Every year, about three weeks before Dussehra, Masterji would start walking.
He was a retired primary school teacher in our village. Thin, slow, always in the same white kurta. He carried a school notebook with a torn blue cover and a pen tied to it with a piece of thread, so he would never lose it.
He went to every single house. Not most houses. Every house.
At each door he said the same thing. "Ramlila ka chanda."
And people gave. Eleven rupees from the widow near the pond. Twenty-one from the family that ran the flour chakki. Fifty-one from the teacher's own brother. One hundred and one from the pradhan. Masterji wrote every name and every amount in that notebook, in his neat schoolteacher handwriting, and then moved to the next door.
As a kid I thought this was a slow and silly way to do it. I asked him once why he didn't just ask the pradhan for the full amount. The pradhan had money. Everyone knew it. He could have paid for the whole Ramlila out of one pocket and not noticed.
Masterji laughed. "Offer toh kiya tha," he said. He did offer.
Then he told me why he had said no.
The year somebody paid for everything
A few years before I was old enough to remember, the pradhan's family had done exactly that. One year they said, forget the chanda, we will handle it. Better costumes, bigger stage, a proper sound system hired from the town.
It was the best-looking Ramlila the village had ever had.
It was also the emptiest.
Not empty of people. People came to watch. But nobody came early to tie the bamboo for the stage. Nobody's mother sent over an old saree to be cut into Sita's costume. The halwai didn't send his free tea to the actors at night, the way he always had. The boys who usually fought over who got to play the monkeys in Hanuman's army barely showed up for rehearsals.
It had quietly become the pradhan's Ramlila. Everyone else was a guest.
And guests don't wash the dishes.
Masterji said the village learned something that year that nobody had ever said out loud. The eleven rupees was never about money. The widow's eleven rupees didn't buy anything. What it bought was the right to say "hamari Ramlila." Our Ramlila.
The next year, he picked up the notebook again. And he made a quiet rule. Nobody, no matter how rich, could give more than five hundred and one rupees. If you wanted to give more, you had to give it as work. Lend your tractor to carry the bamboo. Lend your charpais for the stage. Cook for the actors on the last night.
What the notebook was really doing
Over the years I watched what that rule did.
The pradhan, who could not give more money, started giving his time. He would sit near the stage every evening and settle arguments between the actors. The chakki family lent their generator when the power went, which it always did, usually right in the middle of Lakshman's big scene.
The widow near the pond had no money to spare beyond her eleven rupees. But she was the best at stitching, so every crown and every jacket passed through her hands. She sat in the front row on the last night, and when Ravan's effigy went up in flames, she clapped louder than anyone.
She had every right to. She had made half the costumes on that stage.
When something belongs to one person, everyone else waits to be served. When a small piece of it belongs to everyone, everyone turns up to protect their piece. Masterji didn't need a speech or a committee to explain this. He just needed a notebook and the patience to walk to every door.
I have seen the other version of this many times since, in offices and housing societies and family functions. One person pays for the whole thing, usually with good intentions. They want it done properly. They don't want to bother anyone. And then they are confused when nobody else seems to care, and nobody stays back to help clean up.
They made it easy for everyone. They also made it not theirs.
Walking to every door
Masterji passed away a while ago. The Ramlila still happens. Someone else carries the notebook now, a younger man who used to play one of the monkeys.
I asked him once if he had thought about getting sponsors. A mobile shop in the town had offered to pay for the whole thing in exchange for a banner.
He looked at me like I had said something strange.
"Phir mohalla kya karega?" he asked. Then what will the mohalla do?
I think about that every time I want to just handle something myself because it's quicker. Pay for it. Do it alone. Save everyone the trouble. Sometimes that's the right call. But sometimes the trouble is the whole point. The small ask is what lets people in.
Masterji could have collected all that money in one visit.
He chose to take three weeks, and walk to every door.
~Vazhi
P.S. Dussehra is a few day away. If your mohalla or society still does its own Ramlila or Durga Puja, notice who shows up early to tie the bamboo. That's who it really belongs to.