Essence of Rue

I looked forward to November in my last post but this month seems to have gone in a blink. I have been busy, so so occupied, I have let things go. So naturally, without thought, that it tells me much about how priorities alter your outlook. I have been back in Hyderabad for almost four weeks. I have not yet acquired a local phone number - somehow there hasn't been time. For the very first time in my life I've forgotten to pay my credit card bills before they were due. I have managed to meet my professional commitments but just. Other correspondence lies neglected...I will be embarassed later, I know, but I cannot tackle them now.
Just when it should last, time slips by faster. Hasty, hasty November.

The march of seasons

I may as well tell you right away that this post is a cheat. I have mangaged in spite of my negligence of this blog to have at least one a month, every month and we are on the brink of losing this October forever...
But November comes. It is quite my most favourite month of the year. It is a poetic sound, the winter seems to stretch out ahead... there is music everywhere, concerts, on the radio... it is conducive to meditation, I am back home - so many reasons to like November.

Wapsi

है मुख्तार को फिर वहीँ लौटना
हवा पर के पानी पे चलते हुए

Oops, they did it again

In September last year, my landlady had this nice tree outside my balcony shorn. I was a new tenant then and I had protested mildly - perhaps she didn't even notice. But look, they did it again:


What am I to say? It was doing well, better than I had hoped. In a few weeks it would have given me privacy from 70 percent of the apartments that face me. Besides, I liked it. I didn't know they had this planned. Nothing to do now but wring my hands. Shall I storm off harridan-like and tell them how presumptious, how officious they have been? It isn't even on their property. It's a street tree. It belongs to EVERYone. How dare they?

Or now that nothing can be done, can I calm down and consider this a lesson in cultivating detachment?

Kahat Kabir

Kabir Festival 2

Just a brief overview of what the festival offered. It was an effort to broadcast the work of the Kabir Project - a project that involved "series of journeys in quest of this 15th century mystic poet in our contemporary worlds." The output, if you want it in concrete terms, consists of 4 documentary films, 2 folk music videos and 10 music CDs accompanied by books of the poetry in translation. The person who has propelled this effort is filmmaker Shabnam Virmani and all of this was the result of an Artist-in-Residence program at the Sristhi School of Art, Design and Technology.

The films have taken some four years to make: they involved extensive and intensive travel and although they have been constructed into four stand-alone themes, there is substantial overlap (at least, of personalities) and the tetralogy is best, in my opinion, seen and taken together.

The first of these was Chalo Hamara Des that starts by introducing to us Prahlad Singh Tipanya, a folk singer of Malwa, whose way of life is coloured by Kabir. With Prahladji in tow, Virmani travels to Stanford to meet Linda Hess, a scholar of comparative literature who has translated Kabir and now is working on the oral traditions that thrive in various parts of the subcontinent. Early in the film, Hess talks of the peak of Shoonya that Kabir refers to, the peak that is the destination of anyone on the spiritual path. And earnest though these seekers are, and sound though their theory is of what they must do, it is the practice of it that was fascinating to me. Through the films they expand into something larger, and fall back again into their selves, trapped by habit, structure and personality.

The next film Had-Anhad is the most toasted of the four. It starts in Ayodhya, with a few chest thumping Hindu reactions on the Babri Masjid issue. Then the film seeks Ram - Kabir's Ram, the Sagun Ram, the Nirgun Ram and it seeks Kabir or rather the various Kabirs that appear scattered here and there. It follows the trail to Rajasthan to interact with Mirasi sufi singer Mukhtiyar Ali to see what he makes of it and then over the border to Karachi to meet with Farid Ayaz whose family has been singing qawwalis for 700 years - a man so intensely possessive of his Kabir he tells his contingent of guests very frankly that he is not about to tolerate their dissenting views.

Kabira khada bazaar mein - which some might perceive as the weakest in the chain - is still interesting for its examination of how Kabir has been appropriated by various sections of society. Some are interested only in his incendiary stances, some use him for his dalit status, some take Kabir to represent an alternative religion that goes against the very essence of what the saint might have himself said or meant.
However, the truly ticklish point of the film comes when it traces the actions of Prahlad Tipanya. A man whose singing has earned him a considerable following, a man who has all through believed in the essence of Kabir and tried to emulate it to a subtle pitch, does the unthinkable: he joins the Kabir Panthi Sect as a mahant. His work now involves ritual, wearing a hierophant-ish hat and he must perform (and exhort others to perform) the chauka aarti. Tipanya is criticised in the film by his own assistants, his family, his friends (Hess and Virmani included) and his contemporaries. He protests albeit softly that he wants to change the system from within. It is a weak argument. What is clear though is he feels he must; however obscure his motivations, it is obvious he thinks his path goes through the establishment, not around it.

The fourth film Koi Sunta Hai moves to fresh arenas: classical music. It explores the influence of Kabir on Pt Kumar Gandharva and in turn, classical singing, as well as of course, what this did to elevate Kabir's own status from being considered the literature of beggars and mendicants to more refined circles.

The films are avowedly a personal search as far as Shabnam Virmani is concerned. She wields the camera herself, we see her occasionally caught in mirrors or shadows but she pervades the films far more than through appearances alone. She is addressed by name by her interviewees, that they are in fact in a dialogue is never in doubt. It must be her manner, her skill as a questioner that she manages to evoke such spontaneous responses, such charming reactions.

Music occupies a large chunk of the footage and it is quite central to the project. It enhanced the experience of the festival so much that the personalities whose lives that were being minutely examined in the films were also present. When they sang of course, we knew them intimately.

The festival was expensive too: entry was free but there was music on offer and after each screening or concert I went back, quite sure I needed to have that CD as well. So ended that a bit poorer and a bit richer.

Sahib mera

Little bit blown. Actually very much blown. I’ve just spent the weekend from Friday evening to Sunday evening at a festival devoted to Kabir. An explosion of music, of Kabir’s words, his personality, his timelessness. An explosion of ideas, perspectives, people, their intimate personal lives. Their words, their attitudes, their common goal. The politics of it, the ownership of it, the fluidity of it — the high brow application of it, the accessibility of it... it has been all somewhat overwhelming.
I want to blog at some length but am tumbling over my words, so incoherent am I in my hurry to say all the very important things at once.
So this, just to capture the first flush. But I will, insha’allah, come back to blog about the various aspects of what I have learnt, what I have observed. Already my state before I went to IIC on Friday evening is fast fading; I have assimilated too quickly.

Mind the gap

She is not what she says
sometimes she falls through the gaps between the words,
slips between them
although she tries to cling to the curl of the g, grasp the hook of the t
she slips...

Jis desh mein Ganga behti hai

Prompted by some vague impulse, I dusted off this song today to hear it again. The words are by Bhupen Hazarika, translated to Hindi by Pt Narendra Sharma. The lines are clunky, the thoughts disjointed, the syllables awkward to sing, but Hazarika manages to get hordes of singers to join him in his sentiment and somehow raises it to an operatic pitch.

But I was very moved at one time by the content, the plea in this song. Ganga is, of course, only a river. Already burdened by her considerable responsibilites and treated so shabbily by the plains she services. She has rather a lot to contend with, a mother who keeps the food coming, cleans out the junk, gets dumped on... a mother who simply isn't thanked enough. To make such lofty demands of her as this poem does seems unreasonable. But also pathetic. Who else can we ask?

गंगे जननी, नवभारत में
भीष्मरुपी सुत, समरजयी जनती नहीं हो क्यों?

The song is here and the whole text is here:

विस्तार है अपार, प्रजा दोनों पार करे हाहाकार
निःशब्द सदा ओ गंगा तुम...
गंगा, बहती हो क्यों?

नैतिकता नष्ट हुई, मानवता भ्रष्ट हुई
निर्लज्ज भाव से बहती हो क्यों?

इतिहास की पुकार करे हुंकार
ओ गंगा की धार,
निर्बल जन को सबल संग्रामी, समग्रो गामी
बनाती नहीं हो क्यों?

अनपढ़ जन अक्षर रहीं
अनगिन जन खाद्य विहीन
नेत्र विहीन देख मौन हो क्यों?

व्यक्ति रहे व्यक्ति केंद्रित
सकल समाज व्यक्तित्व रहित
निष्प्राण समाज को तोड़ती न क्यों?

श्रुतास्विनी क्यों न रहीं,
तुम निश्चय चितन नहीं...
प्राणों में प्रेरणा देती न क्यों?

उन्मद अवनी कुरुक्षेत्र बनी...
गंगे जननी, नव भारत में
भीष्मरूपी सुत समर्जयी
जनती नहीं हो क्यों?

इतिहास की पुकार करे हुंकार
ओ गंगा की धार,
निर्बल जन को सबल संग्रामी, समग्रो गामी
बनाती नहीं हो क्यों?

Ragni Pilu and such thoughts

Isn't it odd what people will take on themselves to do? Some will save lives, some will save music - their inner compulsions mysterious and... well, compelling.

Aren't some destinies beautiful? Such fabulous patterns, such large arcing themes.
But most of us, we live lives of quiet desperation. A struggle, a little pinching here, a small tuck in the fabric there. Without that one great talent, without that insistent call of one purpose... making do, marking time.

It all comes back

Two or three years ago, I mentioned a concert by Prabhakar Karekar where he sang a Marathi natyageete. Came across the original today. Happiness!

Carrion

So gory but this is looping in my head:

कागा सब तन खाइयो चुन चुन खाइयो मास
दो नैना मत खाइयो मोहे पिया मिलन की आस

What Lies Beneath

I've been wanting to put up this travel piece for a while, but I'm hurrying because I am dying to put up the next one: I went to Meghalaya recently and wanted so much to blog - only, I couldn't because the first words out needed to be for the magazine. I've lost steam on that one but in the meantime, here is Patalkot. I had mentioned it in an earlier post, this is the longer story.

===========

A tribal settlement in a deep forgotten stretch of the Satpuras...





The most fascinating aspect of this adventure was the idea of it. The idea of a gorge so deep it was seldom ventured into, a valley so hidden it was forgotten. Consumed almost by the hills of the Satpuras, in Chhindwara in Madhya Pradesh, these depths have a fanciful name—Patalkot, Sanskrit for the ‘nether-lands’.

To best communicate the extent of this place, it needs a bird’s eye view, or better still, a satellite-eye view. From the firmament, this section of the Satpuras looks as if giant hands had absently run a finger through the surface, doodling a small horseshoe shape as it scooped out the earth. The narrow rut left behind is 1,200-1,500ft deep, and on average, 2-3km wide from wall to wall. The entire valley covers less than 80 sq km. I was excited; frankly, straining-at-the-leash excited to be taking this walk. Trekking as we do through India’s stunning landscapes, this one was still special. My sister Shweta and I were with a group of people on a small circuit through the Satpuras. We’d marvelled at the marbled walls of Bhedaghat, traipsed through the very civilised Pachmarhi and, on this day, we were going down. We drove through to Rathed village and were set down at the beginning of a trail, with a couple of local guides in charge.

I tried to glean a little more about the fissure. What, for instance, was the reason for this sharp depression? No one knows for sure but one plausible theory is meteorite impact. An odd-shaped, sharpish lump of otherworldly stone, crashing with enormous impact, slicing through the land...all conjecture, of course, for there have been no studies, no validation of the surmise. On the other hand, there are myths. Prince Meghnath is supposed to have passed into ‘Patallok’, the nether-world, through this valley. Patalkot’s existence may have been known to the outside world, but the memory had grown hazy, and it was certainly forgotten till about half a century ago. Then in the 1950s, a small scout party belonging to the new administration of the then Central Provinces made their way through and ‘discovered’ the valley anew. They found something more, something guaranteed to send a zing down the spine of anyone who enjoys colonial thrillers featuring ‘remote tribes’—they found human settlements. Scattered across 12 villages, close to 2,000 people lived in the valley, self-sufficient tribal communities retaining no significant contact with the outside world. Since then, interactions have grown but slowly. Before the 1980s, none of Patalkot’s inhabitants had ever tasted salt.

We seemed to be descending for half an hour, but we were not technically in the gorge yet. Already, our breakfasts showed signs of having been digested and instead of digging in our packs for sustenance, we turned to the trees that flanked the trail. Amlas were found to hand and we nipped away; they left a cool taste on the tongue and took care of the thirst—a mistake, we discovered later, for Shweta forgot to sip from her water bottle and developed a thundering headache later. Still we seemed to be walking along the rim of the basin. People in the group dawdled as they took pictures and I was starting to wonder what the guide was about, for time was limited. It would take us four hours to get down there and as much to climb back up—except the sun leaves Patalkot about two hours sooner than it does the world outside. If we didn’t want to climb back in the growing dark, we would have to make better time. In about 15 minutes though, it was official—we were lost.

There are apparently three trails down to the bottom: we’d come from Rathed, the other two go from the villages of Chindi and Chawalpani. We waited for another guide to join us, and the sun was climbing when we finally stepped off the edge. A very little way down, the air around us started to change. It became cooler, the scents of the forest pressed down and everything went rainforesty. Warblers flitted incessantly and, further on, the mandatory stream entered stage right, gurgled charmingly and exited stage left. The forest floor was covered with growth, giving off a bouquet of smells as plants were crushed underfoot. Protected as it was from marauding intruders, and also due to its peculiar geography, Patalkot is a veritable treasure trove of medicinal flora. According to Dr Deepak Acharya, who has made it his work to preserve and document the medicinal plants here, there are hundreds of economically important plants, a clutch of rare flora and even some endemic ones. The people of Patalkot (mostly of the Bharia and Gond communities) are expert foragers, and remarkably skilled at making pulps and extracts. Their concoctions are believed to have therapeutic value and are even able to treat snakebites, measles and cholera, alleviate hypertension, diabetes, coughs and pains.

We reached the floor, and came to a large clearing, rimmed with soaring circular rock walls. I stood there, turning where I stood, craning up long enough to acquire a crick in the neck. I’d have like to see a play performed here, for it was glorious natural amphitheatre. Also, precisely the sort of place that has humankind buckling to its knees in prayer. Predictably, there were deities and other godly representations carved on the stone; an idol installed at one spot, a red, fierce-looking trident lodged in another with ‘om’ emblazoned on it—isolated or not, in some ways the settlement is clearly no different from any other place in India. Not far away, we came upon the Dhoodhi river that flows through the valley. Here and there, the river cuts through rock, and stepping-stones are strewn about conveniently—within five minutes, the lot of us were in the water for an impromptu dunking.

A group of tribesfolk came by, herding goats, strolling with their staffs across their backs, arms casually looped around. They looked at us, I imagine, with as much curiosity with which we studied them. Dark-skinned, deep-lined tribal faces. There were a few girls as well: wearing men’s shirts and what seemed like sari petticoats, tucked in so they stayed at knee length—and on their feet, they wore hawai slippers. The villages of Patalkot have been subjected to rigorous ‘development’—there is a school here now and the clincher, the sign that they have indeed been brought up to speed, comes from the fact that some houses now have dish television. Just another tribal settlement now and, frankly, it would have been just another day-trek through forest and brush, but for the knowledge that this was once a remote, inaccessible trench that no one knew about.

The sun was withdrawing from the walls around us and we hustled. I didn’t fancy tripping into brooks or climbing back out by torchlight. We spilled out of the valley to a glorious sunset, just in time to catch the ball of red fire dipping over the horizon.

_____
Published Outlook Traveller February 2009; picture ©Shweta Vyas