We walked away from Kamalbai’s mud hut on the thin path that wended its way through wide cotton fields, with the streaming blobs of white cotton bursting out of pods waiting to be plucked.
‘Would it be the second pluck?’ I asked, following Kamalbai. We must have made a funny pair – she, sixty-seven according to her Aadhar Card, straight as a ram-rod, thin, unshod and quick on her feet and I, ten years younger, obese and struggling to keep up with her.
‘No, the first pluck,’ she replied.
It is mid-December, the month of Setti or Margsheesh according to her calendar. The second Sunday of the month is the day of Setti celebration and worship at the temple of Bhimanna and Pochamma. She had called me several times and insisted I should come for the Setti-puja. To what do I owe this honour? For it is an honour to be invited to the worship of the Adivasi deity, an occasion that is reserved only for the close-knit clan. It is simply because I had helped Kamalbai and the villagers of Machhiguda get the Caste Certificate from the administration – a valuable document that had made them eligible for government welfare schemes, scholarships and political representation. I feel frustrated that after seven decades of independence, the Naikpodu community to which Kamalbai belongs has to struggle so much for a piece of paper that is theirs by right.
The Naikpodus are a Telegu-speaking Adivasi community and there are fewer than seven hamlets and scattered households in Jivti block of Chandrapur district on the Maharashtra – Telengana border. Their population of around five hundred souls is too minuscule – not even a blip on the administrative radar. In fact, when Kamalbai and the forty-odd people of Machhiguda first applied for the Caste Certificate, the administration issued them certificates of the ‘Kolam’ scheduled tribe. Kamalbai refused to accept the certificates.
‘We are not Kolam, we are Naikpodu,’ she insisted.
‘Naikpodu?’ the officer gave a blank look. He knew of Gonds, Pardhans, and Kolams, but was hearing of Naikpodu for the first time. Thereafter the books were brought out and the list of Tribes in Maharashtra consulted.
In a time when well-to-do people are paying bribes to create false caste certificates in their names, the Naikpodus of Machhiguda refused to touch the certificates that the administration had prepared in their names.
‘Arey Akka, the Kolam certificate is more valuable than a Naikpodu certificate, why are you refusing the Kolam certificate?’ a young man in the corridor hissed as we emerged from the office.
Kamalbai faced him squarely with her hands akimbo and scolded him roundly in her broken Marathi – ‘how can we become what we are not? We are Naikpodu, not Kolam. Are you going to call your neighbour your mother because she is richer?’
The cotton gave way to short, green jawari, still too young. We walked on in a single file – around six or seven of us. Then the land dipped gently and we climbed down to where the clear forest stream flowed, the fish darting away under the stones shining in the warm afternoon sun. Now began the real steep climb to the temple at the top. For a moment I felt I wouldn’t be able to make it. In that moment, Kamalbai had already glided five steps ahead, effortlessly. I was too ashamed to give up.
When we arrived, the hundred or more people were already gathered under the large canopy of branches and leaves. The temple was only four pillars barely five feet tall with cement sheets for the roof. Kamalbai fell on her knees with folded hands before the deity and then wiped her eyes and placed a fifty rupee note on a brass plate.
I too bowed down before the gods – Bhimanna was represented by a thick, dark, wooden stick, a geometrical abstraction of cubes and spheres sprinkled with turmeric, vermillion and bright pink gulwal powder. He is accompanied by other gods, metal horses, tridents imbedded in the ground. The goddesses reside in the ancient rocks covered in red vermillion. Placed before the deity were coconuts, little mounds of rice sweetened with jaggery-water on small leaves, each mound exactly the same shape and size, a tiny pyramid. From a large, black clay pot an old man took out several pairs of ghunghroos with large brass bells and five long rope whips, yellowed with turmeric, arranged carefully by the naivaidya plates. Four heads of freshly slaughtered goats, set on reddened earth in a row faced the deity.
In the clearing before the temple, men and women danced in a circle, the drums and flutes played on sonorously. A large group of family members arrived from Telengana, creating fresh waves of excitement and music. The dance was faster now. The man with a long-snouted, wooden gun danced beside the old man with a wooden blue cobra with small sharp ears. The man danced with his wooden gun – not just a symbol of the Adivasi’s courage but also a reminder of times when Adivasis carried bows and arrows, spears, katyars and guns.
The spirit entered some of the dancers who held out the whips and then in a sudden thwack the rope coiled on their back – they whipped themselves even as they swayed to the rhythm of the music. The spirit took them to a smouldering log on which they stepped and swayed. A woman stood up with folded hands held high above her head and the whip lashed her twice – on the legs and her back. ‘To drive out the evil spirits that tortured her.’ Relieved of her torment, the woman went and prostrated herself before the deity.
Kamalbai was meeting with the women and introducing me to everyone. They spoke in Telegu before I was hugged warmly, my hands shaken. Kamalbai insisted on pictures with her grandchildren after the babies were taken to the deity to be blessed.
‘Now you see,’ said Kamalbai, ‘we are very different from the Gonds and Kolams.’
‘No Kamalbai, I don’t see,’ I said. Nothing was obvious to me.
‘Our god is more powerful,’ she explained patiently. ‘Look at that man over there – he is stepping on the fire again and again, but his feet are not burnt. That is the power of our god – he takes us to the fire but does not allow our feet to burn.’ She pointed at a swaying dancer with ash-caked feet. He stepped on the smoking log and then stepped off in rhythm to the drumbeat.
‘Our god is the most powerful. Once the men of another tribe took our child for human sacrifice. Our people prayed to Bhimanna – save our child! Then our god released five tigers to retrieve the child. The five tigers galloped to the house of the Patil of the other tribe and growled outside his hut, swishing their tails. The Patil fell on his knees and wept and begged forgiveness. Then our child returned, brought back home by the tigers. So powerful is our great god Bhimanna! No other tribe, none can ever have god more powerful than him!’
Under the cool shade, surrounded by bejewelled women, the smell of fresh chillies and spices rising from the other corner, the golden ripe pigeon pea fields stretching behind us and emerald hills only an arm’s length away, and the sweet notes of the old man’s flute – the almighty Bhimanna watches over us all.
