No Expectations

UNTOUCHABLES By Narendra Jadhav

With a name like Untouchables, a book has to be about either Al Capone tearing up Chicago or the struggles of India's historically disenfranchised lowest class. Narendra Jadhav's isn't writing about Tommy guns.

The untouchables were the subjugated stratum in Hindu society, "required to place clay pots around their necks to prevent their spit from polluting the ground ?[and] to attach brooms to their rumps to wipe out their footprints." The earliest Hindu text, the Rig-Veda, laid out the cosmological underpinnings for this raw deal in around 1000 B.C. The arrangment was finally abolished by the Indian constitution in 1950.

Despite the weighty subject matter, Jadhav's book often reads like a fairy-tale. It's the tale of Damu and Sonu, Narendra's parents, who were born into cruel circumstances, merited a happily ever after-and got one. The majority of the text alternates back and forth between their two narrative lines, often describing the same anecdotes so the reader gets to experience them from both perspectives-a very enjoyable literary device. Sometimes, in fact, experiences are retold more than once by the same character; but it only serves to render them more vivid.

The couple reminisces about childhood events (for the mother, marriage counts); about the plague as it swept through their communities, wiping out cousins, neighbors and parents; about seeing railroad trains for the first time. These stories put me in mind of Rudyard Kipling's Plain Tales from the Hills; they have the same simple lyricism, evoking the limitations and the beauties of life in rural India.

The book is keyed around the couple's recollections concerning their place in Indian society. Dr. B. R. Ambedkar, fondly known to the masses as Babasaheb, looms large throughout. First, in the introduction we get a little history of the man who "organized, united, and inspired the Dalits [untouchables] to effectively use political means toward their goal of social equality." His teachings, rallies and example constitute a great deal of the narrative.

But while Damu was truly a passionate visionary, his wife Sonu was the opposite. As the author relates, she "was simple, her range limited to her immediate surroundings. Never mind the success and financial prosperity of her children." And though Jadhav is currently the Chief Economist for the Reserve Bank of India, "even today if I buy sweets on my way home, she asks, 'Got paid today, did you?' She can't yet accept our having the freedom to spend money on sweets except on payday."

And this simplicity of Sonu is brought out in her narratives. She shares vivid memories of the events that surrounded her young marriage. For example, when she serves her husband tea for the first time and finds she's forgotten to add sugar: "I had tears in my eyes. Was this how I was going to make my husband happy?"

It comes as rather a shock when Jadhav relates later on that his mother, asked about the qualities she had liked most about her late husband, instantly replied: "He never drank, never abused me. Best of all, he never raised his hand to me." Suddenly, as her surprisingly low expectations are revealed, the charming tales of sweet honeymoon revelations take on another, slightly disturbing, hue.

Jadhav's goes back and forth between the voices of his parents so that the reader is drawn, enchanted, into the remarkable struggles and dreams of these two hardworking untouchables. And then, as we hear from their educated, successful and socially enfranchised son and granddaughter we recognize our own world, the voice of our own thoughts.

At the end of the book is an addendum written by Jadhav's daughter, Apoorva. It's a little alarming that she sounds exactly like the sorority girl that she is. An undergrad at Johns Hopkins, a pre-med, she uses sentences like "the beauty of my ancestors' efforts is that they were not in vain." But it's true: Damu and Sonu toiled to get their children the chance to succeed-and they have.