Just this morning when speaking on the phone with my co-sister in Salem, our conversation veered towards the latest news.,.the 10th class results. Our niece’s son had scored well and I was congratulating my co-sister on her grandson’s performance in the exams. Then we were drawn naturally to the news of a Thalaivaasal girl having scored 496 out of 500 and having become a state ranker in this board exam. Then my sister told me that the girl was indeed from Perieri our sleepy little village near Attur where we used to have all our cultivable lands .and where this co-sister and brother-in-law had spent a major part of their lives. I have loved the breezy place which had just a scattering of lonely homes in the midst of paddy fields, both left uncultivated and ploughed and cultivated..To even imagine that kids of this tiny hamlet would ngo to school or wish to be educated is a farfetched dream. That was in those days. Nowadays it is a reality that India.s villages are getting deserted and people there want to migrate to the city, a haven for jobs and education. Besides, agriculture is neither a lucrative, attractive or easy prospect..
That takes me back to the good old days when my husband grew up in Salem and used to go holidaying during the summer vacation to where else but Perieri where we had a huge farm….cows, goat, calves, bullocks and buffaloes all included. My husband reminisced that in his youth when he and his brother used to walk up from the road to the farm house ,,,a good 2 miles that!!!…….the village folk used to rise and wish them just because they had been to school upto or beyond 5th class. That to them was as big a thing as going to Oxford or Cambridge! Now looking at this latest news from that standpoint, I must admit our village folks have come a long way..that too in the case of a girl child. ,I believe this topper is from our Village Perieri and attended the school very near our Perieri farm and that her parents are both farm hands. Could be the child of one of those who worked in our fields…that is their 3rd generation.. How proud I felt that Perieri has progressed and come along way in terms of thinking.,.in giving their daughters education. But the flip side is that our farms and fields are no more being tended and where from will we get our grains from hereafter?
Another good news is the top score achieved by the daughter of Revati who used to be our house- maid , whom we taught to read and write at home…Her own son goes to a polytechnic and her daughter has scored 90%. But she and her husband are still tilling the soil but with newer methods and machines. There is yet another success story of the daughter of our ironwallah who again has scored above 85% in her 10th class exam..These are incidents that prove the adage;.where there is a will, there is a way. Poverty is just no excuse for those who have ambition and are raring to succeed doing hard work. Here I have to highlight the story of an IIT IIM graduate who has scorned all lucrative city jobs with big MNCs to take up farming and cultivation on his own. He says he is very happy content and peaceful., .far from the madding crowd and teeming millions and stress of mega cities.
This leaves me pondering whether my own life in the city is worth all that much, despite the fact that we enjoy all the luxuries and trappings of modern life. Is it necessary anyway, to be happy??? Think about it seriously.
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