BAJRA KI ROTI

I am very fond of local food. Bajra with white butter and curd is one of them . Even today when i see "them" baking some , I feel like asking for them....social pressures stop me! But once a while I do manage it.

I will never forget that day when a little boy literally ran away with my hot case of lunch. He was sitting on a small dune under a tree whereI had decided to have my lunch. Just then he appeared with a stick in his hand tending his goats. Talkative with bright black inquisitive eyes he had asking me simple questions. He was afraid of our uniform. It seemed that he knew the answers to some of the questions too. He wanted to eat my lunch. When I said that I don't mind going hungry if he really needed to eat. But I would prefer a bajrey ki roti in return. But his behaviour surprised me when I offered my open hot case to him. He closed it, picked it up and ran away.

With no great alarm I got up to look beyond the dune. My driver was also taking his lunch. I waved at him and asked him to follow with the jonga once he had finished. The boy headed for a small lone hut surrounded by a thick interwoven ring of a neat wild thorny bushes. Before I could step inside the precincts, a young woman, whose face I could not see, appeared with a thick cloth that she spread over a cot that had lost its shape. Then came a big glass of light curd, not sweet.

I sat on the cot wondering as to what would happen next. Then came in an old man who sat before me asking questions as if I had comitted a crime. Then he went inside the hut and again came back. I did start feeling uneasy. What if he raised some alarm? No. She came out with a big plate with curd, bajrey ka roti and white butter. I could se her face now, but she hid it well from the old man.

The boy also came and sat before me and said "Now eat, my ma has made it specialy for you." He kept running in and out asking "How many can you eat?"

By then my driver also appeared. She came out with my washed hot case and a forces letter. She asked her son to hand it over to me.

Her husband was in the army. He was also a gunner... he wore the same lanyard., tugging at mine, the boy said.