Death Of A Son, Grandson, And All of Life's Dreams

"The Kalaskar story is a distressingly familiar one in Vidarbha. Sonia Faleiro and photographer Vibhor Pradeep Chandra visit the region to encounter a tragedy that is a shame on the modern Indian nation. Manohar Kalaskar of Vegaon, Yavatmal district, hacks at a tall tree with glossy leaves the size of plates. The bark bleeds onto the thin edge of the axe as leaves pour to the ground. A hillock forms at his feet, and looking up, he sees blue between green. He gathers his catch in an embrace of twine, and places it behind his bicycle, which he pedals slowly. Nobody awaits his arrival, and there is but one stop. This evening, Kalaskar, 45, will celebrate the farmer’s festival of Pola. He will gently massage his two buffaloes with a paste of ghee and turmeric, and perform an aarti to honour them. He will garland their necks with flowers, and for an entire day allow them to rest in the freshly plucked leaves. He will celebrate his buffaloes and thereby his lands and profession. He will not ask why these lands led his elder brother Babanrao to swallow pesticide, and his nephew Sanjay to break his neck. This is Vidarbha in eastern Maharashtra. Farmers die. Sometimes one a day, sometimes 12. There was a time in Vidarbha when if a man owned property and grew his own food, he was the master of his soul. But today, owning land equals impoverishment and enslavement. And when a man you were married to or fathered by kills himself over debt, and if that debt becomes yours, and you too are unable to repay it, you must ask yourself, “What can I do but that which those before me did?” Since the first reported suicide by a debt-ridden farmer in 1997, suicides among the 3.2 million farmers of Maharashtra’s seven cotton-producing districts have been mutating the fabric of the traditional society in which farmers have lived and prospered for centuries. From January 1, 2001 to August 19, 2006, according to the Maharashtra government, 1,920 farmers, many between 20 and 45, have killed themselves. The situation is reminiscent of the Great Bengal Famine of 1943. According to the Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti, in the past three months one farmer has died every eight hours. The overwhelming cause of death is debt, sometimes less than Rs 10,000. A farmer like Kalaskar requires an investment of Rs 5,000 per acre of land he owns, per year. He has no savings, and takes a bank loan. However, one attack of the fungal infection Lal Rog, which swept Vidarbha last year tinting the landscape a shade of blood, or floods of the magnitude which devastated nine lakh acres in areas like Yavatmal this June, will destroy his crops. The cotton that survives sells at Rs 1,700 per quintal, a crash from Rs 2,500 in the early nineties, and won’t even cover his production costs, which have trebled in the past decade. While repayment of his debt is impossible, he still requires money to feed his family, and prepare for the next sowing season. Blacklisted by the bank, or offered only a portion of his requirement, he must turn with leaden feet towards a private moneylender. Whoever this may be, he will possesses the ability to wring personal advantage from desperation — a first right on produce; a land sale deed, which may not be returned even after a debt is repaid. A farmer who has no land or who cannot support his land will kill himself. The land is who he is, it is his soul. Anticipation of such a moment has saturated the air of Vegaon; its heat causes the skin to parch. There are no sounds but the desperate squawking of a hen that has strayed from its plot. There are no people to be seen, not even in the fields encircling the village, which are now covered with saplings of cotton, soybean and sorghum. Everyone is at Maregaon market, sweeping up clay models of buffaloes, diyas, and ingredients for sweetmeats they will eat on Pola. For Rs 30, some men will buy a bottle of arrack to forget about, and to forgive themselves. The only person left behind in the village is a tall, twig-limbed woman in a bright green sari, whose watery grey eyes strain to see through thick glasses. She is Rukma Sadashiv Kalaskar, whose eldest son Babanrao, 48, killed himself with Endosulphane on April 14, 2005, leaving behind his wife Durga, and sons Sanjay, Vijay and Ajay. On July 12, 2006 Rukma’s grandson Sanjay, 25, killed himself with the rope he used as a pulley to swing his baby’s hammock. Rukma herself is recovering from Chikungunya, a viral infection with arthritic symptoms currently sweeping Vidarbha. The Kalaskars own three houses in Vegaon, and one in the neighbouring village, which may be reached through a road strewn with flowers of purple, pink and yellow. Rukma and her husband Sadashiv were among the few prosperous families in Vegaon, owning 36 acres of land the annual debts of which Sadashiv was able to repay promptly. Their sons were promised 12 acres each if they followed their father to the fields. Babanrao had wanted to teach, recalls Rukma, but the family decided it was better if he became a farmer. Perhaps they think so still. He loved discussing politics, and was fond of mutton, which he insisted on once a fortnight. Then he got married. “After the wife came home, there was no peace. She would say, ‘I have to feed budhi and budha, clothe them, and they don’t even work!’ So my husband built three more houses with his own hands, no help from his sons not that they offered, and each son got one.” Babanrao left immediately, and it was in the neighbouring village that Sanjay and his brothers were born and grew up. Rukma would hear stories, she says, from relatives and friends who travelled the five-minute bicycle distance between the villages. But the stories were about births, marriages, and festivals. “No one talks of debt,” she explains, sucking on toothless gums. “Everyone has debts. And if you start talking, who knows who will ask you for help? Everyone is alone here. Father, son, grandson.” “Of course,” she adds, her eyes lighting up with malice, “they appeared to have enough money to spend on Sanjay’s wedding.” After Sanjay’s death, Durga and her sons moved in with Manohar and his family in a two-room home beside Rukma’s. “There were ghosts in the other house,” Manohar says, vaguely. The houses in Vegaon are built to extract the maximum advantage from minimum space. The bathroom is a small shed with a tin door in the courtyard where goats graze and dogs sleep. The front room is 8 feet by 8 feet, there is one charpoy, and upon it several tightly rolled mattresses in red and green, which are unfurled across the floor at night. This room is, in fact, a parlour, for this is where guests sit and are offered tea; where they can admire the ornaments in the house — in Rukma’s case photographs of her sons framed in gold painted wood, in Durga’s, two big, black speakers, which are connected to nothing but add an air of worldliness to the surroundings. A narrow entrance carved into the mud wall leads to the second room; a kitchen with a woodstove, a stack of firewood, gleaming steel utensils lined like soldiers. “What will you eat?” villagers ask graciously as the sun sucks the fertility from their land, and moneylenders rattle their door with impatient fists. “Will you have tea with sugar and milk? Or something cold from the store? Kuch meetha or should I make you jawar ki rotis?” The Kalaskars’ generosity does not appear to extend to one another. From her kitchen window Rukma watches Durga cook, but she will never call out to her because she knows the answer will be silence. Later that evening, on Durga’s return from Maregaon, two corpulent cloth bags swinging from one wrist, she sails past her in-laws, and when they creep into her house during my conversation with her, she glares at them through tear-filled eyes. If a bond ever existed, it is, like Rukma’s son, now dead. Durga is a strong, muscular woman who does not smile and it isn’t because she is grieving. She wears an orange sari and gold in her nose, ears and around her neck. There are no known cases of suicide widows in Vidarbha remarrying, and most remain with their in-laws. But she must lay down the law, confides Durga, because “a single woman attracts gandi nazar, and may be manipulated for money, and overworked.” Some widows are sent home so that they cannot take a share of the government compensation of Rs 1 lakh. This is particularly true of those with young daughters, for one day they will grow up and entail a dowry debt. Durga at 14, and Babanrao — tall, lean and gentle-faced, with a neat moustache and hair so slicked it appeared painted on — had an arranged marriage, like Sanjay later would, but that was before Vidarbha discovered suicide. In time, Babanrao’s 12 acres grew to 17. Like the other villagers, the Kalaskars had access to Doordarshan on their television, but to read the newspaper Babanrao had to walk to a ration shop in Maregaon where the owner would allow him to browse his personal copy as they chatted about things that matter to men: seed prices, plant diseases, the health of their cattle. Their world did not extend far beyond. Once a year, if that, the couple would join neighbours in renting a bus to visit Nagpur. Mumbai was a place they saw on television, and thought of little. Life “theek tha”, maybe even “accha tha” — the way it had been for their parents and how they imagined it would be for their children. Then two years ago, like bollworm on a cotton bud, debt crawled into their life. Babanrao had to borrow Rs 1.5 lakh from the Central Bank of India after his crops failed during a ferocious monsoon. When he died, he owed Rs 80,000. He was confused, recalls Durga, “Where would he get so much money in time to avoid defaulting?” One night, after months of morbid silence, as they lay in bed, he quietly asked her, “Now what?” She had no answer. The next morning, he passed by his own field where his wife was hacking at weeds on her haunches, jumped a hedge, and hidden by crops owned by a friend, poisoned himself. Sadashiv, dressed in his festival finery of a white topi, dhoti and kurta; a full-sleeved cream coloured shirt topped with a white scarf with a golden border, and brown shoes, recalls: “I heard the news and went running, but before I reached, I fainted.” “Sanjay inherited the debt,” explains Durga. “And because his father was a defaulter, the bank wouldn’t give Sanjay a loan for the season. But I thought, ‘He’ll be fine’. You know, he was so good at Maths in school. He would get 98 percent in his exams. But he failed his tenth because he didn’t know English. Who would he learn from? It doesn’t even come on TV. And he couldn’t write Marathi well. He paid Rs 60 to retake the class, and failed again. So we thought, ‘Let him come to the fields’. He did. He was happy. He minded his own business. Never fought with anyone, hurt anyone … he loved kabaddi. He was my favourite. That’s what I can say now that he is dead.” This is the most the Kalaskars will reveal of their trauma of losing a father and son. Perhaps it is just as well for candour may cost, and they are already in debt. Manohar says, “I’m not like Sanjay was — always tense. The deaths haven’t impacted me.” Rukma argues, “They didn’t live with us for years. For me, nothing has changed.” Sadashiv sighs, “I haven’t been well since Baban died. Even the five acres I have are difficult to look after.” And Durga tries to be strong, but falters. Tears slide down her smooth, high cheekbones, but her fingers are rolling chappatis, and the tears must dry with the wind. Sanjay lived and died like his father. He had little control over the important decisions of his life including schooling, profession and marriage. What he did choose was death. He owned his father’s debt, and his own to a moneylender, totalling Rs 1.3 lakh. Like his father, he never discussed his concerns with other farmers, all of whom were smit with a fever of hopelessness. When the subject of suicides in Vidarbha entered the conversation, Sanjay would shrug, turn away. It wasn’t his problem. After he was unable to repay his debt in time, and his crops failed for the second year, he was tense, and ate little. The day of his death, Sanjay was alone at home. Recounts his nephew Sunil, 14: “I had gone for a visit. The door was locked from the inside. I kept knocking. Finally I peeked through the window. I say my uncle swinging from the ceiling. I screamed and ran to call my mother. I didn’t eat the whole day.” There were several factors that led to the debt, which killed father and son. Both, insists Durga, suffered for their usage of bt cotton, a genetically modified seed supposed to repel bollworm. bt has been successfully introduced in several states, but remains a contentious issue in Vidarbha. At Rs 1,850 for 450 gms and despite its claims, it requires inputs which are expensive and allegedly harmful for the land. The minimum support price for cotton, at Rs 700-1,980 per quintal, which is less than the price of bt, also ensures that cotton production remains a loss-making venture, depleting Vidarbha of its most important produce — farmers. While the issue of easing out cotton and replacing it with jawar, pulses and legumes has been raised, journalist Jaideep Hardikar, who has been covering Vidarbha for eight years, points out that it may be too late: “In their desperation, farmers have over fertilised the land. Now no matter what they grow, they’ll suffer a poor yield.” Analysing the phenomenon on a macro level, activist Kishore Tewari, Vidarbha Jan Andolan Samiti says, “The government needs to ban imported cotton, offer an advance bonus for cotton produce, and institute a cotton monopoly scheme.” The impact of the crisis is visible at every level in Vidarbha. Single mothers are rearing young children, facing the challenges of widowhood in a patriarchal society. Children’s education and emotional well-being is compromised by the trauma of a parent’s suicide and the responsibility of doing an adult’s job. Women start working in other people’s fields, children follow. A two-hour drive from Vegaon is the village of Dhanuli. The atmosphere is electric with the excitement of a festival. The men have begun drinking, several walk in zigzag ecstasy. In a corner, a young man is fashioning miniature bullocks out of wet clay; he pulls an ear and carves a mouth with precise fingers to the cooing delight of gathered children. There have been no farmer’s suicides in this village, but six months ago, a young woman jumped into a well after being battered by her alcoholic husband. Two years ago, Manohar was visiting a friend here. The friend’s sister, Nalini was 19 and unmarried, and therefore a concern for her parents. She was of the Kunbi caste, like Sanjay; she was educated, which is neither an advantage nor a disadvantage, and her family was as poor as Babanrao’s. Manohar’s nephew Sanjay was also unmarried at 23, so over tea with their family present, the two met once, and three months later married. Recalls Rukma, “There were 1,000 invitees. We had laddoos, palak ki sabzi, baingan ki sabzi and dahi ki kadi.” Now Nalini has returned home. In a dark blue sari with a grimy white blouse, the tall, slim woman of 21 with a narrow nose, full mouth, and long hair pinned back with a black clip, appears enervated. As she speaks, a group of men gathers to listen, for irrespective of the occasion, there is never much to do once the crops have been tended to. On her lap sits her eight-month-old daughter, and when her cries become insistent, Nalini unbuttons her blouse with a sigh, and feeds her. “Sanjay never told me about his problems,” she says, in a low voice. But they were happy, she acknowledges, and her mother-in-law dotes on her. “I’m going back after the festival,” she insists. Sadly for Nalini, nothing she has, not even Sanjay’s legacy, can sustain her relationship with her in-laws. Times have changed, and fulfilling unwritten family obligations is an extravagance few can afford. Durga had reiterated: “We never took dowry.” Nalini admits, “They asked for Rs 30,000. We had to take a loan for that and Rs 60,000 for the wedding.” A family friend reveals: “They asked her to leave. The loan has come in; the Rs 1 lakh compensation from the government is due. She and her child are two extra mouths to feed. She’s a child herself. Maybe we will find someone for her, otherwise it will be unsafe.” He recalls, “On July 7, Sanjay got drunk and beat Nalini. He drank often, and beat her, but that evening he was vicious. She fled, taking their child with her for safety.” Five days later, Sanjay hanged himself. The dead are always beloved, and so it should be with Babanrao and Sanjay Kalaskar. Ordinary farmers facing the challenges; tormented by the weakness and emboldened by the strength of those whose destiny is determined by the vagaries of nature and the inhumanity of men. When the father killed himself, the son reluctantly bore his burden. The he killed himself. Now his mother Durga must take over. But today is Pola, and death should not be discussed. The Kalaskars, however fragmented their ties, will light diyas, savour mithai, and laugh into the night. Perhaps they will step into their individual courtyards and look beyond, at their land — a silvery oasis under the moon, glowing with potential. One may nod with the optimism which celebration endows and think, smiling: ‘It can be done.’ Another may know, ‘It cannot.’" For the entire cover story with photos, and an interview with P. Sainath, go here. Tehelka, September 9, 2006. Death Along the Famished Road. My earler profile of Vidarbha's suicides.