For cold: Red chillies fried in clarified butter, ground fine and made into pellets with water. To be given for two days.
For instable legs in infancy: Mix the droppings of the pigeon with warm mustard oil and wrap its feet in it. Also, leave some earth in its loft for fulfilling its calcium needs.
For longer flying hours: Large cardamom, black pepper, sugar, fennel seeds, carom seeds, clove, bay leaf, betel leaf. Heat everything in water and bottle it. Feed the day the pigeon has to take a long flight.
A kit of pigeons who were a part of the race roll back across the sky, hurtling towards the clouds and then dive-bomb in perfect unison, splitting apart into two and integrating once again—like men and women swirling across the floor together in a ballroom dance. ‘Look at that one,’ Sood points to a dark pigeon straying away from the flock like a lonely cloud. ‘This one will leave the flock because it is confused, going around in circles. Their kabootarbaaz should ideally keep him separate.’ He clicks his tongue. Over the years, Sood has learnt that he should get rid of birds that frequently pull away from the flock because such rebels will lure birds into other flocks too. On a rooftop a few blocks away, their young kaboortabaaz Ahmad is frantically whistling and screeching, trying to lure the bird back into the flock. He holds his head in his hands dejectedly as the isolated pigeon separates himself from the group and joins Khalifa Jaggu dada’s pigeons flying in from another direction.
Banging his fist against his hand, Sood laughs at him. ‘The first three spots in the race are gone. Only the last spot is left. You are not winning this one. You have a long way to go,’ he shouts at the amateur flier. When a pigeon from one group joins another, the original owner loses the right over that pigeon, only claiming it if he is ready to pay a compensation amount.
‘My secret is that I keep all my pigeons separate—males in one coop, females in another.’ This organization is termed ‘widowhood’, in which coupling pairs are kept in different cages to increase their yearning for each other—and, accordingly, to aid their hurriedness to get back home. ‘Training,’ he says, readjusting his collar again, ‘is the toughest bit. You should always keep newborn pigeons, or squabs, in the coop for four weeks and only let them out when they are hungry so they will be trained to return.’
He explains further, ‘It is important to know what to feed pigeons at a given time of the year. As the trees start shedding leaves in February and March, the birds start shedding feathers too. They are mostly in their cages then, mating and getting some family time. It is important to give them a diet of cooling liquids made of things such as khus-khus, the juice of almonds blended with water and bajra soaked in water.
‘In the winters, we work on building their strength. This is the flying season, when we give them rotis. Flour is mixed with ghee to make dough and then fat rotis are rolled out,’ he says. These are then baked on fire, skinned to remove the hard parts, and then crumbled to be fed to the pigeons. On the days the birds are expected to be airborne, the birds are given a rich diet of dry fruits like kaju, badam and spices like elaichi with clarified butter. ‘Their mouths are designed to eat more than double. They eat almost two hundred grams a day,’ he says, showing a steel measuring-cup designed for this purpose. ‘They are brats, these kids.’ Sood laughs. ‘They will throw up all the food they ate earlier if they like something better.’
Sood spends between Rs 50,000–1,00,000 a month on taking care of these pigeons. ‘Yeh nawabon ka shaukh hai ji. Aise thodi koi bhi pappu jhappu inhe palega [This is a royal hobby. Not everyone can be a pigeon fancier]. I always knew my returns would be less. The only time I actually earn money is from competitions and, sometimes, when I sell squabs of a precious breed. For my grandfather, this was his part-time profession. He earned money from breeding, betting, selling these racing pigeons. But it can be as expensive as you want it to be. You can have fewer, local birds and spend less on their food and more on their training.’
Several pigeon societies evolved as pigeon racing turned from a hobby to a part-time profession, helping solve disputes and other matters. ‘At these societies, we go to one another for good birds. We exchange notes on birds and also purchase them from pigeon fanciers in other cities like Chennai and Kolkata,’ he says. Throughout the world, in Iran, Belgium, the United States, Pakistan and India, as many as one million people keep homing pigeons. Sood compares the atmosphere at these meetings to an Irani chai cafe, where ‘men come to get away from their women and the pressures of the week’. The camaraderie often involves uncouth but good-natured mocking about how many birds a flier caught from another’s flock. The chatter also allows for racial taunts, though some comments bite too hard. ‘Arrey, tu who kale Madrasi log se haar gaya? Langot bandh le, langot [You lost against those dark Madrasis? Time to wear a diaper, my boy]. Pigeon racing also has an unobserved felonious side to it. While the theft of cherished birds is common, gangs have been known to set fire to coops following rivalries and arguments about decisions at competitions.
As the Government of India does not permit8 the import of these birds, some individuals and organizations that breed and train pigeons import eggs of particular bloodlines and hatch them—bypassing the law and stocking the European pigeons in various lofts. And like dogfighting, pigeon racing is often accursed with the problem of gambling. Animal rights organization People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) penetrated racing organizations all over the world where thousands of dollars is bet on a single race, and discovered that pigeon racing generates huge amounts in illegal gambling and involves felony violations of racketeering and tax-evasion laws.
The high stakes can also lead some flyers to cheat. A young doctor who treats the birds close to Old Delhi, and who refused to be named, reveals that some birds failed tests for banned performance-enhancing drugs, even opium. ‘Non-performing birds can be very expensive to maintain sometimes. Their treatment, food and nutrition are obligations. Often, their necks are wrung and their remains buried ignominiously.’
‘It’s flawed. This whole system is flawed,’ screams Anil when we speak about it. ‘These animal organizations that claim we torture these birds are on a witch hunt. Why would they keep returning to us if we tortured them? Anyway, the presence of drugs in the system of these birds doesn’t give you an advantage. The bird has to be of a good breed and trained well. They are intelligent birds. Now look at that flock coming towards us,’ he says, spotting another in the air. The other flocks of the neighbouring home are returning, one by one, some so large that they blot out the sun.
‘If you look at them carefully, they somersault,’ says Sood excitedly. ‘These birds perform some of their best histrionics in the air, all for the fun of it. Sahi nasal hai inki [They are of a good breed]. Look at that.’ He jumps up, eager to show me the pigeon turning a somersault. ‘I love them,’ declares the otherwise stoic man who takes pride in his masculine prowess. On the floors below, he becomes a landowner who bullies his way through deals, a body builder with a formidable reputation. But here he is a protector and home keeper—a dimension to a man’s personality that perhaps even denotes the innate kindness that is bestowed upon every human.
To the kabootarbaaz waiting for his birds on his rooftop, the years of money lost on these birds has not dulled his spirit. Staring at the horizon, he jumps up when he sees a silhouette form, the hope that his bird, now appearing amongst that white patch of clouds, will come back from the unknown nooks and crannies of the world and swerve down into his outstretched hand. Kabootarbaaz and the kabootar—the men with their feet on the earth, looking skyward and hoping for the magic to be recreated, and the others with wings, who have a single purpose: to come back home to their men.
5
THE STORYTELLERS OF ANDHRA
The oil lamps hanging from the trees are dim, but they still glow like sweet honey on the faces of the audience. Crickets hum in the distance, and a few dogs can be seen dozing near discarded truck tyres. For a while, everything is silent—even the
restless bunch of children sitting cross-legged before the tiny stage decorated with marigold flowers. Moments later, a trio, with their indigenous instruments, perched atop the platform, clear their throats, the sensitive microphone turning the sound into a deep reverberating screech. Once silence is restored, they break into song, filling the air with their poems. They tell stories, sometimes all night long—legendary stories that the villagers gather to hear every year around bonfires during the winter months and, sometimes, in the cool evenings of the summer. These are stories that their fathers and grandfathers have heard. Stories that they have heard before and want to hear again. Of lovers, kings, gods and beggars. Stories that dissolve in their bloodstreams like pearls in the sea, becoming tender memories that comfort them like a mother’s soft caress. The quest for a lost childhood, after all, is an ancient one.
Kothagadi is small village in Vikarabad in the state of Telangana. Every Sankranthi,1 women decorate the thresholds of their houses in this town of a few hundred, making wriggly rangoli patterns from rice flour in the wee hours of the morning—a chalky welcome-mat to the most modest of huts. Later in the afternoon, they gather in open courtyards outside their huts and bind together sesame seeds with sugar syrup to make sweet balls of laddus.
Children fly kites in open fields during the day, and in the evening the villagers collect money to bring over our storytellers: the Burrakatha artists from the nearby town in Vikarabad. Burrakatha is an oral tradition that employs poetry and music in an all-night session of storytelling. Those who contribute more to the fund sit on plastic chairs along with the local MLA and the temple priest. The rest make do with sitting on the ground or perching on the thick branches of banyan trees; some, more than others, squat on the blue tarpaulin sheets that have been donated by a charity organization from Hyderabad, to watch the three storytellers shake their heads like the bobblehead dolls of Thanjavur,2 narrating long tales characterized by wit and quick-fire repartee, their voices like smooth velvet, intoxicating like toddy.
Burrakatha stories, usually mythological, historical and sociopolitical in nature, are the twentieth-century version of what was earlier known as Jangamkatha.3 The form has been improvised from the original, where the central underlying message was religious, with separate moral codes of conduct for the different strata of society, divided on the basis of class, caste and gender.
The origins of Jangamkatha have an interesting parable attached to them. A long time ago, when the gods and goddesses still lived in the cold, white mountainous paradise well beyond the clouds, the four founding fathers of the Budaga Jangam4 tribe were walking below them through dense jungles, hunting rats to take home as food. Pitying their desperation, Goddess Parvati requested her all-powerful husband to grant them a better life. The all-knowing Lord Shiva explained that they didn’t deserve better. But on his wife’s insistence, he suggested the men be tested before deciding their fate. Dressed as earthly beings, Parvati and Shiva appeared before the four men and offered solutions for a better way of life. Unfortunately, instead of honouring the god and goddess, they attempted to rape Parvati, so the infuriated Shiva cursed them in perpetuity to a life as beggars and nomads. And, thus, say the legends, dawned an era of the nomadic storytellers—the jangams, or ‘nomads’ in Telugu. In the twelfth century, they took up the Virashaivism5 religion under the influence of its propagator, Basava—a Karnataka-based saint who worshipped Lord Shiva and used the religion to combat caste issues and social inequality. It was a rebellion of sorts. But the religion soon dissipated and the jangams gave up their lifestyle, quickly going back to non-vegetarianism and alcohol. For their livelihood they continued begging and performing Burrakathas, in which they narrated stories of the much-venerated Shiva as well as other tales that they picked up while begging from village to village.
On the makeshift stage, the chief narrator, known as the kathakudu, sits in the middle, wearing fitted pyjamas with a loose robe and belt, and a plumed turban that seems to have collected dust, grime and sweat over the years. The fast-paced dialogues have him switching between multiple characters within seconds—one moment he is the vigilant, wise narrator and the next he is mimicking the cagey subtlety of women characters, and an instant later, he becomes the enigmatic, chimerical Lord Shiva. The younger audience lies back, relaxing with hands under their chins. To them, the storytellers seem to have all the innocence of a grandparent recounting tales. The elders have, meanwhile, drawn their knees up to their chins, the narrator’s voice flowing like cool, buttery toddy; their sleepy, tired, lolling heads jerk up as the characters come alive.
This endearing art form can seem discordant in less able hands, but the kathakudu handles the narrative carefully, allowing for a performance that maintains the vital tipsiness of the atmosphere. ‘Aieee, Gopeshwara Mahadevaheeeeee . . .’ The kathakudu starts the evening with a devotional song in praise of their Lord Shiva, using a copper ring, an andelu, in his right hand for the taal, meaning ‘beat’. A tambura, the fretless Indian lute, is strung across his shoulder. The tambura provides the origins of the word Burrakatha—the term burra refers to the tambura, while katha means ‘story’. The kathakudu pulls the string of the tambura to a soprano, stretching it to achieve maximum tension, while closing his eyes in concentration.
‘Pani, pani, pani . . .’ chimes in the rajkiya, a young moustachioed man on a dimki, a drum made of animal skin stretched over a mud pot, enabling it to produce a distinctly metallic sound regarded as an indispensable part of the Burrakatha performance. Apart from helping the narrator string the story together, the rajkiya cuts in on the narration with comments on contemporary political and social issues. The drummer to his left, the hasyam, meanwhile, cracks jokes throughout the performance with his wit and verve.
‘Dubulu rajyam paripalinchuta . . .’ In the silence of the night the kathakudu begins the story of the king of a village in Andhra. Soon, the tale will be embellished with songs, comments, melodies, tunes and expressions. ‘A village in the arid region of the Deccan plateau dries up due to drought,’ he recounts to his audience of fifty-odd villagers, the rajkiya stitching the story together with his acknowledgements—‘haan’, ‘pani’.
‘The king, queen and their young prince, along with their pet dog, leave the village to find newer pastures.’ His hands move to create mountains, jewels, forests, dust and prisons, his voice steadily thickening with a gradual rise in volume, carefully holding back his pitch for a climb to a melodic peak until the very end. ‘They travel far and wide, encountering monsters, wise rishis, evil spirits and dangerous animals . . .’ There is a brief pause, only to be immediately followed by a chorus from the other two raconteurs. ‘Dublugundu tambuda, bajerao tambuda . . .’ the hasyam and the rajkiya croon, the sounds punctuated by beats from their drums, the blur of their knuckles competing with the flapping of a hummingbird’s wings.
‘The royal family finally arrives at a neighbouring kingdom,’ continues the kathakudu as the sounds of the instruments wane, ‘hoping someone shows them mercy with some food. But the king of this neighbouring land, Kamleshkota, has other plans. Petty and trite as he is, he challenges the king to a fight.’ He builds on the story, increasing his pitch. A frenzied queen, a peppery parrot of a minister along with a sleek wise adviser in Kamleshkota’s court join the character list. The kathakudu’s rendition alters from agitated to piquant as the characters come alive, like words dancing between the audience and the narrator.
By now, the artists have aroused the curiosity of the audience, all of them wide-eyed in anticipation. The villagers are on their haunches, gaping at the raconteurs whose sparkly vigour conjures up fanciful delights—opening the doorway to their imaginations. ‘The challenge is to get his pet pig to fight the visiting king’s malnourished pet dog. The visiting king begs and pleads otherwise.’
‘“I’m here only to look for some food.” Kamleshkota, relishing the power play, refuses to relent. The kathakudu fleshes out the king’s character: “Two kings can’t live on the
same land,” roars Kamleshkota.’ And the rajkiya chimes in, ‘Just like Andhra and Telangana6 cannot be together,’ the line earning a hearty applause from the audience.
‘“If my pig wins, you become my slave. If your dog wins, I will leave my throne and make you the king,”’ roars the kathakudu, his voice a deep-throated baritone now; he plays the character of the king, his eyes turning into balls of fire as the drums roar louder. The atmosphere is thick with anticipation, and the kathakudu’s narration cuts through it deliciously.
The dog ultimately wins in the story and Kamleshkota leaves the kingdom. Peace and prosperity prevail over the village under the new righteous king.
‘The gentle bee is singing, is dancing, Tummeda.’7 The rajkiya and hasyam start singing a celebratory song to their dimkis.
She announces rain, the gentle bee, Tummeda
The river with the golden mouth flows, Tummeda
It ripens all the nine jewels, Tummeda
The bee in the forest where the honey fills up, Tummeda
In the fields, the fruits are filled with honey too, Tummeda
In this way, the farmers happily harvest the crop.
‘Kamleshkota ultimately repents his sins and throws himself into a river, flowing away with the fresh water and flowers, learning and unlearning throughout the rest of his life journey.’ The kathakudu finishes after about two hours; the account elicits a spontaneous wave of gusto from the audience, encouraging the Burrakatha artists to narrate another story. A few men, tanked up on toddy,8 dance in wild abandon while their women cheer them on.
‘We don’t care about the Andhra–Telangana divide,’ says the kathakudu as he sips hot chai during the interval, introducing himself as Anjalayya Jangam. ‘It is a fight between the kings, politicians. We are simply an audience. Maku anta saman [For us, everyone is the same].’ His voice is a papery rasp, beads of sweat form on his nose and chin and a musty smell fills the air as he sits on the ground beside me. Anjalayya is small, but has a vibrant energy in spite of his age, as if he would never need help getting up after long hours spent sitting.
The Lost Generation Page 7