Ram and Rahim

In the year 1973, I spent Durga Puja festival holidays in Chunar, a very small place in Uttar Pradesh. We got down from the train at Chunar Junction. Is it a junction station !. A lonely semi village station. It seemed very queer to me. An ordinary lonely semi village station, only a few people got down there. We took an Ekka(a horse driven cart) and started for our destination. When we got down from it and the door we knocked,  an old man came out – the caretaker of that house. I looked around it was a locality of very poor people, and they were mostly potters. I thought we made a mistake. It couldn’t be the right choice to pass the vacation.

However when we entered we saw that it was a two storied house and a garden which had no sign of maintenance. We came here only for one of my uncle who just recovered from a prolong suffering from diseases and one of our  relatives  advised us to stay for about a month if possible as because the water of the place would be very much suitable to regain his health. My uncle and his elderly friend who accompanied us entered the house.

Our daily routine was -before dawn to wake up and start prayer songs(bhajan), because my uncle and his friend both were unmarried and lived like saint, then having tea and breakfast to go the market. Purchasing fresh vegetables and fish we used to start the preparation of a full course meal. In the evening we used to go out for walking that never could be finished before the late evening, taking rest for some time again bhajan and reading of Gospel of Shri Ramkrishna. There after dinner and a sound sleep.

After a few days when we were busy in the evening Bhajans, we noticed that local poor peoples with folded hand with a sign of astonishment entering in the courtyard one by one sat silently up to the end of the prayers. Gradually they became acquainted with us and sometimes ask for medicine or some help but never any monetary help. We could feel their several inabilities, several shortcomings, their hopelessness and their surrender to the poverty but above all their honesty and honour for basic values of life, highly attracted us. In that locality, there were Muslims also and the most interesting matter that they too gathered in the evening bhajans. One day my uncle asked an old Muslim lady whose gaits revealed that she was having the blue blood but slipped to poverty for a generation – “Ma(mother) you are Muslim but why do you join  Bhajans of Ram(the well-known deity in north India)? We became speechless hearing her answer- “You see my son, here we are living in a village full of poverty and a dull life,  but we both communities live here for more than centuries, we can share the sorrow and pains of each other, then why  won’t we be able to share our religion with each other ? you are  saying Ram I am hearing my Rahim.

we could not expect such wisdom and philosophic views from an old lady of that tiny village where most of the villagers didn’t have any schooling in their life. Is it the essence of true religion! We could not utter any word.

Days went by the muslims and hindu neighbours became very familiar to us. After a week or two we became the native and very well known neighbours to them.

My uncle was fomd of homoeopathy medicines and he had some amaturish knowledge. He used to prscribe medicines for his friends or families. So when one day an old man Sitaram Pottery came to my uncle to know whether he could get any medicine for his dysentry, my uncle gave medicines that worked miraculously.

The news spread out rapidly that a good doctor came. So from next day, my uncle got good numbers of the patients every day.

But a month consists of on an average thirty days. So one day the time came to depart. The villagers thronged around us when we were loading our bag and baggage on the Ekka. We saw their eyes were moist for the approaching separation. Though we promised to visit them again we both knew that was next to impossible.

We could see them waving their hands until we disappeared at the end of the road which took u-turn and passed by a hillock.