Farmers on a pilgrimage to modern India

It’s an old Hindu tradition in India that when a person becomes old, he goes on pilgrimage to visit holy shrines and temples to pay his homage to Gods. In earlier times, it was a kind of lifetime ambition as people wouldn’t have so much money to go on multiple pilgrimages and due to poor infrastructure and lack of medical help, many would die. The old people, who finally came back from the pilgrimage, before they entered their homes, were worshipped by their children and families. Even today, few drops of charan-amrit(water obtained after washing feet) of people coming back from Pilgrimage is drank as Prasad as it is supposed to contain magical powers. This story of mine is about fulfilment of one such lifetime ambition of one Indian farmer’s family.

Around 6 months back, I was going from Mumbai to Delhi on an Air Deccan flight. Now, some explanations here:

1. Air Deccan is a low cost no-frills air carrier in India
2. Ticket cost is in range of Rs. 2200+ i.e. $55 upwards. Average income/capita in India is roughly $1100 per annum.
3. My family has graduated from a middle class to slight bit upper-middle class in last twenty years. In my family of my parents and two brothers, my mother and younger brother have never flown on a flight. I myself flew for the first time when I was sent onsite to Germany by my company around one year back. Now, that I had been working in an I.T. company for 2 years, I was able to fly on my own Salary without feeling much guilty about it(Compared to Government subsidised train fares, Air fares still seem like a luxury)
4. India is a highly class and caste conscious society even today. Even though people wouldn’t verbally object to intermingling between persons from different strata of society, their minds would instantly recognize any case falling into extreme scenario as the inherent notions of centuries old society structure still exist.

Hence, when I encountered this lot of villagers as soon as I boarded my flight, I became quite excited, and started talking with them.

Since it’s been 6 months since this trip happened, I’ve forgotten the name of this person. Let’s call him Ramlal. He had come along with 5 other people from his circle of close family to board the Air Deccan flight.

Ramlal and his family were villagers from the inner countryside of Uttar Pradesh. Their profession was farming and they weren’t too rich as was obvious from their clothes. They had come from all the way to U.P. to Mumbai just to sit in a flight and have the experience of their lifetime. Two days back, they had come from Delhi to Mumbai via a train. Then, they had stayed at some relative’s house in Mumbai and now they were going back by ‘the aeroplane’.

There was one gentleman sitting besides me, who couldn’t believe his eyes. “How come these people are here?” was the question that uttered out of his mouth. He called an air hostess to check whether these people weren’t relatives of some Air Deccan staff or, whether these people were travelling on free-ticket or something. The Air Deccan air hostess promptly replied that there was no such thing and that Air Deccan has no such policy of free-tickets for anyone.

Our guy Ramlal was quite fascinated by the in-flight magazines. He even tried showing me the Advertisement of some Condom brand in which a girl in lingerie was shown, a gesture which wasn’t very well appreciated by his wife sitting besides him. In the middle of flight, Ramlal enquired me whether he can walk the aisle of the plane to which I affirmatively replied.

Later, when the plane started descending, all six of these people started trying to peek out of the windows rather than putting on their seat-belts, and the visibly flustered air hostesses had a tough time managing them. It was all fun to watch for a guy like me. 

Hence, I came back with images of ‘India Shining’ written in bold in my mind. In next post, I’d try to explore the alternate angles and in some other economic sectors where growth isn’t perhaps being managed properly.

Comments

[Toe-Knee]

That's an excellent story.  I think everyone enjoys watching childlike naivete.  This winter I managed to see a show called "The Curious Tribe" which was a mini series about a tribe of primitives from Papa New Guinea who had never dealt with anything resembling modern life.  Their chief and a few close relatives journeyed to England to see what life was like there.  Their innocence looking at things we westerners take for granted was very interesting, but they also had very powerful insights into some things.  

[Himanshu Gupta]

That's true. So many times we overlook the subtle nuances of our own cultures because we have been accustomed to them since our childhood. For e.g. in India, lot many business transactions happen just on the basis of faith i.e. without any legal receipt or document, while such a thing would be considered blasphemous in developed western societies.

I was doing a small study on retail shops in a small town "Satna" in India. The overall business in such a small city runs totally on relationships.. hence if you've sold an expensive piece of furniture to a customer, the customer would expect you to give him service whenever he wants and certainly, he would never produce a receipt of purchase when asking for a repair or for home delivery! If you wish, you can read some more interesting examples here.

Many MNCs coming to India don't understand these subtle codes of conduct and hence end up losing lot of their investments.

[bobr512_41]

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