Prempura. Citadel of love. Where love is celebrated freely and unabashedly, and nothing comes in the way—not the state, not the society, not patriarchy nor religion. A village that could show the way for love in the time of intolerance.
As self-styled conscience-keepers of the nation waged a ‘moral’ war, students in Kerala decided to use love as the weapon of retaliation. The Kiss of Love contagion spread across the nation, and students in all parts of the country locked lips to protest moral policing by the state. No mass or political movement, just a plain assertion of an individual’s right to freedom.
Would Prempura live up to its name? Will it be the mascot the country needs, where love is not a hidden secret, and there is no shame attached to love?
To seek our answers, we set headlong into western UP, some 60 km from Aligarh, to Prempura, a prosperous village of Jats where other castes like Jatavs and Kumhars too live in perfect harmony. The road to love has never been easy, we thought to ourselves, as we negotiated buffalo-sized potholes on a thin, dusty road to what we think is love paradise.
The metalled road in the village gave us hope. And our first stopover was at the pucca house of Gajendra Choudhary, 35, who works for a central government agency but who would rather be introduced by the family profession, that of farming. A swanky new `10 lakh car stands outside the house, and the man in the blue-checked shirt and blue track pants is more than willing to answer all our questions; he has even invited friends and cousins to his courtyard to participate in the discussion. He knows the general drift of our story, how the village looks upon love, particularly ‘chumma-chaati’, and what they think of the Kiss of Love campaign.
The answer to the last comes first. Predictably, the campaign is seen as an assault on the cultural ethos of the country. “A real danger that will destroy this country,” his 84-year-old dhoti-clad father shouts out, sitting on a cot nearby. He might have lost his sight 35 years ago, but he is pretty much tuned into everything else around him.
So, should society decide how consenting adults should behave? The consensus is an overwhelming, unequivocal: ‘Yes!’ “The women should wear purdah and hide their faces from strangers, let alone chumma-chaati,” says Momraj Singh, 59, father of seven sons and a daughter. He has a theory on the subject, which goes something like this: purdah means seclusion, seclusion means women don’t look men (other than their husbands or brothers) in the eye, and no eye contact means they don’t talk much. Talking with men will make them bold, and soon rude. Aankhon ki sharam, shyness of the eyes, is a must. His three daughters-in-law exist as spectres—he hasn’t seen them, and they don’t make their presence felt. But Momraj has different expectations of his daughter, he confesses to loving her more than any of his sons and wants her to become a sub-inspector.
But how will she do her duty as a cop with her face in purdah? “She won’t wear one,” asserts Momraj, unaware of the irony of his statement till we ask him the next question. Why then the bias against his daughters-in-law? “Their parents are to blame,” he says, recovering quickly enough, “they didn’t educate them!”
End of argument.
The 4,000 Jats in the village are said to be descendants of one Prem Sukha (bliss of love), a figure of myth who walked the earth in medieval times. “The village is named after him and we are all like family,” says Chandra Pal Singh, 56, a former head of the village and one of its first matriculates. Purdah to him is andhvishwas or superstition, a tradition the Jats adopted from the Muslims, and a mistake.
Anganwadi worker Dayawati, 50, is thankful that the education of girls has meant the end of purdah. “Why would an educated girl cover her face,” she asks. Julie Goyal, 24, a science graduate, does not. Instead, she wears her dupatta like a TAM o’shanter. Currently applying to various paramedical courses in the city, she responds to our queries with a counter-question. “Why are you doing this story? You think village girls are ignorant? I am the master of my destiny, and I want to take my family along. There is no contradiction between the two. They support my ambition. They want me to do well.” The words issue forth in a tad demagogic tone. “I don’t feel the need to assert my freedom by kissing strangers in public.”
Do the men in the village share the same sentiment, or inhibitions? Pre-marital interaction with girls in the village is difficult, says Brijesh Choudhary, in stiff white shirt and riding a Bullet motorcycle. A contractor by profession, he lives between his village and his two houses in Aligarh and Noida. Also, unlike in cities, everyone knows everyone else in the village, and by virtue of that youngsters are under constant vigil.
Restrictions naturally force people to do chumma-chaati secretly. Ask Jaiveer, 30, married for seven years and father of a boy and girl. He had girlfriends before he got married. He does everything that he supposes men in cities do, but doesn’t talk about it. He loves foreplay, watches BFs (blue films) with his wife, experiments and explores. “It’s important for me to keep my wife happy,” he says. Later we meet the lady in question, Neha, a graduate. She wears purdah at home, but not when they go out, say, to watch a film. “I don’t have to assert my freedom by defying elders,” she says. She poses with her husband on a bike, purdah in place. “Why not,” she asks.
“Change is inevitable,” says sociologist Shiv Visvanathan. “What is important of course is how it comes about, whether it’s tacit or explicit; whether it’s in the private domain or in public; whether it’s a fight for rights or for defiance; or just a mere public display of affection.”
Sexual revolution is in the air, whether rural or urban. Outlook spoke to 25 residents of Prempura, men and women, across age groups, about their sexual practices. Some confessed to having oral sex, others said they massaged their wives, a few even confessed to having filmed themselves on the mobile phone while making love. A 45-year-old farmer said he wears his turban while making love because his wife likes it!
Tacit it may be, but there is no denying the change. “It’s only when things come out in the open that it defies a certain power equation,” says Visvanathan. And that could result in violence. Sundar Singh, 47, says it, in no uncertain terms. “If a girl marries a Muslim, they both will be killed.” Prempura evidently does not take kindly to love across the religious or caste barrier.
By Mihir Srivastava in Prempura, Aligarh
