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Meeting with the Master

Some weeks after I met him, I got a letter from Avinash L Shinde. "I have a wish," he wrote. "I wish that your pen will help improve the situation of our poor community. That the Government will come to understand our needs. That the police who trouble us without reason will stop it. Then my mind will be at peace."

I don't know about the peace, Avinash. But here's something from my pen. The photograph I have of Avinash makes everyone who sees it do a double take. Taken outside his home, there are three people in it. He, his wife and me. I am noticeably more shabbily turned out than either of them. Apart from that, there is nothing particularly unusual about it. Except that I tower over them like some modern-day Gulliver.

Now I am just over six feet tall. Tall by Indian standards, true. But I hadn't comprehended quite how tiny Avinash and his wife are until I saw this photograph some weeks after meeting them. They seem at least a foot-and-a-half shorter than I am, topping out somewhere between my navel and chest. The photograph has a somewhat bizarre look to it and unfortunately, the bizarre part is me. It looks much like a picture of one of those impossibly tall men who enter the record books and then die of an incurable disease.

Physical stature apart, when I met and spoke to Avinash that afternoon, I came away thinking there was not much that was small about him. In fact, I marvelled at what he had made of himself. Where he had come from, where he had reached. In every respect but inches, he stood tall indeed.

Let me begin by telling you how I found this man. I first heard about him from the Phase Pardhis I have been visiting near the village of Rajale, in Maharashtra's Satara district. These are several families who live in six or seven huts outside the village. Most of the men there are unemployed. The only work they seem able to count on are the spells as contract construction labourers in Mumbai, several hours and more rupees away by bus and train. And that's seasonal. Trapping little birds and animals, the traditional Phase Pardhi pursuit is more difficult by the day as the forest cover vanishes. As always, they are accused of crime, ranging from crop thefts to burglaries. None of the non-Pardhis I met in the area spoke of the Pardhis in any way but as criminals.

And yes, gangs of Pardhi criminals do operate in Satara. But they hardly account for all the Pardhis in the district. In particular, if the Pardhis of Rajale are living by crime, they are clearly doing a very inefficient job of it. Either that, or the accusation that they are criminals has serious holes in it. These men and women are visibly poor. Not destitute perhaps, but poor. They are ostracised by the village, living as they do several hundred metres outside Rajale on a patch of stony ground.

So when I met and got to know these people over a few visits, as I met other groups of Pardhis in much the same condition, I found myself wondering: Aren't there Pardhis who have risen above and out of this condition? Aren't there any who have managed to escape the "criminal" tag, who are not ostracised, who have become members of the wider society? I found myself so curious about this that I finally popped the question to the Rajale group.

Pop came the answer: You have to meet Shinde. I did not manage to figure out the precise relationship, but he is some kind of cousin to one of the Rajale Pardhi families. Go to the town of Dahivadi and ask for "Master" Shinde, they told me. We don't have his address, but don't worry. He teaches in a school near there. Everybody knows him.

A Pardhi and a teacher? I was intrigued enough to persuade a friend to drive me the 100 or so kilometres to Dahivadi the next day. We stopped at a pharmacy as we entered Dahivadi. I asked the attendant if he knew where I could find "Master" Shinde. I got a blank look. The schoolteacher, I said. Still blank. The son of Lafangya Shinde, I said. The man's eyes widened at the name and he burst out laughing. So did the rest of the shop and the two customers there.

I knew why they were laughing. Lafanga means a good-for-nothing, a time-waster. Pardhis often have strange names and this was just one more. The man in the pharmacy found it funny, he also immediately knew it was a Pardhi I was looking for. But he didn't know "Master" Shinde, so he leaned out and pointed up the road. "Ask at the bus station," he said. As we drove off, I turned and looked back. He was still snickering.

At the bus station and at a few other shops, I got several more knowing smiles before I finally got a lead. Somebody directed me to a straggly collection of little huts from where a Pardhi emerged and took me to meet Avinash Shinde's brother. The brother's name? Another of those odd Pardhi ones: Pakshya, from the word pakshifor "bird". Pakshya worked for a roadside samosa stall, rolling dough. To my surprise, the stall was right next to the pharmacy where I had stopped nearly an hour earlier. The laugher was still there behind the counter. He caught sight of me speaking to Pakshya and couldn't resist smiling again.

Pakshya took us to his brother's home. It stood alone on a little rise near the edge of Dahivadi, behind a garage and a temple, a little cube of brick and concrete. Avinash sat inside, eating lunch and watching TV. While we waited for him to finish, I looked around his home. One-and-a-half rooms, that's all; but this was a solid house, not a flimsy hut. He had electricity and a television set and even a cable connection. It was a startling change from where his cousins lived in Rajale.

Avinash is 24 years old, has a BA degree and has done his diploma in education. He teaches at a primary school just outside Dahivadi. There are 25 students and Avinash and one other teacher are responsible for all their subjects. He earns a total salary of Rs 4,317 a month, though after various deductions he comes home with about Rs 2,000. For these parts, for a Pardhi, that's a substantial sum. Avinash's wife is Sarojini and they have two young boys, Rishikesh and Ashutosh. Avinash is considering getting "the operation" done -- being sterilised. "Two children are enough," he told me quietly.

In short, Avinash lives a simple but dignified life. How did he get to where he is when his Rajale cousins are in so much poorer shape?

He explained. "First of all," he said, "my father chose to come away to Dahivadi where there were very few other Pardhis at the time. Second, he decided to stay here instead of being nomadic like other Pardhis are. Third, the people in this place treated us with respect and helped us. In my fourth standard, I came first in our taluka and fourth in the district and got a scholarship. The villagers told my father, your son is good at his studies, keep him in school. They helped us with the fees and my books."

And there was one more reason, perhaps the most important. "My teacher, Sharada Devi Shinde, saw some potential in me and encouraged me. I got through school and took my teaching diploma only because of her faith and help."

These simple things, this one teacher who believed in him, had turned this young Pardhi man into a known and liked teacher himself. In two decades, a boy who would have been assumed criminal had become a respected citizen in his town. Especially given the depressing condition his own cousins were in just 100 km away, spending time with Avinash was an encouraging, rejuvenating experience.

At one point, we got talking about our recent war with Pakistan. Avinash said: "I want Kashmir to remain part of India. But both India and Pakistan have taken such rigid positions that we will keep fighting wars. We will never have peace. As long as the situation is like that, we Pardhis will remain poor. There will always be poverty. And there will always be this religious hatred in the country."

How perceptive, I thought as he spoke. Yet how easily the rest of us brand people like you as ignorant criminals. Laugh at your very name. If we only tried listening to you instead, we might learn some lessons ourselves.

And that is not just because you are a teacher.

Dilip D'Souza