Sanawda - a small village

Sanawda was a tiny village in Betma's neighbourhood, I have no idea how small but in those days I had not seen a village smaller than this. May not have more than 100 houses with no other government institution other than a primary school. That had just one teacher and perhaps 40 or 50 students comprising of all classes from 1st to 5th. My father was transferred from another village called Kanvan that was nearly 50 kilometers from Betma. He sought this transfer to attend to his father who had retired from the Holkar State service some 20 years back and used to live all alone since Dadi, like my Nani, lived in god's abode. None of us, me and my siblings, her grandchildren saw them. I am sure it must have been tough for Dadaji to live alone since Dadi departed. When father for transferred to Sanawda, Dadaji must have reached 75 but he was hale and hearty and used to manage his own chores. However, I don't remember us spending much time with him before we moved to Betma the nearest "connected" village from Sanawda with some basic facilities for transport, civil dispensary, police station, higher secondary school, shops for daily needs, cloth merchants, pharmacy, jewelers etc., reason being whenever we had long vacations we would go to Nani's. Bua and her children may have been coming to live with Dadaji during summer vacation but our cousins and his grandchildren were much older than us so I suppose they also may have stopped coming there few years back.

When we moved to Betma in 1964, there was no electricity in the village, it had been sanctioned and work was in progress to install street lights and some well to do people were preparing to wire up their houses to get connections when the wires got energised, that must have happened in the year that followed. When the rush was over we also got our connection in the house and were very excited and thanked Thomas Alva Edison ( though name to this godly person was known to me much later). Ghamu Da was quite enterprising and seeing the opportunity he trained himself as to how to do wiring and used to wire up houses with the help of Damu and some other people he kept on temporary rolls. There were two types of wiring, one was open and another was concealed. In the close wiring you would use an inch wide wooden cover and hide the wires beneath, it that had another wooden piece of the same width nailed to the wall. The open wiring had half an inch wide single piece of wood and wires would be placed on it using metal clips. I knew all this because like helping them sell tea and cold drinks at bus stand I also used to watch them do wiring installation work and give them nails, wires etc. when they stood on stools or ladders to fix wooden strips that would conceal or just be a base for wires.

Till mid -1966 we used to study under the lalten ( lantern) that consumed kerosene that was called ghaslet then, like you see in the old Hindi movies. We couldn't go out and sit under street lamps as also shown in those movies since there were no electrified street lamps and I don't remember any kind of street lamps lit by any alternative mode at all in the village. One could barely see while walking on the roads after it got dark by using a torch or often a lalten. Should you have neither you need to be careful and make do with little light coming from people's homes. By then I had graduated from primary school and had joined or would be joining the middle school that was on the main highway just before the bus stand, unlike the primary that was in the heart of the village.

Those days a teacher in villages was literally worshiped unlike how we see them today. A school teacher called Maad sa'ab( crude/corrupted word for Master sa'ab). Smaller the village lesser you found educated people who could even read or write and generally you would find the children studying in schools are the first generation learners. So maad sa'ab would do many things besides  just teaching.. like reading the letters received or writing the letters they wanted to send. People will look up to maad sa'ab for getting current affairs news of kasba, tehsil, district, state and the world. Maad sa'ab would also be teaching them moral values and unless you are a crooked person you would listen to him intently and follow what he said. Maad sa'ab's family would also be kept in high esteem and people would jump at any opportunity to host them. 

Those were the days when father didn't even have a bicycle and would walk some 1 to 1 1/2 Kos ( 3-4 Kms) each way to  school. A Kos was a unit of distance that was equal to 2 miles. There was no motorable road from Betma to Sanawda and the only relief to your feet at times was when a bullock cart was going your way. In monsoon the road will be muddy and under the water at times cutting off the destination and villages on the way. So during monsoon half the time the school would be closed or when in school, father would stay with someone in the village if it was impossible to walk back. During the harvesting season be it in winters when it was time for rabi crops like wheat or chana or the summer crop like maize, jowar, baajra etc. Sugarcane is one crop that would come in any season.. it is sown in three seasons and it takes nearly 18 months, so people used to sow it in different seasons but in those days we saw the crop maturing during monsoon, same time as maize and jawar. We never saw soya or even paddy.. soya was a new word in the country ( at least for me). Malwa was not right place for paddy.. first time I saw paddy field may have been in my twenties or so. Malwa is also known to be very fertile with its black soil. For our entire childhood we didn't know of any other colour of soil and only other soil we used to see was a  beige colour soil that was used for washing hair before mother (and other women) applied amla sikakai. There was no concept of what we call shampoo now. We would be treated with fresh crop produce in the fields be it green wheat (umbi) or green gram (chhod) in winters and makka (maize) bhuttas freshly roasted over dried branches available in the field. It used to so tasty and the process especially that of removing jawar pearls from the bhutta/cob was fascinating. 

Sugarcane/eikh/ganna was also grown in abundance in between the fields that had maize or jawar during monsoon crop. Since there was no sugar-mill in the vicinity most sugarcane growers would use sugarcane juice to make gur ( jaggery). This process was also very fascinating. You would take out juice of sugarcane using a small crusher that would be rotated using oxen sometimes one and some other two. During the season, at least two or three times we would be invited by locals in Sanawda who treated us to start with fresh sugarcane juice filtered and enhanced in the taste by squeezing lemon juice over it. While you drink this, you will be served freshly roasted maize cobs (makke ka bhutta)/ or jowar pearls. Before you finish that, freshly made hot gur/ jaggery will be served to you on a leaf. Gur is made by boiling sugarcane juice in a huge flat metal vessel, it takes 3-4 hours for juice to solidify to become gur and you have to constantly stir the vessel and mix some additives that removes impurity that is taken out constantly. The taste of fresh gur is just wow! something out of this world. As urban dweller it is difficult for you to imagine that until you taste it. 

On one monsoon day when it appeared it won't rain three of us and father walked to Sanawda to be guest of the village head in his farm. We were full to the head and enjoyed ourselves thoroughly with all the savories ( roasted stuff, juice and fresh gur) that it was difficult for us to even get up and walk. When we were leaving for home we were also given a small vessel full of sugarcane juice, besides fresh gur and bhuttas to be taken home for further consumption, especially to have sweet rice cooked in the juice, a delicacy. 

We must have left the village around 4.00pm and started walking home.. half way home it started raining with thunders and then pouring with such intensity that the small metalled/ gravel road was full of water and mud flowing at the bottom and soon the water level was nearly 3 feet as there was nowhere water could flow but on the road. I must have been little over 4 feet at that time. All of us were also carrying something or other given to us by our host and I had the juice in a container carried on my head.  It was tough walking the road and it was getting dark, somehow we reached home and when I handed the juice over to mother for making sugarcane juice rice, she couldn't believe that on such a rainy day, I managed to get it safe.

 Reprentatice pictures downloaded from Internet.