From urban to rural: exploring the culture and history of traditional Indian villages
Growing up, I completed much of my schooling from a convent school in Bangalore, and I remember once asking someone older to me why Catholic schools were so sought after? The answer I got was that, “Catholic schools are much like finishing schools”. True to this, there was a lot of attention given to how we spoke (and talking in any other languages outside language class was discouraged) and our mannerisms; and my friends and I all listened to English music, watched English movies and read English books. But what I didn’t realise at the time, was how much this experience would distance me from my culture.
It wasn’t until much later, that I began to feel like I was missing something. At this time, I was about 24 years old and working as a financial journalist. I didn’t quite know what it was, but I felt like I wanted to do something different, and I I made the very scary decision to take some time off.
Ten months later, I began working at an environmental research and conservation organisation. I began largely working on a project to help small farming communities co-occur with elephants with minimal contact or conflict. Adult Asian elephants can weigh upto 5 tonnes and eat over a 100 kilos of food per day, sometimes from crop-fields bordering the forest. The farmers who till this land endure the financial burden of crop-loss, and sometimes even put their lives at risk to protect their cropfields.
Most of the villages we visited were small, remote villages barely comprising a few 100 people, mostly the older generation. Much of the youth had moved to nearby towns and cities, although living in a city was not all some people hoped it would be, and they returned to the village.
Since most households had between about two and four members, people rarely build large, showy houses, but most homes were similarly structured. And each house had its only distinct colour! The houses were made of single, sloping tilled roofs supported over a raised veranda with wooden pillars. The veranda served as a seating area and often a breezy and shady spot for an afternoon nap. In the olden days, a room below the veranda served as a storage space. The houses had a main room where people ate meals and watched TV; one or two bedrooms; a kitchen; and a bathing/washing area, but rarely a bathroom. After the harvest season, it wasn’t uncommon to see one side of the main room filled with bags of produce.
The slightly bigger houses were sometimes built around a courtyard and called a Thotti Mane. During the rains, water would collect here to be used later, saving women the trouble of going to collect water.
The villages usually had narrow roads and people sometimes tied young calves and buffalos on the road along their houses. When we drove by the animals would cling to walls petrified by the sound of our Jeep. Villages had a common water tank where people gathered to wash clothes and sometimes their animals, who often drank this same water. Some of these tanks were natural springs that had been enclosed generations ago.
These small, sometimes remote villages were so different from the surroundings I’d grown up in, and, especially during that initial time, I frequently felt lost. But slowly, as time passed, my colleagues and I uncovered the most interesting histories of these villages.
The first village I visited was a small hamlet in Tamil Nadu, referred to as “Little England” during the colonial period because of the cool weather. Anand Reddy’s father, one of the farmers we began working closely with, recounted how when he was young, the Britishers would come to the adjoining forest on hunting expeditions.
When I returned home, I found a copy of Kenneth Anderson’s “Nine Man-eaters and One Rogue” and began reading about his encounters with “The Man-Eater of Jowlagiri”. Describing the forest, Anderson writes, “those who have been to the tropics and to jungle places will not need to be told of the beauties of the moonlight over hill and valley, that picks out in vivid relief the forest grasses and each leaf of the giant trees, and throws into still greater mystery the dark shadows below, where the rays of the moon cannot reach, concealing perhaps a beast of prey, a watchful deer or a lurking reptile, all individually and severally in search of food.”
Anderson spent much time in the region tracking and finally killing the man-eating tigress over two separate expeditions. Anand would also tell us stories of a long ago village deep in the forest, and about nomadic tribes who visited the area in search of tubers and roots.
Another story that vividly stands out is from a village called Noorandumalai. Here, two farmers Madhesh and Basappa, told us the story of how the village got its name. This story takes place around 800 years ago.
In the 12th century, a yogi from north Karnataka came to meditate in a nearby cave. This yogi is believed to be disciple of Basavanna, the founder of Lingayatism, a Shaivite Hindu religious tradition.
His arrival created much excitement, and the people along with the local rulers wanted to test him to find out if he was a true yogi. At the time, people believed that yogis were powerful people capable of performing extraordinary acts. So, on the decided day a 100 people visited the yogi, the test was to see if the yogi could feed everyone. The yogi had already prepared his meal for himself. Yet, according to the story he managed to feed all 100 people and still had food fo himself.
Thereafter, he came to be known as Noorandu swamy, meaning “100 and one” in Kannada and eventually the village, too, adopted the name.
But, as I’d mentioned earlier, we mainly visited these villages to talk to people about their experiences with elephants. And along with stories about their village we heard numerous stories about the elephants that came to their cropfields, their village tanks and to fruits trees in their vicinity.
Contrary to what I expected, these stories were rarely retold in anger. People where frustrated sometimes, but they believed that this space was not theirs alone, despite the many difficulties they faced. They spoke about the many changes that had occurred over the years, many of which in their own lifetime, and for the most part, people were patient, understanding and accepting.
(By Nicole Pinto with help from Sandeep G; work carried out as part of the Frontier Elephant Programme)
