Machkund - Innocent Memories of an Oncologist as a Child
Getting born into a family is a destiny, much though I did not realize this in my younger days to seize the opportunities better! The independence fervour was fresh in the air and the liberated Indians were jubilant in spirit. My father had started working under the British Raj police, in a low rank with a small salary. Despite his limitation, he was keenly perceptive and sagacious in his pursuits. So I got down to spending a childhood amidst grandmother, uncles, aunties, brothers, sisters in a house; and often distant relatives coming to stay for months together. The police job was a transferable type. If I can recall it right, in 1959 by age of 6 years, I moved with father to Machkund, Koraput, a small non-descript place where he got posted as Deputy Superintendent of Police (DSP). That was a respectable post in police in those days; I do not know what its status is now! Machkund was a scenic small town of hutments and scattered official quarters. Its geographic recognition was due to the nearby Jalaput hydro-electric dam, built in post-independent India in 1955, over the Machkund river, a tributary of the larger Godavari river. There was the Dumduma waterfall nearby. This place is a tribal homeland, where a police officer’s job can be tough even in present times and imagine about the 1950s!
Jalaput dam, Machkund, Koraput, Odisha
Dumduma Waterfall, Machkund, Koraput
Jalaput Hydro-electric power house, Machkund, Koraput
With me and father, Tukuna accompanied. He was the son of my father’s friend whom we called Keshab Kaka. Tukuna was a year younger to me, my father having taken the responsibility for his study and upbringing. We stayed in a single storied, very official looking tiled house, with a front garden and a back orchard. There was a cook-cum-housekeeper. My father would remain tied to his job and official tours, whereas we two young children got down to some reading and writing at home, assisted by a house teacher. Our study materials consisted of a couple of books,a writing slate and chalk pieces. The slate was 7X10 inches with a black surface, which could easily fit into my lap to do the writing with small pencil-size chalk pieces. The chalk pieces were often soggy and fragile in the rainy season. Looking back, the slate chalkboard was an older version of the modern day computer tablet! You could do similar functions; delete, alter, edit, and reuse. The human endeavours take ideas from one generation to the next.
A slate chalkboard
Often my father got down on the garden bed, mulching the soil well to plant some saplings, and tend to the flower plants and trees, while humming some songs! Then on occasional evenings, he would sit down with me and Tukuna to teach us a few lines from books and correct our writing and spellings. My mother and grandmother had to stay at Cuttack, where the elder siblings continued their studies. It must have been tough on my father to maintain the two establishments at 500 km apart, with a limited salary. My mother was a real home maker on a shoe string budget and father was brutally honest in a police man’s garb! The childhood was never a realization about our frugal and often fragile financial position, keeping several mouths full in the two houses! Often my brothers, sisters, and mother accompanied by a couple of relatives visited Machkund. Those visits were memorable, brought me out of the solitary confinement, and rustled up the otherwise sedate official house for a few days. Mother took hold of the kitchen and the meals tasted better. We were taken to the Dumduma waterfall and given the ropeway ride into the Jalaput dam’s electricity generation site. A child could only see the big things and not understand much about those gigantic turbines, and the noise of water.
After sixty years, two things have remained etched. One early morning, I went to the back of the house and climbed up a tree. Was it a champak tree, because I vaguely remember plucking some white flowers? Suddenly I noticed that a khaki-uniform clad police man was standing at a little distance from the tree, instructing me with his fingers to stay there on the tree branch. I looked down from the tree branches at a big snake lying curled at the ground, may be resting under the morning shade of the tree. The morning sunshine in the hilly areas of Koraput can be harsh on your body. The snake moved away after sometime, and I was brought down from the tree. The police man was my father’s official driver, who had reached at the usual time to take him to his office. On this day, he stood between me and the snake. The other imprinted memory of that time reflected a child’s craving for company. At the end of the visit, my mother, sister or brother would get into an open jeep to go to the Vishakhapatnam railway station to catch the train back to Cuttack. I ran after the vehicle with tears rolling down and sobbing hard. Life for a child used to be confined. A few hours of study, a little game outside the house, and we two boys made some exchanges with the few who ran the house.
This small place gave me a lesson to enjoy the spirit of neighbourhood. The house in Machkund stood inside a colony of government quarters. During the festival days, people visited each other’s houses, shared food items and exchanged gifts, played cards or games, or simply stood on an open field to fly the kites. Often the tribal families who stayed in nearby villages descended inside the colony, giving it a special atmosphere with their attire, bows and arrows. I was fascinated and attracted to one particular neighbour’s house. A very humble and pious Muslim family, whose two sons often came out in the evenings to play with me and Tukuna. On some days, they used to tell us that they need to rush back home before the sunset, pray, and eat their meals with family members. Then the next day, they were to wake up before sunrise, pray, and eat food. Between sunrise and sunset, they observed fast for whole day for the period of Ramzan.I got curious about this ritual and if my memory serves me right, Ahmed the elder son offered to treat me with the evening meal at his home. Soon after the prayers, he came out wearing churidar pyjmama, kurta and skullcap, the sun was setting and he beckoned me to enter his house. His mother was pleasantly surprised to see me. I sat down with all family members and ate a hearty meal of several courses and rounds of dates and semiya.
Ramzan lasts for a month and ends with the festival of Eid-ul-Fitr, on the sighting of the crescent moon. During the whole of this month, the adults appeared very sombre and solemn, prayed a lot in between their daily tasks and looked up towards the sky. Whereas the children were always rushing in and out of the house, looked to be keen on their pre-dawn Suhoor meal, and took mouthfuls of the post-fast Iftar spread late into the evening. This exposure to the Ramzan period has given me a lasting impression that Muslim children are heavy eaters! All my life, I have always looked forward to eat an Iftar meal with my friends and fortuitously the professional career took me to the Arabic world to get a real experience of the Ramadan calendar. The childhood experience of dates, semiya and crescent moon were revived in 2004 when I reached Muscat, the capital of Oman and stayed there for next 2 years on an official assignment.
Declaration: Author states that the content has no conflict of interest and no financial disclosure.
Author: Bidhu K Mohanti is an Oncologist, who worked as a Professor at AIIMS, Delhi; and is presently a Consultant at Manipal Hospital, Dwarka, Delhi
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