AN OVERAGED LONELY INHABITANT OF A VILLAGE IN PAURI GARHWAL WANTS TO DIE LONELY IN HIS VILLAGE
The exodus of Uttarakhand’s population from villages to metropolittan cities, local towns, Dehradun and other areas of plains has become so tremendous that thousands of villages have turned into ghost villages with shrubs coming up everywhere and houses covered with them.
The situation is so worrisome that there are hundreds of villages where the population of the villages have been reduced to five to ten families and in several villages merely one family. Shockingly there are several villages where one person is left either an aged women or man. There children are in the cities earning sustenance for their families and giving best of education for their children. There are others who don’t have children and are banking on feeble pension while there are others they don’t even get pension. A film Pyre exhibited abroad having won several international recognitions was produced on such real stories in which a husband and wife live in their lonely village , overaged, frail and fatigued thinking as to who will light their pyre, the day they will die in the absence of no one ?
Hence they have already readied the pyre in their house not to bother others for the day they will die in isolation.
Though there are conservative figures to suggest that there are over three thousand ghost villages in Uttarakhand but there are several villages where lives a single men or women committed not to leave their respective villages till they meet their last on their land they were born on.
They were born here, grown up here, went to school here, married here and ploughed their fields here to arrange for their survival all these decades. There are so intimately and passionately attached to the past reminiscences , the healthy culture, the traditions and the hectic lives of their village that they are not able to detach themselves from their birthland emotionally, now.
One such, among several other lonely senior citizens living in their villages in Uttarakhand leading a discarded life with meagre sources of income and no one to support them is a senior citizen inhabitant of village JASPUR GWEEL, BADHAITH,GADKOT ROAD,PAIRI GARHWAL.
The overaged Dadaji daily comes on foot from his village in the downstream valley on the road and sits on a PULIA watching the traffic or passers by and then comes down to his lonely house to sleep after the self cooked dinner.
This is his daily routine but he is not ready to leave the village though noone is living here. He says his last desire is to die here and achieve salvation. According to a social media post :
There’s only one man in this village in Uttarakhand.
The elderly man you see in front of you is the one who comes up every day, sits on the road for half an hour, and then goes back to the village. He’s the only one in the entire village, and he’s vowed he won’t leave this village as long as he lives.
My heartfelt salute to you, Grandfather. Location of the village is in Jaspur Gweel Badeth Gatkot Road, Pauri Garhwal.
