Book review: 'The Other Country: Dispatches From The Mofussil'

The Other Country: Dispatches From The Mofussil
Mrinal Pande
Penguin
212 pages
Rs350

Ever since ‘Shining India’ — that ill-fated slick term — received a sound bashing from the millions who thought otherwise, there has been much talk about the fault lines that run across the nation. But few dare to negotiate unknown terrain and report on the same. The youth of towns like Banka, Latihar, Kapkot or Jhumri Taliya are targeted by market forces, but little attempt is made to really understand what life is all about in such villages and small towns of “long evenings with dim lights, yowling cats, howling dogs and babies, and the perennially coughing and groaning elderly relatives with whom one shares the home.” Mrinal Pande, veteran journalist and Hindi writer, who worked in various small towns before becoming the editor of a multi-edition daily, is a rare exception.

The book under review is a collection of articles she wrote for various publications as she, a city-based woman journalist,

crisscrossed small-town India. The subjects range from perspicacious observations of social mores and cultural phenomena — such as the famous schools in Uttar Pradesh where students flock because they facilitate cheating during examinations, or the emergence of “hydra-headed new speech” which can swallow several languages and regurgitate a uniquely pan-India medium for public discourse. It can spin verbs out of English adjectives (hum nervousia gaye) or feminise adjectives (meri neighbour na, badi proudy hai).

Idiosyncratic and not afraid of mincing words, Pande’s gender-based approach is marked with a humour that can range from gentle, wry and ironic to even acerbic, as when she is examining why the immensely successful Aishwarya Rai had to undergo ridiculous traditional rites because she was a Manglik.

Another article examines with empathy why child marriages still prevail, and how it is inextricably linked with poverty and the threat of violence that the poor live in villages and slums.

Besides gender, Pande’s other major concerns are media, regional chauvinism (she is unsparing in her criticism of the Shiv Sena and Raj Thackeray’s targeting of North Indians and migrants in ‘The Demographic Anorexia of Aamchi Mumbai’), dismal health care standards, farmers plight and inequity. In ‘A Fistful of Rice’, she looks at the desperation of hunger through recounting an incident in which landless youth of Mahoba district, Bundelkhand, were charged with a crime — snatching cooked food and drinking water from three local farmers.

What most newspapers or television channels would dismiss as quixotic or exotic news becomes for Pande an exercise to examine the social and economic fabric of our society more closely. With her astute eye for the absurd, she takes up the story of ‘Mineral Water Baba’ of Ballabgarh in Haryana, who claims to cure any ailment with a sealed bottle of mineral water.

Baba has set up a permanent office in Dharuhera village by the name of Om Sai Ram Astha Samiti. Baba’s success, Pande notes, is also the story of failure of India’s healthcare and water management systems, particularly in Haryana and Rajasthan. Through this, she challenges our notions of development, since both are comparatively rich states. Pushing her case even further, she questions why metros like Mumbai and Delhi still have outbreaks of hepatitis and other water-borne diseases, and concludes with how Mineral Baba is a terrifying symbol of India’s looming groundwater crisis.

One can disagree with many of Pande’s strongly individualistic observations or sweeping generalisations, but her ability to look at the other side, to challenge our presumptions and offer refreshing new insights makes much of the book riveting reading.