Tikra Toli

Context : Written by Rakhi Chakraborty, Christ University, Certificate Course : History of Scientific Discoveries - 2013

In today’s youth obsessed society, once a man has hit a certain age, he is relegated to echelons of respect and disinterest that has little to do with sincerity and more to do with superficial banality. Irrespective of how dashing my grandfather was in his heydays, how he captured female hearts on a bowstring and the momentous life that he lead, today his chief claim to fame is as father and grandfather. He is loved and respected, yet rarely understood. Looking at this travesty, I made a conscious effort to unravel some inexplicable threads that surround him. This I did for two reasons. One I realized that no matter how rich a life you lead, if that life does not mark the social criteria the world has determined for you, then you will be judged on a narrow parameter of failure always. Second, I will be old and in these shoes someday. I do not want to be treated how the world treats those it deems, kindly perhaps, irrelevant.

Ranjan Roy was born to a German mother and a highly educated Indian father at a time when colonial dictates were in its peak in India- 1932. He had a classically rigorous European education at Doon school (India’s Eton) followed by St Xavier’s college. The family’s primary source of income at the time were two collieries which the government began to nationalize post-independence. Foreseeing this move, his elder brother deftly sold overnight and moved to the States with his American wife to live with the classic American dream with the stolen Indian money. 

This betrayal was too much for the ailing Roy patriarch who succumbed to his depression. His adoring wife Hermine soon followed. Ranjan had little choice but to give up his studies mid-way and return home to manage bankrupt family estates. Though he did a stellar job of turning things around, he deeply regretted not earning a degree. Engineering was not merely a vocation for him. It was a passion. He would spend hours taking old defunct derelict appliances apart and rebuilding them piece by piece till they worked better than when they had been new. He gobbled up books on aerodynamics and polytechnics like they were thrilling murder mysteries. He laboured over sewing machines and tractors with equal fervour till they chugged efficiently back to life. Yet because of this cruel twist of fate, he was denied every opportunity to advance his career and join the elite circle of men who built machines on which the country ran. Though this would cut deep, he hid it. He focused his talent and ability on the little farm his beloved father had left him. This piece of land became a place to express his brilliance as well as take solace when the rest of the world became too daunting.

Once Ranjan was 6 feet 4 inches and a strong hulk of a man. Today he is 6 feet and four inches, equally majestic, but strength and determination have ebbed from his body to be replaced with deep bitter cynicism. Once he could have protected his beloved farm from any threat, local or national, with a perfectly accentuated deep growled threat. Today his own children, sick of threats by local mafia, thieves, corrupt caretakers and bureaucratic red tape, shrilly convince him to sell that “old piece of junk”. They see in him a wonderful father, dedicated husband and an adoring grandfather. But they tale in hushed tones of him dropping out from college and being unable to do anything concrete in life. They tell their children that we don’t want to end up like him, ergo we should make the most of what we have.

He hears these hushed whispers and knows very well the place the world has assigned him to. He is happy to take himself off the centre stage but stubbornly refuses to part with the one thing that made him feel complete and accomplished in his life. In this farm he sees his life and his legacy. Though his children don’t see his value the way it should be seen, he sits by his grandchildren and tells them grand stories of the British Raj, his exotic mother and brilliant father, his own turbulent life and the anchor of it all- the little farm he calls “Tikra Toli”. He hopes that his grandchildren would see worth in something others deem useless and preserve and build on the heritage that he dedicated his life to.