Dhani

Subhadra Sen Gupta

His day began and ended at the river. At dawn, as the sky lightened in the east and the birds flew over his head welcoming the new day, he would walk down the ghat steps to the water. Then as he stood reciting the Gayatri mantra, the river would be all around him, the water rising to his waist in a cool, living presence.

In the evening he went back home across the darkening waters as the lamps were lit in the temples by the ghats and the sound of the temple bells came echoing towards his boat. The river was always with him.

Pandit Kalpeshwar Tripathi could not imagine life without the presence of the River Ganga. In Kashi they said that the city was the kingdom of Lord Shiva but for him it was the flowing waters of the Ganga that spelled home. When he sat and watched her waters flow over the ghat steps like a liquid benediction he knew that he was in a sacred space.

That morning as always, Kalpeshwar was on his way from the Kedar Ghat where he lived to Assi Ghat where he taught in a paathshala attached to the Sankat Mochan temple. Recently many new schools – paathshalas and madrassas – had been opened in Kashi by the patronage of the Mughal Emperor Akbar and his general Raja Man Singh but his school was an old one and he had been teaching there for nearly 30 years. What he liked most about it was that, as he sat in his classroom, a patch of the river was visible from the doorway.

He sat at one end of the boat that was being rowed by his regular boatman Dhani. Dhani would be waiting for him again in the evening to take him back home. Kalpeshwar, careful of his purity as a Brahmin made sure that he sat far away from the defiling shadow of the low caste Dhani but that did not stop them from chatting.

Dhani liked to talk and the pandit liked to answer his questions. He found it oddly peaceful talking to the boy.

“How old are you Dhani?” he asked

“I don’t really know Panditji,” the boy shrugged, his dark muscled shoulders straining at the oars. “Amma only remembers that it was during the rains and it was the year when the river covered all the steps of the Dasaswamedha Ghat.”

The old pandit laughed and then studied the dusky, sharp featured face before him, “I think you are 15 or 16. I remember your father telling me he had a son. He always gave me all the family news.”

“May be,” the boy shrugged indifferently. “Does it really matter? I am a boatman today and I’ll be rowing till the day I die.” He gave a quick sigh, “Just like my father and his father before him.”

“How is your father?”

“He can walk now but I don’t think he’ll be able to row a boat very soon.” Some months ago Dhani’s father had slipped on the steps of a ghat and hurt his head, so now young Dhani was the only bread winner of the family. Soon after the accident, one morning, Dhani had offered Kalpeshwar some money for a puja for his father.

The pandit had refused to take it and instead he had given the boy a silver rupiya coin and said, “Use this for his medicines.”

“What about the puja?”

“Pujas can wait. The gods don’t need to be bribed with pujas. If they truly want our good they will listen to our prayers.”

Dhani had given him a startled glance, “But at the temple all the priests ask for money.”

“I’m not a priest, I’m a teacher.”

The boy had given him a doubtful glance, “The priest says only he can talk to the gods. When you pray the gods listen to you too?”

Kalpeshwar had stared across the river and then said gently, “I think we should not depend too much on the gods. The medicines from the vaid are much more dependable…”

Dhani had smiled and given a quick nod of his curly head, “Amma wanted the puja. I didn’t.”

As the boat moved across the wide expanse of the Ganga towards Assi which was the last of the 80 ghats of Kashi, they sat in easy silence. Then, as he often did, Kalpeshwar began to sing, softly chanting one of his favourite shlokas to Shiva, the mahamrityunjaya mantra, “Om Trayambakam yaja mahe, Sugandham pushti vardhanam…”

As he was reciting the Sanskrit mantra he realized there was a soft echo that followed his voice.

“Urva rukmiva Bandhanan Mrityor mokshay…”

He looked in surprise at Dhani and realized that the boy was reciting with him and they sang together till the end. He was so delighted to find the boy singing with him that Kalpeshwar forgot to protest about an outcaste boatman singing in Sanskrit. Any other Brahmin would have been furious at Dhani’s presumption.

“How did you learn the shloka?”
“From you Panditji; you sing every morning in my boat.”
“You learnt just by listening to me?”
Dhani shrugged, “I remember things…”
“Things?”

Dhani stopped rowing, letting the boat drift as he tried to explain, “I don’t know. I just don’t forget anything I hear a few times.I know many of the songs that you sing.” And to Kalpeshwar’s astonishment, Dhani then sang snatches of many mantras that he sang in the boat on his way to his school.

“How do you remember them? Do you write them down and then memorize them?”

Dhani shook his head, “I can’t read or write. I just listen.” Then he stared at Kalpeshwar, his eyes wide and watchful and then he asked nervously, “Do you think you could teach me to read and write, Panditji?”

Pandit Kalpeshwar Tripathi looked at the pleading young face before him and could not say, “I only teach high caste boys and you are a boatman’s son. I cannot teach you because if I do, then people will banish me from the school.” He just said gently, “I’ll think about it Dhani.”

“It’ll be easy to teach me Panditji,” a smile curved Dhani’s lips, “You just have to tell me once and I’ll remember.” His eyes deepened with a touch of sadness, “There is a new paathshala near my house and I went there but the Pandit there said I’m not a high caste so I can’t study there. He said that if I went and sat in his classroom then the other boys won’t sit with me.” He gave a quick, cheeky grin, “But you could teach me in the boat!”

Kalpeshwar laughed, “Yes I could do that.”

By then they were at Assi Ghat and as Dhani held the boat steady, the old Pandit stepped carefully on to the slippery muddy bank. He took a few copper daam coins and dropped them from a height into Dhani’s outstretched hand, careful that he did not touch him.

A week later, one morning Kalpeshwar sat before his class of a dozen Brahmin boys who were being taught the scriptures so that they could become priests. The row of boys had shaven heads with pigtails and wore white dhotis and prominently displayed sacred thread across their chests. They sat bent over their palm leaf pages reading aloud, swaying and memorizing.

‘I try so hard to make them understand the shlokas, appreciate the beauty of the words but all they want is to memorize so that they can spout them before a yagya fire. All this effort is only to make a living.”

He turned to look out of the door from where he could catch a glimpse of the Ganga and remembered his conversations with Dhani. The boy wanted to know the meaning of the mantras that he had picked up and as Kalpeshwar explained the meaning of the maha mrityunjaya mantra he listened carefully and then gave a happy sigh, saying softly, “It’s so beautiful Panditji. This is real poetry.”

Dhani’s mind was filled with questions. He wanted to know where the Ganga started and where it ended. He listened in wide eyed concentration as Kalpeshwar described the Himalayas and the sea at Ganga Sagar at the end of the river’s journey. He was curious about everything. Why do mangoes grow only in summer and not winter when onions grew all year round? Has Kalpeshwar seen Agra where Raja Akbar rules? Is the sun made of fire?

At times the old teacher would have to shake his head and confess that he did not have the answer. Dhani knew many of the answers lay in books and that was why he wanted to read; if only Kalpeshwar would teach him. Somehow to his logical young mind it made no sense that a mantra could be defiled if he sang it. He was a human being too, wasn’t he?

‘When he sings the mantras with me, with such love and joy,’ Kalpeshwar brooded, ‘the mantras sound like music and poetry. They are not defiled by his young loving voice. It is so much better than this obedient, mechanical repetition that I am hearing now.’

Then a thought struck him, ‘What am I first? A Brahmin priest or a teacher?’ and Kalpeshwar did not have an answer.

That night Kalpeshwar Tripathi could not sleep as Dhani’s pleading young face kept floating before his eyes. He got up and left the house, walking through the narrow lanes of Bhelupura to the Kedar Ghat. He sat down on a step; it was still dark, the ghat quiet and empty. The early morning bathers would come closer to dawn. It was so quiet that he could hear the soft splash of the river hitting the ghat steps.

The Ganga was a dark, glistening expanse before him, catching patches of the fading moonlight. The still air carried a faint aroma of flowers and incense and the slightly dank smell of the river.

The old Pandit had come to his river goddess seeking an answer. The Ganga had to tell him what he was first, a priest or a teacher.

That morning Dhani had asked him a question that haunted him. “Panditji, who created the rule that said that you are a Brahmin and I am an outcaste because I row a boat? Which god said that?”

“No god said it. It is Brahmins who made the rules.”

“But they are human beings like me.”

“Yes, they are.”

“Then why can’t they change the rules?”

“Why should they? The caste system makes them powerful and rich. They say the gods told them about varna and jati, so they obey the gods.”

“Did the gods tell you?”

He had laughed, “No, they did not. I did not hear anything from the gods and I’m quite sure the others did not either.” He could not tell a lie to the dark pain in those young eyes, “These are all just stories we make up to make money.”

He thought back to the years of teaching and realized that what he remembered the most were the good students and the joy of teaching them. There was the boy who was a brilliant mathematician and now worked in the royal treasury. Another who composed poetry and had become a famous singer. The boy who studied Ayurveda and now practices as a doctor. With Dhani he felt the same happiness he had felt while teaching them.

In all the years he had never found a mind like Dhani’s. There was the quick understanding; the crystal clear logical reasoning and that extraordinary memory. Most of all, there was that hunger to learn and the passion to discover. Where did he learn to ask those questions?

He knew that Dhani had been seeking a teacher all his life. He had persuaded a grocer to teach him numbers and could calculate quickly in his head. A trader who lived in his lane had taught him the devanagari alphabet and he could recite them and even scribble them on the dust with a stick but it went no further because he had no books to help him to read.

Kalpeshwar knew he would have to find a way to teach Dhani and not on the boat as the boy optimistically suggested. ‘I can hire him as a servant’, he plotted, ‘to help me with the chores around the house and I’ll teach him when no one is around. My wife is dead, I am growing old. I live alone and need help.’ Then he thought firmly, ‘Who will know what I do at home?’

As the sun rose, touching the ripples of water with gold, the river gave her answer. The Ganga did not know of the divisions that humans made within themselves. Her waters, fish, and clay were for everyone. The water and clay could be used by a Brahmin for his rituals and by a potter to mould an arati lamp. A weaver dips his skeins of cotton in her water to dye them the colours of the rainbow, a farmer irrigates his fields and fishermen throw their nets across her waters for their daily catch.

‘Potters, weavers, farmers, fishermen, boatmen… these people are the anchors of our lives and we treat them with such terrible contempt,’ thought Kalpeshwar. ‘The river goddess cares for them all with generosity and equality because she is jeevan dayini Ganga. She just knows how to give life.’

I am a teacher, Kalpeshwar Tripathi said firmly to himself; and I give knowledge. That is my only identity.

Then walking peacefully back home after his morning bath, he thought with amusement, ‘I am no longer his Panditji. Dhani will now have to call me Guruji. And we just have to find a way to fool the world and its absurd, inhuman, cruel rules.’

Then Kalpeshwar Tripathi threw back his head and laughed. ‘I think we’ll enjoy the journey.’

Subhadra Sen Gupta writes on Indian history and culture. She has published over thirty books for children. In 2014 she was awarded the Bal Sahitya Puraskar by the Sahitya Akademi. She can be reached at subhadrasg@gmail.com.

Historical Note

Teachers may be curious about what was taught in the paathshalas and madrassas in the Mughal period. Education was limited to the Brahmins and the rich and it was only for boys. They were taught basic reading and writing in Sanskrit, Persian or Arabic. The emphasis was on rote learning and questions and experiments were discouraged. The curriculum was a mix of mathematics, grammar, history, logic and theology. Surprisingly no physics, chemistry, biology or even geography was taught. Indians had little knowledge of the world.

One of the reasons for our backwardness was the effect of the caste system that kept children away from education and discouraged enterprise. At a time when Europe was racing ahead in engineering, science and medicine, scientific thought did not exist in India and we did not develop any new technology. Fearful of losing their caste, our merchants did not voyage across the seas to discover new markets.

Our craftspeople, the weavers, stone carvers and metal workers excelled in their work but we had no machines and no modern factories. Our education system would only recover at the time of British rule.