[It was only once that I went to Rewaghuli. But before that, it was a land that was always mysterious and forbidden to us. It was a land that swarmed and ‘smelled’ of people who were ‘dirty’ and ‘uncivilized’; a space where people ate ‘things’ which were not supposed to be eaten and if the children there excelled in education, if at all someone in sometimes in a blue moon, the reasons behind it were soon enumerated spitefully in the nearby dehen village- a term use by the Karbis of Rewaghuli to describe non-Karbis. There were no tensions, no fights, no condescending remarks, no revolt, no resistance from the people of Rewaghuli; partly because they thought they were destined to be that way and partly because their social and economic existence were defined and protected and validated by the norms and customs of this dehen village itself.
But this strong sense of caste prejudice pained me as a young child. That was not because I was aroused with concern for the ugly tensions in our society, but because I couldn’t go there, explore those forbidden terrains. One girl, whom we used to call Peelu Baideu (elder sister), eloped with a boy from Rewaghuli and she could never come back home again for any puja, any bihu and any funeral….
Those were the days long before I started loitering freely in Rewaghuli, as a man of about twenty years old. But have things changed? There is greater degree of tolerance, lesser resistance. But the mentalities and the attitudes are the same. I don’t see much difference in these.]
Rewaghuli
If you stride across briskly
playfully
Over the dead dry mellow grass
and go to Rewaghuli,
in a sparkling dewy morning—
Crossing the cow-dung-mopped
pale-algae-green courtyard
pushing aside the fat bholuka-bamboo gate,
in the evening, it is
just like stealing a Magh bihu rice powder cake
from a smoky, cobweb dominated kitchen;
Where corrylium wearing cobwebs
hang like grandma’s folded and wrinkled skins
from a furry sky.
It’s not that you can scoop up
Seluks from the golden grass’s feet
easily;
But that’s at least easier than crossing Rewaghuli
At least, no bamboo canes with fine prickly horns
chase you there
with words
with the irrational snobbery of
an unofficial family rulebook
If you explore the inverted world in Rewaghuli
you are caned with golden bamboos
(that don’t glitter)
If you pick up a seluk,
and have it un-salted,
You are caned with flying words
that carry creaky colours
and stories
unheard before--
in their invisible wings
that flutter endlessly
like dragon-flies.
With dancing rose-red
and luminous sky-blue tails.
They are words that talk about burrows
of gleaming black fleshy ‘ropes’
(only at night)
and furry naughty brown mongooses.
Of
big
fat
round
brown rats, that sleep on a bed of
stolen golden seeds
Abodes of mysterious many-legged
and legless creatures
that may colour your lips blue,
and turn you
dead.
In Rewaghuli, there are ‘burrows’ too—
Of thatched bamboo huts
and of not so high clay-verandahs
of quadrangle rooms
somehow standing.
Of walls with a small square eye
not wooden and yet
painted oily-black;
Of houses, standing wearily
without wooden pillars
gomari
chegun
or
balsum and sal
Its an inverted world, our elders would say;
Forbidden seluks—
burnt and mashed with salt
decorate rice plates
for breakfast
which are not golden.
A green chilli, slim
like a harmonium playing long-nailed finger
a burnt brown flutteringly smelly garlic, in red smolders
garnish their dinners
at the time when we have
our smoky aromatic evening tea.
Dal, with fried ginger-garlic-pepper paste,
is only for special people
Who come from ‘town’ in white ambassadors
Or
When someone die
When a small girl is stained below
For the first time---
Then, they cry singing
how difficult it is
to make a village-full of hungry jealous people
and Brahmins
stand under a single banana leaved shade
and a single dining space;
They don’t do it with fanfare
with hindi songs flooding the air
the smell of oil-dripping luchi, loitering languidly.
And that leads to the easiest verdict,
‘Heartless people!
Uncivilized!’
You should not cross the dry
Egg-yolk field
Stripped off her golden seeds children
and mingle with the Rewaghulians---
It was hammered
into our judgmental heads
Our elder brothers
used to blush
and fume red
when some embarrassingly colourful
flying words would rudely clutch their faces.
Scared: they can’t protest
That, small girls dressed in dirty panties
Or women with only mekhalas on their hanging breasts
(like a pair of jackfruits)
were not something as enticing
as the intoxicating white horlang
Its intoxicatingly dangerous after all,
to go to that inverted world.
Perhaps, it is---
bormas and khuris and mothers
Who wear a chadar with a mekhela
‘covering everything’
After all know everything about them
including, the secret to the success of
any Rewaghuli student;
After all, we would never bring ourselves to
Drink milky-looking rice starch
and top the class
Like the inverted people of Rewaghuli
Who ‘doesn’t have brains’
until they kill
obese pigs
white-stripped Brahmin-frogs
hairy wild potatoes
and lush blood-red tomatoes
for dinner
and lunch.
Glossary:
1. Rewaghuli: A Karbi (scheduled tribe in Assam) village below poverty level. The people there are considered to be of a lower caste and hence children from upper caste were forbidden to go there.
2. Magh Bihu: A food festival after harvest during the month of January.
3. Seluks: The round sized roots of the water lilies that remain embedded in the harvested paddy fields during the winter months. A popular edible among children. Tastes slightly bitter; better when salted.
4. ‘Plates… which are not golden’: Reference to a slightly expensive alloy called ‘kanh’ used in Assamese households to serve food; golden in color and glitters like gold when washed with ash and lemon.
5. Mekhelas: A kind of petticoat that Assamese women wear.
6. Horlang: Karbi rice beer.
7. Brahmin-frogs: A kind of frogs with white strips on their backs. Assamese- Bamun (Brahmin)-bhukula (frog, generally male).
