Touch Me Not

Does casteism still exist in our country? Most of us would say yes to that even if we haven't experienced it in person but believe me, most of us won’t recognize how crude it is unless we see it for ourselves.Well, it was my turn to be educated about this evil and as they say "Education begins at home".
I was visiting my grandfather's place in Jalaun(a small town near Jhansi(UP)). Its funny how you feel detached from the world in a place like this. Its quiet, the only sounds you hear in the morning are that of a Maulvi praying in a Masjid and that of chirping of birds. Frankly speaking, in a few days you begin to miss the polluted air of the cities!! But that day the calm was short lived.
I woke up in the morning and to my utter disdain found my grandfather shouting at the top of his voice."The boy sleeps till 7'o clock. What is he going to do with his life", my grandfather shouted at me. He looked flabbergasted. Its a sin to sleep after sunrise in Jalaun and I didn't know that. He might as well have hit me for sleeping till 7 but something pulled him back ; may be he thought I was too old now to be beaten or may be he was waiting for the right time, right place. Whatever it was, I was thankful to have escaped my bed without a bump on my head.And so it began.
After freshening up, I settled down to read the newspaper. They say lightening doesn't strike twice in the same place. Well, in my case, it did."Bring me the Karkatiya, hurry up.", my grandfather snarled at me.I got up to fetch it but stopped mid way. What was I supposed to get? Oh God!, I realized I didn't know what a Karkatiya is!!I went back to him and asked " Grandpa , I don’t know what a Karkatiya is . Can you please explain it to me?"I might as well have asked him to shoot me, it wouldn't have made a difference."You don't know what a Karkatiya is!! What good are you. What do they teach you in your college. Oh my God, this lad is as dumb as they can get.", he shouted.First things first . Of course, they don’t teach about a Karkatiya in an engineering course and if it was such a life altering thing , I should know about it!!As I later found out , he was asking for a screwdriver. OK, that was the news of the day.
As the day passed, his anger subsided. I was able to survive the next few hours without being scolded. But that's more than you can as for, isn't it?In the afternoon, a man came to clean up our verandah and the sewage system of our house. His name was Ramlal. My grandparents had given him this job for which he got paid monthly.They also gave him to eat some leftover food on most days. Rest of the days, he got a cup of tea. That day, it was tea.
After he was through with his job he asked my grandmother for a cup of tea. My grandmother took a cup which was especially separated from other cutlery items, kept in one corner of the kitchen."A separate cup for him Dadi?", I asked her."Of course, we are brahmins, beta.", she said.These people really think I am dumb enough not to know that."Ya, Dadi, but how does it matter. Wouldn't it be good if we treated him in a more humane way", I asked her."Beta, there are some things in life you should not question. If we are doing this, it is for a reason. Now go give him this tea.", she replied.So I took the cup and proceeded to make the biggest mistake of my life. Ramlal was sitting on the floor with a puppy by his side. I tried to hand him the cup but he insisted, "Sahabji, keep the cup on the floor and I will take it."Thats when it happened. I kept the cup on the floor and gave him a pat on his shoulder."Nahiiiiiiiiiiiii", shrieked my grandmother who was watching us from the door.The man stepped back, his eyes wild as if he had seen a ghost.”Nahi Sahab.”, he said with terror in his voice. Before I could understand anything or ask my grandmother, she ran back into the house.Hell, now even I was scared. Was there something scary that I was missing, c’mon tell me!!In a moment, she came running back with a bottle of water and hurriedly started spraying it all over me, mumbling something at the same time.Now this was embarrassing, contrary to popular belief I do take a bath everyday. By the time she stopped I was half drenched. I was shell shocked. Ramlal was still staring at me as if I was a ghost. The poor puppy had the shock of his life and tried to escape through the closed gate, but only managed to get its neck stuck in an opening."He is not to be touched. Don't you know that? This is gangajal to purify you. Never do this again.", she shouted at me. My grandfather, hearing all the noise, came outside. When he came to know what had happened all hell broke loose. "He is an Achhut. Why did you have to touch him. Are you an idiot? You have no commonsense for God's sake...." I stopped hearing after that.
All the neighbors were looking at us in bewilderment. The fact that I had touched an Achhut didn't go down well with any of them. They were looking at me as if I had brought shame to all of them. Taunts and advices started flowing in from all the surrounding roofs.The fact is, I did feel embarrassed for Ramlal. How would have the man felt at that moment when everyone was scolding me for "touching him". Frankly, you cannot feel like a normal human being in such circumstances. After about ten minutes, when my grandfather was through with his harangue on untouchability and my lack of brains, we went in. Ramlal left without finishing his cup of tea and the poor puppy managed to run from the house too. So that left me alone. My grandfather’s reaction showed me how he counted this as a normal thing like waking up early in the morning or knowing about a karkatiya !! By the night, almost all my relatives knew of the incident (Frankly, I wouldn't have been surprised to read about it in the newspapers the next day.) As for me, I barely spoke after that. Once I tried to make my point but my grandfather looked at me with such fury that I almost fainted. After dinner, we had our customary stroll on the roof where he quietly(yes, quietly) explained to me the caste system and the grave sin that I had committed. I didn't dare interrupt him, not after the day that I had.
Two days later I packed my bags and came back to Kanpur. But the memory of that incident still lingers on like a ghost. That day I came face to face with a gross reality of “our times”. There are places beyond the metros of our country where casteism and untouchability are still in practice. Small town India has still got a long way to go before it can count itself among developed societies. Nuke-deals and multi-billion dollar acquisitions are good but there are places in our country unaffected by all this hoopla where the basic equality of people is still an issue, of course accompanied by many such evils. Let us not forget that.