A Suicide In Runikhata

I wonder how many Calcuttans have any idea where Runikhata is. In 1989 I had never heard the name either. I was on my way to Gaylegphug for the first time in life, in a Bhutan bus and waiting in the middle of a desolate highway on a dot of a hamlet called Samthaibari. Waiting for army escort to come and take us to the Bhutan border town. The main convoy of trucks had gone ahead towards Guwahati with their army escort and we were to turn left (north) towards Bhutan outside the Bongaigaon town from where another escort van would help us complete the journey. Just two buses but packed with passengers. When the army escort jeep proved elusive for about 15 minutes and our driver was getting nervous, it was suggested that we should go up the route to this village called Runikhata which had a police station and the bus could wait inside the complex safely, as it was fortified.

The driver had reasons to be nervous. Assam was reeling under the Bodo agitation and we were in the heartland of this extremely violent agitation that took hundreds of lives and disrupted normal civilan life for a few years. Trains were suspended to the North-East for months, if not years. Even the insignificant hamlet of Samthaibari had bullet marks on the abandoned street-side dhabas.

Runikhata, it turned out, was a Bodo village on the outskirts of an elephant infested deep forest that would start from there and continue up to Bhutan for about 30 kilometers. There were other Bodo villages on this route where many Bodo men and women would board or disembark the bus. These two Bhutan buses every morning in either direction were their only means of transport. They were mostly local passengers though. 

On this narrow jungle road the most bone chilling sight used to be the remains of a bombed out army truck where more than 20 soldiers were blown off several months ago by the terrorists. I remember another sight on this route. Most of the Bodo villages had a library near the bus stop. The villagers weren't very affluent (but none of them ever looked shabby or visibly poor) but their love for books was evident in the presence of these libraries. I have never seen a library in such remote parts of India anywhere.

Between May 1989 and September 1990 I had made several journeys on this route. Mostly by public transport or the dangerous army ration truck that would pick up supplies from Bongaigaon. Dangerous because the army was the prime target of the terrorists. I found it very thrilling that this was a dangerous thing that I was doing. Apparently as harmless and innocuous as a ride in a truck but fraught with the real risk of dying in a moment.

Ever since I came back from Bhutan I never had an opportunity to even talk about these names like Runikhata with anyone. Even Aisling wouldn't know this name because being foreigners in Bhutan they were not allowed to enter that part of India even for transit purposes to go to Phuntsholing. So these names remained buried deep in my consciousness. Therefore, when I read the name of Runikhata in a news item this morning I reacted more than just emotionally. 

As it is, the news is really shocking. A class ten boy in Runikhata has commited suicide because he couldn't take an online examination as his father couldn't afford a smart phone. Read the news here . There have been other similar suicides in India which also affected me but because this was Runikhata, with which I somehow feel emotionally connected, my emotions were really stirred.

I made a post about this incident in facebook. Perhaps I was looking for some cathartic effect. One of the first comments was from a lady facebook friend. I had met her online through her curiosity and interest in birding and trekking. She has even come to our flat. She is a senior from my daughter's school and went to work with some big multinational in the US. I have no idea why she came back. I believe she is from either IIT or IIM or perhaps both. Right now she possibly does nothing except take general interest in everything on facebook. 

She felt the boy in Runikhata was stupid. I told her that her privileged upbringing has not only made her insensitive but has also dehumanised her. And asked her to get lost (after she failed to take the subtler hint dropped initially). I probably should not have been vulgar with a lady I hardly knew. I was not only hopping mad about her insensitivity and this "I know it all" attitude, I felt she needed to be tackled bluntly. But evidently I was not in control of my emotions.

Even without getting into an argument over the complex issue of why a child commits suicide, I felt like asking her, as a child if she had ever been denied (by her parents) any object of desire or need that most of her friends had. Denied not on any moral, ethical, health or disciplinary grounds but because the parents just didn't have the money to afford it. I have gone through this and I know exactly how it feels. Imagine this scene that was common to most middle class Bengalis in the 70s or before. 

You are playing cricket with your friends on the footpath with a rubber ball. A speeding car flattens the ball and your game stops. In the evening you ask your father for 30 paise to buy a new ball. It is the 20th of the month and your father says, let the month be over and let me get the salary then we shall see. Now this is a salaried father. In fact even my mother worked. And they were not miserly.

And here we are talking about a daily wage earner father in a remote village in Assam reeling under the impact of the lock down and struggling to organise a square meal and perhaps failing every day. 

My father had no vice. He did not drink, gamble or go to the races. He had no expensive habits. He took a second class tram to work. He saw no point why he should spend 3 paise more on a first class ticket only for the cushioned seats (which he hardly ever took) and the slow fan. My father spoilt me rotten with gifts and toys but even he would often wait for the month-end to get a 30 paise ball for me.

My daughter, I can say, has never been told this - wait till the month-end. In fact she has never had to ask for anything. They all come before she can ask about them. She has no idea how it feels to be told no. She is so satiated with everything that she does not even want anything.

Today when I spend Rs 12,000 on a bicycle saddle, double the cost of an average Indian cycle, I know it is that child that is spending. Mike Tyson has this expensive habit of buying luxury cars. I know where he is coming from.