Mahua Magic

I bit into a ripe Mahua flower (left), goaded on by eager women. It's the 'tribal grape' one said. The other added that it would be sweeter than jaggery. The experience definitely was bitter-sweet. The intoxicating smell of the Mahua flowers carried through the wind to my expectant nose, promising more than it could deliver. The women harvest around 10 quintals of Mahua a season and earn Rs 35,000 to Rs 40,000 by selling the dried Mahua flowers (centre). They save some for their own consumption. They explained how they make sweets with it and how they add it to the vegetables they cook. A man was more forthcoming. "Do you know when there was no food to eat, we would consume the wine made from Mahua and work tirelessly?" he said. The others insisted that they did not make any alcohol with it. This may be because I was accompanied by someone who bit into the Mahua flower and wrinkled her nose saying it tasted of alcohol. It's interesting how narrative and knowledge shapes our senses and our experience of things. Thus Mahua 'tastes' like alcohol even for someone who has probably never consumed alcohol. Because alcohol is commonly made from it and is seen as taboo. Someone whose experience of alcohol is through films, would probably have a whiff of alcohol and start swooning, because that's is the commonly Bollywood-certified response to alcohol. Most tribal communities these days do not openly admit to making alcohol from Mahua. They would rather keep it a cultural secret than talk about it and have it disparaged in public by 'outsiders'. Often civil society projects end up vilifying any consumption of alcohol as a blanket crime. The cultural significance is thus marauded and shamed until even the children of these communities internalise the criminality of drinking and proclaim taking action against alcohol consumption with pride. It goes to add a moral reputation to alcohol consumption, not addressing other dimensions of why alcohol is consumed, why it may lead to violence, why excessive consumption can impact many things, including health and well-being. This is done through a careful juxtaposition of alcohol consumption and domestic violence. Often, going into the root cause of domestic violence can lead to uncomfortable questions, upending status quos and open social wounds that cannot be closed. Is it all the Mahua talking? Or the deep dissatisfaction with the way some questions are repeatedly broached and addressed regardless of geography, community, or custom? One wonders, but for those few minutes, the Mahua magic brought me together with the women of a small tribal hamlet somewhere in Odisha.        

 

Pati. A year on.

Time flies. It's been a year already since pati bid goodbye to us. The one word that comes to mind when I think of her is regal - she had a regal air to her. Even in her most shrivelled, helpless, confused last few days, she was a queen. Exercising control during the moments of clarity between long spells of daze that she was experiencing. Glimpses of the Lady of 312, Thadagam Link Road, who oversaw her children, grandchildren, nieces, nephews, maybe a grand niece and a grandnephew or two grow up, become persons of their own being, get married, have children, get jobs, move cities, move countries and continents. She was the constant. Over the last few years, we bonded so much more as friends and conspirers. She would take me back in time to go with her neighbour and friend to watch Tamil films in Alankar (I think) Theatre in Mumbai. Through her I would experience the country's Independence, like her, learning from her Post-Master father about the birth of a nation at midnight. I would walk a few paces behind her and her friend as they giggled and chatted on their way to school. I would watch enviously and proudly as she got a rubber stamp declaring the magazines she collected, collated, curated belonged to Annapoorni Swaminathan. I would gape with amazement at a grandmother who could hold her own in conversations about any sport - be it tennis, cricket or even football. I learnt how she started getting interested in cricket - serving as the secret messenger who would listen to the radio commentary of matches played by India to religiously recount the same to her elder brother who was forbidden from listening to the radio because of his exams. The mischief never left my grandmother. We would indulge in some of her guilty pleasures, like an icecream, some sweets (especially badam halwa / badusha from Sri Krishna Sweets), and earlier, a soda (usually Sprite or Limca. As I remember her, the fragments of our conversations come rushing through my memory palace. Especially as I am stranded without access to my Smart Phone which had recordings of many of our ramblings, I rely on memory to relive my dearest pati. As I watched a golden sunset over some hills in Deogarh today, I wondered whether a person who dies lives on in every memory of them that stays behind. Is that what forever means?        

Count your blessings

The last few days: from watching a swarm of bees fly towards us atop Ponnuthi Hills as we tried to get as close as possible to Lambton's Peak to watching a bear with her cubs negotiating the tea gardens in the Nilgiris, from bisons out on an evening walk to peacock twins perform a synchronised number in the morning as I was enjoying breakfast on the thokkarai kallu, it's just a reminder to count the blessings. 

Also witnessed a teacher taking students down archaeological journey at an hour exhibition of excavations in different parts of Tamil Nadu. 

Of Leprechauns and more

Spent a sleepless night tossing and turning, waking up several times, listening to the screeching peacocks and the pattering rain. Spent an hour of darkness staring into the screen wondering what was making me so anxious. Decided enough was enough and stepped out through the backdoor, hoping to sit on 'washing stone' for a while with my thoughts. 

However, that wasn't to be!

Stepped out to see a glorious rainbow through the coconut trees and my father pulling out weeds oblivious to the cosmic creation behind him. I called out to him and we went looking for the edge of the rainbow. The sun groggily shone and the beautiful brick wall of a neighbour's half-constructed house basked shyly in the goden light, turning pink with the adoration. A patch of gold on the water tank. A patch of pink gold on the house. What was it about rainbows and Leprechauns with pots of gold again?! 

Went about weeding some more, woke up some beetles from slumber, plucked some spinach for lunch and worked up an appetite before the rain steadied into patter once again. 

Yes, I found the pot of gold alright. 

Coimbatore, May 19 2022

The Tower of Babel

June 22, 2020

Each to one’s own. 

Each in one’s own. 

In a tower of one’s own build, 

One’s own rules, messages, memories filled.

Each running one’s own race

Each one the victor

Each the vanquished 

Alone in an imagined crowd, dead.

Life in a vacuum

Held in a palm

I talk, you listen, you talk, I hear

Yet, neither knows the other’s fear.

Fighting for another, 

Fighting for self

Art, music, borders, votes

Everything comes, and everything goes.

Your words sound familiar

Yet your ideas queer

Why! do we speak the same tongue?

I hear you loud and clear

As you tell me your dreams

Unfulfilled desires

Our minds intersect briefly

Before contempt dulls the fires. 

Alone, in our shell, dead. 

Speak out and be heard

When i was a child, I was told I was too young to know what’s good for me.
I was told life is too short to make mistakes and learn from others
When I grew up, I was told my focus should be studies and I believed it.
When I went to college, I was advised to stay off politics as it is a ‘bad’ thing.
When I started working, I put my soul into following orders, even ones that I knew were wrong.
When I questioned anything, my seniors said I was too big for my boots and needed to be shut down
Now I am told to keep quiet or face the consequences.

I have kept silent enough and now I know I must speak up now or die.
Because my silence is equal to the permanent closure of all my thoughts
It is the shroud over my ability to think and to decide for myself.
I dare you to tell me what is right and wrong and whom to follow and who not to.
I dare you, because, it is as much an insult to my intelligence as to yours.
I believe I can make an informed choice, even if it goes against what the majority believes
I believe I will be right even if my decision is wrong for me.

This is a promise to myself, today and hereafter.
Your voice will not quell mine.
Your stares will not blind me.
Your abuses will only make me stronger
And your selective silence will only convince me that I am doing something right.
It is not the time to wait for understanding and compassion
It is the time to stand up for what I believe in and stand up I will. 

#StandWithJNU

Aruna's Song

The night sings the elegy
Holding your head lightly upon its lap
The farewell song hums
Tears gently flow.

Confined to a bed,
Condemned to live your death
You served the sentence second by second
While the fiend escaped unscathed.

You lay limited by four walls.
While he roamed the streets.

You like to listen to the radio they said.
They who breathed life into you morsel by morsel.

I listen to the radio along with you.
Praying for you to pass.
Wishing you peace.
Wishing you release from this strange life you were forced to lead.

Stomach churns to hear the words you may have spoken.
Heartbeats pause to catch your wasted smile.
Eyes hurt holding back the pain you have endured.
It's time to let go. Gently may the night take you home.

(11.45 pm. May 15, 2015)

She died two days later. Hope she finally found the peace that was eluding her for so long.