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| Jitish Kallat-"Universal Recipient" |
The Road to El Dorado
Only very few people from our village ventured outside to make a living. The fortunate among them joined the army as sepoys and the less lucky became construction workers at the border. The third category went to the cities and worked as mazdoors. Those who had passed high school and acquired typing skills aimed for white-collar jobs. Nobody went on their own. A friend or relative offered the helping hand normally after soft persuasion. The non-resident villagers were called Pathankot by the residents which in real life was a place in Punjab where many of them worked as labourers under tough living conditions. They earned their copper through hard work and often by taking risks to come home like a winner once in two years. The army men, however, had plenty of leave and visited the village every year like migratory birds. All of them popped bottles of rum, offered Passing Show cigarettes to all and hosted parties by the waterfront. They gave a facelift to their ramshackle houses and married off their sisters. It was their turn next. The bridegroom’s party set out in huge cargo boats (which were ancestors of modern-day house-boats) hired for transporting people. Loudspeakers were mounted on top and film songs were played continuously while the crowd inside talked about dowry or bride's family connections.
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| Jitish Kallat - "Death of Distance" |
One of my uncles was a typist in Bombay. He dabbled in fancy clothes whenever he came home and his mother was particularly pleased. She made chapattis and exotic dishes to go with it, taking considerable effort. It was a common practice in our village to attach all hopes and expectations to the son who worked outside. One day the mother got a letter which nearly made her faint. The son was in love with a “Bombay girl” and they were going to get married soon. She was shattered. The crude shock prompted her to believe that the unseen hands of fate were at work; for she was a widow and married a family man shortly after her first husband’s death. She was young and beautiful and already had two children. Three decades after, a dark, diminutive girl of the city developed a crush for her fair, handsome son and they fell in love. The newly married couple visited the mother to seek her blessings and the bahu waited outside. Nobody turned up with the lighted oil lamp to welcome her. The daughter-in-law was to be ushered in by the mother-in-law after pouring water at her feet. The custom demanded it. Years later, there was a second coming. The couple visited us with their newborn baby. The entire village was in for a shock as they watched the lady in sleeveless blouse and hi-heeled stilettos, surging ahead happily with her husband. The ways of the city was unknown to us. Hardly anyone turned up for seeing them off. Normally the entire village would have gathered and a taxi hired. The well-dressed couple from the city preferred to wait for the bus all alone. Their son was waving his tiny hands continuously in the air.
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| Jitish Kallat - "Suffix Herbaceous" |
Untouched by Ground
The bicycle-performers descended on our village during festival season falling between January to April. People were comparatively better off after the harvest and the weather would be fine. Acrobats, clowns and a couple of dancing girls completed the group. The main performer was to carry out a unique feat, yajna, of spending at least seven days exclusively on a bicycle without touching the ground. He would be encircling the arena in a rickety bicycle while his companions entertained the village folk. The show started by the evening when people flocked to the market and certainly didn’t mind spending a few minutes by the ring. One of the performers would be luring people at the top of his voice. The courage and perseverance of the guy on the bicycle was the USP. The result showed. There was a sizable audience waiting to get carried away. The acrobat and the clown would now move to the center-stage relegating guy on yajna to the background.
Saranam Sri Guruvayurappa…
That was an invocation. The acrobat was to break a tube light by smashing it against his head. After a silent prayer with folded hands, he lifted the tube light dramatically once, twice but never really broke it. After keeping the audience on tenterhooks sufficient enough to voluntarily loosen their purse strings, he finally did it. The act was accompanied by a deafening sound. The drama was even higher the following day. He spread himself over a bed of glass splinters and a heavy grinding stone was put on his chest. Anybody could come forward and make a chutney-mix with the grinding stone placed on a human-being. The village folk turned a soft, oily mass in seconds and an empty biscuit tin was circulated with a perfect sense of timing. Needless to say, no one would come forward to make chutney while the biscuit tin was making rounds. Now, to pep up everyone’s spirit, there would be record dance for a change. Wearing faded skirts with a matching blouse, rose powder all over the face and lipstick laden, the dancing girls shaked their breasts in tune with the fast music. The clowns gave them company. The final day of the yajna kept the villagers on razor’s edge. The acrobat was lying three feet under, literally, in a pit dug especially for the purpose. The pit was covered with wooden planks and camouflaged with sand. In other words, he was “buried alive”! Before the clock struck twelve, he would be dug out to the world outside with his life intact, as zestful as ever. The cash registers, in the meantime, would be ringing merrily. Those who couldn’t contribute in cash offered farm produce such as plantain, jackfruits etc. which were to be auctioned later. Some others invited the entourage to their homes for food. Afterall, the villagers were kept on cloud nine for five hours every evening.
Once, a performer named Das stayed back after the yajna. He was an acrobat. He had fallen in love with a girl from our village and hovered around her hut even after his colleagues left. One morning we saw him tied to a coconut tree in front of the girl’s place, badly bruised and almost unconscious. He was groaning with pain. Somebody released him but he didn’t make any effort to go. He was a nowhereman. The girl, however, was married to a villager bridegroom shortly afterwards.
Years went by and we grew into our teens. We graduated into wearing dhotis and had wrist watches to flaunt. The yajna performers had fallen on hard times. The audience grew thin. People got vary of the same set of feats and jokes. Blood oozed out to drench the glass splinters but the biscuit tins returned empty. One of the last groups did put up a yajna at our temple ground. The dancing girls were conspicuous by their absence, they were probably expensive but a good-looking eunuch was in place as substitute. ‘She’ dressed, talked and of course danced like a woman. I was a regular at the grounds but ‘she’ never showed any interest. In fact, she had ignored me. One of those nights, I was standing beneath a huge mango tree watching the show from a distance. The yajna was nearing its end and the crowd was pathetically thin. ‘She’ appeared right in front of me, as if from nowhere and asked,
“You are a rake, aren’t you?”
“You are a rake, aren’t you?”
‘She’ came closer. ‘Her’ hands crept in gently pushing through my dhoti.
“Oh.. kochu kallan” she cooed.
I never really heard what she said next.
