Sometimes Bheeva wondered if there could be a place on the earth where a Mahar boy were treated like a human being?
One day Bheeva thought of Bombay (Mumbai) a big, very big city, the city of dreams, of rich, cultured and civilised people. There couldn’t be any untouchability there. He wanted to be there, just for a heavenly experience.
He had a reason to visit that city. His elder married sister lived there with her husband. Bheeva had the right to got to see them.
So, Bheeva took a train to Bombay. The big railway station of Bombay stunned Bheeva. His sister’s house was a long way off as he learnt from a porter whom he mentioned the colony he wanted to reach. He had no spare money to hire rickshaw or tonga. So, he set off on foot.
Midway, Bheeva felt tired. He went into a roadside tea stall and sit down on a bench. There he asked for a cup of tea in quivering voice which smelled of fear.
The shopkeeper looked hard at the boy. Bheeva sweated and shivered. The shopkeeper barked, “Boy, what caste are you?”
It chilled Bheeva and got him goose pimples.
He stammered, “Mum…Mahar.”
“Mahar!” the shopkeeper screamed. “Lowly scum of untouchable caste! How dare you…?” He pushed the frightened boy violently off the bench into the gutter.
As poor Bheeva flip-flopped in the filth of the gutter, as the shopkeeper hissed from above, ‘‘That is where you belong to Mahar filth!’’
Somehow Bheeva dragged himself out of the gutter soaked in slime and ran back to the railway station. He took a train to Satara. Bheeva wept and sobbed all the way.
There was no honour for a Mahar boy anywhere on the earth. The life was an ordeal.
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