THE MORNING RITUALS IN TARASHIV

The first day in Tarashiv, our chosen village, was pretty okay. This was way back in December 1983 when Apoorva and I were to spend a month in this village as part of our rural orientation, as part of our Rural Management studies from the Institute of Rural Management - Anand (IRMA). We didn’t have anything to do. We walked around a little bit to get to know the lanes. There were not very many, anyway, so it didn’t actually need much time. The houses were in neat little rows facing each other. In the evening, we went to the milk co-operative, in time for the evening collection, of milk hoping to be of some help. The secretary, our land lord, was there, waiting for people to come and pour their milk. The people were coming in a trickle, with milk in bottles and small utensils. They didn’t have much to contribute to the pool anyway. No single contribution had exceed a litre, a far cry from the Kheda co-operatives in Gujarat, where there used to long queues to pour milk, after which they would move to another queue to collect their cash payment for the previous day’s milk and after which they stood in yet another queue, some of them, to buy cattle feed. So it meant on their way back, they (mostly women) would have an empty brass pot or big steel utensils with a long handle, all empty, a kilo or two of processed, nutritious cattle feed and still have enough money to take back home as hard cash, in their fists or tucked away into their blouses or in a cloth purse that would hang around their waist.

However, none of this was required in Tarashiv. Cash could be available only once a week, or if the Raipur (district level) dairy was going through a liquidity problem, it could be once a fortnight or even longer. There was no cattle feed stock. In fact, no one bought cattle feed, as no one could afford to. Which then meant that the bullocks were only big as the cows, the cows looked like calves and the calves were barely bigger than the mongrels that roamed around ! We once came across a family of 17 cows and so, we thought they would be the single largest contributor to the milk society. But that was not the case. They had barely managed to pour 10-15 litres of milk during an entire month as most of the cows were dry and there was only one which gave milk everyday, most of which had to be used for home consumption !

Coming back to our first day in Tarashiv, as night came nigh, the winds got a little chilly. Our landlord, the secretary of the milk co-operative, was also the provider of our food. We were never very clear on the terms. We weren’t told, nor did we ask. The arrangement had been made by the Raipur Milk Union who told us that we would have to pay a ‘reasonable amount’, though the reasonable amount was not specified. We welcomed the darkness. It helped us to get over the inconvenience of not having access to a toilet. We didn’t have to go far to urinate, atleast ! Any bush round the corner was fine. Not that we were not used to urinating in the open. It was quite easy in the anonymity that a city like Ahmedabad could offer, where the chance of a person seeing you pee in public would be one in a thousand and hence worth taking the risk. Whereas here, on the first day itself, we had been seen and noticed by several people in the village and several more would see us and we had to continue living there for atleast a month !

The food was hot and delicious (it was partly because we were very hungry and partly because it was our first meal, not realizing that the menu would largely be unchanged throughout the month). It consisted of white plain rice (which had a nice aroma - remember, we were in the rice bowl, Chattisgarh) in a heap in a round thali (plate) and dal (lentils) made of green grams. Yes, we did look at the dal very carefully. Those were the days when there was a raging controversy on the after effects of regular use of the saffron-coloured (kesar) dal which was commonly consumed in Raipur and the neighbouring districts (which now form the state of Chhattisgarh). It was said that regular consumption of kesar dal could lead to paralysis. Though the local people couldn’t care less, for us, we did not want to take a chance. Hence the sight of a green gram dal was very welcome. There was also a little vegetable (this would change regularly, but normally it was potatoes and brinjal).

It had been a long day. A 60 kms. ride by jeep from Raipur, settling in our new home, walking round the village, an evening the milk co-operative – well certainly, our insulated carefree life on the IRMA campus with its idyllic setting had not prepared us for something more taxing ! We snuggled into our beds, one on the cot, one on the floor. And while we were dying to sleep (we actually went to sleep at 8.30 p.m., again, a far cry from our sleeping time at IRMA, which was never before 2.00 a.m.!), we found ourselves tossing and turning around.

For me, it was possibly because it was a new place. But then there were other factors too. The excitement of being in a new place, the slight discomfort at the complete silence all around, except for the grunting noises that our bovine neighbours made occasionally, worrying sick about the possibility of having to share the floor with snakes or scorpions or other insects…..! For Apoorva, it was almost entirely to do with the threat of the cows knocking down the rear door and trampling him or goring him, depending upon where and how they caught him ! He cursed the cows each time the thought about them disturbed him, cursed himself for choosing to come to a village and stay in a place where the cows could just walk it with little effort with their threatening horns and hooves, cursed himself for having joined IRMA and having to undergo such unusual travails, far from the comforts of his home in Ahmedabad ! But somehow, we managed to sleep.

We kept hearing various sounds and noises from early in the morning, but it was too early for us to wake up. 8 a.m. was normally a reasonable time to wake up while we were on the campus and we had thought we will give up an hour’s sleep and wake up at 7 instead. With every passing moment, the type of sounds kept increasing. People talking, the heavy metal handle of the buckets hitting the rim as women poured water into the various brass pots they had collected from the village well, the creaking sound of men’s footwear as they untied the cows and led them to wherever they intended to take them, of sounds and smells from the kitchen and so on. And yes, the cocks crowing (well, they kept on crowing endlessly even after they would have managed to wake up the entire village !) and the cows mooing, calling out for either getting their udders emptied or to draw attention to their empty stomachs. 7 still seemed quite early in the morning, for we had no work to do, no classes to attend. All that we had to do was understand and observe life in rural India and then write about it.

We came out to the verandah and started brushing our teeth. It must have seemed a strange sight to those who walked past, seeing us brush in a very strange manner with white froth forming at the corners of our mouth. Most of the people we saw had a neem twig which they kept on chewing while they went about their other errands – herding their cattle, carrying wood and haystacks on their heads, cycling down the road. Some were, like us, stationed at one place while they rubbed their teeth vigourously with the kala dant manjan – the black tooth powder, which was locally made and commonly used in several parts of rural India. We even had it in Kerala. It was called ‘mukkeri’. In cities, they came in neat little and for some reason, red coloured packets. I remember, in Ahmedabad, one of the most popular brands was the ‘Monkey’ brand. Later on, these were replaced by Dabur’s lal (red) dant manjan and the Colgate’s white tooth powder.

So far, so good ! But then, the rumbling in our stomachs started. It was time to answer the nature’s call. For some reason we were quite optimistic to find a toilet, but did not quite know how to go about identifying one. Just as we were wondering about asking our landlord, his mother came out and handed over a steel lota to us which could just about hold a litre of water, “Yeh bahar jaane ke liye hai” (This is for you for going 'out' - 'out' being an euphemism for toilet, which we did not know at that time). We did not quite understand what that meant, for we hadn’t asked for one. But then, the lota, in addition to being symbolic for various other things, was also symbolic of the morning (or the evening ) ablutions ! Fortunately, we were carrying with us a plastic mug too, so that we did not have to be sequential about answering the call of nature, the longer one, that is ! “You can fill the water from the pond which is on the way to the fields”, Somu said helpfully.

It was a cold morning. Our rubber chappals (slip-ons) were not good enough to keep them from freezing. But our pressing need and the anxiety of finding a good enough place to let it all out on our first day in the village (we had hogged the whole of the previous day in Raipur, considering the fact that urban food would now be a month away) made us tread gingerly on the path that led us out of the village to the pond where many like us were visible. They seemed to have completed their task as we could see them wash their hands.

We didn’t have the faintest idea where we needed to go and how far we needed to go. We hadn’t bothered to check it out with Somu. We thought of walking as far away as possible. As we made our way through the freshly ploughed farms that grew pulses, over the lumps of damp earth, our feet started freezing even more with the fresh cold dew that was very visible on the plants and wild grass. And as our need became more pressing, we started walking faster, awkwardly negotiating over the lumps of damp earth in our most unsuitable chappals (no wonder those who wore footwear chose to wear a very rigid sort of a leather chappals). The now-less-than-a-litre water from our plastic mug and lota started spilling miserably, drastically reducing the quantity of this precious liquid that would ensure our hygiene !

Finally, we came to the corner of a farm with a nice protective hedge all around. “This place looks safe” said Apoorva in great relief. And just as we were about to go onto our haunches, we saw someone coming straight across the farm from behind the very hedge which we thought would give us privacy ! And before he could notice us, we darted to the other side of the hedge, looking for a safer place. It took a good five more minutes to identify the next safest place. This time, we said enough was enough. We could not hold on any longer. And if someone did see us in the act, well, there was no choice. So there we were, out in the open on a cold morning in Tarashiv, delightfully relieving ourselves, happy in the thought that our act of commission would make someone’s farm organically more rich !

This was the first time I was going out in the open. Not that I was used to attached toilets all my life. In the government quarters that we stayed in Ahmedabad, the toilet was in our backyard, a good 10 feet away from our living space. That was okay except on freezing winter early mornings, when we had to go to school early in the morning, twice a week on a Wednesday and a Saturday. As a kid, the cold and the dark were ingredients for a certain mortal fear, till I was about 7 or 8. Our village in Kerala was different. At least, till the seventies, the toilet was about 40 feet away from the house, in the midst of our ‘parambu’ or the open land dotted with coconut palms and various other trees that was typical of most houses in the country side. There were two neighbouring houses. One belonged to my great grand mother and the other to my grand aunt, both on the maternal side. One was a pucca one, the other, a kutcha one. The pucca one was pretty much like the typical Indian ones that you would see in a government quarters, like the one we lived in, except that there was no water tap. Instead, there was a water tank into which we had to pour water drawn from the well. The kutcha one was made of sheets of coconut leaves woven like a mats which provided for an enclosure without a door. You had to turn in left to enter it and then turn right to get to the place where you would perform your job. It didn’t have a septic tank. It had a pit. You had to squat on the two wooden planks while you relieved into the pit. To avoid looking below, one would look up at the heads of the swaying palms, which made for a much better sight and also enabled you to keep the nose turned up. I would avoid this structure as much as possible. I was most worried that someone would barge in while I was there and hence keep on coughing incessantly to keep the potential trespassers away.

Coming back to Tarashiv, the most anxious moments, especially in the early days, was about finding out a safe place to relieve ourselves. Thankfully, I found Apoorva more fastidious than me. By the time he has scouted around for a suitable place with his own security checks to make sure that he could get his 10 minutes of peace to complete his job, I would have done mine. And it was this type of pressure that made us alter our waking up timing. We were now up at 6 in the morning to take advantage of the morning winter darkness. Ofcourse, it meant we would encounter more people on our way to or way back from the fields, but the morning darkness lent us a relative anonymity that we welcomed !