Aehsan Ul Haq Danish
As put by a great poet Cowper, ‘God made the village and man made the town’. A village is the panorama of charming scenes of nature, being larger than a hamlet and smaller than a town but evidently and undoubtedly more beautiful than both. None can deny that villagers live happy lives. The first flash of sunlight. The cool breeze early in the morning. The pure air. You feel it once and you can gauge, how lucky villagers are, to live in natural surroundings while enjoying the mesmerizing beauty.
I too live in a village and I feel a strong sense of pride when I reminiscence my childhood. And so do others who have lived in villages, at least once in their lifetime. A strong sense of nostalgia rules when I happen to see, beyond village life. And I have come to believe that life in a village is far better than those of cities. Though luxuries and comforts of cities are preferred by some people but I fiercely deny that.
I ruminate the flashbacks of my childhood when I watch — the dew on grasses, birds singing gleefully , insects cricketing early in the morning and late in the night, tall maize crop, cheerful leaf-laden trees, buffaloes and cows lazily grazing in vast expanses, people cutting grasses for feeding their domestic animals, people wearing traditional salwar kameez dotted with turban, women carrying water-pots to river banks and springs; farmers moving to their fields around 5:00 a.m, women milking buffaloes and cows, herds of goats grazing in mountainous terrain, students rushing to their schools barefooted with their rubber shoes in hands, old men and women engaged in magical gossips. Yes, it ushers nostalgia. And yes, I love my village.
To describe the life of villagers, you need to be a villager yourself. Villagers are pure, simple, innocent and pure-hearted. They feel happy traveling in buses, with very few of them owning personal vehicles. They don't have water availability and electricity 24×7. Yet, they feel happy. Yet, they are content. They rise early in the morning and are actively involved in household and field chores, contrary to city life. They do not live life to accumulate wealth. They aren’t materialistic. Rather they work and toil hard to grow crops, upon which they feed. And their entire life goes in this. Yet, they feel happy and satisfied.
In villages, people are usually farmers but there is also a clear division of labor, with different occupation-based-castes like oilmen, cobblers, barbers, fishermen living in the same village. Tailors, teachers, shopkeepers are recent additions to their occupations. This is the beauty. And so I feel proud when I look at people of my village. I wish and pray that peace prevails in every village. And we need to take a cue from the female Prime Minister of India, who said, ‘Being Prime Minister isn't the only job in life. As far as I'm concerned, I could live in a village and be satisfied’ and start admiring life in a village and appreciating people who live in villages.
About the author: Aehsan Ul Haq Danish studies Botany at University of Jammu, Jammu.