THE BENIGN BHIMA

Bhima – the name evokes images of the Pandava strongman from the Mahabharata, huge, tough and fearless. But this is the story of a Bhima who was, in many ways, quite different.

Bhima was everyone’s Man Friday. Bhima was a young man in his early twenties. He belonged to the Koli Patel community and hailed from Sapar, a village on the national highway that connected Ahmedabad to Rajkot, in Gujarat.

Bhima was a well built, handsome guy. It was difficult not to notice him. His athletic gait, his broad smile, charming demeanour, his twinkling eyes and his thick moustache were quite conspicuous. A hard working, sincere and honest guy, Bhima was quite popular in the village. He was rumoured to have had affairs with quite a few pretty young lasses, both from his Koli Patel community and the Rabari community. (That was quite an achievement considering that the more agriculturally inclined Koli Patels were always at loggerheads with the Rabaris who were cattleherds, with most of the disputes around the cattle of Rabaris helping themselves generously to the crops that were waiting to be harvested in the Koli Patel farms !).

I do not remember when and how exactly we befriended Bhima. Probably it was in his avatar as a tractor driver. When we started work on renovating the Sapar percolation tank in early 1986(this was one of the earlier major projects taken up by AKRSP, an Ahmedabad-based NGO with whom I worked), we also needed tractors to transport earth that was dug out by those working manually with their spades. Bhima was introduced to us by Devchandbhai, Sapar’s respected and clever businessman in his sixties, a hard nosed agriculturalist, the local trader, moneylender, a dispute settler…all rolled into one. The two major communities in the village, the Koli Patels and the Rabaris, could not ignore Devchandbhai. Not because he was popular, but because he was important and influential.

Bhima was Devchandbhai’s trusted lieutenant too. He drove the only tractor in the village that belonged to Devchandbhai. He was a regular on the Devchandbhai’s agricultural lands, spread all over the village. He was some sort of a Jack-of-all-trades, and pretty much a good one in almost everything he did. As the tractor’s driver, he was also a local tractor mechanic. Working on the farms meant that he could repair the diesel motor pumpsets. He could tend the crops and knew quite a bit about fertilizers, pesticides and productivity. He could even do odd electrical repair jobs. But Bhima was only partially literate. He had barely gone to school. Hailing from a poor family, Bhima had started working very early in his life and was quite devoted to supporting his family.

Bhima was, in some ways, quite different from the other youth of the area. Unlike his other companions, he never was idle. He was extremely industrious. He did not smoke, drink or indulge in eve teasing. Though he did love going to the local block headquarters (Sayala) or the nearest city Rajkot, he rarely indulged himself. He often came back with improved seeds of crops or vegetables, or something useful for his family.

Bhima was a regular on the Sapar tank site for the entire duration of its work during most part of 1986. On days when the tractor was not required, he got down to digging the earth or piling up the stones or any work that was available – and you could always trust him with doing a good job. A quick learner, he was often asked to assist with supervision of the tasks along the 2 km bund length and with his unquestionable integrity, he could be assigned with various responsibilities. This virtue of his was of immense value in the corruption-ridden environment that we were working in, and construction sites was one of the easiest to siphon off money.

One thing that was entirely new for Bhima was community mobilization, something that AKRSP often engaged in. This was something he had never done before. Never before had he been deeply involved with such ‘public’ responsibilities. The renovation work often meant that there were frequent meetings in the village. Our trusted Bhima would ensure that the message went round and that all were aware of the timings, the venue and even the agenda ! But that was not all. As a deeply sensitive and an intrinsically intelligent person, Bhima had very useful insights to offer. Often he would articulate what others may want to say, but hesitate to do so in a meeting. Bhima had, through this process, discovered something which he was not aware of – his capacity to represent his community and confidence in his articulation abilities. Gradually, he started functioning like a secretary of the local association called the Gram Vikas Mandal. He even started to learn to read and write (he had some basic literacy skills in spite of not going to school) so that he could take down minutes of village meetings, read out from the muster rolls to mark attendance of people on the sight, and even compute weekly wages.

Bhima set a certain benchmark for us that we kept looking for in village level functionaries in all our project villages with his amazing range of qualities – honest, sincere, hardworking, eager to learn and generally acceptable. That was not easy. When AKRSP started exploring working in other villages in the area, we often took Bhima around with us, so that he could talk about what had happened in his village and so that the village youth could find someone to connect with, someone who understood their environs, their culture and more importantly, their perspectives and aspirations.

As our work in Sapar came to an end, our interaction with the village and Bhima reduced. We had more villages to work in, there were more concerns, more projects……But we did make it a point to seek him out whenever we visited Sapar or passed through – and invariably, he would be busy either with his own work or with helping others. Bhima must be in mid-forties now. He is probably married. He probably has children. His ex-girlfriends probably still yearn for him. He has probably joined politics and contested local elections. He is probably a very successful farmer and entrepreneur. And he certainly would continue to be an asset to his village and his people, someone that the younger generation can look forward to for inspiration and emulation.