Our Quest for the Lost World of Shangri-La!
By Dr Basheer Ahmed Khan
Garden Grove, CA
There is no doubt that it takes a village to raise a child. In the present time we are missing that village where we can raise our children and grandchildren. I have travelled from the underdeveloped region of Arunachal Pradesh in India to the most advanced civilization of America and everything in between only to find that even primitive civilizations are affected by mechanized lifestyle losing their natural instincts associated with the people of a village, which are essential for child bearing and child rearing. We are wrongly led to believe that the whole world where everyone is at the neck of the other for their self-interest is the Global Village where we should raise our children and grandchildren to be sacrificed at its altar.
As it is impossible for a child, or for that matter, his parents, peer and professors and other professionals to clear the cobweb around this Globalized Village, every “expert” adds to the confusion without showing us the village or the way to reach it. Not finding that village where it is easy to go in and stay with ease in permanent relationship in marriage to nurture future generations, people are compelled to accept gender choices and alternate lifestyles to find an outlet for their sexual urges and forget the misery of it in the surreal TV and the gadgets that immerse us in a virtual world.
The place I grew up was not a village but a city and the capital of the Princely State of Mysore from where lot of talented individuals rose to contribute to society. I am not a celebrity to engender interest in my biography; I only want to show how the society then faced the same problems of poverty, homelessness, health, and gender relations, and still raised children like us to become productive adults. The only thing different then was that people were sincere and politics had not steeped to low levels as we see it today. It was a real world in which people were busy solving the real problems unlike the surreal and virtual world in which we live today, unable to understand and solve our problems. This was the Lost World of Shangri-La which we are searching for now and by going in the wrong direction we have landed in the land of Gomorrah.
Each person is a product of his own personality, his family, his society and his religion. Therefore, good religion, good society, and good family are all a perquisite to a good personality. Some people pay too much importance to heredity and genes and try to groom people with good pedigree to positions of importance in society. But we see many a progeny of such noble and intelligent souls fail the expectations because of the bad environment in which they have to perform. Heredity may give us our physical attributes, but environmental factors have greater say in the upbringing of a person for him or her to realize the full potentials with which God has created him or her and placed them in the world for a certain work.
Chun-nay Walay Abdullah Sab
When I ponder about the foundation of my life to understand my family, my society and my religious upbringing in shaping my childhood and its contribution to the development of my worldview, Chun-nay Walay Abdullah Sahib’s family and the interaction of our family with them comes to my mind.
Abdullah Sahib lived with his wife and daughter in a one-room mud house covered with tin sheets and mud tiles on the side of an alley which led to several such houses on the eastern side of our huge house. A similar complex with a common quadrangle was on the west and south of our house. These houses did not have electricity and lit kerosene lamps for light and burned wood for cooking in one corner of their house. Another corner was earmarked for a makeshift bathroom with curtains and the water drained into a makeshift drain leading to the main drain. They had a common lavatory for their complex of houses to which they had common access. They had to bring water from the street tap which was well managed by the city. We had public bathrooms providing hot water and soap, one of which was managed by my cousin and it used to be busy all the time.
The civic sense was good and the civil service providers were sincere and there were no major health issues that could be attributed to poverty and poor amenities. It is hard to swallow the opinion of “experts” that the problem of the Third World is lack of amenities to rectify which we should spend billions of dollars in dispensing all the latest technologies that we have developed. This argument may be good for photo ops and economic stimulus and does not solve any of the real problems which they face, namely, the rising cost of living and too much controls and harmful information on public and social media.
The place where people like Abdullah Sab lived were the apartment complex of our time. As most of the people were honest and contented with what little their life had offered to them, there were not many problems between them in using the common facilities available to them. Each one lived with his or her dream and fears and was working silently to achieve them. The whole neighborhood used to participate in their success and in their failures, in their happiness and in their sorrow. I am sure that this was the story in many parts of the world before industrialization, urbanization and globalization affected them.
The same alley which led to Abdullah Sab’s house also led to four similar houses belonging to our family, three of which were given free to poor families and the fourth was rented to a very good tailor and embroider for Rs. 10 a month (equivalent to 4 dollars then) and I was made responsible to collect this rent. As my brother never asked me for it, I used the rent as additional pocket money.
Like most other ladies in the neighborhood, Mrs Abdullah, whom we called khalajan (aunty), also used to come to my mother to share her stories and her problems and my mother gave them all her shoulder and her ear and tried to help them as much as she could. I have vivid memories of their visits, their dignity, their poise and their friendly interaction with my mother. That instilled in me respect for the less fortunate amongst us. During festivals and other occasions my mother used to prepare and send them some food and I was very happy to take it to them. I waited for such occasions because that also gave me a peep into their simple lifestyle full of love and calm despite the problems they faced.
In one of the houses where the employee of the nearby mosque lived, his grown-up son had developed some bad habits after returning unsuccessful from a big city where he had gone to better his prospects and that of his family. He used to create some nuisance both for the family and the neighborhood and they all dealt with it in a nice manner. Some admonished him and beat him, and the others consoled and offered him good advice. He never took this advice and ran away from home again.
Abdulla Sab was a very handsome elderly person with a fair complexion and his face was adorned by a snow-white full beard befitting a scholar and saint. He was recognized as Chun-nay walay in the area because his profession was white-washing the houses. In those days we did not have many paint companies and it was very expensive too. Therefore, people used dissolved lime stones to whitewash their houses. As limestone is called Chunna, Abdullah Sab’s name got associated with it.
Every year we south his services before Ramadan to whitewash the kitchen in our home. He would bring lime in a gunny bag and put it in a drum and put water in it and allowed it to dissolve for a day or two and then would come the next morning and spend the whole day white washing our big kitchen with a brush made from coconut palm leaf. That day my mother would make a makeshift kitchen in the backyard of our house and it proved a fun day for me helping my mother move her kitchen stuff. I was the only one amongst my siblings who helped my mom most. My readiness to help stemmed from my love and sympathy for my mother who worked hard to do chores for our big family. We had a maid and a boy employed to assist her in indoor and outdoor work. I had taken seriously to the Hadith of Nabi SA taught to us by our Islamic Studies teacher that our mother deserved three times the love and respect than our father and that paradise is under her feet and we reach it by helping her.
Sometimes when Abdullah Sab got unexpected job offer he would take it up for fear of losing it and kept us languishing in the makeshift kitchen. This annoyance and inconvenience were toleerated because of our compassion for the neighbor.
Whenever I saw Abdullah Sab climbing the tall ladder to whitewash I realized the possible danger of his falling and hurting himself. This was also one of the constant worries of Mrs Abdulla which she would express to my mother. Sometimes when she visited our home, she would not accept any snack or drink offered to her saying that she was fasting. It was her practice to fast for the safety of her husband when he was out on job. She also fasted and prayed a lot when Abdulla Sab did not get enough work to save some money for the marriage of their daughter. I remembered this fast of Mrs Abdullah when I went to pay a courtesy visit to my Commanding Officers. That day was the annual festival of Karva chauth when the devout Hindu ladies also fast and pray for the health and wellbeing of their husband.
My mother used to talk to all her neighbors, friends and relatives in the kitchen because of her continuous business there. The only exception was that of Mr Abubakar who retired as secretary to the state government. He was a distant relative who would visit us when in town and my mother would meet him in the sitting room from behind the screen at the entrance to the sitting room. One day Mrs Abdullah came to my mother with a very happy face. She said that her daughter’s marriage was fixed and gave the other details. My mother congratulated her and conveyed her best wishes with a big hug.
Pointing to the changes in the position of the light bulb in our kitchen, which I had made to throw enough light under the chimney recently built, Mrs Abdullah asked if I could provide electricity to her house during the marriage. I readily agreed to comply. It would mark my contribution to the joyous occasion of a neighbor. Moreover, having seen marriages in our house with all the additional lighting, I was aware of the importance of it in this marriage. By drawing wire cable across the ally to their house on some bamboos, I not only gave some light to their house but also got a gramophone play the songs related to the occasion of marriage with lot of sentimental values on such an occasion. Now I see my daughter showing the same enthusiasm in the marriages of her cousins. After marriage of about a dozen of her cousins and her own marriage she is now bored of it.
I knew nothing much about the bride except that she used to play with some other girls of her age in the neighborhood in the ally and that she was the prettiest of all. Our religious teacher had taught us the Qur’anic rule that we should keep our gaze low in front of ladies and an unexpected glance is forgiven. This has been my demeanor to this day. Besides, our mother had instilled in us a respect for women. My interest in Urdu literature had taught me that unwanted interaction with girls brings a bad name to them and one should avoid it despite all temptations. One of my favorite couplets in those adolescent days was:
Dekhna Hai Tho Unhin Door Say Dekha Karna
Shewa-ye Ishq Nahin Husn Ko Ruswa Karna.
Meaning: if you want to see her, see her from a distance for love demands that you do not besmear the beauty and get her a bad name for your pleasure.
The memory of the marriage is fresh in my memory to this day. The ladies of our household could not be accommodated in their small house. They watched it through the small window that opened into the alley and sent to them some dishes from our house for the groom’s party. When it was time for the girl to depart from the house of her parents and step into an unknown and unfamiliar world to start her own family with her husband whom she never knew we all cried with their parents and prayed for a good happy married life for her. My mother used to enquire about her wellbeing and rejoice in the happiness of this family.
All this happened when I was in high school in the late fifties of the previous century. When I got admission to a medical school many of these women came to my mother to congratulate her and me. They were happy at the prospect of having a doctor in their neighborhood to care for them in their old age. I was still studying when the fear of Mrs Abdulla came true and Mr Abdullah fell down from the ladder and broke his leg and hurt his back. He got treated at the local hospital which was both good and free except for the medicines which he had to buy. Those days Epipen, which is sold in America for $500, was marketed as Adrenaline and was available for 25 cents. This hospital was established by the former Maharaja and was taken care of by the government then.
Abdullah Sab spent his remaining time on the bench made on the boundary wall of the library in our neighborhood brooding about the past and fearing about the future. His wife whom he had kept in safety and security despite his meager income was forced to work to support him and herself. And in this struggle, she had the support of my mother.
Homelessness was not a problem in those days but lack of accommodation for all the family in the small house was. Therefore, many people would sleep in the mosque managed by my father and in the public library managed by a trust in the neighborhood. There was a Night Shelter managed by my brother under the auspices of Social Service Samaj of the college where he studied. As there were not many cars the whole road was a footpath and sometime people spread their cots on the street to sleep, especially in summer times.
One Hindu Family is Muslim Neighborhood
On the street to the west side of our house lived the only Hindu Brahmin family amongst hundreds of Muslims. They had raised some cows and we used to buy milk from them. Their house was recognized by the cow dung cakes which they used to dry on the walls, and the Diwali lamps that used to light during Diwali. The head of the family had a lot of respect for my father and because of it he continued his stay in a Muslim majority area against the trend after partition when Muslims and Hindus felt comfortable staying in the neighborhood with their coreligionists.
He ultimately sold his house and left our neighborhood after the Jabalpur riot in the fifties. The riot was horrible and haunted me for a long time. It was the first big riot after partition in the series that followed all over India to change the secular liberal socialist order that was successfully laid in independent India by Nehru, Azad and Patel. It was replaced with the Hindu Nationalistic Capitalistic order which is now led by PM Modi.
Common Quadrangle for Children
I saw a documentary the other day in which they counted the blessings of collective dwellings like the one in which Abdullah Sab and others lived with their doors opening into a common quadrangle. One of which was that it helps in developing good interpersonal relations amongst children playing freely with other children in this common area giving convenience and leisure to moms while the children are honing their interpersonal and conversation skills of their own.
I very much doubt if this will succeed in our time where we believe in the “survival of the fittest” and teach our children to be bullies. The foster homes, hostels, public libraries, parks and schools on which we are spending a lot of our resources in the globalized village can’t take the place of the village in which Abdullah and other families lived where there was no competition of survival but only altruistic love and concern and support for each other to develop according to potential with which God had sent them for the job which He intended from them.
Raised by Village Destroyed in Cities
When I visited my place in India about ten years back, the City where I had grown had expanded far beyond the limits that I had left it with. There were lots of younger people contributing to its growth. Men and women were both in greater numbers studying and working together and the barrier between the two sexes appeared almost nonexistent. Assertive feminism and sexual anarchism had taken deep roots. Rape was rampant; divorce had crept into a society where marriage vows were repeated fifty years after a successful married life to reassert commitment by the spouses. Sex and crime had not spared even the nobility and the political elites to provide news to tabloid and an opportunity to the self-appointed politicians and NGOs to promote their agenda at the misery of others. Corruption and conspiracies were mocking at the adage on the buildings of the secretariat at Bangalore “Work of Government is the work of God.”
I found that many of my friends who were raised in circumstances similar to mine had all gone to different countries to contribute to the Globalized World. Some of them were doing well, but most were doing menial jobs to support their families. Some had returned home after the failed dream of Globalized world to hold on to what little they had saved and sent to their parents only to live as unwelcome guests in their own houses. Some had died a disappointed life.
It is sad to watch millions of such promising children raised in a village like mine, languishing in refugee camps outside the metropolis of the globalized world. These unfortunate people were intelligently manipulated by the dictators and the democrats, religious and liberal zealots to meet this fate.
There were lots of private hospitals and medical colleges, but they were beyond the reach of many ordinary people. The Government hospital where Abdullah Sab got the best treatment was fighting for its survival and was surviving because of its affiliation to one of the oldest medical colleges of India. Some devoted doctors were working hard to sustain it. Even they were losing hope and considering to succumb to insurance schemes to ensure financial viability for the present. The Anglo Hindustani Primary School with its Victorian style building and a huge playground was given to a parking lot and to scrap metal dealers (Gujri). Public schools were in shambles and private schools were beyond the reach of the common man.
After all these observations I have concluded that the wellbeing of a society does not depend on wealth alone, it depends on sincere people and the villages to make them. Wealth is the magnet to watch we are all attracted. As the opportunities to grow wealth have grown complex and un-manageable we are using AI to grow it. As the globalized world has accumulated too much wealth and is finding it difficult to share it with those at its borders, it should at least use some of it to resettle these refugees in the lands from where they were uprooted by creating chaos in the name of democracy and freedom. For this we need honest and hardworking people which we lack wasting the billions of dollars already spent on this. To hear that instead of doing this we are preparing for more wars and more instability is alarming. It is believed by some that those who pushed the world into this instability by their misadventure of establishing democracy and freedom are now working to bring back dictators to manage it.
