Ahilya

This summer my search for articles for Iris, led me to many unsaid aspects of life.

Have you heard of the name Ahilya? Those of you who are aware of Hindu mythology and stories of Ramayana will recall that Ahilya was the beautiful wife of sage Gautama. She was transformed into a stone by a curse of Gautama  because of the debauchery of Indra the king of gods. Ahilya was freed from her stone form when Rama touched her with his foot.

I had heard this story as a child from my grandma and she used to narrate to me the story with so much religious fervor that at the very moment in the narration when Rama set his foot into the Gautama ashram , I used to clap and jump with joy.

However, that was childhood. Growing up, I hardly gave the story a thought, and I am sure even if I would have given it a thought it would mostly be cynical questioning the intention of all these men who could transform a woman into stone and human being alternatively at their own pleasure, just because they had the power to do so.

However, Ahilya the name came back to me in the flash of a moment in a strange way.

There is a Devi temple around 56kms away from Bhubaneswar towards Berhampore (south Odisha), called Ugratara. The temple is an ancient one and one has to go a few kilometers away from NH-43 in order to reach the shrine.

One afternoon we just decided to drive to the temple for the sake of a long drive. The heat in Odisha exceeds forty degree scale and humidity added to it makes life unbearable. Sitting in air conditioned cars and going for long drives are no great adventures or achievement in such a context. Anyway, we reached the temple around 4.00-4.30 pm with the extremity of the heat waiting to greet us the moment we stepped out of the car.

Bare-footed I ran across from the car to one of the shady corridors of the temple. I was angry about the selection of the time and the place for this drive and was muttering something against  the travel in anger, when a lady came and stood before me with a large cane basket of  red hibiscus flowers (supposedly a favourite of Devi) and some bilva leaves with her betel-nut stained teeth opening into a large smile. She was short, dark in complexion, with tattered saree, a large Kumkum on the forehead and a dab of rubbed-off kajal in the eyes.  Irritated with the intrusion and the heat, I said “na! na! darkar nahin, ja tume” (not needed, you go from here). She must be in her early forties,  not for a second perturbed by my angry resistance to her red hibiscus. She said affectionately, “na ma, mun phoola bikuni tate, tume nua asicha ta, seyithi lagi gote phoola neyiki jaa maa pakhaku, sabu dukha sunibe siye tora.” (transl: no daughter, i don’t mean to sell you flowers, you have come to this temple for the first time, take one flower to the goddess, she will listen to all your prayers) .

My cynical self refused to give-in and I said, “mausi jadi maa sabu dukha sunante tebe tume phoola biku nathanta” (aunty if the goddess listened to everyone’s prayers, you wouldn’t be selling here flowers). I knew these are tactics in almost all Indian temples to get you to buy stuff. She broke into an easy laughter and said,

“arre, arre, Ahilya mausi phoola bikiba payin phoola bikeni …tu eyi phoola ne aau jaa maa ku deyi debu. ” (Ahilya doesn’t sell flowers for the sake of selling, take these flowers for free and give them to the deity) and she pushed a long garland of flowers into my hand. That’s how the name Ahilya struck me — I liked her name and the way she pronounced the name as Ahalaya in colloquial Odiya.

Being in a hurry and because of the heat I thrust the garland into my mother’s hand, impatiently went to the shrine and came back from within the temple after a brief sojourn. I sat by the shady courtyard watching the mango grooves gently swaying by the early evening warm breeze. The lady came back to me after some time and inquired whether I had presented the garland to the deity, and I absent-mindedly responded with a ‘yes’ (she gave a look of satisfaction). She didn’t seem to be affected or perturbed by the heat. I thought that the heat is their natural habitat, so what big deal. I handed a 10 rs note to her in lieu of her flowers. She kept the money in a knot of her saree pallu and sat there in front of me gazing my face. I was not very surprised because in rural Odisha if you have an urbane dress-up (jeans and tee types) you are quiet often stared at.  I got a little uncomfortable with her gaze because her eyes seemed to have a lot of admiration as well. It was a strange look — she looked at me with immense compassion as if she had a great treasure and I was the poorer seeker asking for some money or some benediction from her and her deity. I decided to start a conversation with her.

I asked her about her family and where they stayed. She said she stays in a village a kilometer and a half from this temple and comes early morning, sweeps the temple premises, collects flowers, makes garlands, and sells them. Very proudly she announced to me, that the priest himself requested her to make these garlands because they are so loved by the deity that she fulfills the wishes of the devotees who buy them. I asked her how much she makes in a day from this business, and she happily said “jiye jaha dela mun niye…mula bhava karena” (transl: whoever gives me whatever I accept, I don’t bargain), Rs. 40-60 rupees and sometimes on festivals Rs. 100 per day for the bigger garlands. With a smile she added that she has two sons,  and a husband who is suffering from Tuberculosis and might die.  I was surprised! How can someone die in the 21st century from TB? ?

I informed her that the medicines for TB are free and available in all local hospitals. She nonchalantly said that they had to buy those medicines and that food itself was so expensive what will she feed a TB patient, because TB needs a lot of food. She informed me that the deity is very kind and takes care of her husband and her children and never lets them go hungry for a day. Whatever she earns in a day suffices to help her buy ration for that day. She also added as an information that very big ministers, devotees, and business men come from the city and buy her garlands. “They become richer, get their daughters/sons married, or their political issues solved when they buy my garlands, and it is so satisfying to see them happy” . She kept the conversation on for a very long time, talking to me as if she knew me for a very long time. I requested her to allow me to take a few pictures of her and she very happily willed and posed for the camera with her flower basket.

It was getting late and the time to leave was at hand. My family had finished saying their prayers, their wishes, and their demands to the deity. Ahilya walked with us to our car and bid us farewell saying, “Ma toh sabu iccha pura karantu…eyi ahilya mausi ku bhulibuni” (transl: may the mother fulfill all your wishes…don’t forget this aunt of yours). I was surprised by her warmth and her nonchalant innocence — why do we with all the available resources, riches and power lack that basic humane-ness? On retrospect I feel sad and guilty — am doing nothing extraordinary or humane. I too am selling a story like many others in this profession,  for Iris. You may call it selfishness or cowardice.

We drove away from the temple, but I’ll never forget the charm, the smile and demeanor of Ahilya in my life….

The Dumping Business

Use and throw…. Use and dump…. Use and dispose….

The world has become a large dustbin where we use things for our convenience and dispose them without caring for safety or with a concern for this earth.  This summer I got to spend nearly a month’s time in Odisha. There are a lot of changes in the state — some positive and some negative. There are now large well-maintained streets in Bhubaneswar and other places. The village roads under the Pradhan Mantri Gram Sadak Yojana are made of concrete and are often better than the city by-lanes. However, the suburbs of Bhubaneswar are extremely ill-maintained and the privilege of street-lights or a decent by-lane devoid of potholes is still a dream. Once monsoons arrive these streets can be the breeding ground of mosquitoes and other water borne diseases. In fact, recently I saw a news-piece on a regional news channel (OTV) regarding the large potholes right in front of the Fakir Mohan University in Balasore, where waste water remains deposited even in summers. Now, you can imagine its lot in the monsoons!

Roads or no roads, what is peculiar about not only Bhubaneswar but also all other places in Odisha is the lack of an awareness regarding the need for dustbins or dumping yards or waste-collecting vans. Though, there are waste collecting vans in Bhubaneswar that charge around Rs. 50 per residence in Sailashree Vihar, but the number of people who avail this facility is absolutely meager. Even well-to-do, educated citizens carry a notion that when they can take the waste basket and throw it near the open fields or besides the pavement or even in front of their large marble bungalows; where is the need for paying a waste-picking van? People who spend thousands of rupees for dresses, for weddings and for personal maintenance are incapable of paying Rs. 50 to the waste-picking vans!   The lack of awareness in people as well as in the municipal bodies regarding the disposal of wastes is severe. People throw anything at any place without even caring to look back at it for a moment.

The condition of villages is no less precarious. Even though the streets in villages are made of concrete and appear really clean but you will not find a single community dustbin at any point. So is true of the cities like Bhubaneswar or Cuttack. If you go to Sailashree Vihar or any other suburb residential area you will not find a single dustbin for disposal of wastes. As a result, polythenes, papers, dirty bags, food wastes and other such toxic substances are found on the roads. Cows and Oxen come near these pavements and graze away these toxic polythene and other garbage and fall prey to several diseases.

There are a lot of pan eaters in Odisha and the way pan-thook gets deposited in the corners of hospitals and other public places is something which has to be really studied. You can find amazing patterns of red betel spit on government buildings, colleges, offices, medical colleges and even homes. The luxury of eating pan is such that people refuse to let the residue of their pan-eating charm fade from public memory. Thus, the red betel spit speak the history of tobacco and betel-nut flavor and give the legacy of Pan in Odisha. But, my contention is that why does the luxury of a chosen few has to become an inconvenience for many others?

I intend to bring to focus another point regarding this dumping business. These days, at a distance of every few yards there is an industry in Odisha. Some manufacture steel, iron ore, some red bricks, some coal, some synthetic, some sugar while others are into small-scale manufacturing business. If you go to Angul and Dhenkanal Districts you will find indiscriminate number of large and small scale industries. Odisha Govt. distributes license to these industries as if it is distributing sweets. When we were children, Dhenkanal was no less than a hill-station with a climate that many would envy. A rare kind of wind current would blow during the summers keeping the temperature at its optimum. But, gone are those days. If you come here now you will be welcomed with a relentless hot summer and malaria. The reason — not only global warming or global climate change but also climate change induced by the hazardous smoke and water disposed by industries in and around this place. The plight of Angul and Talcher, less said the better. I do not know if the weapon of RTI regarding pollution control and pollution testing has been used in these places as yet.  Who issues these industries permits to start functioning? How many industries should be located in a certain place? What are the pollution control measures being carried out by these industries? These are some issues which the general public in this state still does not concern itself with. The lack of education mixed with the lack of awareness is partly responsible for the impending climatic dangers over this state. My personal opinion is that people believe industries are a boon because they provide employment and money and that’s where the story ends. The need to understand ecological concerns is neither different nor isolated from the importance of industrialization. I am confirmed that the number of people who will read this particular blog post from outside the state would far exceed the number of people reading it from within Odisha.

I gave one state as an example  of this dumping business. I am not capable of explaining the position of other states because of a lack of first-hand experience. However, there is a commonsensical aspect which makes me generalize this plight of dumping — we all love to enjoy and we love to have the luxury of using things or producing things but when it comes to the settlement of the garbage or the waste-products our responsibility ends there. The proper disposal of wastes is something that one has to inculcate internally as well as through proper social conditioning. Garbage disposal should be a part of social responsibility as well as individual ethics. If we use a certain thing, it is also our responsibility to see to it that it is properly disposed so that others do not suffer the toxic by-products of that waste.

When the earth is struggling for its survival, when the entire global community is striving to generate awareness against pollution and global warming Odisha is one such state which is going through a topsy-turveyed change. This state which is famous for its natural resources, which is endowed with the bounty of natural heritage is going through a late industrialization that threatens to take away its beauty and charm.

There is a firm necessity of honesty, accountability and awareness to protect whatever nature has gifted….

9.00 PM CST-Khapoli Local…

Life moves on…

My Cellphone rang and woke me up from my nostalgic travel through memory lanes.

It was around 11.20 pm when we reached Khapoli on a chilly December night. We were traveling by the 9pm Local from CST to Khapoli. I had never traveled out of Mumbai or even in Mumbai in a local train at that hour of the night. It hardly made any difference — trains were bustling with human beings at least up till Kalyan station and even a little later. I could not believe my eyes to see that so many people travel so late from offices to their homes in distant corners of Mumbai suburbs. In Odisha there is not much of a crowd after 9pm. The office-goers who come from smaller towns like Dhenkanal, Angul, Talcher, Khurda to work in offices at Cuttack or Bhubaneswar usually return by the 5: 15 pm local and reach their homes by 7.30-8.00pm.

I used to travel from Bhubaneswar to Angul/Dhenkanal every Saturday-Sunday and sometimes even on holidays in this particular local train for 7 years; first during Graduation and then during my University days in Post graduation and M.Phil. Either my parents or my uncles would be waiting to receive me from the station. Every time I came back home from the hostel on weekends, I would be received in a grand fashion. When grandpa was alive, he would come to pick me up or drop me while on his morning and evening walks to the Dhenkanal station. I would jump down from the boggy, hug him as if I had not seen him for ages (it might be even less than a week) and then happily chatter away about my friends/teachers in college or University till we reached home, where specially made delicious baingan bharta and mushroom deep fried with garlic and steaming hot rice would be eagerly waiting for me. I think I lost my best friend when I lost him. Grandmom and my aunty sadly would lament on my health condition because of malnutrition in the hostel food .

Probably, this nostalgia was the reason that when we were offered a “Special Paper” in PG English, I had enthusiastically opted for a course in “Professional Writing” and chose to write my dissertation on “The Life in Local Trains”. There were diary entires, interviews with commuters, history of the train, letters and statistics collected on the 5:15pm local train for the dissertation. In fact, at the peak of my data collection I had traveled almost everyday by that train to observe and record events and take snaps of various landmarks. I had a very strange, mysterious bonding with the Local trains, as if these trains gave a miniature version of my world.

All these memories of the past years had come drifting towards me when I saw a group of office-goers boarding from different stations, in one compartment on the CST-Khapoli Local. Probably they were using this one compartment for many years and were now friends or perhaps family. Interestingly, one of them carried a mouth organ, another a dafli and another a flute. While some of them sang some Marathi and Hindi numbers, the others’ played on these instruments or listened silently. I thought there was some special occasion and asked one of them sitting close to me that what was the reason for celebration. He replied with a smile; “nothing! we do this everyday! we celebrate everyday…we come from different stations and from different offices, but make it a point to meet in the train, share some joys or our troubles, sing, laugh and get down at our respective stoppages. This has happened for years now.” He grinned and the song : “hai apna dil toh awara na jane kis pe ayega” …wafted in the air. Everyone in the compartment was silent, listening intently to the songs; no one felt like talking…I suppose everyone had some or the other nostalgia to go back to.

These people specially reminded me of an event which I have documented in that dissertation on local trains. It’s the story of one particular gentleman who had traveled in the 5:15pm local from Bhubaneswar to Dhenkanal for 30 years of his service in the AG Office (Attorney General’s Office) in Master Canteen Bhubaneswar. He worked as a senior clerk there.On the day of his retirement from service, the entire compartment (he had boarded the same compartment for the last 30 years) and his fellow office goers had organized a grand farewell for him in the compartment itself. People sang, made speeches on the small tid-bits of their experiences with him, cried, hugged him and then saw him off with tears as he got down at Dhenkanal station on his final day from work. I was very young then to understand the realities of these emotions — because I had everything and everyone around me at that point of time.

But, of course the event had intrigued me and my imagination. I tried to locate his home in the town and went for an interview for the dissertation. He had told me during the interview that more than his family he valued the friends in the train. They shared all his day-to-day stories, gave valuable advice like his son’s job or a daughter’s wedding or official tussles. They had laughed, played cards, gossiped against their office colleagues, sometimes also fought, but most importantly had grown old together. He added that he will not miss office so much as much he would miss his commuting in the train. “Sadly I will not meet my fellow passengers any longer as I will not need to travel from this small town to Bhubaneswar anymore. My friends in the train have shown more patience and have listened to me more than my own family”... I saw his eyes moisten.

The picture of the old gentleman vividly came before my eyes in the CST-Khapoli local train after another 7 long years of my life. I realized seeing these people around me on the train, that there are certain human emotions which cut across narrow language, caste and cultural divides and time. When the politicians and even some theoreticians seek to divide my nation on the basis of caste and language politics, I still can see that the emotion which people have in Odisha is similar to that which they have in Maharastra or maybe elsewhere in the world — the emotional bond of one human being with another.

The Basket-Weaver

Last Thursday I heard on the phone that she died!! For a moment I was numb.

One generation was coming to its end…and with that generation a whole world of traditions, customs, stories, myths and legends slowly reach extinction. She came every morning to our doorsteps with her kula (winnowing fan) and sat there for hours singing, laughing and weaving small flower baskets with tidy, sharp bamboo pieces. No, Jambilo did not weave those for livelihood, but just for use in the temple in their basti.

I was always shy meeting people, hardly speaking to anyone, but this lady — she was fascinating. There was something typical in her which attracted me towards her — her lilting, melodious hummings. She hummed with a passion for the “mother-goddess” – “Durga maa”– she would click her tongue and postrate a thousand times before uttering that name. While weaving the baskets, she would sing in her mellifluous voice:

Oh Maa Tarini! (a form of the mother goddess) I weave these garlands for you
With droplets from my eyes.
Oh Maa Tarini! I sing these songs for you
With the rhythm of my heart…
Oh Maa Tarini! What can I ask from you,
Save, a dot of sindoor (vermilion) and a pair of sankha (bangles) in my dark hands.

I am sorry, I have not been able to reproduce the exact translation of these line from vernacular Odiya into English. But roughly, these were some of the lines that she sang while weaving her baskets. Whenever, I went to my grandparents’ place, Jambilo would come in the early morning to see me. As a child, I was mortally afraid of her…all the kids in that locality called her “pageli” (crazy). But eventually, she was one person whom I loved and respected from the core of my heart. There was a story about her that her husband had either died or left her since a long-long time. But no one ever dared remove her sankha-sindoora. She belonged to the Dom caste and lived in the dom sahi down the lane. Jambilo earned her living by sweeping the temple premises (jamadar) of the devi temple down the road. They gave her a few rupees and food twice daily. She did the job with a passion that cannot be described in words. She would not let any other person enter the temple at early dawn (including the priest) before she had sweeped the entire temple premise to her complete satisfaction.

The neatness in her dress up and the sweetness of her voice can put to shame any so called “upper caste” female. There was another thing peculiar about her, she always giggled — like a school girl, her face burst into a hundred wrinkles with the curve widening. I don’t remember of having seen her with  sad or worried eyes ever. She laughed like a young bride, the pallu of her saree covering her face with every little giggle. I spent hours listening to those unheard melodies and to her stories. Jambilo was a treasure house of a thousand tales — of gods, of black magic, of people in her locality, and she would go on endlessly until someone in my family came to the verandah to call me back for lunch. Sometimes, when she got intensely involved in a tale, she would almost act that out for you. It happened very frequently when she went to the bazaar to watch a Pala, Daskathiya (these are some typical folk dance-drama forms, very popular in Odissa because of their rich mytical and legendary content) or a Danda (Danda is an extraordinary ritual in Odissa that is performed specifically in the month of April — chaitra as we say in the honour of the Devi. Danda as a dance form is a very difficult skill that requires extraordinary expertise). Jambilo would be in the front row in the crowd if you happened to come across these performances somewhere in the marketplace. And then, once she returned, she would dance the entire performance for you, with the exact dialogues that followed each little song piece. There would be no stopping her then! She would get really angry, if you dared to interrupt in her performance — I often wondered at her memory for having been able to remember every little piece that she ever watched.

Jambilo would be present at all weddings and mournings of every family of the locality. She would sing for the brides before they went for the early morning turmeric bath ; she would cry her heart out for the old men/women who passed away as if they were members of her own family. Did she ever ask for money? The strangest thing about that lady was that she never-ever would accept a pie from anyone around her. With a pride of the peacock, she would retort if you offered her money in lieu of one of her performances, “I have enough Maa (child) to feed me for the day. I don’t think of the evening. Durga Maa takes care of my wants”. But she would be always happy for one thing — if you gave her some bangles, a little vermilion and a saree and some rice and vegetables. Sometimes, if her whim possessed her, she would not accept them without giving you a basket or a kula in return. Every bride in the family would give her some of these things and get her blessings in return. Sometimes during Durga Puja, she would come to my grandmother or to my eldest uncle’s wife, “Bada bahu! (Eldest daughter-in-law) This time you give me a saree with red embroidery. I want to wear that for Asthami (one of the sacred days during Durga Pooja) .” And no one ever dared deny her a thing, for all her desires were modest!

Such was Jambilo then for us! Last time when I went home, she came again to see me. I sat devotedly near her for sometime, but now she treated me with a respect which I was uncomfortable with. I was an alien from the big city who came for a few days to spend time during vacation. She told mother humbly but clicked her tongue and widened her eyes, “Maa (daughter in this context) is now a big babu in the city! She lives beyond seven oceans…do they wear sarees there?” I smiled and said “yes they do just as you do”. She was delighted for a moment and clapped her hands child-like and added, “can you get me a saree with golden borders from that place”…I nodded in affirmation.

I never could give that saree to her…

P.S: I exist here in the midst of academic debates on caste, non-caste and anti-caste…. But people like Jambilo are also a reality of the society from which I come. They are somewhere caught in between these worlds.