So with the help of my grandfather, I started interviewing local folk artists, local leaders and Bundelkhand University professors.Īnd this is what I briefly learned about my land. I wanted a sense of belonging and an emotional connection with the land that was mine. He started telling me about all the great warriors of this land: Rani Laxmi Bai, Alha Udal, and king Chhatrasal.Īll of this encouraged me to write a research paper on Bundelkhand. My grandfather is not an educated man, but he has the entire encyclopedia of our land, Bundelkhand well uploaded in his mind.
#Prithviraj chauhan painting code
Unlike men of his time, he doesn’t live his life by the strict noblemen code and believes it’s okay to sometimes not have a purpose in life. My grandfather is a kind and amusing man who looks for humour in every small aspect of life. Stuck in the loop of mundanity, I took to refurbishing my age-old bond with my grandfather and befriending my rural identity. Something about being home was agonising for me. I would patiently respond with a ‘yes’ to all their questions, but never quite entertained their curiosity. I knew this time it would not be 15 days or a month-long break but would last several months.Īt home, my neighbours visited me to ask all sorts of questions centring around the magnificence of Delhi – is it really a big city? Did you visit Qutub Minar? Did you travel by the metro? Do girls really wear short skirts? Out of all viable options, I reluctantly took a train to my hometown.
It was last year when the Covid-induced pandemic hit us that my parents invited me back to our age-old home in the village. I entered college with the same thought system. The thought that being a city kid brings acceptance and validation among peers was now deeply inbuilt in me. Soon I was transferred to a boarding school, and there too, I lied about being a city dweller. I started lying about my native place, erasing all traces of Bundeli from my accent and feeding English vocabulary to my diction.
#Prithviraj chauhan painting skin
It was then that I started shedding my indigenous skin in pursuit of social acceptance. My teacher often shouted at me for bringing my colloquial diction into the classroom. Also, my dialect was an odd mix of Bundeli with a few words from a sophisticated Hindi dictionary. My city school classmates were not very welcoming towards my rural identity at the beginning. So my sisters and I were sent to that English medium school. Despite sharing a rural orientation, they secretly harboured a simple dream of their kids speaking fluent English like city kids.
My parents decided to send me to an English medium school located in the nearest town.
I had a very simple yet adventurous childhood – going to impromptu picnics with my cousins and grandfather over the weekends, learning swimming, climbing rocky plateaus, fetching water from distant wells and what not. Initially, the difference between a village and a city wasn’t that apparent to me. Now as simple as this may sound, I complained about being born in a small rural unit for the longest time. I was born in a small town of Bundelkhand, near Jhansi.
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