The Hindu Business Line : Of fakir tales on rustic mornings

LACHHAKADI village in Valsad does not quit one's memory lanes easily. The village still clutters traffic and lingers somewhere in you even at times when the Mumbaikars crush you in the wrong places in crowded locals.

Some traces of green still stick to your inerts and could take some more time before it gets digitally stored in one's memory. To wake up in the morning to the scrape of the broom on the earth is something special, like the first calls of birds on stretching out of their nests and is perhaps exclusive to India's villages.

At Lachhakadi, young women wield brooms made of coconut palm, their arms moving in clockwise fashion to neatly pack fallen twigs and leaves into a heap for onward use as quality manure even as the first rays of the sun climb down step by step from one wide leaf of the teak to the next below before landing on brown soil. The grounds are spacious and it takes an hour to complete the job without any supervisors.

Breakfast follows before the day lines up other chores like white milestones on long pathways. It reminded one of the times spent in Kottarakara and Alappuzha where it was always the women who broke the morning hour with a swish of the broom on bare earth. Never did men ever do the job and for my grandmother it was because the men had no shame sleeping late. Yet whenever her grandson offered help she turned it down with a "This is not a man's job."

In the mood, my grandmother would softly intone her favourite prayers to Lord Krishna to the hiss of the broom and that was when one learnt the bhakti piece, with a touch of dew, in Malayalam to Lord Krishna: "Kani kannu neram ... (To see the Lord in the early hour of the morning)." The poetry and faith in those lines will be forever there for every Malayali to rest on.

Then my grandmother would head for the village pond densely packed with fish for the morning bath, go round the Lord Ganesh temple before turning home to light the lamp in front of her many gods. The coffee came as the last item on the agenda to be generally served with dosa and sambhar cooked over a wood fire. Being a kid and her favourite, one had the first right to eat, with grandfather being allowed second charge.

Lying on a cot in a well-ventilated room with four windows opening into the campus garden, one mused over some of the nicer moments of life. One could afford the leisure, as there were no railway locals to catch or offices to attend to at Lachhakadi.

By 8 a.m. Paul and myself were prepared for Dr Hasmukh B. Kharecha, who refused a top deck job in a pharma company, being content to live with the Adivasis. It was in one of the runs to the Adivasi districts that Dr Kharecha told us of the many stories picked up from passing fakirs in the area.

The Trax was running at a comfortable 40 miles per hour on easy-to-drive roads and a wind, fresh like chilled cola, played on us.

Some years ago, a 5-year-old Adivasi gulped down a few seeds of an unknown plant with a glass of water. He went without food for the next 13 years but grew stronger than the rest in the village.

Hearing the miracle of the seeds, a passing fakir called on the 18-year-old and quizzed him. The boy had no idea of the seeds he took nor of the insane fellow who had offered them nor the time of the day. Somehow, the fakir got the fellow to throw up the seeds and in turn ate them. In an hour, the fakir resembled Dara Singh of the 70s and quit food forever while the youngster turned limp like a patient in a government hospital.

Paul and myself laughed when Dr Kharecha finished the story.

But an incident Dr Kharecha wanted us to believe was of a 10-year-old boy who packed his lunch of chicken in the leaves of a tree he was unable to identify. In the afternoon, on opening the packet, a live chicken jumped out at him. The boy passed on the happening to his parents, who were not surprised having seen and heard such live events.

Dr Kharecha does not doubt the Adivasi tales brought to him every day.

"I have heard of Adivasi men and women turn into bamboo and grass when they first saw a train or when electricity came to light their homes. Adivasis can readily transit from real life to imagination and that acts as an insurance cover against modern civilisation," he said as the Trax, overflowing with Adivasi fairy tales came to a halt in front of a paddy field.

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