by Mark Tully
The shopping turned out to be a half-bottle of Jupiter Royal King Whisky. At the top end of the market, Indian whiskies are highly potable; at the bottom they are near lethal. I'd never heard of Jupiter and so I assumed it was in the latter class. Iyer described it as his cocktail, and proceeded to pour handsome pegs into his, Jangarh's and Prakash's beer.
I wanted to know more about Swami, so I told them how much I had enjoyed my two days with him. Iyer said, ‘I'll tell you a story about Swami, about the sort of man he is. When I applied for a job at Bharat Bhavan I had just left university, where I'd been a student leader. We were the rough and tough types, ready for anything. The local shopkeepers gave us plenty of respect and we used to drink with the police, so we were well in with them. The problem was that I had no job and no ready cash. But I wasn't going to take any crap from anyone just to get myself a job, and specially not from some government babu. So I came to that interview in a foul mood.’
‘What made you apply for a job at Bharat Bhavan? Were you interested in art?’
‘No – that's the whole point. I saw this advertisement for a galleryman on a bag of potatoes made out of newspaper and I thought that, being a government job, it would have been fixed in advance. Nevertheless I applied, like I applied for a whole lot of other jobs. I had absolutely no interest in it at all. My mood didn't improve when I saw this long-haired, khadi-clad creep sitting behind the interview desk. I thought to myself: some typical arty fraud bumming off the government. Anyhow, I thought, I'll fix him. Swami's first question was, “What do you know about art?” I replied, “What is art?” Swami didn't take me up on that one but went on to ask me to name three Indian artists. I told him that I didn't know one, but that I had liked a statue I had seen in a film called Mughal-e-Azam.’
The statue was a particularly tasteless plaster of Paris representation of a heroine in a sentimental historical drama.
Iyer went on, ‘That still didn't faze Swami. He continued with the interview – apparently seriously. His next question was the standard “Why do you want the job?” I of course replied, “For the money. But while I am getting the money I'll also look at your art.” It's a hell of a guy who can give you a job after an interview like that, and I have proved he was right. From being just another mindless bolshie student I have become an artist. My pictures have been shown in Delhi and are now going to Bombay. That's Swami for you.’
By this time the Jupiter Royal cocktail had made Jangarh talkative too. He turned to Iyer and said, ‘Don't mind if I tell you, but I think you are wrong. I think it's your fate and what you do with your own strength which makes you a success or a failure. I've told Swami to his face that I'll stand on my own two feet and whether I eat chicken and eggs or only dal is my fate, not in your hands or the government's.’
‘Come on,’ said Iyer. ‘You know you owe everything to Swami.’
‘That may be so, but I can look after myself. When I was at school I was the champion kabaddi and kho-kho [team games] player. I was a very good singer, and a dancer too. I know nobody really cares about the poor, although the poor are polite. Everybody goes and pays attention to the rich, although the rich are rude. As for these government officials who are meant to do good to the poor, well, I'll tell you my experience of them – they are just blood-suckers.’
‘What do you mean?’ I asked.
‘I once applied for a loan for a cow. The loan was for 2,000 rupees. I knew I was entitled to it because the government always makes such a noise about these schemes for helping the poor, although they never do really help. Anyhow, after the bank manager had taken his cut I got only 900 rupees – not even half what I was meant to get. But I was poor and in no position to argue and so I took the money. I still intended to buy some sort of a cow, but then I found out that the government vet took 300 rupees to certify the cow was fit to be insured. So I just kept the cash. What else could I do? The police still send warrants from time to time because I haven't repaid the loan. I have the cash now, but I'll be damned if I ever repay it.’
I broke the top off a beer bottle as I was opening it. Prakash said, ‘I can tell you why that has happened – there's too much gas in the bottle. I used to work in a small soft-drinks factory where we made naqli [fake] Coca-Cola at night. We used empty Coca-Cola bottles, and I swear you couldn't tell the difference between ours and the real thing.’
Jangarh unwrapped his red and white checked safa or headcloth and strained the beer through it to make sure no broken glass got into our drinks. At that stage in the evening no one much bothered whether the beer was naqli or not, and we polished off the last couple of bottles with an excellent meal of tandoori chicken and dal.
We had arrived at night and had received only the vaguest impression of Jabalpur. Most people from whom we asked the way to Jackson's Hotel seemed equally vague. The next morning we were able to see this leading city of Madhya Pradesh for ourselves.
In The Highlands of Central India (1889), a British officer, Captain J. Forsyth, wrote of nineteenth-century Jabalpur:
The steam-horse has torn his way through the parks, and levelled the bamboo clumps that were the glory of the place. Hideous embankments, and monstrous hotels, and other truly British buildings stare one in the face at every turn. Crowds of rail-borne ‘picturesquers’ assail the Marble Rocks and other sights about the place. Everything has run up to the famine prices induced by the rapid ‘progress’ of the last ten years.
Captain Forsyth would have loathed the internal-combustion engine even more than the steam-horse. In the Jabalpur of today, drivers of scooter-rickshaws, whose two-stroke engines emit particularly noxious fumes, battle both with their less fortunate rivals pedalling cycle-rickshaws and with pedestrians driven off the pavements by the stalls which have commandeered them. Situated at the exact geographical centre of India, the city should be a place of distinction, but it is in fact most undistinguished. It has an army tradition, being the depot of the Indian grenadiers, but it is a most unmilitary shambles. In short, Jabalpur's growth has been unplanned, uncoordinated and chaotic. Its streets are lined by small shops, tea stalls, purveyors of various sorts of cuisine, sweet-makers boiling great pans of milk on Calor-gas rings – every sort of fire and health hazard. Nobody knows how many of its citizens live in one-roomed shacks whose roofs are held down by bricks, old cycle frames, pieces of wood or any other junk the owners can find. We were only too happy to leave Jabalpur behind and get on the open road to Jangarh's village, Patangarh. It was just 112 miles away, but no one was guessing how long it would take the Ambassador to get there.
We were travelling through countryside which had once been jungle but was now rolling green hills with small clumps of trees dotted here and there. Yet everyone we saw seemed to be carrying wood or grass on their heads, indicating how dependent the tribals still are on the fast-dwindling forests and common land. We passed a gang of adivasis repairing the road. They wore just patched shorts and plastic shoes. Sweat glistened on their black skin as they stirred boiling tar and poured it on the road. Labourers are a common enough sight in India and I wouldn't have thought about them had it not been for Jangarh sitting in the front seat, smartly dressed in a pair of cream trousers and a purple shirt. Now, however, I saw those labourers as men who might perhaps be artists or musicians, who had villages, homes, families and traditions they were proud of.
Road signs warned of the approach of the steeper hills which they described as ghat sections. At the bottom of one ghat section I saw a group of women in startlingly bright saris sitting on the rocks at the edge of a river. On the other side of the bridge were a group of men dressed in white. A barber was shaving their heads. ‘It's a funeral,’ said Jangarh. One of the men came towards the car. I feared that he might be quite rightly annoyed that we had been staring at his women, but he was just curious. He was the eldest brother of a young man who had drowned in the river, a member of a farming caste from a nearby village. He had buried the boy near the river. When I asked why the boy
had not been cremated, his brother said, ‘Cremated? Nowadays who can get wood?’ The boy's widow, who was only fifteen, would not be able to remarry but would be adopted by some family.
By now the women had started walking back to the village, in single file. The young widow, looking stunned but rebellious, was the only one wearing a white sari – it symbolized her widowhood. The end of the sari covered her head too, which, as custom demanded, had been shaved by the side of the river. She wore no bangles – they had been broken as part of the ritual.
Eventually we reached Dindori, where the collector should have reserved rooms for us at the rest house. A cook whose head and belly had swollen in the service of the government told us rudely that he had not heard anything from the collector and that both rooms were reserved for the superintendent of police. The cook, like all minor Indian functionaries, delighted in being obstructive. We went to his boss, the assistant engineer of the public works department. He too had heard nothing from the collector but, surprisingly, was more willing to help. The engineer suggested that we stay in another rest house which, as luck would have it, was nearer Jangarh's village. When we reached that rest house, the cook there told us that the thanedar, the head of the local police station, had reserved it for the superintendent. Prakash was able to persuade the cook that the superintendent couldn't be in two places at the same time and that, anyhow, the engineer, not the thanedar, was the ‘concerned officer for controlling reservations in rest houses’.
Now the time had come for the last leg of the journey. We all fell silent, and I was worried about our arrival in the village – the embarrassment of being a total stranger in a close-knit community, the unreality of my position as a spectator who could never be a participant and, of course, the possibility of putting my foot in it.
It was pitch dark when Jangarh told Prakash to stop at a bullock-cart track going off the main road. This was the way into the village of Patangarh. Prakash didn't like the look of the track very much, but determination to see that his Ambassador made it to the very end overcame caution. We lurched across a shallow ditch, started to climb up a steep hillside and were soon in a narrow lane with small, dimly lit huts on both sides. We stopped outside one of these huts, which was Jangarh's home. The car was surrounded by people shielding their eyes from the lights. Cattle in a small stable shuffled uneasily. There was silence except for the whirring of the cicadas. Jangarh got out and touched the feet of his relatives, but nobody spoke.
It was Prakash who broke the ice. He leapt out of the car, opened the bonnet and fixed up an inspection light which he shone with exaggerated professionalism over the engine, pulling at a wire here, adjusting a screw there. The children couldn't resist this and soon everyone was involved in a discussion on what could be wrong with the Ambassador. I had not noticed anything beyond its normal eccentricities. Eventually Prakash, by now crouched beside a back wheel, shouted in triumph, ‘Ek shocker baith gaya’ – ‘One shocker has sat down.’
Jangarh led us through a low doorway, across a small courtyard into a room which he announced with pride was his. It was about thirty feet long and eight feet wide, with a sloping roof supported by three thick wooden beams. Jangarh explained how he had carried those beams from the forest on his back, and how he and his wife had ‘raised the walls with their own hands’ with mud mixed with chaff and straw. That was during the harsh early years of Jangarh's marriage. As often happens in Pradhan society, he had fallen in love and married when he and his wife were just thirteen. When, shortly afterwards, his father had died and the family had split up, he had to build his own house. Three of his children had died before they were two months old. He seemed resigned to their loss, saying that he would have been like a brother, not a father, to them if they had lived.
His room was lit by a wick in a small kerosene-filled bottle hanging from the wall. Some words of that senior official of the tribal welfare department in Bhopal came to mind. He had told me about a new scheme to install one lighting point in every Harijan and tribal house. ‘That’, said the official, ‘will mean that every time they switch on the light they will think of Chief Minister Arjun Singh.’ That is how politicians look at tribals – as easily purchasable vote fodder. They insult men like Jangarh, who are proud of their homes no matter how humble they may appear.
Gilly and I sat on a low ledge with our backs against a wall. Iyer sat opposite. Jangarh went out into the courtyard, from where we could hear the sound of low voices. The room had two small, unglazed, oval windows with bamboo bars. There was no furniture except for a charpai and some earthenware storage pots. On the wall was an advertisement for Tiger-brand biris, which Jangarh smokes, and a photograph of his son in Bhopal. He returned with a colourless liquor in a rum bottle, and four glasses. ‘This’, he said, ‘is mahua.’ Captain Forsyth said of mahua, ‘The spirit, when well made and mellowed by age, is by no means of despicable quality, resembling in some degree Irish whiskey.’
Mahua didn't taste like Irish whiskey to me, but maybe that was because my drop had been sold before it was seven years old. In Patangarh they don't believe in maturing the liquor, which they make from the flowers of the mahua tree – once it's been distilled, it's ready to drink. But even unmatured mahua is certainly not despicable. It has a pungent bouquet and a bitter-sweet taste very like many of the other better country-made liquors of India. Jangarh assured us it was a very clean drink.
Jangarh kept going out to meet his relatives and other villagers and then returning to drink with us. He explained how important it was that he should not cause offence to any of the villagers. ‘The whole village thinks, “This one poor small boy with no land is so wealthy today,” but I fall at their feet and they are all happy. However much I earn, I give half to the village whose earth I come from. I give the children biscuits and the older people a bottle of booze, and they are happy. I am happy too. If I don't meet everyone, and most of the village are my relatives, they say, “Here he is – yesterday a boy and today he thinks he can ignore us.”’
‘In what you call “city” society,’ I said, ‘we all do our best not to give anything away, avoiding income tax and all that.’
‘Hold on,’ replied Jangarh, ‘I don't give away so much that I am left naked.’
Towards the end of the evening, two of Jangarh's sisters – Genda and Shamabai – brought in food for us. Their children stood by shyly, but there was nothing shy or retiring about their mothers. They drank mahua, joined in the conversation and sang with Jangarh. The words of one song, which Jangarh himself had composed, ran, ‘The earth calls out, “Tell me, Raja, why are you leaving me? You will never find such love in the city as you find in your village.”’
The two sisters were the only villagers we met that night. When we left Jangarh to return to the rest house, the village was quiet, the inhabitants apparently asleep. He promised that tomorrow we would meet everyone, bathe in the River Narmada and drink more mahua.
When we returned to Patangarh at about eleven o'clock the next morning, the village still seemed to be asleep. Genda came out of her house grinning and told us that her brother was still not up because he and his friends had been drinking and dancing until five in the morning. Eventually Jangarh emerged, rubbing his eyes. He suggested we should go to meet the sarpanch, the head of the village council, who lived just two houses away. The sarpanch's wife was another of Jangarh's sisters, but considerably older than him.
After we had waited outside his hut for a few minutes, the sarpanch – Sahiba Singh Tekam – appeared in the doorway, dressed in a grimy vest and a crumpled dhoti. He blinked at the sunlight and asked, ‘Who are you?’ Without waiting for an answer, he came and sat beside us on the charpai which had been set out in our honour. He looked at us and remarked truculently, ‘No one should come to the village without calling on the sarpanch. I am the sarpanch, and everyone should call on me first. After all, I have the power to stop people coming here. They have to take my permission or’, and here he broke into English
, emphasizing each word, ‘No Admission, By Order’.
I explained that we had come to see him as soon as we had arrived that morning. That appeared to mollify him, though he was clearly under the influence of last night's liquor.
‘It is good of you to come to see us. We are only adivasis and live miles from anywhere.’
‘No,’ I replied, ‘it's not good of us. We are delighted to be here and are very honoured to be welcomed by you.’
That fatuous remark enraged the sarpanch. ‘People like you think you are too grand even to shit in the sort of houses we live in. I'm an important man. I should have a chamber to entertain you in. It's a disgrace that I don't have a chamber. Perhaps you don't know that my sister married Dr Verrier Elwin. He was a great man. He lived in this village and never counted anyone as big or small. He treated everybody alike.’
Verrier Elwin was an Anglican priest who worked in India and became close to Mahatma Gandhi. His fellow Englishmen did not, of course, approve of this. Elwin first came to work among the Gonds of Mandla district in 1932, with his lifelong friend and colleague Shamrao Hivale. They opened ashrams in the area, offering shelter to lepers and education and medical assistance to the villagers. Eventually Elwin renounced his orders, telling his bishop that his contact with the Mahatma had made it impossible for him to believe that there was only one way to heaven, and he remained among the tribals, studying their life. He became a distinguished anthropologist, and his writings show him to have been a humorous man with a great sympathy for the Gond way of life and character.
Elwin was always sceptical about the benefits of modern, Westernized education and medicine. Soon after coming to Mandla, he noted in his diary, published in Leaves from the Jungle – Life in a Gond Village, ‘Shamrao gives lecture on malaria at Bondar. Asks, “Who are our greatest enemies?” A voice, “Our wives.” General impression in villages, as result of health propaganda, that syphilis is spread by mosquitoes.’ He went on, ‘Dhobi [washerman] reports popular view of me, that I am immensely wealthy, and live as I do in order so to engage the favour of the Gods that they will give me more money still. Idea, common in Europe, that the ascetic life creates good impression on the oriental mind clearly very erroneous.’
