On a Shoestring to Coorg

by Dervla Murphy

  Yet the influence of the Raj did appreciably improve the position of many urban women and this new legislation must eventually bring about a change in rural India. Listening to Shanti, I got the impression she would prefer not to see an abrupt change, even if such a thing were possible; and on such a basic point as arranged marriages few mature Indians – outside of a tiny cosmopolitan ‘sub-caste’ which is no longer truly Indian – are prepared to advocate any change, ever. Even a couple as liberal as the Appayyas would feel deeply distressed should their daughter set out on a personal husband-hunt instead of depending on her parents’ judgement.

  I asked Shanti what the average parents’ priorities are as they cast about for suitable mates for their young, and she replied without hesitation that all Coorgs consider ‘blood’ the most important qualification – by which I assume she meant caste and sub-caste. Next comes ‘honour’ (that is, moral character), and then property, health, looks and accomplishments. On the question of honour a boy’s parents pay special attention to the character of a girl’s mother and Shanti quoted a Coorg proverb – ‘If the mother has a white tail the daughter will at least have a white spot’. So if a girl can produce a mother with an unblemished reputation it does not much matter what unsavoury predilections she may have inherited from her father.

  Shanti also remarked on a change I have recently heard mentioned by several other Indians – the tendency amongst today’s youngsters to abandon that love-match ideal which twenty or twenty-five years ago was the dream of every progressive young Indian. Some of those youngsters are themselves the victims of love-matches gone wrong, and many others know that a high percentage of such marriages failed. This failure rate is hardly surprising since there is little in the Indian’s cultural background to help them to create the sort of relationship that should develop out of a love-match.

  According to Casey, the Coorg Civil Law is still widely respected and Coorgs have only recently been permitted to own private property. Until the joint-family system was weakened by migration, no individual could acquire or inherit property that was separate from the family possessions. Now, however, men are allowed to leave to their children – without having first to seek permission from the Koravakara (Head of the House) – all property acquired through their personal effort. But the Coorg who has prospered in some far-away city is still criticised if he does not annually donate a generous portion of his wealth to the family pool. And nothing is allowed to interfere with the cultivation of the joint-family lands by the joint-family for the benefit of the joint-family.

  It seemed to me, listening to Casey’s explanations, that the Koravakara is not to be envied. As the eldest son, he has all the worry and responsibility, when he succeeds his father, of managing the entire estate, yet he is not entitled to an even fractionally larger share of anything than his brothers – or his widowed sisters-in-law, on behalf of their sons, should his brothers predecease him.

  The adoption laws are interesting. A childless Coorg widow may adopt a son to inherit her husband’s share of property, and so may a Coorg male who is himself disqualified from inheriting through disease or blindness, or an unmarried Coorg female who has no brothers. (Spinsters are very rare in India but they can happen, usually because of some physiological defect.) An illegitimate son or daughter may not, however, be adopted, nor can a boy be purchased. Most people prefer to adopt a spare son of a daughter of their own household, if such is available. Adoptions are not recorded in writing, but a little ceremony takes place in the presence of relatives and friends; and, if adoptive parents subsequently produce a son of their own, he and the adopted boy have equal rights and the latter, being the elder, will eventually become the Koravakara. Many childless Hindu men adopt because they fear Putt, a place of torment reserved by some unspecified but obviously unreasonable god for those who have no son to perform the last rites over their corpse. But Coorgs are made of sterner stuff. They don’t believe in Putt and their motives for adoption are always strictly practical.

  7

  The Huthri Festival

  8 December. Green Hills, near Virajpet.

  This address – sounding so like a stockbroker’s fine detached residence in darkest Surrey – is a typical period aberration on the part of a wealthy Coorg landowner and Cambridge graduate of the early twentieth century.

  For some odd reason, now quite forgotten, a Swiss architect designed Green Hills in about 1910, when Tim’s father moved out of the ancestral home. By my humble standards – or, indeed, by normal Coorg standards – it is an imposing mini-palace, full of ebony and teak and rosewood, and silver and ivory and brass, and ancient armour, and swords that were wielded in famous battles, and of course the inevitable, magnificent shikar trophies which Rachel and I find so very off-putting. However, though Tim was one of the most celebrated hunters of his generation, and prided himself on always going into the forests on foot, even he has at last been bitten by the conservation bug. But it may already be too late to save the Coorg tiger.

  This morning the Appayyas insisted on providing us with an ancient retainer as escort, which I felt was taking concern for one’s guests a bit far. Obviously none of them could imagine a foreign woman, who spoke only English, being able to find her way unaided from Andanipura to Green Hills – a distance of some thirty miles.

  When we changed buses at Mercara I bought today’s Deccan Herald and read: ‘Three Killed in Bus Capsize: A bus proceeding from Coimbatore to Velanthavalam village had more than one hundred passengers at the time of the accident … The driver was reported to have absconded, while the conductor surrendered at the Madukkarai police station.’ Folding up the newspaper I looked around and estimated there were no more than sixty-five people in our forty-four-seater bus, so we seemed likely enough to survive.

  The road from Mercara to Green Hills – which is five miles north of the market town of Virajpet – winds through South Coorg, where the landscape is less rugged than in the north but even more beautiful. This whole area – Yedenal Kanad Taluk – is extraordinarily fertile and generally considered the centre of Coorg life. Many leading families live here and Virajpet, though a smaller town than Mercara, is the province’s most important commercial centre.

  I find myself automatically using the word ‘province’ when writing of Coorg, though the term is no longer technically correct. Under the British, Coorg was a province – the smallest in India, administered by a commissioner – but now it is merely one of Karnataka’s many districts. However, I may perhaps be allowed this inaccuracy, in view of Coorg’s ‘natural’ – as distinct from political – independence.

  The bus put us down at the freshly painted white wooden gates of the Green Hills estate and as we walked up a long drive I could for a moment have believed myself in some quiet corner of England. On either side, green parkland was dotted with handsome trees; near by grazed a few fine horses and a herd of even finer cows, and in the distance, beyond the big house amidst its brilliant abundance of flowers and shrubs, lay the long, uneven line of the Ghats. Their gentle blue contrasted with the vivid, sharp, almost incredible blue of this Coorg sky – a sky such as one would never, it must be admitted, see in England. Nor would one pass there a nursery of orange-tree saplings and baby coffee-bushes, each infant protected by a wicker shield; and the bull would not be a glossy red Sindhi with a splendid hump, nor would the house be surrounded by graceful groves of immensely tall areca-nut and coconut-palms.

  We arrived just as lunch was being served on the veranda and Sita introduced us to her mother, her two brothers, various visiting relatives and five dogs including a Great Dane the size of a pony. More relatives will arrive this evening for the Huthri Festival tomorrow.

  One has to admire the Coorgs’ devotion to their own customs. Observing the Thimmiah family today, I noticed that when junior members meet their elders they bow respectfully to touch the older person’s knees with the fingertips, which are then pressed to their own forehead and, finally, to their superior’s feet
. This form of obeisance takes longer to describe than to carry out: the whole series of gestures is somehow swiftly accomplished in one graceful movement. And it pleases me to see such a tradition maintained, even in the most sophisticated circles.

  Huthri literally means ‘new rice crop’ and the festivities go on for about a week. These celebrations are simple – mainly dancing, singing, eating and drinking – but Huthri is greatly looked forward to as the one occasion when nothing short of serious illness prevents every family member from returning to the ancestral home. The central event is the solemn cutting of the first sheaf of paddy by the head of the family. This must be done on the night of a full moon, in either November or December, at a precise moment which has been declared auspicious by the Kanias (astrologers). No one yet knows when the 1973 auspicious moment will be, but tomorrow’s newspapers are expected to publish it. I felt slightly cheated on being told this; an announcement about a ceremony that may well antedate the written word – never mind the printed word – by thousands of years should surely be publicised in some more romantic way than through the newspapers.

  A thorough spring-cleaning of every house, outbuilding, yard and garden precedes Huthri, and today all doorways and windows were decorated with festoons of mango and peepul branches and garlands of flowers. The pathways and gateways from the fields to the house must also be decorated with elaborate floral arches, and this afternoon Rachel and I went for a long walk so that none of the busy household would feel it necessary to entertain us.

  On our way we explored one of Tim’s big plantations where the coffee-berries were swelling and ripening beneath towering, ancient shade-trees. As coffee-bushes need shade the forests never had to be completely cleared to make way for the plantations and walking through coffee is always a delight; enough trees remain for the insect and bird life to flourish and this afternoon we saw three sensationally large butterflies and several jewel-like birds.

  As we were leaving the plantation I happened to notice, in an uncleared patch of forest near the road, one of those primitive non-shrines which seem much more relevant to the religious life of Indian peasants than the ornate, Brahman-dominated temples. A long, flat stone (not a lingam) lay on the ground amidst the tangled roots of a gigantic tree that seemed as old as the earth itself. No attempt had been made to erect even the crudest shelter over this altar-like boulder but many small objects were piled near by and, when my eyes had got used to the perpetual twilight beneath that dense canopy of leaves, I saw the simple pottery votive offerings of people whose ancestors were worshipping thus before ever Brahmanistic Hinduism was heard of. These clumsily made little figures represented elephants, cattle, goats, dogs or pigs and some looked fresh from the fire. We circled the colossal tree under which the stone lay, following a path trodden by countless generations, and I noticed that piles of broken pottery almost covered the complex roots. I wondered then if human sacrifices had ever been made in this appropriate setting. But if once upon a time such rites did take place the victims must have been as happy to die as Christian martyrs, for there is now no stain of terror or brutality on the atmosphere. (In letting my mind run on these morbid lines, I was not being unduly fanciful. Up to the middle of the last century, at Kirindadu and Konincheri villages in near-by Katiednad, a human sacrifice was offered to Bhadra Kali in the June and December of every third year. Then gradually, as the British influence spread, human victims were replaced by animals.)

  When I asked Tim about the stone slab in the sacred grove he said – rather surprisingly – that he had never heard of it, but that it could be one of those altars dedicated to the local god Bete-Ayyappa – Lord-father of hunting expeditions – which are found all over Coorg in forests and fields. He added that in honour of this god the Coorgs have reserved a certain tract of forest in each nad which is considered sacred and where no trees may be cut. Despite Coorg’s abundant forest wealth, the indiscriminate felling of trees has always been discouraged and very ancient customs – which have the force of laws – specify which trees should be used for fuel, which for building, which for furniture and so on. It is laid down that only the branches should be cut; nobody has the right to fell a tree unless he has already planted two.

  9 December.

  By dinner-time last night all the family had assembled for today’s Huthri ceremonies and a more congenial gathering it would be hard to imagine. I am still searching for words to convey exactly what it is that makes the Coorgs seem so endearing. Perhaps I came across a clue to it this morning, when reading an early book on Coorg borrowed from Tim’s library. Some 120 years ago a Swiss missionary – Dr Moegling – wrote of the Coorgs that ‘strangers are received among them and naturalised without difficulty.’ And for the ordinary traveller it is not only heart-warming but flattering to be made to feel immediately at home by people who, though Westernised in many superficial ways, have so far remained emphatically a race apart.

  This evening’s ceremonies began at seven-thirty when we were sitting on the veranda sipping our gins or whiskies. Suddenly Sita said, ‘Listen!’ – and we heard the distant beating of drums and clashing of cymbals and the occasional long, solemn note of a horn. As the music drew nearer I moved to sit on the broad wooden parapet at the edge of the veranda, overlooking a level stretch of freshly swept beaten earth – some fifty yards by twenty – on which the Holeyas would dance. These are the labourers who work in the paddy-valleys and many of whose ancestors have been the Holeyas of Tim’s ancestors for centuries.

  There was nothing outwardly remarkable about the forty or so men and boys who soon appeared, dressed in everyday clothes and led by a five-man band. At first they seemed rather self-conscious but then something took hold of them – the music? the home-distilled Arak they had been drinking? or simply the Huthri spirit? – and for two hours they danced and chanted like beings possessed by some happy demon. This was a glorious scene, lit by the full moon – slim, agile figures leaping and crouching, and twisting and wriggling, and bounding and swaying in their improvised dances. It was every man for himself, from a turbaned greybeard who must have been well over 70 years old to a chubby, vigorously pirouetting 4-year-old. And overhead the leaves of the tall palms stirred and glinted against a blue velvet sky, while fireworks of every conceivable sort were being let off at frequent intervals by the small boys of the family.

  Meanwhile, the menfolk had been taking a purifying bath and dressing in their traditional costume, which is so dignified, attractive and practical that I cannot imagine why they ever abandoned it in favour of Western clothes. The coat – called a kupya, and usually made of thick black cloth – reaches a little below the knees and has a vee-neck, elbow-length sleeves and a scarlet and gold silken tasselled sash. Under it is worn a white shirt and into the sash is tucked a peechekathi or an odikathi, or both. The former is a short, sharp dagger with an ivory handle and a silver and gold ornamental scabbard; the latter is a heavy, curved knife very like the Gurkha kukri. On ceremonial occasions the male Coorg costume must include a peechekathi, attached to the silken sash by a long silver chain decorated with exquisite silver miniatures of all the traditional Coorg weapons. The unique, flat-topped Coorg turban completes this striking outfit and the legs and feet should be left bare; but nowadays almost everybody is hookworm-conscious and wears light sandals. A strong streak of egalitarianism runs through Coorg society and at ceremonial gatherings it is impossible to tell the difference, by their attire, between the poorest farmer and the richest coffee planter.

  For Huthri each member of the local community makes his contribution, the potter bringing a new pot, the mat-weaver a new mat, the basket-maker a new basket, the carpenter a new wooden bowl; and at nine-thirty, when we went to the Nellakki Nadubade or inner hall of the house – which amongst the ancestor-revering Coorgs serves as a family chapel – I saw the uses to which these things are put. At one end of the room the sacred brass wall-lamp, now lit, hung from the ceiling at face-level and directly below it the new mat was spread
on the floor, touching the wall. On it stood the new basket, containing auspicious bitter-gourd, mango and peepul leaves, and also an old basket containing some of last year’s paddy to welcome this year’s crop. The new earthen pot held flour made from fried boiled rice, and beside it stood small bowls full of milk, honey, sesame and ground coconut. On a three-legged stool was laid the billhook with which Tim would cut the first sheaf, beside a dish-lamp complete with rice, betel leaves and areca nuts.

  As we all stood before the wall-lamp Tim invoked the blessing of the god Igguthappa and the Karona (family ancestor), and then each member of the family saluted him in the traditional way and received his blessings. At this point the Koravakara’s wife becomes the most important person in the ceremony and Mrs Thimmiah, bearing the dish-lamp, led us in procession from the house to the fields.

  We were preceded by several torch-bearers holding aloft blazing plantain stumps to light our way down the steep slope immediately below the house, and at intervals other stumps wrapped in oil-soaked rags flared beside the pathways, making the blossoms on the flower-bedecked archways glow with a strange, subtle radiance. All the time the tempo of the music was quickening and it reached a crescendo when we stepped from the shadows of the tall coffee-bushes and the paddy came suddenly into view, looking like a wide lake of silver beneath the brilliance of the tropical moon.

  The swathes to be ceremonially cut had already been prepared and we approached them by walking in single file along the narrow tops of the dykes. Then Tim looked at his watch, poured milk and honey on the roots of a paddy clump, accepted the billhook from the youth who had been carrying it in a special bamboo container and, to a frenzy of music and exhilarated chanting, cut the first stalks of this year’s harvest. At once a henchman rushed to the edge of the group and fired a single shot into the air to summon Igguthappa – and everyone began an immemorial chant to invoke the god’s blessings on the crop. As I write this is still going on somewhere out in the vast, shadowy courtyard. The words mean ‘Increase, O God!’ and sound like ‘Poli, Poli, Deva! Poli, Poli, Deva!’ Poli’ is said very quickly, while ‘Deva’ is almost drawled.