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Trailing the sheep and the dunghill
R.V.SMITH
IT IS the year 1975. Near the Ridge, beyond the Kabristan (graveyard) Punjabiyan in the Civil Lines, a shepherd grazes his flock. Stick on shoulder he is in a world of his own amid the lungs of a Capital plagued by agitations and violence. The sheep nibble the grass and follow their leader. Sheep mentality can have its advantages too. It's the leader who thinks for them and the flock goes where he goes.
The Ridge is Delhi's most famous landmark. In the 19th Century British soldiers could see the Himalayan snows from it on a clear day. At least this is what the old gazetteer says. May be because of lack of pollution the skyline was clearer then, and at night one could see the stars in all their brilliance. Now they are not so bright, unless one sees them in the winter sky. Otherwise "twinkle-twinkle" is hidden in the haze.
The shepherd's thoughts are not these, of course. He has other things to bother about. All his news comes by word of mouth, and sometimes one gets to know more that way. Right now he has other matters to ponder over. The monsoon grass is not ideal for his flock. They like to browse in scantier growth.
In Australia they might be thinking of slaughtering 36 million sheep to cut down on oversupply of wool. Here the sheep are not up against such problems; and the wool one can get from little flocks is not much anyway.
The shepherd wants to relax in the shade of a big tree where the sun and the flies can't get to him. The sheep mind their own business and they know how to keep away from the graves while passing by the old cemetery. Mostly people from Ballimaran lie buried there. And they were all merchants connected with the footwear industry.
The flocks will browse till the shepherd has his nap and thinks it's time to go. Back home they don't dream of graves and ghosts, not these sheep. Perhaps of better pastures, but not the butcher's knife - which some may eventually have to face. But until such time the grass beckons and the shepherd is there to lead them on the Ridge, though he has never seen the snows.
Those days Nizamuddin had a huge dunghill. Now it has many attractive features but the huge refuse dump on its outskirts in those days lessened the appeal of the place for both the tourist and the Delhiwallah. The dump, which contained all the refuse of the Capital, was piled up so high that it became a hill that could pass off as Delhi's Gehenna.
Vultures and kites hovered over it throughout the day, attracted by the carcasses that lay scattered all over. And almost all through the day people worked at the dump burning rubbish. It was a sight which made one wonder if one where trespassing on the abode of the dead, with the smoky fires making it look like some medieval picture of hell.
Sohna had been working there for years. He was a lonely man without a family, though he remembered that there was a time when he had one. But his wife died and the children drifted away. He was left alone and this was the job he eventually got. Sohna got so involved with the work that he didn't know whether he liked it or not. He smoked a bidi while busy and a "chillum" when relaxing, and through the tobacco haze he viewed the dunghill with a kindlier eye. "This hill provides us with our dal-roti. We are bound to it and have developed our own equation with the place," he remarked with a philosophical look.
His companion, Radhey was an old wizened man who once worked as a sweeper in the bungalow of an Englishman. He remembered his name, Bird Sahib. That was in the pre-1947 days, when every compound had its own sweeper, living in a ramshackle hut, at the corner.His daughter Bhoolie died of cholera after eating an unripe watermelon one evening and soon after his blind mother. He didn't have any other children. His wife eloped with his cousin and then came Partition that saw the Englishman depart. After that life had not been the same for him. The new owner of the bungalow, a brown sahib, engaged another sweeper and Radhey was left to his charas and himself. Later, much later, he came to the dump and worked on it by fits and starts.
There were several others like him, though not all of them were relics of a broken home. The kites and vultures that swooped down on the hill seemed to have become familiar with them, for together they constituted the morbid scene that was the dump.
It was a place that gave a creepy feeling to even those passing by in a train. But how may of them know that like the Ancient Mariner, the outcastes who burn the refuse also had a tale to tell, though there was none to listen to it. Now when one passes by in a train, one misses the hill because the new landfill site has moved to Ghazipur.
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