My heart dwells in the countryside

My heart dwells in the countryside

My heart dwells in the countryside

                             -Dr Raj Bahadur Yadav

 Oliver Goldsmith, an Irish poet, in his famous pastoral elegy,"The deserted village"[1770] laments,"Sweet Auburn! loveliest village of the plain/ Where health and plenty cheered the labouring swain". In the recent years, urbanisation has come to invade the countryside with a vengeance in India. The villages on the periphery of cities and towns are losing their existence fast, becoming an integral part of the municipal committee area. I can notice a geographic and demographic upheaval everywhere. Perhaps, I happen to be a nostalgic person with a pastoral background, so I feel a bit more than others about the mind-boggling growth of jungles of concrete in our cities.

                       In the months of April and May,  I have heard the birds chirping in the wee hours. When I step out of my house for morning walk at 5:15 am, I find the streets and roads quiet except the occasional barking of the street dogs. In the day time, the highway looks quite horrible and "hostile" to me, dotted with cars, trucks, and  motorcycles.  Not an inch to spare! The public places are over-crowded and the pedestrians feel puzzled while making their way through  vehicles parked bumper-to-bumper. The peaceful morning brings a big relief to common people as  they reinvigorate themselves, inhaling the fresh air around them and doing "yoga"[meditation] in the public parks. In such a  peaceful ambience, I feel really comfortable meeting friends and acquaintances and exchanging cordial greetings with them. My body is recharged for the hectic schedule of the entire day. When I return home around after one and half hours' brisk walk and some light exercise, I take bath and then skip through some national dailies in Hindi and English like The Tribune, Daily Post and Dainik Bhaskar etc. Having taken a light breakfast, I leave for my place of duty on a motorcycle. Hardly do I cross 500 meters than I find the fields and open countryside staring  in my face. Fatehabad still remains a rural town though it has a  big potential of turning into a big city in near future. As I reach the mini-bypass in the south, small hamlets with trees of bakain, shisham and mulberry greet me. The large water reservoir near the Crescent Public School looks like a modest lake. The wind rustling through my shirt appears quite cool here.  The neat and clean water of the nearby canal has kept the farmers settled here happy and prosperous too. The fields which run parallel to the canal are very fertile and they produce plenty of rice,cotton and wheat. I travel for nearly twenty kilometers westward and I find myself carried away by  the perennial beauty of the countryside. In the mornings, the trees seem to be greeting me silently with their gentle shadows. They shield the travellers from the swirling dust also. I deplore, many of them lost their green twigs and a few of them were uprooted altogether when a big dust storm had struck the area. They seem to be recovering from this shocking experience after a few pre-monsoon showers. Life in small hamlets is slow yet full of fraternal feelings with farmers usually sitting on the cots or in the plastic chairs under the thick shadow of trees planted in the courtyards with a"hookah" [ a long tobacco pipe] in front of them. They take occasional puffs at it turn by turn, sharing family tales and cracking light jokes. The buffaloes seem to be mirthfully munching green fodder and regurgitating it. We can notice a few motorcycles and at some hamlets even luxury cars also elegantly parked under the thick boughs of bakain or shisham. Some farmers have raised splendid "kothis" [houses] and taken to horticulture also. Their neck-tied children are seen waiting for yellow buses bound for different private schools. They are really hardworking rural folks. The cotton seeds have begun to sprout into tiny plants out of the white and brown soil at some places. We can smell the farmers' sweat in the perennial beauty of our countryside.

                                     I spot  the brick-kiln workers giving shape to raw bricks. Most of them have settled down in the small huts located in close proximity to the brick-kiln. Many of them take shelter under trees, eat their lunch and  take siesta in the hot afternoons on their cots. Their privacy depends on the mercy of the  passers-by as their women folk and kids spend the entire day in open. They fire beautiful red bricks which  help the villagers in building houses in their "dhanis"[hamlets]. Some of them send their children to government schools also. Even these uprooted people from backward areas of our nation  have right to a dignified life as they are busy adding to the prosperity of our countryside. I salute them for their honest labour and an authentic life -style.

Dr Raj Bahadur Yadav

Behind Kath Mandi, Kranti Nagar, Fatehabad[Haryana]