On a Shoestring to Coorg

by Dervla Murphy

  In the November 1922 issue of Blackwoods, Hilton Brown, an I.C.S. officer, wrote: ‘There is just one disconcerting feature about the Coorgs – their ready willingness to be dominated by the outsider … The Coorg’s profession is all to the contrary, but the fact remains … It is very puzzling, for it is just what one would not expect … The Coorg can think for himself, and he ought to; but very often he won’t.’ I wonder, however, if Mr Brown was altogether right. It is arguable that the Coorgs have a history of being dominated by outsiders not because of any innate tendency to submit but because they have never been able to unite effectively for the good of their country. Up to the beginning of the seventeenth century this tiny region was never ruled by any one dynasty but by numerous princelings and chieftains owing allegiance to bigger outside powers.

  My old friend the Gazetteer emphasises the benefits conferred on Coorg by the Raj, yet during the restless 1920s the Coorg Landholders’ Association was formed to demand – unsuccessfully – a greater share in the running of the province. Then in 1940, as part of a Government economy campaign, Coorg became ‘a self-sufficient unit with all the offices located within its territory and was governed by a full-time Chief Commissioner’.

  So the scene was set for much post-Independence political agitation in a province where the powerful Coorg minority wished their land to remain ‘a self-sufficient unit’, while many of the less influential non-Coorg majority favoured a merger with Mysore (now Karnataka) State. From March 1952 until November 1956 the province had what was known as a ‘Popular Government’ with a two-man ministry; but ‘popular’ proved a very inappropriate adjective and by 1956 many previously staunch separatists had become so disillusioned by the inefficiency and corruption of their own Coorg politicians that they, too, advised a merger.

  However, most Coorgs still bitterly resent their loss of independence; walking into Virajpet this morning I met no less than three men who made a point of telling me what a fine place this once was, when not being manipulated by the bureaucrats of Karnataka for their own ends. One middle-aged man, clad in patched pants and a threadbare shirt, gloomily quoted Abraham Lincoln – ‘You cannot strengthen the weak by weakening the strong.’ I do not know how real local grievances are, but one does see many signs of a recent decline in the region’s traditional level of prosperity. For seventeen years the State government has been siphoning off, through taxation, a considerable proportion of Coorg’s income and the Coorgs argue that it is grossly unjust to expect them to prop up the less fortunate areas of Karnataka. At first glance this reluctance to share their wealth seems ungenerous, but at second glance one realises that Lincoln was right. Applied to the vastness of Karnataka State that stream of wealth which would suffice to keep Coorg happy and healthy makes little impression, while its deflection from Coorg has already had perceptible ill-effects.

  One is very aware, here in Devangeri, of witnessing a society in transition. This evening Dr Chengappa arrived with his 18-year-old daughter whose duty it was, as the eldest maiden in the family, to initiate the storing of this year’s crop by carrying a basket of paddy on her head from the threshing-yard to the granary. She is an extremely sophisticated young woman who speaks faultless English and, as I sat on a window ledge, looking down at that elegant figure ceremoniously crossing the compound with its unaccustomed burden, I wondered if her daughter will in time do likewise, or if she represents the last generation of tradition-observing Coorgs.

  15 January.

  We lunched with the Machiahs today and on arrival found Mr Machiah sewing up big sacks of paddy to be sent to his three married sons in Bombay. One daughter-in-law is a Cochin Christian, but the Machiahs seem as fond of her as of the two Coorg girls whom they themselves chose. Although the Coorgs are so proud of being a race apart, they are more socially flexible than most Indians. No doubt they are secretly saddened when their children marry non-Coorgs, but the majority warmly welcome outsiders into their little community. Such marriages are now becoming much commoner and there is a danger that eventually the 80,000 or so Coorgs may lose their identity amidst India’s hundreds of millions.

  We had a delicious lunch, cooked by Mrs Machiah, and everything on the table was home-produced: steamed rice, fried chicken, cabbage so cunningly cooked it bore not the slightest resemblance to what we call boiled cabbage, egg and tomato salad, rice bread, crisp, subtly flavoured potato-cakes (these specially prepared to honour the Irish), fruit salad and coffee. Unlike most South Indians, the meat-eating Coorgs do not care for very hot foods and are such good cooks that I foresee my middle-aged spread getting altogether out of control here.

  To my annoyance – and to the great glee of all onlookers – the antique well in the compound utterly defeats me so someone else must fill my bucket and keep the great earthen water-pot in the latrine topped up. Because of caste laws, this is a slightly complicated situation. No Harijan can draw water from our well, and no non-Harijan will enter our latrine. So I myself have to top up the latrine container with water drawn by Subaya or Shanti, poured by them into the large brass washroom jar, and transferred by me into the latrine container. It would be only too easy unwittingly to do something dreadfully polluting – like borrowing a cooking vessel from the kitchen – which would involve the family in an elaborate and expensive purification ceremony. One is therefore permanently on the alert, watching out for disapproving glances.

  16 January.

  I realised today that I have not yet adequately described Devangeri. It is a typical Coorg non-village, consisting of our house – the manor, as it were – the two schools already mentioned and a few score homesteads and thatched labourers’ cottages, scattered over an area of two or three square miles. Behind our house is a long, two-storeyed building with an outside stairs at one gable-end leading up to the local Co-operative Society’s offices and storerooms. The ground floor of this building accommodates the tiny post office – which opens only for brief periods at irregular intervals – and the village tailor’s workshop, and a mini tea-house where card-players gather, and a twilit general store too small to hold more than one customer at a time. Anybody who happens to be expecting a letter saunters along to collect it during the forenoon, or sends a servant to fetch it, and so far I have heard no complaints though the battered and rusted metal box to which one entrusts outgoing mail has been in situ since the reign of Queen Victoria. I buy my kerosene (a litre in an Arak bottle for 1 rupee) from the store: but nothing else, as village hucksters charge at least 20 per cent more than bazaar merchants, and adulterate even such unlikely things as soap and candles – which have probably been adulterated once already, before leaving their respective factories.

  At a little distance from the Co-operative building, on the edge of the forest, stands our ‘local’, a ramshackle cottage from which Subaya every morning procures my breakfast litre of palm-toddy – in another Arak bottle – for 50 paise. (Where else, nowadays, could one buy a litre of beer for 2½ pence?) This potation is taken from the toddy-palm at dawn, in an earthenware pot that was attached to the top of the tree by a tapper the previous evening, and it arrives in our room fermenting on the wing, as you might say, with numerous dead ants almost blocking the neck of the bottle. If one neglects to drink it within a few hours it is said to do terrible things to the innards, so at last I have an excuse for drinking beer with my breakfast. It is most refreshing, whitish in colour and with a low yet perceptible alcohol content. The Coorgs think it so health-giving that even elderly female pillars of respectability habitually have a glass (but not, admittedly, a litre) before breakfast.

  At all hours of the day, Devangeri’s alcoholics may be seen sitting on benches outside the local, clutching tumblers of neat, potentially lethal, home-distilled Arak. According to sacred Hindu laws the drinking of alcohol is a most grievous sin, for which the orthodox atonement is suicide by drinking boiling spirits – though it seems unlikely that anyone impious enough deliberately to drink alcohol would afterwards feel remorseful enough t
o take his own life. At all events, the Coorgs have never heeded this prohibition and excessive drinking is undoubtedly their worst collective fault. Often men stagger home at lunchtime, unable to keep upright without assistance, and local reactions to this spectacle remind me very much of Ireland. People are mildly amused, or affectionately chiding, or ribaldly witty, or occasionally slightly impatient – but never critical. (Except of course for the more responsible members of the community, who think about the drunkard’s wife and children.)

  I was diverted this evening by the section on Prohibition in the 1965 Coorg Gazetteer. Passages are worth quoting: and the reader should bear in mind that the Prohibition Laws have since been allowed to fall into disuse. ‘It has been laid down in the Constitution as a directive principle of State policy, that the State shall endeavour to bring about Prohibition of the consumption – except for medical purposes – of intoxicating drinks and drugs which are injurious to health. Drink has generally been responsible for the poverty and misery of man, sinking him lower and lower into depths of danger and despair. There is no gainsaying the fact that prohibition is a social as well as an economic necessity and it acts as the fulcrum and force in our economic programme for social amelioration. … Though prohibition was formally inaugurated on the 2nd April 1956, effective enforcement began only on 25th April 1956, leaving reasonable time for consumers to adjust themselves to the new circumstances …’ [And to make Other Arrangements] ‘… Permits for possession and consumption of liquor were issued only in exceptional cases; they were issued to (i) those who were accustomed to take liquor, (ii) non-proprietary clubs for sale to such of their members as held permits and (iii) the church authorities for sacramental purposes … Government have sustained a loss of about twelve lakhs of rupees annually, consequent on the introduction of prohibition in the district … As is to be expected, illicit distillation followed in the wake of prohibition … The incidence of illicit distillery cases was high in the year 1962, 1,846 cases [in tiny Coorg!] having been detected during that year.

  ‘The introduction of prohibition has already brought a change in the social outlook of the people who were once accustomed to drink. It has brought peace to their homes and enabled them to save money, pay old debts, purchase new clothes, eat better food and lead healthier lives … The general feeling among the public, however, remained that … the prohibition law was contravened on a large scale and the percentage of convictions was very low … it has to be admitted that the number of permits issued appears to be large. Action is being taken to restrict the number, only to deserving cases.’

  But alas! for the prohibitionists, those ‘deserving cases’ soon came to form the majority of the population of Coorg, and eventually the whole dotty though well-meaning experiment was tacitly acknowledged to be no more than a breeding ground for bribery and corruption. I daresay something similar would happen if anybody tried to enforce prohibition in Ireland.

  Reverting to the Hindu sacred law on alcohol: for years I have wondered why it was so fanatical (by any reckoning, suicide as an atonement is going a bit far), and at Cape Comorin I got a plausible explanation from a splendid old Brahman scholar with whom we watched the sunset. It seems that when the Aryans arrived in India they were confirmed soma addicts, and because they assumed their gods must also enjoy this psychedelic drink they decently fixed them a soma whenever they made a ritual sacrifice. By the end of the Vedic period soma drinking had come to dominate their religious ceremonies and the severity of the anti-alcohol laws was part of a successful attempt to have harmless rhubarb juice substituted for the juice of the extremely dangerous hallucinogenic red-capped mushroom, which is now accepted by most experts as the source of soma. Neat soma is a deadly poison, but blended with honey, milk and water it becomes palatable. Its addicts were evidently not too fussy about flavour since laymen commonly collected for their own consumption the urine of soma-drinking priests.

  Virajpet’s post office is the oldest such establishment in Coorg – and looks it. This morning, when I patronised it for the first time, a clerk became excessively agitated at the prospect of having to register four air-mail letters to Ireland, and the unruly behaviour of the crowd around me did nothing to help him regain his composure. It had taken me fifteen minutes to establish myself in a position of negotiation, to the forefront of this crowd, and in order to retain my advantage I had to grip the shelf in front of me very firmly: otherwise I would have been pushed beyond reach and sight of the clerk. Meanwhile he, poor man – looking not unlike a harassed rabbit, behind his wire netting – had to thumb through two grimy volumes, and do intricate calculations on blotting-pads, to enable him to arrive at some plausible conclusion about my letters. While he thus did his duty several of the rowdier members of the crowd yelled abuse at him and demanded to be given 15 paise stamps at once. It was easy to see how their minds were working. They only wanted one stamp each, for which they were clutching the right number of coins in their fists, whereas I wanted to transact an infinitely complicated piece of business which might take hours. (In fact it took precisely forty-three minutes.) To placate them the clerk at intervals pushed a few fifteen paise stamps across the shelf, which naturally encouraged another importunate scrum to form around me. There must have been at least fifty jostling, shouting men on that veranda when suddenly one tall, elderly Coorg appeared and said a few sharp words. Intantly the crowd fell back and was silent, not advancing again until I had finished my business. I do not know who this gentleman was, but there could be no more striking example of the Coorg community – minority though it is – or of the enduringly feudal structure of Coorg society.

  17 January.

  This morning Rachel suddenly announced ‘I think I’ll be able to walk properly today’ – which she was, though wearing only a sock over the thick bandage on her injured foot.

  After lunch we went to the Machiahs in quest of eggs, Mrs Machiah having agreed to become our supplier. But today there were none because during the past few nights a mongoose and a jackal have between them decimated the hen population. Early this morning Mr Machiah shot the jackal and gave it to a local outcaste eccentric who relishes jackal flesh – a rare taste, even among outcastes. It is less easy to eliminate a mongoose, and anyway these pretty little creatures kill so many snakes and rats that they deserve an occasional banquet of chicken. We saw one this afternoon, racing across the path near the Machiahs’ house. The culprit, no doubt.

  Today’s domestic excitement was the purchase of twenty large sardines for 1 rupee. I bought them from a ragged youth found sitting on the back doorstep and unmistakably they were fresh, but had I known the wretched things would take an hour and forty minutes to clean I might have felt less enthusiastic. The minute scales proved extremely adhesive, first to their owners and then to everything in the kitchen corner of our living-room. Also, if not gutted very delicately they went to pieces in me ’and, and their multitudinous fins required no less skilful treatment. By the end of that session I had had the simple life and could entirely see the point of buying tinned sardines.

  On the whole, however, I am enormously enjoying the rhythm of these Devangeri days. Nothing much happens here, or is ever likely to happen, and if one did not have a lot of reading and writing to do one would no doubt feel bored; but I consider it the ideal life. When I hear Subaya locking up after sunset, and going off to wherever he and his family sleep, I reflect that now it’s just the Murphys and the Chengappa ancestors in residence. And if one can go by the ‘feeling’ of this whole huge silent house, lit only by the two candles flickering on my table, those ancestors are most amiable and welcoming. I am totally unpsychic, and not abnormally suggestible, but in a most curious and pleasing way I am aware of not being quite alone here. The house is companionable: let us leave it at that.

  19 January.

  This afternoon Mrs Machiah took us to meet cousins of hers who live just up the road but have been away during the past few weeks. The family consists of Lieutenant-Colonel (Rt
d., and for some years past a coffee-planter) and Mrs Ayyappa, their 20-year-old daughter Shirley and a 14-year-old son now at school in Ooty. The new Ayyappa bungalow – very handsome, with teak floors and rosewood ceilings – stands beside their old Ain Mane but on a lower level, since no dwelling must overshadow the ancestral home. Mrs Ayyappa is a fanatical gardener who has created – starting from bare ground – what can only be described as a mini-Kew. Both she and Shirley are rather shy and very gentle and we are invited to drop in whenever we feel like it.

  As we drank our coffee the talk was of inflation, civil disorder, food-adulteration and the oil-crisis. Colonel Ayyappa showed me a paragraph in today’s Deccan Herald, where India’s Defence Minister, Jagjivan Ram, is quoted as having said, ‘The Indian Penal Code provides the death penalty for murder by physical force or weapons, but those who kill people by adulterating medicines or food go practically untouched. Yet the gravity of the crime is far greater in the latter case and warrants a proportionate penalty.’ Makes one think, as one goes forth into the bazaar with one’s shopping basket. My only real fear is powdered glass in the sugar – a not unusual phenomenon, since some merchants think nothing of poisoning customers if they can thereby rake in a few extra rupees. Several (Hindu) friends have strongly advised me to buy only from Moplah (Muslim) merchants in Virajpet.

  This evening, as I read Rachel’s bedtime stories – from The Heroes and The Arabian Nights – it struck me that in future such stories are going to seem much more real to her. Grinding the day’s supply of flour, drawing water from the well, going into the forest to collect firewood to cook the evening meal, fetching bales of cloth home from the bazaar on one’s head, yoking the oxen, shaping and firing bricks to build a new home, hunting for meat, trimming the lamps at sunset, making offerings to the gods – all these are commonplace activities here, though weirder than space travel to Western children of the Technological Age.