Reconstructing childhood

The world suddenly is so ruthless. It always was, but now, increasingly, devastations are becoming rule of the day. Flood, earthquakes, accidents, terror attacks – the daily staple of all news agencies, is enough to fill the mind with horror. Inadvertently I seek recluse in the peace of our childhood and adolescent days when the world at least appeared more livable.

The place where you spend your childhood probably has the most lasting impression on your personality. Gomia – the place where I have spent just sixteen years of my life holds a special place in my memory. It is a place perhaps unique on the map and a place that has come a long way. But its journey across time is a story for some other times; to my mind it still remains that intriguing little township that I had left behind in the late 1990s, apparently dormant, but with a strong positive energy. It held variety not just topographically but also linguistically. In fact, it won’t be an exaggeration to call it a microcosmic representation of India. Located in the Giridih district of Bihar, and later in the Bokaro district of Jharkhand, after the state was born, it is nestled between two rivulets, surrounded by a range of hillocks with a rich diversity of flora and fauna. A part of the Chhotanagpur plateau, Gomia is well endowed in terms of topographic and natural diversity. Culturally, it had a vibrant and thriving community comprising of representatives of almost all the states of the country. So probably we grew up in a climate of cultural amalgamation and not alienation. This I think had a lasting effect on our psyche, which is why Gomians in any part of the world can instantly relate to each other, so what if they had never even met there!

The point of unity for the township was the factory – the ICI Explosives Limited, initially an Indo-British joint enterprise, called IEL or the Indian Explosives Limited, established around 1956. The township had grown around it and strangely, the factory had a very authoritative presence in the everyday life of this community. It seemed to regulate every movement of the residents there. The timely sirens emanating from the factory, signifying the change in the shift of the factory employees, peculiarly came to symbolize the schedule of an everyday life in Gomia. It marked the beginning and ending hours of the school in the day, time for children to go out to play in the afternoon, time for dinner and time to bed at night and time to wake up early in the morning. Our parents would tell us to wait for the afternoon siren of five o’clock before we rushed out to play. When the 12 noon siren was blown, the women would gear up for the family lunch as it meant lunch break for their office going husbands who generally returned home for a meal and a short siesta. By 1:30, the warning signal reverberated in the airs of the township, asking those employees to rejoin their office by 2pm. The 1:30 signal also signified homecoming for the school children as the school got over by 1:15.

The school was another interesting feature of that society. Continuously crisscrossing its path with the inhabitants on a daily basis, but lacking in the infrastructural advantages of the urban ones, the school was able to inculcate in its students a hunger for success. Success, not exactly in the material sense of the world; but albeit as a drive to make it well in the world. With a sprawling campus in the folds of nature, the school had the amenities of modern education – library, laboratories, a big playground, pure drinking water, proper toilet facilities, a cheap store cum book shop, etc, etc. yet in an indescribable manner, to me, it seemed to exist in vacuum, not in continuum with the rest of the world. I still find it an enigma as to how could so many of us from such a remote locality could comfortably grab a place the real world of cut throat competition and cutting edge dynamism.

Gomia, interestingly, believed in the singularity of existence – which is why there was a single housing estate, a single hospital, one English medium school, one club with its pool and badminton court, one recreational centre and one rifle shooting club too. Oh yes, there was also one guesthouse, later very popular among the student community, but that will be something to talk about in another time and another blog. Well this point of singularity forced the small population of this town to coexist and there emerged an interesting medley of divergent cultures. Religion had its place too – a Shiva temple, a church, a masjid and a gurudwara – all had their place of pride in the community. A pride which is rare in this world – a pride of peaceful co-existence.

It was a world remote in the true sense of the word. The rest of the world did not have much impact on that quaint little township of the Chhotanagpur plateau though winds of change had slowly started gaining motion by the time we left that place, a couple of years before the change of the millennium. Actually, there was a tenuous connection with the world outside – constantly its young population kept migrating outwards in search of greener pastures and kept revisiting at least as long as their parents' stayed there. Ironically, it was not a place where we had ever dreamt of making a career, yet it is a place almost sacred in most of our hearts. Probably nostalgia, a sense of the impossibility of return and truant memory has invested that place with a good amount of utopian quality as reflected in my writing here. Yet in today’s extremely fragmented and disillusioned world, it seems to be the only recluse for my perturbed heart and mind; even if to others it appears to be a myth created out of my overworked, nostalgic brain.