New generations think of new mornings

Gulf Today, Staff Reporter

There are some places in the Indian subcontinent where many a prejudiced mind distorts the names of the members of the lowest strata of society. Gulf Today’s journalist Muntazir Imam has raised a voice against this social issue through his novel “Jaihind made the Cobbler a Novelist” published in India by Leadstart Publishing, Mumbai.

A few years ago, the author was deeply shocked when a news anchor had distorted the name of a big Indian leader in Munger. The author is among the leader’s millions of admirers. At that time, the author thought his novel could become a voice of the downtrodden.

The Indian politicians who make strategies to win the elections should know about this serious social issue.

This novel is the first book to shed some light on it. No book had been written on it as yet. This book does not talk about Jitan Ram Manjhi’s portrayal of the picture of a kind of ‘untouchability’.

But it will definitely give the readers an idea of the vestiges of ‘untouchability’.

There are many similar incidents, from which anybody can draw a conclusion very easily that there are many such places where prejudiced minds grow in all seasons. No adverse circumstances can become obstacles, if a person has a goal from the age of 12.

Aryali, the main character of the novel, believes this. Its story begins in the early 1980s. If the readers are from the places which are like the villages of its story, a new morning awaits them.

The atmosphere of Dalmapur, Aryali’s village, is seemingly perfect. But what is happening inside it is not in the knowledge of the outsiders. Aryali feels low when someone calls him Aryalia. At 12, he is aware that his name is distorted deliberately.

When Aryali was five days old, his grandfather, a cobbler, had dumped the word ‘babu’ from his name. ‘Babu’ was the word reserved only for the upper-caste people of his village. Reluctantly, Aryali addresses the upper-caste boys of the same age as ‘babu’ the name he secretly wishes for himself.

Amid poverty and struggle, with his parents and grandparents wishing him to be an expert cobbler soon, he is doing all that he should while keeping aside all that he wants. The first book of his life he touches is an old, tattered book that becomes his best friend and starts transforming him. Gradually, Aryali maintains a distance from all those boys of his village who distort his name and humiliate him.

Some years passed. The boys don’t know that Aryali has become a literate person.

They still continue to insult him. He is still a cobbler in their eyes. An unfortunate situation that forces his family to move to a town called Jaihind, might change the direction of his life forever. This book is a voice of those downtrodden proletarians of the Indian subcontinent who are subjected to all sorts of humiliations. Aryali becomes a role model for all those people whose names are vulnerable to distortion.