Who says barter is dead?

Barter very much alive at Jonbeel Mela!

Barter is trade without using money. We all barter sometimes; my uncle regularly barters with his 3-year old son during the kid’s meal-time, and the exchange rate is “you-eat-your-food-now-and-later-I’ll-take-you-for-a-car-ride.” In Assam, an annual mela (fair) founded entirely on this barter concept by the erstwhile Ahom kings perhaps in the 15^th century is still going strong today. This fair called the Jonbeel Mela is held every winter at a historic place known as Dayang Belguri in Morigaon, around 32 kms away from Guwahati. The name Jonbeel comes from 2 Assamese morphemes – ‘jon’ meaning moon and ‘beel’ meaning wetland – because this fair is held beside the eponymous beel which is shaped like a crescent moon.

This fair is a 3-day event commencing when the tribes from nearby hills come down to this place in the plains to barter their goods with the local populace. The hill people like the Tiwas, Karbi, Khasi and Jaintia trade in their indigenous items like ginger, wild honey, turmeric, etc. for the traditional pitha, sira, akhoi, muri (local Assamese delicacies made of rice flour, puffed rice, etc. which are conventionally prepared in this season). In the olden days when trade and commerce was intermittent and scarce, I suppose that this fair must have played a more than symbolic role in the sustenance of the people. In todays age, the Jonbeel Mela must be upheld as a showcase of the cultural landscape that exists in the region, and the simple joys that people engage in, adding gaiety and colour to their lives.

My mother tells me that when she was a small girl living in a place called Jagiroad very close to Jonbeel, she used to go to the mela every year. The local kids used to call the hill tribal traders ‘mama’(uncle) and ‘mami’ (aunt), and it was a grand opportunity for the young ones and the old too I suspect, to partake of fresh-tasting food items from the hills and have fun. The mela is interspersed with colourful activities like communal fishing on the beel, performance of various tribal music and dance forms, cock-fighting, and descendants of the erstwhile Rajas mingling with the people to conduct a puja, collecting taxes and finally, arranging a grand communal feast on the banks of the beel.

The Jonbeel Mela seeks to serve as a living bridge among the various tribes and communities scattered in the region, and this noble ideal together with the alter-purpose of serving as a cultural showcase, has to be appreciated and carried forward.

Every January the hill people still come down to mingle with the people from the plains. Every winter the Jonbeel comes alive with joy and songs. And yes, the young ones still call their hill neighbours mama and mami.

For more info and colourful pics of the Jonbeel Mela, you may visit the following 2 links. 

Link #1

Link #2 

About the Common House Lizard & how it brings out the worst in little boys

The house lizard in my younger days was a ready source of amusement and convenient prop for naughty tricks. Lizards were always to be found in plenty in all the houses we have lived in till now. The earliest instance of a predator stalking its prey that I have seen must have been the lizard sneaking up on its prey (bugs, flies, moths, etc.) with all the finesse and stealth of a natural little hunter. As I remember though, the lizard was seen as something of a pest in our society. This must have something to do with its ‘detachable’ tail falling down upon unsuspecting people and people’s food, and sometimes even the whole lizard spiraling down onto least-prepared human presence. To top it, the lizard was also viewed with suspicion – it was rumoured that killing a lizard would bring bad luck, and of course, we all shared in the uneasy though misplaced idea that a lizard coming into contact with your food would poison it.

So all in all, the lizard was fair game for me and my friends when we were little. To be sure we could not kill it but we could conjure up all sorts of devilish mischief designed to leave it half, but not fully dead. The simplest trick was this.

Step 1: Get hold of a broom with a long handle, and search out the house walls for prime lizzy specimens. Note: Lizards are found in plenty under tube lights and bulb holders where they wait patiently for the moths to show up for the ‘grand illumination’.

Step 2: After target acquisition, creep up on the lizzies with your broom and give that section of the wall a god ol’ sweep.

Step 3: “All fall down” and now the lizzies are at your mercy. Take hold of a tong (I used my mother’s old forceps) to pin down the lizard’s tail. Watch the lizard squirm and struggle, until it sheds its tail to flee.

Step 4: Long after the lizard’s gone, watch the still-squirming tail with fascination as it writhes in its own dance of detachment. (Taking the tail to show to your mother at this point, may not be the best way of attracting parental approval, as I found out painfully on one occasion).

An older cousin brother had his own novel idea for tormenting the lizard. He used a long stick, applied the top end with some lime (calcium hydroxide which is a white chemical used in preparing 'paan'), and raise it up to the wall where lizards would be seen. He did not have to wait long before an unsuspecting lizard crept close to the white end and thinking it to be a moth/ bug, tried to bite it. Lime can cause skin irritation and skin burning and the poor lizard after his attempt, would writhe in agony from the burn, fall down on the ground or just plain disappear from the scene as fast as it could run. We never did find out if the lizard would die from such a nasty trick.

Another fav trick was collecting lizard’s eggs (tiny white round replicas). Lizard laid eggs in plenty, and we would gather up the pretty, fragile-looking things with their soft shells and hide them away. Again after placing them in a hidden spot only to forget about them in the burst of other childish activities, we never did find out if the eggs ever hatched.

In our present house, lizards are rare and we hardly hear the loud ‘tik-tik’ as the lizards call out to each other in the night. Perhaps too many lizards have already provided game for mischievous, unmindful boys like my younger self. As I recollect my own pranks I feel sad somehow that I could not or did not care about nor understand how I was hurting a small creature. 

Leopard in the City

I had been meaning to write on ‘Urban Wildlife’ for some time now; an urge driven mostly by my experiences in our national capital, Delhi. It was in 2000 that I remember being astounded by the sheer number of squirrels traipsing on trees, buildings and on the pavements in delhi. I was staying near Connaught Palace at that time, and squirrels were omnipresent; with their cute brown fur, their tiny forelimbs clutching at food. Years later when I was staying in South Delhi, we had a tract of protected forest right behind our college – an extrusion of the Delhi ridge. Peacocks, foxes, Nilgai (blue bulls, a type of antelope) and squirrels of course, were to be found in plenty in the forest, which is open to public. We used to roam in the forest sometimes, looking out for peacocks with their majestic plumage all fanned out and collecting their pretty feathers from the ground. Once when I was climbing down a small ridge in the forest, I must have startled a family of nilgais for they burst out from behind a thick green wall of foliage, and galloped right down below me, not more than 10 feet away. Congested Mumbai too, has its share of wildlife and a large protected forest in Sanjay Gandhi National Park, home to an astounding range of flora and fauna.

Guwahati located along the southern bank of the Brahmaputra, is bounded by hills on the other sides. The expanding city corridors and the main city itself now form the largest metropolitan area in north-eastern India. For a city that has 11 forest reserves, including 2 wildlife sanctuaries in its vicinity, Guwahati may very well boast of the highest concentration of wildlife.  Guwahati and Greater Guwahati are home to several rare mammals like the elephant, tiger, leopard, primates etc. With shrinking living spaces and a tentatively-shared habitat it is common for these animals to stray into the city sometimes.

The latest such incident occurred this January 7^th, when a male leopard strayed into the city, mauling and injuring 4 people before it was tranquilised by Forest personnel and whisked away for rehabilitation. What happened that day is a stark reminder of the sad drama that gets invariably played out in man-animal confrontations. The animal cowed and unsure of a city environment, wants to pass through and finding his escape difficult, attacks the first thing he sees, in this case, humans. People on the other hand, being informed of such an animal in their vicinity, congregate and surge towards the spot where the animal was seen. The unsure animal now further cornered and feeling threatened by human sounds and sights, becomes more aggressive and goes into a frenzy. In this case, the unruly crowd that had assembled to see the cornered animal, made the task of tranquilising the leopard all the more difficult. A procedure that should have clinically taken 5 minutes took 45.

Some days back, a tiger was killed by police bullets outside Kaziranga. The tiger has strayed out of the park and was resting in a bamboo grove by the highway when it was spotted. Predictably a crowd gathered at the spot and a media photographer trying to get a good picture of the tiger, got in the way of the animal trying to escape. The tiger finding its way blocked lunged at the photographer, and the armed police beside felled the animal like a mad dog. A wildlife personnel said, “Point a camera at a tiger or a leopard and it thinks it is being attacked. After that it will lunge at you. That is cat behavior.” It is pertinent to note that where Nature has given the leopard claws and teeth, it has given us humans, the brain and the demeanour to think and act sensibly. The leopard stays true to its nature but do we?

How Austin Stevens helped me

Austin Stevens

For regular viewers of Animal Planet, Austin Stevens is a familiar name and a known face. I myself came to know him not more than 6 months back. I was more interested before while watching nature programs, with the animals rather than the presenter. Somehow though, this saffron-shirted (mostly) free spirit fascinated me with his sheer energy, simple narratives and almost-schoolboy passion. Austin Stevens is a herpetologist and wildlife photographer who travels across the globe in search of nature’s wild treasures, photographing them and making short films. His chief interest lies in snakes and he is better known as ‘the snakemaster’.

When handling snakes, Austin is always careful, respectful and very deft. In his commentary and through his movements while handling a snake, he explains the characteristics of the reptile and wherever possible, describes the unique physical attributes of the snake, mostly fangs, scales etc. There is a common thread which runs through his commentaries in snake programmes which is basically this – the snake will not harm you unless you advertently or otherwise, exhibit behavior which it might construe as threatening. Since man is not the natural prey or predator of the snake, it shies away from us. Also, if you follow Austin’s shows, you will see that it is the snake more often, which is trying to get away and Austin who is the one compelling the snake to stay/ react. It dawned on me eventually that it is the snake who is more afraid of us.

This brings me to my own story. Years ago when I was maybe 6 or 7 years old, we were residing in a small town (my father was posted there). I was in kindergarten and our government-provided quarter was a large single-storey house with a large backyard which was over-run by weeds and shrubs. There was no running water but there was a tube-well in the backyard to pump water and carry it back inside the house in buckets. The tube-well was constructed on a cement plinth and served as a nice platform to wash clothes and dishes. Also, being a small kid, I mostly used to perform my ablutions there rather than inside the bathroom. A nullah existed beside the plinth for draining the dirty water from all the washing. It was my custom then to take a long afternoon nap after school and one evening, as I woke up, I remember I was feeling particularly groggy and disoriented from waking up. So groggy in fact, that I had thought that I had woken up in the morning. So, I took my toothbrush outside and went to the tube-well to brush my teeth. My father was away and mother was in the kitchen. As I was intently brushing my teeth with my head down and still-heavy from all that sleep, I heard a loud hiss.

I looked up and saw a hooded cobra not more than a foot away from me; to my small eyes, its hood looked almost as tall as myself. The cobra’s hard glinty eyes stared at me, it seemed and then it just climbed back into the nullah and raced away from me, its hood still high and its scales making a swishing sound along the wet surface of the nullah. To this day, I can see the back of that long dark hood swaying from side to side as the cobra weaved its way through the nullah. I stood like a statue for I know not how long; then uttered a long scream, and then with my toothbrush still in my hand and foam still in my mouth, ran to my mother inside. I clutched at her, shaking all over and not being able to utter a word after that one scream. My mother did not know what happened, and I was dumb for as long as it took my father to reach the house after work.

Cobra sketch by Karen Murray

That one childhood incident impacted me in a way that I found any pictures, mention of snakes terrifying. Their long sleek shiny bodies, forked tongues and hisses pervaded my dreams. Many a night, I have woken up in cold sweat after a nightmare in which a raised hood had stared at me and then moved away. This dream had continued all these years, the only difference being that sometimes they came regularly and sometimes, after long intervals. In fact, they had continued till well into this year but then, around July, I discovered Austin Stevens and his snake-wisdom. In the last 6 months, I might have seen many snakes on TV – sidewinding over sand dunes, flying (or falling with style!) from tree to tree, coiling around each other’s bodies during mating, baby snakes and many other facets of a snake’s life. I have seen too, Austin Steven’s wonderful presence in my mind’s eye and his cool collected words of wisdom.

I have not had any nightmares involving snakes for a while now. I do not know if they will start coming again in the future but somehow, the vision of a person named Austin Stevens re-assures me. “The snake will not harm me”.

Portrait of the Countryside in Winter

I was fortunate to take 2 trips through the countryside this month – once by road and again by train. Though Assam has great bio-diversity across, both the trips I undertook were along the Brahmaputra valley, which is sub-tropical. As the name itself suggest, the river Brahmaputra is the principal geographical feature here, influencing as it has for centuries now, both the land and the people that live in it.

To be sure, when you are in these areas, the perceptible difference between summer and winter landscapes is not great. Nevertheless to the discerning, winter landscapes in the valley present uniqueness. The first sign that winter has crept in often lies along the roadside in the tall, silver stalks of the kohua bon. These slender reeds thrusting their tall cottony stalks into the sky grow in big bunches, creating large undulating splotches of silver and green. The second sign grins in your face with blossoms of varying shades of yellow, rising up from flower beds, tumbling down from corners of walls, the bamboo fences of peoples’ dwellings – marigolds and black-eyed susans. These two flowers grow profusely in this season, often voluntarily, with little care, presenting their sunny faces and soaking in the wintry air.

Fields of winter paddy clothe the ground in gold, often wreathed in mist till late in the day. Of course, when you are in the valley, you can trust the river to present the starkest feature of the season. Every winter, the deep waters of the Brahmaputra recede, unearthing large sand-banks (chaporis) of clayey soil, stretching for miles around. This wonderful illustration of regenerative nature provides sustenance to man and beast – people grow varieties of winter vegetables and mustard here, and animals like the rhino and large herds of elephants, make these chaporis their winter home, feeding on the grasses that grow in this short season.

Winter is also the time when you find entire roadside markets of vendors selling oranges, with their citrusy smell pervading the road. People do take advantage of the nippy air, the receding river, the soft sun and the vistas that nature presents and go out; picnicking by the shores, even in the fallow paddy fields by the road. Sometimes these picnics (bon-bhuj) are interspersed with little trips to wildlife sanctuaries like Pobitora and Kaziranga, where an early morning jeep or elephant safari is succeeded by large meals prepared by the families themselves al fresco at the picnic sites (on the river shore, or by forests, or near hilly glades, or by streams). December and January is the time for such excursions, and they come out in droves – in cars, in minivans, small and large buses. Yes, winter is fun!

Movie Review: Passion Fish (1992)

Cast & Credits

Mary McDonnell  (as May-Alice)

Alfre Woodard  (as Chantelle)

David Strathairn (as Rennie)

Written, Directed And Edited By John Sayles.

Running Time: 135 Minutes. 

My Rating: 3½ stars of 5

Passion Fish, showcases its 2 principal characters’ (May-Alice and Chantelle) hopefulness and hopelessness in a light which I had never realized previously. Where May-Alice relapses into a daze of misery and alcohol-induced mist of self-centeredness, Chantelle struggles alone towards her self-rehabilitation - two unlikely individuals who are connected at a very obvious level, by the conflict of their motivations for existence but at a deeper plane, related not by conflict but by identification of a shared identity.

Named after a Cajun superstition about finding love, the movie opens with a close-up of May-Alice’s eyes as she lays on a hospital bed, victim of a freak accident and now, very mean-tempered inheritor of a crippled body. Her soap acting rendered futile and raging at the seeming dithering uselessness of all hospice personnel in uniform (nurses, physical therapists, doctors, psychiatrists), May-Alice moves back to the family home by a Louisiana bayou in a clear attempt at drinking herself into oblivion. Bound to a wheelchair and perennially in front of the television with a wine bottle as an unshakeable appendage, she has an attendant nurse to look after her but her belligerence results in a steady procession of agency-sent nurses who take up the May-Alice assignment only to leave the cantankerous woman within a short time. This mélange is broken only when a feisty black nurse (Chantelle) comes into the picture – who takes up this work for far more substantial reasons than what initially appear.

May-Alice’s curmudgeonly self-indulgence in wine and TV collide with the blunt denials and admonitions of Chantelle, with decidedly un-“nursey” approaches. This conflict of wills between two strong and set women lies at the heart of this film; a conflict which does not get manifested in typical conventionally hoarse and piquant scenes. What interested me immensely are the numerous tiny battles which emerge in the course of this war of wills – a tug here, a pull there followed by a push. Several times in the movie, I expected the dam of unresolved and unsatisfied emotions to burst into a torrent of screams and the inevitable firing of the nurse. It never came.

Passion Fish intensely resists the easy transition of such a story into a likely tale of maudlin sentimentalism and spiritual upliftment. When I think of it, the movie is less of a motif for human tragedy or that of people who have suffered mentally or physically coming out of the ordeal as veritable angels. Alice-May is a self-proclaimed “bitch”, her repartess with Chantelle are stinging – you do not have to like her. Chantelle likewise, does not automatically get custody of her child because she is a reformed addict now.

Then there is the Louisiana landscape and the comic portraits of an assortment of Alice-May’s visitors, and a repressed but tender romance which materializes with an old acquaintance. To the back of the house, there are verdant and soothing wetlands teeming with herons, alligators and snakes while towards the front, the track which leads to it is dusty and decidedly un-photogenic with what I can only presume to be factories, pumping affluents into this seemingly serene lake. This two-tinged sepia is present everywhere in the movie. Chantelle appears at first, to be a strong, cool and collected customer, but later developments show all too well, the timidity in character that co-exists. This many-layered portrayal of a story of two women is marked by engaging performances all-round and a screenplay which does not veer into the realm of the tear-jerker. Some may find the movie’s duration (at 2-and-a-quarter hrs) a tad taxing, but the unfolding drama may very likely, present you with the patience to partake in its delights.

One more thing, I love the “I didn’t ask for the anal probe” monologue for its intensity and the sheer range of emotions it seeks to explore – from thrill to determination to anticipation to frustration to dismay and finally, resignation. You can take a gander at this scene here (it is titled as a comic scene in YouTube, never mind).

IMDb link for Passion Fish  

Death of a Balladeer in Mumbai

There was a quote I found in a newspaper some days back; reflective of the general public mood in the wake of Anna Hazare’s agitation against corruption in the echelons of power. I reproduce it here - "You chase the drunken elephant towards us, but if we people come together, we can tame him too"; said by a hypothetical commoner Assamese of bygone times to the ‘Swargadeo’, the Divine Title assumed by the Ahom king (the Ahoms ruled over Assam for more than 600 years). The words speak of the power within the common people like us, held within our throbbing hearts and pulsating blood to even subvert the will of a heavenly creature like the ‘Airabot’ (the Royal Elephant of the Ahoms). These evocative words might have been poured into a song, a book or a film – I do not know, for Bhupen Hazarika, the man who penned them, also composed songs, wrote lyrics, created screenplays, directed movies, authored books. And Bhupen Hazarika, the man who could create such a landscape of sheer beauty for us Assamese, for his country and indeed for the world, died today evening in Mumbai.

Dr. Bhupen Hazarika (1926 - 2011)

Bhupen Hazarika was a symbol of Assam, the North-east and the Assamese like nothing before has been, and nothing after probably ever will be. His songs, the wonderful poetry he wove, the music he composed are a part of the consciousness which the Assamese society possesses or lays claim to. Indeed, he could create ethereal magic out of nothing and everything. Dew drops glistening from the wires strung across telephone poles, a mother harshly admonishing her child with a switch – everything was grist to that wonderful imagination. In his compositions, this maestro consistently held aloft the motif of the mundane, the everyday into a thing of great beauty.

It is perhaps immaterial at what unthinkably tender age Bhupen Hazarika composed and sang his first song, or which were the many commendations and awards that a grateful people bestowed upon him, or who were all those great singers and musicians and artists who collaborated alongwith him to create great masterpieces. What matters is he created universal images for everyone who seeks to lend this great artist his senses, for all time to come.

For a long time (since June this yr), this great artist under the ravages of old ages, had been ill and admitted in a private hospital in Mumbai. A few days back, when the news of him suffering a complete renal failure came, the newspaper report proclaiming this carried a detail which I felt very numbing. The report stated that Bhupen Hazarika as he lay strapped onto a life-support system, seemed oblivious to everything else, but one thing. His head doctor said that the 85-year old was responding only to Bihu geet (the harvest songs of Assam) – he seemed to have just that little bit of consciousness to lightly tap his fingers to the rhythm of the song which was played to him intermittently. At 16:37 today evening, those frail fingers stopped tapping their wonderful magic into our lives.

(You can know more about Bhupen Hazarika in the following 2 links.)

Website dedicated to Bhupen Hazarika 

Wiki's Stub on Bhupen Hazarika