By Rajshekhar Pant
A biting, darkly humorous allegory of Uttarakhand’s 25-year journey, told through the rise and fall of the family of Nandaballabha- who is to the Uttarakhand hills what John Bull and Uncle Sam happen to be for England and America respectively. As dreams of autonomy and dignity give way to tourism, extraction, politics, and intoxication, each generation inherits less land and more illusions. A story of ambition, ecology, and the consequences of forgetting the hills that once sustained us.
Nandaballabh – born into a joint family so large and so diverse that it qualified less as a household and more as a compulsory experiment in forced coexistence – had long been living permanently in his ancestral home with his wife and their only son; barely a year and a half old. He had once been a teacher in an old District Board primary school.
Picture, if you will, a huge, ill-matched joint family: a hotchpotch of varied temperaments, styles, upbringings, priorities, loyalties, values—an awkward stew forcibly being cooked together in an oversized cauldron. Family veterans would keep adjusting the flame, stirring with the ladle, adding water when needed—anything good enough to prevent the outright spillage of the broth. The aim was never nourishment; it was continuity. Under one roof, the family had to look united. Respectability was non-negotiable. Harmony was optional. Nandaballabh believed in this arrangement sincerely. To him, the willingness to sacrifice—especially silently—was the clearest sign of good upbringing.
As years passed, the suffocating worldliness and stark selfishness of most of his peers within the family only strengthened the conviction shared by Nandaballabh and his wife: that the best way to discharge their parental duty was to instruct their only heir to live a simple, straightforward—almost flat—life.
By now, you would have figured out their status in that circus-like joint family. Condemned to a life shoved to the margins, the couple suffered neglect on multiple fronts. Despite having had a decent education in their time, now life began its gentle decline, his daily duties included washing clothes, scrubbing utensils, cleaning floors, and coaxing a few crops out of tired fields. When reading, writing, or explaining was required, the entire household remembered his education. Praise followed—brief, functional, transactional. He accepted it as one accepts a tip for unpaid labour.
Time passed. The couple drifted along with it, content in their conviction that simplicity was virtue and obedience a form of wisdom.
By the time the sixties rolled in, and their son had already spent a few years in school, they began to feel acutely that their only child, growing up in this garish joint family, might never receive the education and values they wished to give him. The real blow came quietly. Once the boy passed fourth or fifth standard, murmurs began—harmless at first—that after somehow scraping through tenth, he could be trained to wash dishes and set tables at the family’s restaurant-hotel. For Nandaballabh, this revelation was like the shattering of a long-nurtured dream. He suddenly felt that even his dream of turning his son into a better human being would now be washed away with the greasy, murky water sliding down the soot-blackened walls of the family cauldron where lentils and vegetables were forever boiling.
There was only one path left: muster the courage to take his share and build a separate home away from this joint family that had turned into an endless circus—where his own status was no better than that of an animal trained by the ringmaster to repeat tricks without expression.
One day, in a surge of emotion, he placed his demand before the elders. Every elder, every well-wisher, every paternal cousin, maternal cousin, distant relative, clan member, hanger-on—everyone tore into Nandaballabh so thoroughly that he himself began to feel that dreaming of a separate home amounted to a monstrous act of insolence against elders who had either already accepted God’s summons or were preparing to turn their backs on this mortal world.
Under pressure from all sides, the air quickly leaked out of Nandaballabh’s attempt to live life on his own terms. But something did change: the crusty family patriarchs—who considered it their birthright to make every major and minor decision of his life—realised that to prevent the sting of accumulated injustice from leaving a permanent scratch or crack in his mind, it was necessary to hand him a colourful, tempting lollipop in the name of special status and privileges. They trusted that his foolish sense of gratitude would bury his desire to claim his own ground deep underground.
It was decided that he would be given two or three rooms in the ancestral house to decorate as he pleased; if his son wished to study, facilities would be provided; a small portion of the household income would be given to him in cash, to spend as he wished—etcetera, etcetera. Despite a muted sense of guilt, Nandaballabh was happy. At least now, life could be lived somewhat on his own terms.
His son was now ten or eleven years old. The school register identified him as Buddhiballabh. After school, he went on to graduate with a BA from a newly opened government degree college in the nearby town. With age and time, as layers of his mind unfolded, he began to understand that the “facilities” granted to his parents by the joint family were nothing but the price paid for pushing them quietly into a corner.
His future lay ahead of him—dreams that education and growing worldly awareness allowed him to see, understand, and shape more clearly. Soon, he began openly and aggressively voicing his anger at the so-called guardians of the joint family who had fobbed off his parents with a spinning top instead of justice. Gradually grasping the situation, his parents also began to morally support him.
Some fossil-like elders declared that the family would be divided only over their dead bodies. But emotional blackmail failed to douse the burning resolve of Buddhiballabh—and of his parents, now powered by his courage. An all-out battle was inevitable.
A great deal happened in the climax of this family drama—fights, violence, abuse, cunning manoeuvres, conspiracies, gunfire—everything that customarily unfolds during the division of ancestral property in big-nosed, allegedly “respectable” families. Accounts of this dramatic phase are recorded in detail in the pages of history—written, read, revised, and edited from different perspectives.
Anyway… the partition finally happened. The joint family broke apart, and Nandaballabh received his share of land, businesses, and assets. He was happy—and Buddhiballabh’s enthusiasm knew no bounds.
Here comes a cliffhanger in the story.
One would hope that though Nandaballabh may have spent sixty or seventy springs—perhaps autumns would be more accurate—serving others, Buddhiballabh was educated, worldly-wise. Together, Nandaballabh’s simplicity and Buddhiballabh’s intelligence, dreams, and energy should have created some miracle, propelling this splintered family to new heights within a few years.
But ever since the partition, many seasonal well-wishers—circling with vulture eyes—began slowly drawing closer. This group prominently included those who had maintained a shrewd silence during the climax, having correctly read which way the camel was about to sit.
Most of the land allotted to Nandaballabh lay along a riverbank, its far end meeting the foothills of a forested hill. He had tilled this land like an ox all his life, contributing to family needs. He was happy now—whatever grew here would be his alone.
The new well-wishers, however, had different plans. Their sharp intellect was now focused squarely on Buddhiballabh. He was advised that farming was useless; instead, the forested hill behind should be cleared to build a resort. A couple of cottages by the river could be sold at high prices to people from Delhi. The river had immense potential for rafting; the hill was perfect for paragliding. A good restaurant would run on its own. They even suggested a way to raise capital: give power of attorney for part of the land, enter partnerships, take bank loans.
Over time, cottages, paragliding, restaurants, and rafting projects took shape. A hotel rose on the hacked-down hill. Meanwhile, a soapstone mine was discovered on a large portion of the land. Income surged. Partnering with the brother-in-law of a henchman turned politician—who had bought the first cottage—Buddhiballabh set up a stone crusher by the river.
Then began everything that naturally follows when the owl of the goddess of riches makes an accidental forced landing. Nocturnal revelries and inebriation, meticulously arranged by friends, quietly stamped Buddhiballabh as progressive and modern.
By now, Nandaballabh had grown old. Records, history, and folklore are strangely silent about this phase of his life. It is said that sometimes; while walking by the river, he remembered the days when he grew rice and potatoes in fields now choked with stones and sand. The taste of winter greens—lahi, methi, palak etc.—sometimes made him restless. But when he turned back and looked at his glass-façade house and cottages, his stooped back would straighten involuntarily. The JCB machine standing by the river lent weight to his steps with an unfamiliar confidence. At home, the pungent smell of shikar being cooked in the kitchen and the golden gleam of bottled liquid in the glass cabinet erased all images of the green fields that once were.
Buddhiballabh was now an established builder. Government policies favoured tourism, and with big contracts for hotels, cottages, and lodges, he strengthened his identity. Money and recognition, as usual, pushed him towards politics—climbing the ladder from grampradhan to blockpramukh. Liquor contracts in the nearby town followed naturally.
When life takes off powered by the golden quadrilateral of crushers, sand-gravel, contracts, liquor, and politics, the escape velocity becomes so high that both surroundings and destination get blurred. Even the flyer forgets where he is going—or where to stop.
In twelve to fourteen years, Buddhiballabh had surged far ahead. He had money, resources, crowds of supporters, and a solid brigade of sycophants. And when one has all this, one begins to believe that selling coal to Jharia, jaggery to Muzaffarnagar, and grapes to Nashik is an inborn talent with him.
Elections were approaching. Buddhiballabh received divine inspiration: he must now become an MLA. With money, liquor, and clout, the road to becoming “Honourable” wasn’t too difficult. But the opposing camp produced a peer from the joint family—someone with the additional qualification of extensive experience as an accused under multiple sections. In election fever, such unproven charges often turn into medals earned in tireless public service.
Circumstances unfolded such that Buddhiballabh lost the election. And that loss, as often happens, soon became a loss of status, clout, and sudden wealth. Early allies distanced themselves and withdrew their investments. Stories of timber theft, illegal mining, rigged contracts during his tenure as blockpramukh—previously whispered—even by opponents—now became staple topics at tea stalls and street-corner speeches.
Court cases and bank loans took their toll. Land, hotels, cottages slipped away. Vehicles were sold; the JCB changed hands. Whatever remained was leased back to the same people he had once empowered as partners and settlers in this region.
Twenty-five long years somehow slipped by, bundling all these events together. One winter evening, warming himself by a bonfire of rotting wood for long been hanging in crazy angles from the roof of his old house, Nandaballabh departed this mortal world. It is said that in his final days, he wandered confused through nearby settlements, plucking lahi and palak leaves, insisting on making their kapa with bhang seeds.
Buddhiballabh is still alive. Sitting in the veranda of his faded house, filling a Chivas Regal bottle with country liquor, he reminisces about old days. Sometimes, when too drunk, he violently shakes the rusted railing of his courtyard, hurling abuses at those who had once bought land around his house.
Buddhiballabh’s son is now grown. His parents must have named him Kirtiballabh with great hopes. At the paragliding site near home—once built by his father—he has found work as a guide. Selling a small remaining piece of land, a motorcycle has been bought by him. The cash commission he receives for bringing the tourists to the site takes care of his mobile phone, charas, and smack. The leftover money goes towards second-hand foreign jeans and jackets sold on footpaths.
A taste for speed and high flights runs in the blood. Chasing his dreams, perhaps someday he will become the pilot for a tourist’s tandem paraglider.
(The author is an amateur filmmaker, a photographer, and a writer, who has written over a thousand write-ups, reports, etc., published in the leading newspapers and magazines of the country. He can be reached at pant.rajshekhar@gmail.com)
