A Tale of Memory, History and Belonging
Can a single village tell the story of an entire region? Changel: The Biography of a Village (1996) by Arvind N. Das blends myth, memory, and history into a compelling account of rural Bihar, revealing how the life of one village can illuminate the making of an entire region.
REFLECTIONS
Anjali Bharti
7/25/20263 min read
Arvind N. Das opens his book, Changel: The Biography of a Village, with the line, “It was a lazy November afternoon in Delhi’s St. Stephen’s College.” As a reader, you are invited to take a front-row seat as Das explores the history, geography and sociology of Changel through his protagonist, Bachcha.
Bachcha, a student at St. Stephen’s College, goes back to his ancestral village to attend his grandmother’s funeral and takes us along for the ride. His village, Changel, is a small, quaint place in the Muzaffarpur district of Bihar. The book is his reckoning with his origin, identity, and his place in Changel, and, in turn, with Changel’s place in the world. The book doesn’t require you to be from Changel to relate to Bachcha’s search for facts and reason. The history of Changel finds resonance in the history of Bihar and, in some sense, in the history of the nation.
“Indeed that was the predominant process at work in Changel: the village survived, but it never prospered.”
The book oscillates between anecdotes that delight you, like the one detailing how Changel acquired its two rickshaws and anecdotes that make your stomach turn. Nevertheless, the book makes you sit up and take notice of an obscure village in Northern Bihar that had almost passed into oblivion by the time this piece of literature was written.
Bachcha’s return to his village and his emotional distance find a metaphor in the Pahal river-bed right outside Changel that fills up during monsoon and makes the place inaccessible. The village is so close, yet so far away. Das confronts popular memory with history and asks difficult questions that might make people uncomfortable. What does progress actually entail? Is cultural and linguistic erasure the price we pay for it? And is that progress really progress? Do we consider ourselves more developed if our Hindi is more pure and less influenced by our mother tongues? The book deals with gender, caste and class and how deeply influenced everything is by them. It speaks of the Bihari migrant experience, of the political economy of exploitation, of crime and of politics. Changel is never just a village in this book; instead, it is a living, breathing entity, and we as readers follow its journey through time and history.
Our protagonist, unable to find Changel in the literature and language of the world, dives deep into historical and official government records to unearth more about his home. He confronts his own memory with facts. He confronts the privilege he has had growing up, the privilege of his caste and class and the lack thereof for so many people around him. It invites the reader to do the same.
Image Courtesy: Rukmini Bhaya Nair/ Biblio
Arvind N. Das carried the same historical imagination from his books to the screen. His 13-part documentary India Invented invited viewers to see India as a continuously evolving historical process—an idea that continues to resonate with anyone interested in archives, memory and regional histories. Image Courtesy: Biblio.
“One of the results of growing up is that the past becomes more and more interesting and important. Bachcha noticed this in his own case too. As a child, he had wandered about Changel with nary a thought in the world. Paths were paths; houses were houses, trees were trees.”
Interventions in the text by characters like Mangrauliwali, Bachcha’s grandfather, and Jatta Lal keep the readers hooked and prevent the book from becoming one long sociological analysis even though the characters themselves give you another peek into what makes up the society of Changel.
Changel is a paradox. The book is a paradox. And that is exactly what makes the text so human. The village is riddled with contradictions just like humanity is. It is memory interspersed with recorded history. It frees you and suffocates you. It reminds you of how far we have come and how far there is still to go. The reader is brought along on a journey. You grow up with Bachcha. Everything comes full circle.
The book is hard to categorise into a single genre. It is cerebral, it is semi-autobiographical, it is a coming-of-age, it is a biography of a village, but maybe that is exactly what the author intends to do with this title. Published in 1996, the book is a great labour of love, research and a thirst for understanding. It brings you face-to-face with the crude realities of caste, class and the social stratification that is so common even in today’s world. In a time where major forces are at play to whitewash our history, the author reminds you that history can often be ruthless and accepting it for what it is is probably the first sign of progress. The book is layered, succinct and makes for a compelling and important read.
About the Author
An aspiring writer currently based in Delhi, Anjali Bharti is interested in anything and everything related to Bihar, food, gender, history and culture.
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