The Lost Generation

by Nidhi Dugar Kundalia

  On a warm, sunny April morning in 2000, Mohak set sail in his new wooden boat. The Hooghly had an opalescent dark hue that day, and in the shallower parts, it became transparent. It had a fresh odour, though, according to him. ‘You could drink from it—just like that,’ he smiles, cupping his hands together in demonstration. He flew past wild reeds and weeds, past narrow boats with sole fishermen catching a nap with fish hooks plunged in the water. He manoeuvred the dinghy through the zigzag path of the Hooghly, stopping every now and then for the chira his wife had packed for him. On the same afternoon, while he took a nap under a tarpaulin sheet erected to shield himself from the hot sun, dark clouds gathered above him in a hurry and suddenly the weather changed. A storm turned the river choppy, and his dinghy, not designed to handle any great amount of wind, got stuck in a whirlpool. Within minutes, it was swamped near a whirlpool and capsized.

  ‘I drifted ashore, where a few fishermen from a nearby village helped me out. They later told me that all the parts of the boat floated away, except its mast,’ Mohak murmurs, heaving before every word as he hammers the ply, working with it a little more forcefully than necessary. ‘I still have the mast flying above my hut.’ He pauses, looking up. ‘I also heard that another boatman saw my sinking ship and was warned of the whirlpool. Well, at least one boat was saved that afternoon.’

  In September of the same year, it had rained non-stop for a week, and the Hooghly, which spools like a paisley through the wetlands, started swelling. Within days, a massive flood smashed scores of small boats, knocked tree limbs through the roofs of several homes and inundated the huts along the river. The Balagarh boats turned into Noah’s ark for the villagers. The boat makers saved the villagers, going against the current on the boats that were ready for delivery, rescuing them from water-logged areas and passing on supplies provided by the government. Mohak, too, joined them on his father’s old boat.

  Yet, to many of the hamlet’s 500-odd boat makers, a big flood is just a part of the life one lives near the water. ‘In the waters, even the most brain-dead nincompoop gets the fact that you’re not protected any more. The weather conditions and the water are in total charge and you have to work with them to survive. But on land, man forgets he has to work with nature.’ According to the transcendent laws that govern Mohak’s Rajbanshi community, water—rivers, ponds, the water that is filled every morning in mud pots—is personified and worshipped. Rivers are compared to snakes—the female cult known as Manasa—that can turn vicious at any given moment

  ‘In this world, each person and object, from the wood panels in this workshop to the trees here, is meant to play its part. And if you listen carefully, you can hear these things talk—the bamboo around here will tell you the message that the whispering breeze has left for you,’ he says, his hammer drawn mid-air. Moving through his experiences, as if driven by some external force, the boat builder believes that each being in nature is given some role to play, and that when it is done playing its part in this world, it must die. ‘This tree had to die to give way to a boat. My boat died to give way to another boatman. All the boatmen here will die some day, to give birth to new life by this river.’ At least that’s how the Rajbanshi pandit, the one at the temple by the river, explained it to him. ‘Just as his role is to guide men to the home of God in the dark, he believes that my role is to make boats, here, in Balagarh and smoke beedis. Not to live in Kolkata and buy fancy cigarettes. The days I don’t earn enough from boat making here, I fish. My wife hates it because I disappear for days on the river.’ He smiles. ‘It is peaceful out there.’

  Mohak’s workshop is close to Nimai Badi—Balagarh’s biggest workshop. A few hours later, as watery sunshine filters through the clouds, workers appear in the yard. But they sit indolently, under the verdant latticework, the bamboo trees casting swaying shadows on their faces.

  ‘They are on strike,’ says Mohak, lowering his voice, sitting on his hunches beside me an hour later. ‘I am not sure, but I have heard all this is politically motivated. The owner has political affiliations, and the party that he does not support wants their business to suffer. The other party may have paid the kathmistry union under the table to go on strike. The villagers here hardly have any love for politicians who have neither constructed roads nor subsidized wood for us. But every few years, they buy boats from the twenty-odd workshops during the run-up to the elections.’ He smiles weakly.

  The boat he is working on is to be sold to a political party. River campaigning is popular in these regions. Around election season, politicians, along with their followers, board boats that they sail down the river, stopping from village to village, promoting their agenda. They promise new roads, direct bus services and trains to Kolkata, or free foreign liquor. Sometimes, chilli chicken is on offer too. Other times, parties buy boats to distribute them to ‘needy’ people and lure prospective electors. But, otherwise, the boats simply lie in low tide on the banks or creeks, or are stacked one on top of another in the swamps behind the workshops, creating a flotilla of unwanted boats, the marks on the wood that appear during the clamping resembling the scars that the degradation of the Hooghly has left behind.

  Mohak reminisces about the time when, in his father’s days, buyers came in hordes. ‘My father bought sal wood, which is good for furniture and boats. They had many boats lined up at the nao thua, the riverside marina. Slender, high-speed wooden boats were lined along with larger passenger-carrying dinghies back in those days. Buyers would come from the nearby Burdwan district as well as from faraway places in Assam, Odisha and sometimes Malaysia too. They’d see small sample cut-outs, examine the quality of the wood and come back a few months later to buy the boat. But, like the changing winds on the water, profits fluctuated quickly even back then, according to Mohak. The buyers bargained depending on the rainfall. Fuller rivers meant more fish, leading to more boat sales and a higher price quoted for them.

  A decade ago, there were more than forty-five boat-making units in the area. Today, they are just half that number. As West Bengal has slowly developed, bridges and ramps have been constructed across rivers, changing the way people travel. A couple of years ago, the fisheries department gave loans to fishermen under a special scheme. Most fishermen used the loans to buy dinghies, which was a godsend for the boat makers.

  But the jubilation was short-lived—the fishermen’s business depends on the Ganga, and water levels in India’s longest river have been reducing due to the accumulation of silt. ‘Gangai maach hobe na. [There are no fish in the Ganga.] These woodworkers now work in paper mills in other towns, or look for jobs in those modish boat factories in the coastal town, Digha. I work to keep the tradition of these wooden boats alive. But, niropta hobe na ekhane. [There is no security in this business.] We’ll make the boats. We have many hands. But who will buy them? Nobody knows about our boats outside Bengal. Middlemen are a nuisance. And if we can’t sell a boat in six to eight months, who will buy the termite-infested boat? I asked my sons to look for work elsewhere. One makes grilles in Burdwan and the other is looking for work in Jaipur.’ He shakes his head. ‘The chemicals in the water are too many, I hear. I know the fish must die some day. But not all of them. Not together. Something has to change. Either the food we eat or how we fish.’

  As I sail on an engine-powered boat past the village back towards Kolkata that evening, our attention is pointed towards a half-made vessel. Its two columns are carved at the crown like a race boat, tipped up and sinking. They unite as we pass them and then move apart, as things and people do in the water. The sound of hammering in the workshops is soon drowned by the engine. Slowly, Balagarh and its picturesque bamboo-lined streets become mere specks on the horizon as we drift away, meandering through densely packed moorings of fully made boats, their sails unfurled to seize any stirring of the heavy monsoon air.

  9

  THE ITTAR WALLAHS OF HYDERABAD

  A thick and sweet smell suddenly drifts over a swelling mass of shoppers haggling over wares
near the Charminar,1 as if cans of roasted dark sugar syrup have been emptied on to the streets. Walking through the arches of the old city of Hyderabad, I spot the source of the aroma—a tiny shop tucked near the walls of the Char Kaman2 leading to the Charminar, which stocks hundreds of bottles on wooden shelves, each reflecting the intense beams of the shimmery light. As I walk closer, I spot a tall, broad man with a frosty white beard, wearing a woven skullcap, settled on a wooden stool behind the stall. He moves his hands smoothly so that he hardly brushes the glass bottles—slender vials, pear-shaped glasses, cut-glass jars—all made to contain some sort of magic, their shapes resonating the enigmatic properties of the fluids within. The bottles have glass corks that the man unplugs with his hands, producing a clunking sound, his regal nose deforming for a moment before regaining composure. With the unplugging of each bottle, thick fragrances escape. They are essences, extracts and oils. The smell of jasmine, rose, henna, flowers, air, water, sea.

  ‘Tashreef laiye. Here, try this one,’ says Syed Abdul Gaffar, an ittar wallah, smiling, laughing easily, weaving chaste Dakhni Urdu3 into the conversation through the afternoon. A faint air of magic lingers around him, as if he were a wise old wizard pulling tricks on his customers with the worldly wisdom he has gained over the years. ‘That’s zatar. Pur-kaif khushboo hai yeh [This fragrance is full of intoxication],’ he says in a deep, resounding voice, using the glass cork to daub a dot of perfume on my hand. The bottles have grown warm in the sun, so when he rubs the ittar on to my wrist, it seems as if it has been heated for the trial. ‘It’s made by diligently culling thousands of crocus flowers for saffron strands.’ The thick liquid encapsulates the golden goodness of the sunlight in which it glows and then seeps deep into the skin, morphing into the body and, in a short while, becoming a part of you.

  The noise around the historical monument of Charminar is overwhelming—cars, autorickshaws, women in embellished burkas, make-shift shops selling henna, glass bangles, stalls slow roasting haleem in large pots, fakirs with clay pots moving about in green jubbas, men with kohl-rimmed eyes—all clamouring for space in this walled city. But here, in this tin-roofed shop, as the twinkling lights are reflected by the crystal jars—blues, pinks and greens—to quiver on the old man, it is strangely quiet. Even calm and peaceful.

  ‘Allah pak ki azmat se I have had this shop in my family for four generations now,’ says Syed, cleaning the bottles with a soft loincloth before placing them back in their niches. Before they bought this box-sized shop from a landlord, Syed’s ancestors played their part in an unwritten history. They sold their wares from a wooden box that hung around their necks, walking the streets with many others—bear dancers, rope-walkers, mango sellers, carders who buffed the cotton in old quilts, pedicurists who cleaned the feet of royal women with rose water and painted them with alta. They moved about the lanes of the old city that were lined with the nouveau riche homes of the nobles and relatives of the nawabs. Hearing their shrill cry, ‘Ittar wallah!’ echoing in the streets, servants ushered them in and the women of the household bought their scented wares; a vial of raat ki rani, a flowery scent reminiscent of breathing the warm night air of the streets, or jasmine that would lure their husbands to their beds instead of those of the courtesans.

  ‘My grandfather established this store,’ Syed continues. ‘It used to be a larger place, but the municipal corporation wanted to station a drinking-water unit for passers-by and moved us here, near the Char Kamaan. They say that the one who quenches the thirst of the thirsty, the Almighty . . .’ he pauses, looking heavenwards, ‘will quench his thirst from the pure sealed wine of heaven.

  ‘A birdwatcher learns to observe, a chef learns to taste. I was trained to smell. But the training was never formal. In zeest ki rahon ne hi sikha diya khushboo kya hai [The paths of life taught me how to smell].’ He smiles, speaking of his education of the scents, moving his fingers like a bard singing ghazals before an audience. ‘The smells of your childhood, for example, the rose petals that my mother pressed on to her neck and wrists for their sweet scent, or my grandmother chewing paan leaves stuffed with fennel seeds and slaked lime; the smell of my aunt’s home who imported praying mats from Dubai, like the duvet in iron boxes that have been closed all through the summer. The smells have been retained over the years and become a memory. I very quickly learnt to translate them into my bottles.’

  Syed grew up in the peaceful neighbourhood of Gowlipura by the municipal corporation office. Sometime in the eighteenth century his ancestors made their home here where he still lives with his two sons and their grown-up children, with a perfumatory on the third floor of the ancestral house, which he runs like Prospero from The Tempest, a second-sighted man with mysterious alchemical capabilities.

  In this small room, the walls are veined with cobwebs and yellowed pictures of holy phrases from the Koran. Under greasy windows, copper pots, called degs, their shine long gone, are placed. Syed keeps a candle ready, in case there is a power cut from the energy-deprived stations of his Telangana state, ready to search in the ash-streaked murkiness for his precious ingredients.

  But today, the room is well-lit from a sole tube-light. From a covered cauldron, Syed dabs a bit of pink-tinged perfume on with a cotton bud and breathes in its scent, cupping his hands so the smell reaches his nose. A bouquet! Something incredibly uncommon and luxurious. He demystifies the smell for me, tracing it backwards to what had been blended into it.

  ‘It is the humble gulab. Made with desi flowers, the ones with heavy petals, called the damask rose. They have the best fragrance. Our flower seller drops off these rare pink ones with the stems when they are available. The roses from the old bushes have the most pleasurable fragrance. But the time between cutting the flowers and making the ittar is crucial because the petals lose their essence with every second,’ he says, snapping his fingers. Good ittar, like fine wine, depends on the essence of the year’s harvest.

  ‘Petals, after plucking, are then brewed in water on a wood fire overnight.’ He enacts the process with his bare hands animatedly, breathlessly moving about the low-roofed room. ‘And when these petals are plucked and added to the broth, they do not die.’ He smiles, rubbing his hands together elatedly. ‘They live instead, forever, bottled in these jars.’

  Tiny cut-glass vials are piled in a carton at the end of the room. Once the ittar is made, Syed’s daughter, a young, unmarried woman helps her father bottle the potion—pouring in the contents through the thin neck with a dropper. Does she sell the bottles at the shop with him? To that, he shakes his head furiously, frowning in disapproval. Syed prefers that his hijab-covered daughter work indoors. ‘Shops,’ he states, ‘should display only wares.’

  ‘The next step is essential,’ he continues unperturbed, pulling up pellets of wood that fire the cauldron to make the ittar, in what is called the deg (still) and bhapka (receiver) technique. ‘We use only bainth, or cane wood, not teak wood. Teak can make the vapours noisome, giving the perfume a bitter, seared fragrance. The fire under these degs is then lit with a boiler,’ he explains, talking about the thin pipe through which he blows to tame the fire. ‘I prefer cooking in my old copper pots.’ These purportedly belonged to his great-grandfather. ‘They heat evenly and pass on a more rustic fragrance to the perfume. Steel is bad. Very bad. I don’t know why we Indians are obsessed with this cheap metal. Of course, one could use mud pots as well. My grandmother used to make salan, a spicy gravy to go with biryani, in old mud pots over wood. What a zaikedar salan that was . . .’

  Connected to this steaming cauldron is another pot to which all the vapour is directed. Here, the vapour, called the rooh, is collected, separating the water from the oil. Syed generally keeps his ittars simple, mostly using this natural distillation process with sandal oil as a base. If it works, he bottles and sells them. If not, he is back at the workshop, creating another new fragrance and another and then another. It took him eleven years of training under his father to perfect his formula for gulab, a lo
t less than the two decades that his father took to perfect a musk fragrance. Gulab, resultantly, has sillage worthy of aristocracy.

  Fables and legends trace the origin of this gulab ittar to Empress Nur Jehan, wife of the Mughal emperor Jahangir. But according to his diary, it was Nur Jehan’s mother, Asmat Begum, who discovered the ittar instead4.

  The diary states:

  I have regret for the Jahangiri itr [named after him] that my father’s [Akbar] nostrils were not gratified with such essences. This is a discovery which was made during my reign through the efforts of the mother of Nur Jehan Begum.

  When she was making rose water, a scum formed on the dishes into which the hot rose-water was poured from the jugs . . . She collected the scum little by little. It is of such strength in perfume that if one drop is rubbed on the palm of the hand, it scents a whole assembly and it appears as if many such rosebuds had bloomed at once. There is no other scent of equal excellence to it. It restores hearts that have gone [broken], and brings back withered souls.

  The Mughals fragranced their palaces, anointed their wives and themselves in ittar, and sometimes offered the bottled sweetness as gifts to their guests from far-off lands. The women in the Mughal harem were educated in the art of enticement through fragrances, using motiar (jasmine) when the men were tired, and khus when it was hot.