In the barren lands of Rajasthan, in the midst of mighty deserts, there was a barely known and teeny sized village, Bhaleri. Even if you were to be an explorer, there exists an extremely thin chance of you to come across this name, let alone visit it. In this incomprehensible world, billions exist and with them, billions of stories and billions of fates. Some we know about and many we are unaware of. One among these life stories is the story of a beautiful child, Jaanu. That’s what they called her, perhaps she had a formal name too, but that was only limited to a mere registration identity for her village school.
Jaanu was only six years old. She was just as fair as milk with big eyes, carrot nose and apple cheeks. Jaanu was the walking teddy bear for the entire house for she was plump and stout. Whoever visited their house, in a matter of just a few minutes, was found playing with her excitedly. She was one of those magical children who could win hearts with just the charm of their innocence. Everyone was fascinated with the yellow flower clip that she wore in her hair, with her chubby arms laden with yellow and green bangles, with her limitless appetite for Kheer and her go-to orange dress that she saved for every special occasion.
Jaanu lived in an outright traditional environment with her family. Her grandfather, a farmer had two sons. The elder, Jaanu’s uncle was an engineer in the city. His wife, tempted with her husband’s independence and progress, demanded to study further and was then allowed to leave behind her son and a strikingly beautiful daughter to go settle in a hostel and prepare for government examinations. The younger son, Jaanu’s father, was in no mood to abandon the leisure of village life. He was content with the income that came from their agricultural produce. However, due to societal pressure and taunts for being unemployed, Mukesh decided to open a small internet shop, five miles from their house. He was proud of the fact that his was the first and the only shop in the village that could draw youngsters and officials for all their work for which initially, people had to travel to the city. Jaanu’s mother, jealous of her sister-in-law’s life, was always found with a frown on her face. She had neither the ambition nor the prerequisites to indulge in further studies. So, she spent her time in the kitchen along with the other ladies of the family.
Right next to their house lived Jaanu’s bestfriend, Garima. Jaanu met her every day and if there were days when her angry mother wouldn’t allow her to or if there were guests at home, she would throw a pebble on Garima’s terrace. Garima then, would come running to the top of the house and the two girls would communicate with gestures for hours. They couldn’t go to same schools due to the disparity between their house incomes. Moreover, Jaanu was adamant to go to a school that had uniforms and classes, unlike Garima’s, which was only an Aanganwadi with just one teacher and an open ground in the name of a school.
Bhaleri was a secluded place in all terms. There was barely any means for people to know about the world or get any exposure. If at all they wanted anything beyond the necessities, they could either travel to the nearby city or visit Mukesh’s shop to watch videos on the computer system. Life was slow and self-sufficient. Nobody bothered to get more than what they already had; cows for the milk to feed the family, farms to fill stomachs, a cart where t-shirts could be bought, an annual fest where stalls for exciting city things were set up, one school and a hospital. That’s all they could ever need. Maybe on somedays the men needed to smoke beedis or hookahs and now they had Lakshman’s moving cycle for that too. After the smoke and gossips of who loves whom, they bought packets of chips and chocolates for their children and walked back home.
It was an unusual day at Jaanu’s house, on one summer morning. As she was hurrying to ask Mukesh to drop her school on his motorcycle, her mother asked her to go back to sleep. Later, it was found that they were being visited by their relatives from the city. The entire house was running around, preparing to welcome their influential guests. Jaanu peeped from the pillow as she rolled in the bed. She could see her mother was constantly mumbling, walking in and out of the kitchen. Her elder sister, was sweating while she mopped and cleaned the entire house. Jaanu’s grandmother sat on the mat and monitored every bit of the preparation. After all, it was her elder sister visiting them. Jaanu was only getting excited because she knew it’ll be a day all about delicacies, bowls of kheer, no homework and lots of attention.
She quietly slid out of her bed, took a bath with boiling tap water, dressed into her orange frock and put on her yellow flower clip. Then she realized, it was not an ordinary village guests visit so she tip-toed to her mother’s almirah and slyly poured talcum powder all over her neck and a patch on her face. She just couldn’t stop giggling. With her little feet she ran to the verandah and threw a stone on Garima’s terrace, hoping that her bestfriend hadn’t left for her school yet. Garima came running. Jaanu with her little hands, signaled, asking Garima on how was she looking also then noticing that she had forgotten to wear her bangles. After her little chat, she went back to her room, finished up her final dress up regime and sat on the netted bed with her grandmother, waiting for the car to arrive.
Time flew faster than one could imagine. Everybody came in their classy city attires, walked out of their big white SUV, carrying hampers and gifts in their hands. The kids got busy playing around with calves, goats and thatched huts. The adults sat in the room which had a cooler and drank glasses of cold lassi. It was a good day, everyone fought for chances to have Jaanu sit on their laps. They had their usual Rajasthani thalis for lunch with onion fritters as the side dish. Just as the time for Kheer came, Jaanu quietly excused herself from the gathering, filled a big bowl of Kheer for herself and licked till the empty bowl shone as though it were clean. After that whenever anybody asked her if she had Kheer, she would innocently shake her head and say ‘No!’ and share their bowl of the dessert too. After filling her stomach with bowls and bowls of it, she ran to the kitchen, making a twisted face and said, “Ma, it was too sweet! I think you added sugar twice.”
Just as the guests were preapring to leave, Jaanu’s distant aunt, who was in awe of the little girl said, “Jaanu, you go to school everyday, study so much..What do you want to be when you grow up?” The lady knew that either Jaanu wouldn’t understand the question or she would just giggle and to the most, would say she wanted to be a teacher just like her elder Aunt was aspiring to be. But to her surprise, Jaanu did not even wait for the question to end! She flung her little hands up in the air, and screamed “Faauji”! Her eyes lit up when she said that. Everybody burst out in laughter but her aunt was extremely intrigued with the response. It was so unusual for a six year old girl, being brought up in a traditional household in a village to have an ambition as strong and as clear as being a soldier. So she further inquired, “How did you know you want to be an Indian soldier?” “Every morning when we gather in our school ground for prayers and the Indian national anthem, I see army trucks passing by. I get so excited looking at them, that I also wave at the soldiers. On many days they end up looking at me, they smile and wave back. Grandpa tells me that they are heading to the border to kill our enemies and protect all of us. I want to go to the border and fight too!”
Nobody could ever imagine that a child like Jaanu would be garnering a passion so deep. That little girl could think more profoundly than probably anybody else in their entire village. Her aunt, mesmerized, then quickly looked at Jaanu’s mother. With a veil on her head, she was just laughing on what Jaanu had said earlier. It broke the lady’s heart to realize that had Jaanu’s parents listened to her dream more sensibly or patiently, they could actually mold her into an Indian soldier in the coming future. But they not only passed the talk as a mere farce but did not even pay the slightest attention to it. Nobody believed in the dream that glistened through her eyes. But Jaanu kept looking at her aunt, hoping that she would validate her tiny, blooming desire. The aunt gave the girl a tight hug, asked her to never forget about her dream, promised her to gift her movies on soldiers and then blessed her.
When the guests had departed in their car, Jaanu ran towards Garima’s house and got busy showing her the gifts that the city people had brought. The two girls played in the mud till dusk when Jaanu’s mother ordered her to quickly gulp down her night milk glass and go back to sleep. With kilos of kheer already in her stomach, Jaanu slept, with the yellow clip clutched in her hands. That night, she dreamt of the same army truck, this time with her aunt too inside. As she with the Indian Army soldiers halted outside Jaanu’s school to pick her up, Jaanu leapt in the bus with laddoos in her hand and drove off to the border to also fight back the country’s enemies.
Just as I said, in a world of so many stories and so many destinies, this was Jaanu’s little story and her not so little dream…