The musicians beat the huge drums that hung down to their knees and clanged the large cymbals without a pause. The clamour of the drums and cymbals made the whole atmosphere reverberate and hearts jump.
The men made the girl stand on a flat stone at the edge of the pit. She was crying loudly and struggling to maintain her balance. Her eyes were fixed on some spot in the distance, unwilling to look into the pit where her husband’s body lay. The frenzied beating of drums and cymbals continued, but people’s faces showed no emotion. The young boy lifted the water pot on to his shoulder. Someone made a small hole at the back of the pot and the water seeped out in a continuous stream behind him. The youth walked around the corpse and the girl five times before smashing the pot on the ground. He held the palm fronds against the flaming dung and then lowered the torch into the pit. The wood that had been doused with oil burst into flame.
An old man went up to the girl and declared loudly, ‘If all the emblems that a married woman sports are intact when you die the gates of Heaven will open before you. All your sins will burn to ashes in your husband’s pyre. You will be liberated and attain salvation. This man will be your husband in your next life and for all time to come.
‘You will be honoured as a goddess!
‘You will always sport the emblems of marriage!
‘You will be renowned for your devotion to your husband!
‘Do not flinch, do not be afraid!
‘Accept the flames in your husband’s pyre with joy!
‘Be transported to heaven, let salvation be yours!
‘May your sins be burnt to ash…’
The flames were leaping out of the pit as the sound of drums reached a crescendo. The girl drew back sharply, but the old man pressed his fists against her back and pushed her in. Cries of ‘Har Har Mahadev! ’ tore the air. The girl’s screams cut through the cacophony as she struggled to get out.
Padre Simao could bear it no longer, ‘What are you doing, you sinners? Why did you throw that girl into the flames … God will never forgive you!’ he screamed rushing up to the pit. Four or five men grabbed him and shoved him on to a stony patch. One of them hit him with his staff, ‘This low caste wretch from another religion will defile the purity of our ritual. Go! Get away at once!’
The priest walked towards his shack with heavy footsteps. The girl’s voice became fainter as her body was consumed by the flames. The sun was quite high in the sky but darkness seemed to be enmeshed in the leaves of the surrounding trees. A vile black shadow hung over the area, as though the heat of the blazing pyre had swallowed the sun’s light, and an eclipse had begun.
As Padre Simao and Annu approached the astrologer’s house, they saw him sitting cross-legged before a large chest. The joish stared at Padre Simao for a long time.
‘I’ve seen you moving about the village trying to fool people, but you won’t succeed. You won’t convert anyone, except some innocent youngsters like him. Anyway, what brings you here?’
‘I want to know why some of your people will not touch some others. You say cow dung and urine are holy, but even the shadows of some men are impure. How can that be?’
‘Don’t say a word about the holy cow. Thirty-three crore deities reside within her belly, cow dung and cow urine bear the essence of these gods.’
‘Doesn’t man bear the essence of the gods, too?’
‘Not all men. Just Brahmins. They emerged from Lord Brahma’s brain. The other castes emerged from his hands, his legs and his belly.’
‘Brahmins should have some extra faculties, then.’
‘They do.’
‘What is that?’
‘Intelligence.’
‘Others have that, too.’
‘No. That’s the sort of intelligence oxen have.’
The padre remained silent for a while. This Brahmin was obviously intelligent.
‘When I was at St Paul’s college I read that the Hindu epic Ramayana was written by Valmiki a lowly Shudra, and the Mahabharata by Vyasa, a low caste man whose mother sold fish. And the Bhagvad Gita was narrated by Krishna, a Kshatriya, on the battlefield.’
‘Wrong! All wrong! The Ramayana and the Mahabharata were not written by one man, in one day. Hundreds of intellectuals composed these books which kept growing over thousands of years. The Bhagvad Gita presents the essence of Hinduism and bears the stamp of the Brahmins, even though Krishna narrated it on the battlefield. Only Brahmins know the divine language Sanskrit. We composed the Vedas and the Puranas. Brahma and Brahmins are inseparable and one who kills a Brahmin commits a very grave sin. We know the holy chants and incantations, we can curse people and turn them into ash. We make rain fall in times of drought and barren women conceive, at our command the spirits of the dead achieve salvation and ascend to the heavens,’ the joish rasped.
‘You haven’t told me why men discriminate between each other, why one man refuses to touch certain other men,’ the priest said calmly.
‘You are an uncivilized creature from across the seven seas. You won’t understand all this. If all classes were allowed to interact and all restrictions on touch removed, it would lead to a loss of ritual purity and result in immoral behaviour. The duality of self would be destroyed, cross-breeding across the classes would dilute the purity of their blood. The well-defined hierarchy would be destroyed. Sin would reign. Earthquakes and floods would destroy mankind. The elaborate pujas we perform make the world move smoothly, God listens to what the Brahmins say.’
‘If you say such things, the lower castes will forsake Hinduism and embrace some other religion.’
‘Let them go.’
‘I should be thankful to you. We’ve come here with the teachings of Jesus Christ. We want people to embrace our faith.’
‘So many others have come and gone. Waves of Buddhist preachers came here, once. Where are they now? One day you will also go away with your face blackened.’
‘Some of our people have come with swords to force you to embrace our religion. What will you do now?’
‘We have faith in our gods. You don’t know how powerful they are. If you meddle with them, you will die a painful death.’
Padre Simao laughed. ‘When they come with swords to destroy your religion and break your gods, won’t you resist them? With sticks and canes, at least?’
‘Who are we to resist? God will resist them. He will destroy them.’
‘Last week I saw a woman thrown into a funeral pyre. I was very upset. How does your religion allow this heinous crime?’
The joish’s grey eyes blazed with anger, ‘No one pushes these women into the pyre. They accept the flames of their own will, as a mark of devotion to their husbands. They atone for the sins of their previous birth which has resulted in the death of their husband. They have no right to live. They become a burden to the family and their love affairs and quarrels cause strife and degradation. Let me tell you the facts – Brahmin widows in Goa do not commit sati. We remove their ornaments and shave their hair to keep them away from temptation. They bathe in cold water twice a day, have a cold meal just once and spend their time in prayer and worship.’
All of Goa lived in fear ever since the foreigners destroyed the Chamundeshwari temple at Chornem two years ago. After Kashi, Pandhari and Gokarn this temple on Chornem island was the most revered place of worship for most Goans. The temple, which was fifty-two feet long and twenty-seven feet wide, was built of massive blocks of smooth, dark stone. The roof and floor were also made of large stone slabs. Farmlands and orchards not only on Chornem island, but also in far flung villages were owned by the temple and it was said that the deity’s gold ornaments would fill half a sack.
During the temple festival in the month of Chaitra, people from all over Goa came to Chornem for the rath jatra. The magnificent temple chariot had four wooden wheels, each as tall as a man. On this frame stood a stout wooden post atop which were two thick beams fitted crosswise. Dozens of wooden pegs were nailed on to these beams and during the festiva
l masses of flower garlands were hung from them. When the chariot was pulled forward, the crossbeams with the hanging garlands, whirled round and round.
Once the King of Portugal, Joav III, gave permission to start converting the Hindus, the officials on duty in Goa had their eyes on the Chamundeshwari temple. The temple encouraged people to worship idols and practise the Hindu faith and this was an obstacle in their path. Viceroy Francis Barrett was looking for an excuse to raze the temple to the ground. Once this seat of the Hindu faith was destroyed, all the wealth in the temple’s coffers would be theirs. Besides, the task of conversion would become easier.
Disaster struck during the festival that year. As the chariot was being dragged along, one of the crossbeams broke and fell on the devotees killing three people and injuring many others. The Mahajans and other temple officials were terrified.
People began to speculate among themselves. Someone whispered, ‘Rukmi kalavant, the temple dancer, performed her duties so well. When she danced before the chariot with the flaming oil lamps in her hands even the musicians couldn’t keep pace with her steps! Wonder why she killed herself in the temple pond, though. No one came forward to claim her body, and it lay there on the edge of the pond till the temple authorities had some mhars drag it away. No funeral rituals were conducted. The deity must be angry about all this!’
Someone else said, ‘The chariot’s decorative frame was stored in the open in the backyard of the temple. The wooden beam must have got wet whenever it rained, but no one paid any attention to it, that’s why it broke off.’
This incident was seized upon by the Governor and he banned the festival, declaring that everything associated with it – from the construction of the chariot to the procession itself – was a threat to public safety. The temple officials however, obtained the blessings of the deity and built a new chariot out of rosewood and sangvani teakwood that was stronger than the old one. But the old wheels of the chariot were retained.
When the viceroy heard that the festival would be held again, he sent a troop of sixty Portuguese and local soldiers to prevent it. The chariot, bearing the idol Chamundeshwar, was to go round the temple and then to the little Santeri shrine in a nearby grove. But even before the rituals started, the soldiers blocked the path with naked swords in their hands. The devotees refused to be cowed down, and defied the soldiers. Within minutes, the soldiers started to beat up the unarmed devotees, but in an instant, thousands of coconuts from the temple’s store were brought out and people began flinging them at the soldiers. Then the captain fired the gun in his hand and people ran away, leaving twenty dead bodies on the ground. Of these, two were white-skinned soldiers, three were local soldiers and the rest were devotees who had come to the festival.
The viceroy was not content with this. He ordered the soldiers to spray oil on the chariot and set fire to it. Some soldiers armed with rods, pickaxes and sledgehammers smashed the idol of the Lord before razing the temple to the ground. They brought two cows from the village and slaughtered them in front of the temple and threw their intestines in the temple pond. All the deity’s ornaments, the brass and copper vessels and all the wealth in the temple’s coffers was carried away in large boats.
It took the soldiers three days to pull down the temple. All the while, two soldiers stood guard. The bhat, the pujari and the gurav who performed various priestly tasks, the devli and the kalavant who cleaned the temple and danced on ceremonial occasions, and others involved with the temple’s activities remained in their homes. Every blow from the sledgehammer seemed like it was falling on their heads.
One day the viceroy sent a newly converted Christian to Chornem island with a proclamation: ‘The four hundred and fifty acres of farmland and orchards that belonged to the temple now belong to the church. All your duties and obligations will now be directed towards the church. The gaonki and gaonkari system of village administration will continue as before. Those who worked for the temple can continue in the service of the church if they convert to Christianity. Those who farm the temple’s land can continue doing so if they become Christians, but all farmland and orchards owned by Hindus will be confiscated by the State.’
The people of Goa were shaken. They waited with their hearts in their mouths to see what new developments the next day would bring. The slightest noise made them jump, they were scared to talk loudly. If a soldier or a foreigner happened to pass through the village, people drew back in alarm.
‘They’re planning to hold a feast, it seems. They will tie us up and drag us there and then force us to eat what they’ve cooked … cow’s meat, maybe…’
‘They’ll take away the land and orchards of those who don’t become Christians and drive them out of Goa, it seems…’
‘They lock people up in rooms. Soldiers with guns stand outside. Inside, they make you accept their faith. If you don’t, they burn you alive…’
Mhablu Nayak of Shirvaddo had married off his daughter to a man from Divade. After the incident at Chornem, he and his wife were worried about their daughter. The girl had last come to visit them three months ago. So one day Mhablu said to his son, ‘Shambhu, my boy, there’s been no news from your sister for three months. Go and see how she and her two little ones are.’
Shambhu had been wanting to go to Bai’s house for quite some time, so when his father gave him permission, the boy seemed to sprout wings. Ever since his bai Vitha had got married six years ago, he used to trek all the way to her house at least twice a year. Shambhu ate some payz, or rice gruel, and set out early the next morning. He’d just turned sixteen and was young and strong and full of excitement at the thought of seeing his sister.
The route to Divade was lined with large trees and bushes, a number of streams and rivulets cut across the path. Shambhu walked along the embankments of fields where the autumn crop had just been sown. In other parts the summer crop had been harvested and the fields lay bare. The tinkling of bells around the necks of grazing cattle and the voices of cowherds calling filled him with joy.
As he passed five or six houses set in a shallow valley a little away from the track, he noticed four cattle sheds and a group of people huddled before one of them. Shambhu wrapped his towel about his head and went up to see what they were doing. An ox was lying on the ground with blood and pus oozing out of a gash on its flank. One of the men crushed some leaves with a stone and spread the paste on the wound. Immediately, maggots began to crawl out. The ox struggled to its feet.
‘Who are you? Where are you going?’ one of the men asked Shambhu.
‘To my sister’s house at Divade. Saw you, and stopped for a while.’
‘Have some water, or something to drink,’ someone offered.
‘Oh no. I’ll be there soon.’
‘Be careful while crossing the river. A boatman drowned when his boat capsized recently. There were no strong winds, no storm … suddenly the water went round and round and the boat and boatman were sucked into that whirlpool. Such a thing has never happened here in the last hundred years. But after the temple…’
‘Don’t talk of that, Hari. Not another word. Just pray that our village remains safe,’ someone interjected as Shambhu set off again.
By the time he got to Panveli village the sun was overhead, but as the track wound through groves of mango and jackfruit it was quite shady and cool.
The boatman at the ferry crossing was dark and well-built and fearful to behold. He plied the oars as if he were in a frenzy and when the boat reached mid-stream, he stopped. Shambhu stared nervously at the vast expanse of water on either side and then at the boatman.
‘Whose house are you going to?’ someone on the boat asked Shambhu.
‘To my sister’s house. Shanu Desai, who lives by the well in that rocky outcrop, is my brother-in-law.’
The man seemed lost in thought for a while. A shadow of fear spread over his face, but he didn’t say anything. Shambhu felt a sense of unease. Why did that man’s face turn dark, like that?
; Shambhu dragged his feet through the shallow water and began to climb up the muddy slope of the river bank. He walked towards Dula Mhar’s large shack. Dula was burly, with shiny dark skin. His eyes were always bloodshot which made him appear quite ferocious. But he was a gentle, soft-spoken man, and Shambhu knew him well. Dula had come to Adolshi twice, once with the news that Bai’s father-in-law had passed away and another time when a worried Bai had sent him to see if her father was well since she’d been having disturbing dreams. He had always greeted Shambhu effusively when he passed by his shack and would say, ‘Oh, you’ve come! Bhavoji will certainly kill a large rooster for your meal!’
But today he turned away from Shambhu, and bent over the large bullock hide that was stretched on a frame. Shambhu stopped in order to greet him, but Dula didn’t even look at him, continuing to scrape the hide vigorously. Shambhu went on his way, wondering why Dula Mhar was behaving like this.
As he neared Bai’s house, Shambhu’s head reeled. He was filled with dismay. The low walls of the courtyard had been broken down. The tulsi vrundavan, made of mud, lay on the ground in disarray and the courtyard looked as though it had not been swept for days. Shambhu felt a sinking sensation in his stomach as he reached the courtyard. Suddenly, Vitha rushed up crying, ‘No, no my brother, don’t step into this house!’
Shambhu noticed that the galsari, which indicated that she was a married woman, no longer hung about her neck, and there was no kumkum mark on her brow.
‘What’s the matter, Bai? Why can’t I enter your house?’ he asked thickly.
‘Don’t come in here. You are my only brother, you belong to a devout, religious family, if anyone sees you here everything will be lost!’ Then she began to sob.
Age of Frenzy Page 4