A ride through eastern Uttar Pradesh,without the poll math in mind,brings us face to face with an old tehzeeb and new aspirations The plains of eastern Uttar Pradesh,stretched along the road from Lucknow to Gorakhpur,have been more in the news recently for their notorious bahubalis,the complexity of being from Azamgarh,the plight of its migrants in Mumbai and as inspiration for the noirish backdrop of films like Ishqiya. Travelling through the verdant region takes you away from those popular images. One is reminded of its crucial role in the freedom movement,the radical political moorings that developed here from within the stranglehold of the zamindari system,the poets who have thrived here and the lyrical and lilting Bhojpuri and Awadhi languages that with their muhaavaras and colour epitomise the word tehzeeb in Urdu. It's a journey that takes you beyond the immediately visible to the stories of people and what they care about,their aspirations and disappointments. Matter of Taste Once part of Gorakhpur district,Deoria district is politically crucial as the state chiefs of both the BSP and the BJP hail from here. It is also big on the Buddhist tourist circuit,as the final resting place of Gautam Buddha is Kushinagar. But,beyond the poll math,it's a matter of taste. The people of Deoria believe that the ability to set good curd is a sign of how evolved a civilisation is. If the fame of Deoria curd in the region is anything to go by,this town has nothing to worry. Nearly 300 curd-sellers from villages come to Deoria town every morning to sell their curd in earthen pots. There is even a dahi bazaar next to the Sabzi Mandi,where they congregate by end of the day one of the many laid-back markers of small-town life. But the young are setting new standards for progress and evolution. Undergraduate girls from Kasturba Inter College in Deoria rue the collapse of the education system and are angry that it is not a mudda with the political parties. As Brahmins have only knowledge and education as their wealth,are they deliberately kept down so we fall further behind? asks an angry Ragini Tiwari,about 19 years old. Ragini talks of an angst that runs deep. It is not reservations that annoy people like her,the general category,but the decrepit state of schools and colleges. Her batchmate,who accesses the internet on the cellphone (both broadband connections and electricity being unreliable here),says that whenever he logs in and gets a glimpse of Indias bigger cities,he feels a deep sense of inferiority,ek heen bhavana ka ehsaas. Flush out the old Shamsuddin Gaon,with about 300 residents,is a Dalit village in Akbarpur,UP chief minister Mayawatis former parliamentary constituency and the birthplace of veteran socialist (and inspiration for modern-day Samajwadis) Ram Manohar Lohia. For all the rumblings against Maya raj in the state,the changes here represent why several Dalits may still vote her in: there is a toilet for each house. Earlier,Dalit women would be able to go to the toilet (in the fields) only at night,to avoid unwanted attention,though that still posed problems. They would somehow crunch their stomach and hold on through the day. Now,this toilet for each family has liberated them,say elderly women. A pucca road connects the houses to the main road,unlike earlier when a dirt road would be washed away during the rains,cutting off the community from the rest of the village. The government-run primary school in Akbarpur also reveals the crawl of change. The two teachers here,Shabina Bano and Nishat Rafi,hail from weaver families,and have been stepping out of their homes to teach for the past few years. For others,the more things change,the more they remain the same. Tanda in Akbarpur is a weaver town,Muslim-dominated or musalmaan bahul,as they refer to it. Very few people have heard about the 4.5 factor or reservation for Muslim backwards within the 27 per cent OBC quota which UPA-II has proposed. Work goes on,though in fits and starts; power looms clang away whenever there is power. The warp and weft of the weave is quite symbolic of the enmeshed inter-community relations here,as different castes and communities share portions of the prosperity. As payment though,the average rate for a metre woven is only Rs 2. Memories of a night In the white light of a generator,former pradhan of Chauri Chaura village Sharifuddin appears grainy but his forceful voice takes you back to a night 90 years ago,when a police station was set on fire on February 5,1922. His father was a key organiser of that attack. During the anti-British non-cooperation movement led by Mahatma Gandhi,nationalists had set the police station on fire,killing 23 policemen. That led Gandhi to call off the stir,saying that Indians hadnt fully absorbed his message of Satyagraha and non-violence. There is a memorial here to mark those deaths built by the British,but the rebuilt police station itself is also among the more impressive in the state. Syllabus change Sant Kabir Das Nagar is the new name of the district formerly known as Khalilabad,one more example of the several Buddhist-inspired name changes that Mayawati has instituted. The district houses a village,Pachpokhri,literally meaning with five water bodies. Most water bodies have either dried up or filled to make way for more land as the population grew. With 1,500 residents,several of them now away in Mumbai,the place bubbles with efforts to improve their lives. Raza Academy is a small pre-primary school but people vie to send their children here. Thats because children study the same English textbooks as in Christian schools, says Rizwan Ahmed,who runs the school. Like anywhere else in India,English is the passport to a better life and the mobile phone a potential subversive. An old resident told us with some horror,how now even a charwaha (shepherd),because he can talk on the phone,is open to making up his mind by himself,has access to information and an opportunity to exchange views privately,which he didnt have earlier. In the name of god In Banarass Alaipur sits Fareed Mohammed,a 60-something maker of aluminium tools,with the placidity of someone who has always led an unhurried life. He makes about Rs 5,000 a month,his eyes are tired and dulled by the focus and concentration required for hours on end to fashion metal from glowing liquid. His two sons help him with his trade. Fareeds father was a weaver,but Fareed diversified many years ago. He is agnostic about political parties,but treasures the new spell of calm that the absence of communal tension has brought to his city. He says; Terrorism in India is very old. Godse started it by killing that great man. Beggars and choosers A popular gym in Khukhundu village in Rampur Karkhana is run by trainer Suhail Akhtar. The karkhana is no more,and refers to a very famous and old khandsari-producing factory. Sugar was once the mainstay of these areas and flourishing agricultural surplus made eastern UP prosperous and vital for several empires. The closure of mills had a terrible impact. But the Akhtar family,with the son having set up the gym and the father a doctor,have made the most of things that have come their way. When Suhail was asked what he thought of Rahul Gandhis controversial remark on people from UP being akin to bhikharis in the rest of the country,Suhail said he did not feel offended in the least. Rahul has hit the nail on its head, he said. Footnote Less than 52 km from the Nepal border,in Maharajganj district,the temperature drops suddenly as you near the forests of Pharenda. Tall trees off the dusty highway mark VS Naipauls most probable land of origin. He once wrote about a village of Dubeys in the region,where his forefathers came from. Today,Pharenda has a busy market-place as its centre,and a constant rush of buses ferrying Nepal-bound passengers to neighbouring district Sunauli,from where the crossing into Nepal is a popular route. No area of darkness this. The road ahead looks well lit up.
