignited a spark in him, and he made up his mind to educate all his children.
Simply told, the story is an inspiring one of a family that put all its trust in education. Of a boy who didn’t stop reading even though his community told him that it was a sin for a Dalit to read. The boy who when he was a father himself repeatedly said that he will skip meals if he had to, but that he will educate his children to the highest level they could learn. It is the story of Baliah who was the first in his family to learn the letters, and who despite being a manual labourer in the Railways ensured that four of his children did their post graduation and ended up teaching in colleges. It is a story that reminds of you why reservations are necessary, and how affirmative action can in the course of a few generations move traditionally oppressed families out of poverty.
The family certainly struggled. There were too many mouths to feed and never enough food. Jowar roti and toddy seems to have been their staple diet, and even babies were given toddy when there was not enough milk. However, at no stage did anyone appear to complain against it. And nobody opposed Baliah when he insisted that the children would go to school and study, even if they had to compromise on some other essential. What held the family together was the strong sense of duty towards the joint family. Each member contributed to ensure that the rest had what they couldn’t themselves have.
The book, however, is more than just the story of one family. It is also a window into the caste system. You hear of the small and big ways in which Dalits were discriminated against- not just by upper caste people but also by Shudra families whom they often had as neighbours in their Railway quarters. What strikes you is how the family accepted the inequities and didn’t attempt to fight it.
The book offers a glimpse into the life of the Dalits – their marriage rites, their customs and traditions, their food- and how it undergoes a change when they move to the city. The city offers a degree of anonymity- the women of Baliah’s family start dressing like upper caste women, and often look indistinguishable from them. By the time the author goes to college, he is able to blend in to such a degree that nobody even knew his caste till the scholarship announcements were put up on the notice board.
Also interesting was the gradual Sanskritisation of the family. Of how they gradually abandoned their traditional deities and started worshipping Brahminical gods like Saraswati, and keeping tulsi plants at home. The author was clearly not in favour of that, and it is no surprise that he eventually embraced Buddhism.
Where I was left unsatisfied was in the portraits of the women. Baliah’s wife Narasamma was no less strong than him. Whenever expenses went up, she went to the field and toiled as a labourer to supplement the income. Despite being the pampered daughter of a comparatively rich man, she accepted her husband’s infidelity, and didn’t complain when he got a second wife home. When the second wife deserted them, she even adopted her child and brought him up as her own. When Balaih got a transfer to Secunderabad, she didn’t want to go- not because she worried about leaving her familiar life behind, but because she realised she could not work in the fields in the city to earn some extra money. Spending more time on the stories of the women would have added an additional layer to the story.
As a book, it could have done with better editing. While the story was fascinating and you learnt so much, the same lines keep appearing, almost like a leitmotif, though clearly not intended to be one. At times the narration was drive- whether the lack of emotion was because the author didn’t feel much, or because he felt too much and couldn’t articulate it is hard to tell.
The essence of the book can be summed up by the story which is narrated right at the end. The author is at a conference with other college principles when on of them makes a passioned speech against reservations where he argues that education is lost on Dalits because they lack the ability to learn. The author then narrated how in just one generation his family was transformed from one where nobody had stepped into a school to one where four were teaching in colleges. What was left unsaid in that exchange was that even after all that, the only way they could find acceptance was by blending in.
A book I will certainly recommend. There is also a fabulous podcast that led me to this book- here.
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