History keeper of Beni Ka Purwa

I am increasingly fascinated by ‘lived’ oral histories, especially, the ones told to me by people who have been on this planet for almost a century. Some time ago, while in Beni Ka Purwa, a tiny hamlet in UP’s Banda district, I met 95-year-old Mulia Devi. Bent double but surprisingly spry, she’d just finished cleaning the village temple when we saw each other. She invited me to sit with her in the shady courtyard. I did and she rewarded me with her story.

Mulia Devi came to Beni Ka Purwa (named after her late husband) as a 12-year-old bride. She recalled with precision when each tree was planted, and every pond or well dug in the village. Sadly, she could also chronicle the demise of each big tree and the drying up of every single village well and pond. Listening to her, I realised she wasn’t just the village’s history keeper — she was also a living chronicle of its transformation from being a water-abundant area to one now known for its crippling summer drought.

“When I arrived in this village, all one had to do was dig a two-foot trench and groundwater would pool in,” she said, her fingers busy on rosary beads. The pond across the temple had water all year round. “Over 30 years ago, my family had a well made next to it,” she said. “When the well was being dug, there was so much water at 24-feet that they couldn’t dig any deeper.” Not far from it, there was a larger pond. “It was deep enough for an elephant to drown,” she recalled. With the increasing pressure of population and the consequent need for more land and water, the two ponds started drying up in the summer about 10 years ago. “The land just couldn’t keep up with the thirst of the growing population,” she said. “Only the pond in front of the temple remains; the bigger pond has long gone and houses have been built over it now,” she said.

Small farmers aren’t able to till their land anymore because of water scarcity. “People seem poorer than they used to be though paradoxically, they have more money than their fathers did,” she said.  

It began to rain and Mulia Devi commented that a good monsoon could breathe new life into the trees and wells in the village. For, every successive drought has resulted in the demise of the trees her husband and father-in-law planted decades ago. Mulia Devi pointed to a depression on the banks of the pond. “A huge neem tree stood here, planted when I came here as a bride over 80 years ago,” she said. “When it fell, I felt an old friend had died.” With the gradual demise of old trees, she said as she hobbled over to offer prayers at the base of an ancient peepal, the villagers lost much more than the shade they provided. “The death of every tree eroded the soul of the village,” she said.

Mulia Devi has also noticed that over the last few years, people are digging more and more tube wells in the village. “The more the number of tube wells, the less the amount of water there seems to be,” she said. “In the same way, the more the number of people in my village, the lonelier I feel now that my generation is almost entirely gone.”