SHRI RAGHUVANSH NARAYAN JI
(Raghuvansh Narayan Ji was our teacher in the subject of agriculture or the krishi-teacher. He was seen as a tough taskmaster and his classes seemed like concentration camps to us. Raghuvansh Ji passed away in the year 2010. The news brought back a flood of memories from my school days in Netarhat.)
One of the lasting memories one has of the Netarhat School is that of the krishi classes. Agriculture or krishi, as one would expect would consist of sowing seeds, tending to the plants and crop and then harvesting them with a sense of satisfaction. But krishi in Netarhat School consisted of endless classes of digging up hard earth and making beds for someone else to farm on. The only thing that made the unending hours of hard labour of krishi classes was the supervising presence of Shriman Raghuvanshji a.k.a. Hitler.
We may all have done well in subjects like Physics, Chemistry, Geography, Hindi or Biology, but what still persists in my mind till date is how many plots of land I tended to with a kudal. I still boast to my children how we worked like real farmers; and at the same time I find it meaningless to brag about my scores in physics or mathematics. Such has been the impact of the low tech, aimless (so it seemed at that time) and hard labour we put up with in the krishi classes. Raghuvanshji, who would sit by the side in a folding steel chair with a detached air, would oversee all that we were doing with a curse between our lips. When the going went tough, we would cry out, HITLER! HITLER!! That seemed to somehow lessen the burden of the intense labour, apply palliative to our blistered palms and create a breeze of apparently cool air for the entire class. Shri Raghuvanshji would pretend not to hear. I am sure that after decades of overhearing the word Hitler he was pretty sure who was being addressed. But he seemed oblivious to our cries of anguish. We would vent our anger, frustration and irritation in one single word - Hitler.
I often suspected that Shri Raghuvanshji had a smile suppressed in his lips which seemed to convey, "Son! This hard labour will make you understand one day how tough and demanding the life of a farmer or a labourer is. Destined as you are to become white collared babus, this krishi lesson will help you retain your links with your roots much later in your life." How true, Sir! Shri Raghuvansh Ji! I get goose pimples as I write this and remember you. About the only things that still linger fresh in my memories are the practical classes of dhatukala, kashthkala and above all, krishi.
I remember that a classmate once commented that the teacher himself would never have done such tough work on land. Without getting angry, Raghuvanshji called him and showed him his palms. We all went up to him out of curiosity. Those were two hands upturned into our faces, hands of a real farmer - callused and hard-skinned like we had never seen before. All our grievances seemed so small at once, even of having to do the SINK-1 (where we cleaned dishes after meals) after the krishi classes. I do not remember who that classmate was, but I am sure he remembers it vividly to this day.
The krishi classes of the school still enable me to think how thankless and unseen are the toils of an average farmer. Much different from the romantic ideas about agriculture of a youngster who may have studied in a Doon or a Mayo, in a metropolis or in the protected environs of a city school. Shri Raghuvanshji gave us the vision to see that beneath and beyond the seemingly green croplands and swaying-in-the-breeze ears of corn and wheat, there has gone the unacknowledged and unseen hours and days of the farmer's back breaking hard labour. We had heard in our childhood that India was principally an agricultural country. We learnt how and who made it so.
Thank you, Shri Raghuvansh Ji!
