Changes and Challenges: The Lives of Young Men

The alarm on his mobile phone gently buzzed beside Diwan’s pillow and his arm snaked out from beneath the quilt to kill it before it started ringing. He didn’t want to wake up his brother Mohan who had come home last evening. He quietly got out of the room, quickly poured some cold water on his face, and finished his morning ablutions. He changed into his shorts and singlet put on his sneakers and was running down the narrow mountain path to meet with his friends Kamal and Bhimraj who would be waiting at Kundan’s shop. It was 5.30 am and the skies had just about started to become pale behind the hills to the east. After a few stretches the three boys, or young men, since they had all turned 18, started slowly jogging up the rutted village road. It was turning cold as the weather had started changing after the rains, but the boys started sweating as they pounded the pot-holed tarmac. Every day for the last month these three boys had started their new schedule. Early morning and late evening run along with four eggs and six bananas every day and half litre of milk every morning and every evening. The Agniveer ‘bharti’ or recruitment was going to take place soon, they had heard through the grapevine, and getting ‘dakhla’ into the armed forces was the best career option for these young men of the mountains.

I keep meeting Diwan and his friends running during our evening walks and since Diwan’s father Kishan is a good friend, I had asked him the reason for his son’s recent enthusiasm for running. That’s how I learnt the early morning schedule in detail. Kishan is a small farmer in village in Uttarakhand and he is keen that both his sons Diwan and Mohan pick up some practical skills and get a job somewhere. In several of our evening conversations he had shared how he regretted that he had to come back home at his father’s bidding when he was on his way to a promotion in the garment factory he worked in Gurgaon. ‘Vikas, Madan Singh’s son was also with me, he stayed back and now he has his own house somewhere in Gurgaon. And look at me now. The rains are irregular, if we sow 10 sacks of potatoes, we are lucky if we can harvest 50 sacks. And the seed potato is 3500 rupees for a sack and the potato we sell barely sells for 1000 or 1500. Where is the profit?’

Kishan is very keen for his sons to learn some practical skills, but he rues that his son’s don’t share his enthusiasm. His complaint is that they are playing games on their mobile phones all day. ‘Kya karey phone to dena hi para Covid ke samay online class ke liye.’ (Had to give them phones for their online classes during Covid). Now they pester him for the regular recharge. He was sceptical whether they were using the phones for their studies at all. One night when he got up to go the bathroom around 2 in the night, he had heard noises from his sons’ room. He first thought they were discussing studies but then he heard sounds of rapid gunfire. When he enquired the next morning, he learnt that they had been playing some game called ‘pubgee’. Jitna samay is pe lagate hain uska adha agar padhai par lagate to Mohan gyarwi mein fail nahi hota.’ (Wish Mohan spent half that time on studies then he wouldn’t have failed his 11th grade.)

Kishan had shared his reservations about the new nature of the Agniveer recruitments where the job was only for four years. He hoped that his son would somehow qualify but he knows it was not. In the last two rounds no boy from our village had made the final cut. Few were disqualified because they were shorter than the cut-off mark, and the one person who had qualified both the physical and the written tests, stumbled at the medical tests. The children don’t understand that getting into the Army is not what it was earlier, he complained, they think that it is easy to get in and glamorous. We have two retired subedars and some retired jawans in our village, but they have all retired several years ago, and the realities have changed. He had persuaded Diwan to join a hotel management course. The fees were expensive, but the Haldwani institute had agreed to take an upfront payment of 30,000 and take the rest of the 1 lakh annual fees in monthly instalments. But Diwan had come back in two weeks’ time. The course didn’t interest him and most of the teaching was in English. A few tears were enough to melt his mother’s heart and Kishan was ready to write-off the down payment. Fortunately, the second son failed his class 11 exams and he agreed to join the same course, and institute agreed to adjust the fees. They all felt that it was a win-win deal. Mohan now dreamed of joining a hotel in Dubai and pestered his parents to get him a passport.

‘I am not sure what Mohan will finally do. He is not hardworking his brother who helps me and his mother with all our farming. But not Mohan, he is in bed till after 9. Imagine 9 in a village house. How will that work. Hope he can complete his hotel management somehow and he can get a job. Diwan is ready to stay and work in the village, but I don’t want that. I have planted 100 apple trees; they will be ready in a couple of years. Kamla and I will manage our lives with the fruits, some farming and one cow. ‘Bacche apna bhavishya yehan nahi bana sakte, kuchh bacha nahi hai.’ (The children will have to make their futures elsewhere. There’s nothing left here) He sighed with great despondence.

Life is changing very rapidly for the folks of Uttarakhand. It is not that taking jobs outside the region is a new trend. The region has always had a flourishing money order economy. Men would go out seeking work, while the women and children and the older folk would stay back and farm. Horticulture is also a big activity in the region I live near Mukteswar. But over the years families have become smaller but the land holdings have become smaller still. Pahari potatoes were always very popular but now there are new cash crops like cabbages and cauliflowers and beans and peas. But since they are mostly rain fed, and there are depredations from wild pigs and other animals the harvest is unpredictable.

But there is an even greater reason why farming probably has a poor future here, because women are no longer willing to do the drudgery. In the hills of Uttarakhand, its women who do the bulk of all the farming work. It is not just restricted to farming in the fields, but includes collecting forest litter, harvesting grass, feeding the animals, and then piling up the cow dung to produce farmyard manure. Bhawan Singh one of the village elders had informed me that there were now 5 men in their 30’s who can’t get married because all the negotiations would fall through when the prospective bride’s family would learn that the prospective groom was a farmer! Kishan also didn’t want that fate to befall his family.

A common, but not probably very sustainable, source of income has now emerged in our village. In the last year, several plots of land have been sold off to ‘outsiders’, those who would like to build a holiday home or a homestay. These sales are immediately followed by some additions to the old village home, but nowadays the young men have started demanding that they be given a motorcycle, a scooty or a car. In the village across the valley a young boy died when he crashed his uncle’s scooty. He was celebrating his passing the high school exam. One evening when I was being driven back from a long day’s shopping trip in Haldwani, a powerful bike drove past us without slowing. Our occasional driver Ramu enlightened me that it was a KTM bike and cost upwards of 2 lakhs. That was Guddu, he said, their family has just sold off some land you know.

Ramu is a trained electrician. He had started working as an apprentice in a factory at Rudrapur, but during Covid he was laid off, and he came home. No more offers have been forthcoming. Ramu who had already been married has a one-year-old daughter. He occasionally drives our car, but on other days he says that he looks after his daughter because his wife goes to work in the fruit-processing factory nearby. ‘How do you like it, looking after your daughter?’ I used to ask him earlier. Now I know he enjoys it, though he thinks cooking is a chore he doesn’t enjoy. So, I like giving him tips.

One evening I rang Ramu to check whether he would be free to drive us to Nainital the next morning. I don’t like driving to Nainital because parking is a nightmare, and nowadays it is always crowded. ‘You are lucky to catch me, he said, I returned from Kashmir this morning.’ I was intrigued, Kashmir is a considerable distance away from where we stay and even though Ramu does some driving assignments where he will drive back a client to Delhi or Lucknow, Kashmir seemed a little far away. On the drive to Nainital next morning I learnt that 4 young men from the neighbouring villages had gone with a large group to Vaishno Devi with the local branch of politically affiliated youth organisation. He was very impressed with the arrangements. ‘Pura train hamare liye reserve tha.’ The whole train was reserved for us. The food was excellent. ‘Maza aa gaya!’ ‘So, are you going to join the party? I asked lightly. ‘What Sir, we just went for fun. Where do we get such opportunities?’

The young men in our village are going on with their lives. When we meet, they have a quick smile and a polite greeting. They are mostly found with their mobile phones, and sometimes on their two wheelers. But they also love to play cricket in the small primary school grounds next to our house. Sometimes competitions are organised where teams from different villages participate. They are like young men and boys everywhere. But their lives are also in a churn. Social and economic arrangements are changing fast, as my friend Kishan has correctly perceived. The use of alcohol is also common even among the youth. They prefer to drink with their buddies in forested nooks and the paths are strewn with bottles and pouches. Many say they are taking after their fathers. And these young men and boys don’t have many new opportunities.

The village intercollege does not teach English or Computers, two skills essential to negotiate the brave new world. There is a degree college nearby but that does not offer either Science or Commerce subjects and that reduces their potential employability. There is a polytechnic for training mechanics, electricians, and draughtsmen, but as Ramu’s says, work is not always available. Meanwhile tourism flourishes. Some young men have joined the business. Hotels, resorts, and homestays are being built at a furious pace with labour from the plains. Land sales make some families and the land agents flush with funds. This easy money creates its own dynamics. Political parties have also started feeding on this ennui. Who knows what the future has in store for these young men?