Mangru Ram was the best Gobar danda player in our group. The gobarian danda or cow dung stick was a game in which a player (who was identified by a complicated stick push route near the starting point) is pulled at a distance by other players until he or she can touch anyone who has not kept his stick on the piece cow dung, dirt of the earth) balanced his head to the starting point, without discarding it. to the game, but 35 years ago it was the most popular game in our group.
Our basic pitch check was to find out how much of the land the majority of cow manure had before it was picked up (usually other people were picked up by cow manure for drying and use as fuel). Then we will find a pair of Lantana chopsticks, and the game has begun.
I do not remember how Mangrove ever lost, it seemed that losing was not an option. As a rule, a sufficient and ingenious boy, Mangrove became a monster, playing the game Cow Dung stick. He will scream, fight, deceive, but not lose. After the game, Mangrove was a changed boy, normal, shy and prone to extinction in his house.
None of us knew where Mangrew lived, although we lived in a very small town in central India. He never discussed his family, he was not in the same school as we, as a rule, his clothes were smaller than his good body. We asked him to play with us when we noticed that he was watching our game a few months ago.
Those days were birthdays, when we used a new pair of clothes, baked a cake at home and a few snacks bought at a nearby candy store, nothing unusual, but then it was more than enough. I was looking forward to my birthday, which arrived during the summer holidays, because school friends had never been around at all (they went to their grandparents home or to another place).
This year I wanted to invite Mangrove on my birthday, especially since there was no inviting. But because of the holidays that we did not play, since most of the group was outside the city.
so I went in search of Mangrove; asking a few people if they know where he lives. Someone vaguely pointed out to me the terrain on the outskirts of the city. I followed the directions and finally found it.
He lived in a small hut with dirty walls and a roof of bamboo sticks covered with dry leaves. There was only one room where his whole family slipped and ate (in one corner of the room there was a small wood-burning mud stove. We started playing the game.) I told him that the next day my birthday was and asked if I could come me home for some sweets.
I was glad that he agreed, because he looked very uncomfortable, so I immediately got up before changing my mind. He came with me to the street, that's when I saw his father enter. I have seen him before, a person with diminutive nature, who daily came to our locality in the morning and evening.
Then it stuck, it was the one who carried the waste in our toilet (in those days we had toilets that counted one hole with a thin wall covering four sides, and waste that we used to simply collect to collect and dispose of ). I noticed that this man cleaned the pigs, and then took out the waste, put them in the trash can and carrying on his head to dispose of them somewhere (I do not know where). All families using the toilet collectively used it every month.
Mangrove noticed that I saw and recognized his father; but I saw something else, in his eyes, not embarrassment or a plea for pity and not even the joy of seeing his father, but something else that I could not understand at that time.
Mangrove came to me on my birthday, and we ate well the delicious dishes my mother cooked. Our family never talked about Mangrove or his family or his father. Years passed, I went to different cities, studying, and then working, and I forgot this day, when I forgot many happy days of my childhood, until I saw a newspaper today.
It was about the Naxalitic problem in our old region and about the murder of the main local commander of the area, called Mangra Ram. The article did not have photos, but I somehow knew that this is the same Mangrove; he became naxalite!
I suddenly remembered the look in his eyes that day when I invited him to his birthday, and finally realized what that meant. It was a kind of disobedience, a look that said that he would never look like his father, a look said that he would find a way to grow up and not be like his father. The look also explained why Mangrove never wanted to lose the game with the dung-cow, he never wanted to carry around any dirt like his father every day. I am sure that he never did this work even after the death of his father.
But, probably, life never cares about his too many opportunities, and, finally, he took a path that seemed most challenging for society as a whole. He probably lived his life as if he were playing a game on a cow dung stick, never losing what could be.
PS: Manual cleaning was illegal in India in 1993, but the practice continues in many parts of the country, and mostly people from the so-called lower castes only do it.
The problem of Naxsalit still exists in many parts of the country and is considered the greatest security threat to India today.
