Our chai date did not leave me wholly convinced that we would get on. He struck me as rather self-centred and ebullient in a way that felt strangely humiliating and he lost no time in pointing out that I had misunderstood several fundamental aspects of Rajasthani agriculture, such as the relative water requirements of maize and wheat. I therefore made a particular effort this week to form more of a bond and have by and large been successful, although his constant company became irritating at times. Conversely, I have learnt a lot myself in the last few days about my own weaknesses - as well as being sometimes selfish and prone to jealousy, I can be irritable and immaturely resentful of criticism, or the implication that I may not have understood something or that I know less than I do. All these faults can make me difficult to work with at times, and Shiv and I had some flare-ups and patches of mutual moodiness during the course of our work. Back in Kojawara all this has been unreservedly forgiven and forgotten.
His English is reasonable rather than very good, although he has a terrific enthusiasm for improving it. Frequently on our trips he would ask me the meaning of a word, often pronounced wrong (such as “What is the meaning of ‘exiggerant’?” which flummoxed me until I realised he meant exaggerate) and ask me to write down new words and their meanings in a chaotic little pocket book full of words and their definitions. He asked me what my hobbies were, and after giving him an answer involving music, languages, travelling and others, I asked him his. “Collecting proverbs,” he replied without a moment’s hesitation. “I have collected so many English proverbs, nearly thirty or forty”. He delights in bringing them out in conversation, even when only tenuously appropriate to the situation in hand, and more than once has he informed me for no apparent reason that “An Englishman house in his castle” (castle rhyming with hassle).
And what about our work? It was finally time to initiate the formal village survey I have mentioned on several occasions. The idea was to gather data in order to substantiate or refute the hypotheses I had already drawn about land use, crop farming and livestock ownership. Since my own Hindi is several samosas short of the linguistic picnic required for any serious kind of substantiation or refutation, the need for an interpreter was obvious from the outset.
So far we have conducted 17 out of a total 24 surveys, leaving seven more to do next week. While this survey work could be frustrating and tedious at times, and peppered with the irritations described, the experience as a whole was fun. More than this, it enabled me for the first time to feel I was really doing some work, and after three weeks of meandering in the dusky vales of structureless inquiry, I can't overstate how reassuring this felt. Our approach was to walk up to a house on the list we had prepared - a random sample from a larger list of all the households in the village drawn up with the help of Dolat Ram - and ask for the head of the household, or next in authority if he was not available. Then Shiv or I would explain our purpose and beg to be allowed to ask them some questions for 15 minutes (this was a shameless lie on Shiv’s part, the survey generally took half an hour or more, but “These people will never agree to spend half an hour with you.”) If the first people we met were women or girls, Shiv would speak to them in what seemed to me an unnecessarily aggressive and impatient manner, although he later bristled when I told him not to shout at them. Very few women agreed to speak to us, giggling nervously at the suggestion and asking how they could possibly speak to such as us - Shiv, clearly urban, middle class and upper caste, perhaps nearly as alien as me.
Most of the men we surveyed seemed relatively happy to answer our questions, which were about land usage, livestock, crops, water availability and, crucially, forest use. Some seemed rather impatient, some kind, some amused and most rather bemused. Almost all of them had heard of Vikas Samiti (we were on one occasion rather delightfully referred to as “Vikas Samiti-wallahs”) and regarded the organisation positively, if sceptically. Of course, as we progressed through the survey, I thought of all sorts of ways in which it could be improved were it not already too late. And despite the sameness of the answers we received, there were occasional flashes of interest when somebody would give us a slightly unusual answer. There was some unintentional humour as well, most notably when I was urging Shiv to ask a young man about his female buffaloes and how they became pregnant (my aim being to understand whether a male buffalo was loaned out by another family and whether there was any payment involved) and he retorted: “This is a ridiculous question! I never ask sexual questions to the villagers.”
Staying in the village has its ups and downs. Ablution, of course, is more of an effort, and entertainment after sunset can be in short supply. The food is far too spicy for me but somehow still tastes bland. Shiv, used to milder Brahmin cuisine, found the food the hardest part of the trip, although I suspect he missed home comforts in general rather sorely. But there are compensations. Being up for a stroll at seven in the morning is something I’ve always yearned for, and shitting in the open, especially on a moonlit night, has a wonderful expansiveness about it. Above all there is the continual feeling of isolation and remoteness, which is both a source pleasure and pain.
Amratlal's daughter
Last night, I heard some singing and drumming from a nearby house and, under the impression that there was some dancing, I went along with one of Amratlal’s set and found something rather different. In a small room in the teacher’s house, a group of about twenty men and women were sitting around a makeshift altar composed of a covered idol and lots of the tacky pictures of Hindu deities one sees everywhere from food stalls to office calendars and family homes. Three or four of the men were beating rhythms on drums and little cymbals while the whole party chanted in otherworldly cacophony. I cannot think of a way to describe these chants. Although they were clearly based on a form of Hinduism, often containing the phrase ‘Hare Ram’ , they sounded almost more African than Indian, I suppose because they seemed tribal and unadulterated which is not true of either popular or classical Indian music. After a few such chants, I was noticed and invited to play the drums. I bashed around half-heartedly for a bit but I wasn’t in the mood to become a participator, because my doing so would inevitably elicit laughter, thereby disrupting the magic of the situation and reducing it to an amusing travelling incident, an already-formed anecdote.
It was in a subsequent chant that I became aware of a chicken in the middle of the crowd. Almost immediately, the possibility of sacrifice sprang to my mind, but at first I dismissed it, interpreting the chicken as just another animal roaming freely around a house, a ubiquitous sight in Maal. However, the sight of a large knife dispelled any doubt. An officiator, who had been passing candle-lamps back and forth in front of the idol started toying with the knife, and soon flattened the chicken under his feet with little difficulty. Within minutes the deed was done. I didn’t have a good view, but I could discern that blood was being collected and subsequently passed through a cloth filter into a small bowl.
During all this, the group continued singing. Whenever a chant came to an end, there was a brief discussion or comment and then somebody would start a new one, shortly to be joined by the rest. Soon after the sacrifice, another man came and sat in the centre and the officiator daubed his face and arms with spots of blood. This was strange enough, but strangest of all came next when he was presented the bowl of blood and drank it! Amratlal later explained that only certain people, who had the power to transfer their souls to others’ bodies, drank the blood as a way of increasing their tagat, which translates as something like strength. The singing continued most of the night, although I only stayed for about an hour. Deshi (liquor from the flowers of the mahua tree) was passed round and beedis were smoked, all of which reminded me more of religious occasions I have seen in Madagascar than the Tamil Brahmin culture I had previously experienced in India.
Other than the survey and the sacrifice, there is little to report from Maal. Amratlal’s goats have given birth and the house is full of comically tiny goats scampering around. And a social observation: contrary to the impression I had previously gained of Amratlal and Suraj being sworn enemies, they seem to get on quite well. I was surprised to come back to the house on my first evening to see them both sitting outside on a string bed chatting and laughing. Both, I suspect, are unconvinced about Vikas Samiti. Suraj often asks me scathingly how the work I am doing is going to benefit Maal, and laughs when I suggest that the effects might be felt in years rather than weeks. Amratlal is not openly cynical, but his manner seems to indicate that he feels the same.
One of Suraj’s more endearing traits is his habit of dropping English words, or cultural allusions of a sort into conversation. When I was telling him about a Diwali fair in Udaipur, he looked at me solemnly and said “Merry-go-rhy” and then burst out laughing, particularly after I corrected him. We were later talking about a zoo (or “joo” as many Indians render it, unable to pronounce the “z” sound found in words of Persian or foreign origin) and while we were listing animals in English and Hindi, he smiled and muttered ”hare and tortoise” prompting more laughter. Funny as I found this, I realised afterwards that my own approach to foreign languages and cultures is quite similar, and perhaps the Hindi words and Indian cultural references I drop casually into conversations in an attempt to sound interested and informed come across equally quaintly!
On the way back from Maal
On the way back to Kojawara, Shiv and I discussed the events of the last few days, and he clearly felt it time to make his debriefing. “Sam,” he said (he always calls me Sam, as this was the name of the last Vikas Samiti volunteer he interpreted for). “Sorry, yaar, I mean Jon. You are a nice person, but your mind is not very much developed.”
“?” inquired my eyebrows.
“You are thinking like a little child, actually.”
“Thank you,” I said, nonplussed, but the sarcasm was lost.
“One day you will think like me.”
Next Post - Sunday 5th November 2006: Udaipur (will be posted Saturday 5th November 2011)
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