(New born calf)It was not me who have changes... lots and lots have changed here too... the concrete jungle have started coming up places here and there.... I still hold the images of mud houses in my mind... hardly could find here... but I am glad to know that these people have open their arms to prosperity, comfort and luxury....
I held my camera out to find few images that my mind reminisces... those houses, cattles and the green fields.... I found few but the green fields were barren, presently being ploughed.... the rains has just dropped in... the air smell so fresh...
(Village girl filling water at borewell & happily posing for the camera)
Children running around... running at the back of our jeep... trying to catch it....
(The bulluck-cart kept in fornt of a village house)
Everywhere its a makeover time... the rains have given an alarming bell... the roof tiles (kavelu)are being replaced... the hay is being stocked up for the cattle feed....
(Man preparing his house roof for rains)
My uncles have a huge house, just like a square with a big angan at the center. As a kid on summer vacation, when my mother used to bring all our siblings we used to sleep here in open. The rows of beds would be laid, it was giggling and masti till late night. The cover over a head twinkling so beautifully, big & small... the moon light was so good that you could spot the calmness of beautiful faces sleeping around....
This time there was no evidence of all my childhood reminisces... the Aagan was not cleaned, bushes grown here & there. I asked why maintaince is not being done... and the reply was not shocking... as practical as it could be... who stays here...some have moved to cities for schooling and others for job...
I felt bad but understood.... as I too was not here after all these long years just to have fun filled vacation... my trip was much more commercial than personal.... I was making trip to register office for land purchase deal... also had preplanned each and every minute of my days stay here. My every minute seemed so precious today....
I recollected that earlier it was not like this... I had plenty of time... for every thing... where am I lost... this time I was not in haste to visit our Baag (mango farm) and the Baag ki nadi (river near farm)... it was a must trip for everyone in those childhood times... our lunches used to be of all kind of friuts in Baag then... the stomach would make watery sound with all fruit juices inside, when we used to run back home...
I lost something?? I wondered.... but then I realised when all are leaving.. I am coming back here... If not my presence atleast there is something related to me... they all will remember me in some way or the other.... the houses, the lanes, the Baag and the Baag ki nadi....
I hope !!
Photos taken on 11/12th June 2008, Village Murmunda.
Places worth visiting near village Murmunda: Bamleshwary Temple, Dongargarh, CH, India
2 comments:
That was a very sentimental article that you wrote. Thanks for the memories. I read a very intresting article about Iranian Jews who had migrated to Israel, nad was so disappointed with the state of affairs that he decided to go back to Iran.
This is a very iteresting story also.
Iranian Jews going back to Iran.
Ishak can't wait to get "home" to Teheran.
After he immigrated to Israel two years ago, said the short man with dark circles under his eyes, his life became increasingly miserable.
Standing and fretting inside his empty shop on Jerusalem's Rehov Ben-Yehuda, Ishak (not his real name), a 51-year-old Jewish-Iranian who is in Israel now only for a final visit, said the jewelry shop he opened here never sold anything, the renters to whom he leased a property did not pay and his heart began to fail him from the stress of monthly mortgage payments and no income.
So 10 months ago gray-haired Ishak gave up on the Zionist dream and began to move his family and belongings back to Iran. He filled some of his numerous suitcases and trunks with the Persian carpets, silverware, and home decorations he came here with, and flew to Turkey with his two sons. There they sent their new Israeli passports by express mail back to his daughter in Israel. Then they took out their Islamic Republic of Iran passports and boarded a flight to Teheran.
When he arrived, his Muslim friends were incredulous.
"I have a lot of Muslim friends and they all knew I'd moved to Israel," he said. "They asked me, 'Why did you come back?'" His Jewish friends in Iran already knew the answer.
Despite the declaration last week by Iran's president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that Israel must be wiped off the map, the Shihab missiles displayed in Teheran with "Israel" painted on them, the broadcasting of anti-Semitic films on national television and the much-publicized trials of 13 Jewish Iranians on spy charges, Ishak insists that life in Iran is far better for Jews than life in Israel.
"If you have problems there, people help you - and they know you are Jewish," said Ishak, who has now briefly returned to Israel to sell his shop and leave for good. "But here, everyone is looking out for himself. You can't trust anybody."
Ishak is not the only recent immigrant who prefers his Islamic birthplace to his Jewish homeland. Jerusalem's Jaffa Road and Rehov Ben-Yehuda are lined with shopkeepers originally from Iran who say they are desperate to go back - some to visit, some to live.
And while most outsiders might believe that routine contact between the citizens of the two sworn enemies is impossible, in fact, not only are the phone lines between Teheran and Tel Aviv used actively, but so also are flight routes via Istanbul.
Jewish Iranians travel frequently to Israel. To avoid getting the Iranians in trouble back in their home country, Israeli border authorities do not stamp entry visas into their passports. As with journalists, the entry visa is stamped on a separate slip of paper, which is later thrown away upon exit from the Zionist state.
"My parents came for a visit and left two months ago," said Avi, who owns a shoe store on Jaffa Road. But the elderly couple has no intention of moving here.
"The Jews there live very well," he explained. "When [Ayatollah Ruhollah] Khomeini got in power he said there is a difference between Persian Jews who are from Moussa (Moses) and Zionist Jews."
Avi acknowledges that initially Jews were not allowed to travel. "No one was," he said. "But now it's no problem."
Summertime is the most popular season for travel but sometimes Iranians come for just a wedding.
At Avi's, all the shoe salesmen are Iranian Jews. One of them is expecting his mother-in-law back in Israel from a two-month visit to Teheran. Meanwhile, his wife speaks to her mother regularly. "My mother-in-law buys calling cards there for $10 and they speak one hour."
But even more curious is the cooperation of Iranian authorities in allowing Iranian-Israelis who don't have an Iranian passport to visit the country of their birth and roots.
"My uncle's cousin had not been in Iran for over 20 years," said David, who runs a gift shop on Rehov Ben-Yehuda with his brother and parents and asked that his last name not be printed because he does not want the Iranian government to know who he is. "He went to the Iranian embassy in Turkey and told them, 'I am Persian and I am now Israeli. I want to go back to Iran. If you give me a passport great, if not that's fine, too. And they gave him one,'" said David, who is considering trying the method.
The 30-year-old is afraid to ask and he thinks he won't get one because he left Iran by illegally crossing the border into Pakistan some 15 years ago without a passport. But he, too, is dying to go back to Iran.
"I love the country, I don't like the people," stressed the young man dressed in jeans and a black kippa who said he came to Israel because of Zionism.
"I thought that here it was good. I thought that all the Jews leave their doors unlocked and no one stole. But the Israeli people are not cultured. They are rude and disrespectful. In Iran people trust each other and when they give their word they keep it. Here you need a lawyer to get anyone to keep their promise."
Moussa (also not his real name) is a 42-year-old clothing salesman on Jaffa Road who came to Israel in the 1970s when he was 10. His family members own four shops along the street. Many from his family travel frequently between the two enemy states. "They come and go and do business," he said.
Many of the Iranian-Israelis said that after former moderate president Muhammad Khatami got in power in 1997 the government turned a blind eye to the travel. Now some fear that may change since hardline president Ahmadinejad took over in August.
"I'm scared," said Moussa. "Especially after what Ahmedinejad said. He's a new leader and he wants to show off like a peacock. We don't know what it will be like now."
Refugees hold same stories all over the world.
Some move back on their own while others are deported.
It took me long to understand the comment relation with my post...
but tx anyway.....
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