A Goddess in the Stones: Travels in India

Rating:
Summary: A Pilgrim's Progress
Review: In travel writing, Norman Lewis ranks with the best in the trade, such as V.S.Naipaul, Paul Theroux, William Dalrymple and Pico Iyer. But what sets him apart is his choice of extraordinary destinations and his eye for spotting the abiding elements of a culture. He has produced from the much-acclaimed Dragon Apparent and Golden Earth. His desire of chronicling aspects of a society that are exposed to peril brought him to India in 1990. Here, he records the dangerous but less spectacular process of erosion : relentless clearing of jungles endangering the lifeways of the tribals. Despite his initial plans to limit his journey into the heart of tribal India, what he actually covers is a microcosm of India. We have the crowded, foggy and boisterous Bihar representing the North, a sedate coastal Orissa typifying the East; and Srikakulam, with its flashy restaurants and film-dominated atmosphere, exemplifying the South. India's over-populated and muddling metropolises are hurriedly sketched with the author's brief stopover in Calcutta. The ubiquitous old monuments and highway dhabas round off a picture of the vibrant heterogeneity that is India.

Lewis starts his journey in the `badlands' of Bihar and comes face to face with the howling moral void that characterizes the state. The messy streets of Patna, the dark underbelly of Bhagalpur, the ongoing communal killings, `the likelihood of criminal takeover of the democratic process' : all these make a mockery of the description of the state by the Department of Tourism as the `Land of Ancient Wisdom'.

From the stifling atmospheres of Patna and Calcutta, the `yellow refulgence of sand', the `green and pleasant fields' of Orissa bring a welcome relief. Coastal Orissa, with its vast expanses, crisscrossing rivers, exquisite monuments and laid-back people, seem indifferent to the modern art of living. There is no fear of being humbugged here. If Mrs. Panda, the manageress of the hotel in Puri indulged in a bit of `smiling extortion', the blame could be squarely laid on her training in a business school in London.

In the land of Orissa, which always seems to be enjoying its siesta, the past has a formidable presence. Lewis takes us to the pageant of history, showing us temple ruins, old battle fields, rumbling chariots and ancient caves. Soon historical facts blend with fables and folklores. The mythology of the drowned-bride-turned-goddess Kalijai in Chilka brings to Lewis' memory similar legends he had gathered from as far afield as Uzbekistan, and Wales. Lewis concludes, `perhaps, in shadowy folk-memory are recorded the sorrows of pre-history.'

Besides folk-memory, Lewis relies heavily on the recorded accounts of foreign travellers of the past, such as South Asian Ibu Batuta (1334-36), Venetian Caesar Fredericke (1585), Portuguese Sebastian Manrique (1640) and Spanish Friar Navarvate (1670). Manrique must have felt heavenly bliss as, on landing in India, he took to the riverway leading to Bhubaneswar. The river, according to him, `was covered over by great, pleasant, shady trees, whose thick branches here and there interlaced so as to look like an artificial avenue. This was full of most beautiful peacocks, of green screaming parrots, pure shy doves, simple wood-loving pigeons ....' With this kind of a start, Manrique must not have prepared himself for the rude shock he was about to get. He and his travelling party were once arrested and thrown into goal for having made a sumptuous feast of their Hindu host's pet peacock. At the trial, the Mughal Governor agreed `to show leniency by punishing the perpetrator of the offence by no more than a whipping and the loss of his right hand'. The crisis prompted the crafty Manrique to try the infallible weapons : bribery and cajoling. He not only succeeded in mollifying the Governor `by the usual inducements on such occasions' but also secured the Governor's lady's intervention in the matter, by sending her `a sufficiently rich and pleasing gift.' Further inducements led to the prisoners' release their bodies intact.

The openness of the tribals, whom Lewis visits next, allows no such underhanded deals, even in the present times. Their optimism and joie de vivre make their presence quite refreshing. Spurred on by a tender curiosity and an empathetic heart, Lewis penetrates into the innermost sanctums of the tribal communities that inhabit Koraput hills. We get to know that despite their geographical proximity, these tribes live in distinct worlds, separated from each other by intricacies of beliefs and value systems. However all of them are equally intimidated by the threat from the non-tribals, who surround them. This anxiety is most apparent in case of the Kondhs, whom circumstances have forced to share a living space with the trading Domb community. Even within one tribal community, different sub-tribes emerge depending upon the degree of adoption of caste lifestyles. The Kondh tribe is thus sub-divided into the Dongrias, the Desias and the Kutias.

The Kutias, who live on the top of the hills and who are the least Sanskritised, have a `touch of controlled ferocity about them.' Lewis finds Ghotuls, the premarital dormitories, still existing among the Kondhs and he attributes the ritual promiscuity among Kondh women to their Ghotul experience.

Lewis is impressed by the `rugged independence' of the tribal woman, which stands out against the depressing background of the suffering, a caste woman is subjected to. The ritual of Sati, the methodical termination of female foetuses, the dowry deaths -- all these appear so outlandish in the pristine world of tribal women of Koraput.

Lewis has written a rich and entertaining book but he has occasionally allowed himself to be carried away by his subjects a bit too far, making a mess of actual names and factual details. The Sati girl Roop Kanwar for instance, becomes Marwari Rupkandar and Lord Jagannath, `the senior member of a family trio'. Barring these faux pas, Lewis greatly succeeds in weaving his sentiments about the Indian women -- the fallen goddesses -- into his lively sketch of the majestic land.

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Rating:
Summary: A God in the Stones
Review: Norman Lewis, the doyen of travel writers, deliberately strays from the beaten path in modern India in order to discover what is left of the indigenous tribal communities - the ones overlooked by the same crass commercialism which is gathering up the rest of the undeveloped world into the same dustbin. His excursions into the backwoods of provincial India are part of an overriding quest, no less quixotic, for the remains of so-called primitive societies still clinging to their unique claims on a piece of land, a language, or a ritual tradition that has been theirs for as long as human memory can recall. His writing is scintillating, his tone elegiac. A Goddess in the Stones is yet another installment in Lewis's reclamation of the world from the heedless destruction of modernity.

Rating:
Summary: city and the mountain
Review: The population of India is approaching 1 billion. Of that enormous number over 50 million are tribal people.
In the big cities modernity has made a considerable impact, the further you get away from the city though the less modern the world seems, and in the mountain regions the tribes live much the same way they have for thousands of years.
Norman Lewis begins his journey in the city of Patna, which is in the Bihar region of central India. From there he begins to travel further and further away from the densely populated centers. In the rural lands of Bihar the age old caste system which keeps every person in their place selfishly allocating privilege and profit only to the upper castes has begun to meet with a significant challenge from the lower castes who have recently begun to violently assert themselves. Traditional government as well as the police force in this region and in many others is corrupt and people have taken the law into their own hands. Women , especially lower caste women, are especially vulnerable in these conditions and are treated like property or in some cases worse. In India a female child is less valued than a male child because female children must be married off in expensive wedding ceremonies and provided with dowries. Arranged marriage is still the rule in many places and atrocities committed against women, including infanticide, enslavement, and murder, are so often in the newspapers that they are treated like commonplace occurrences, the police rarely interefere or are simply bought off by the highest bidder. It is not surprising that given these dire realities Lewis heads for the hills and mountain regions of Orissa to search for the unspoilt tribes. Lewis takes Ranjan as a guide. Ranjan, a Brahmin, shares Lewis' interest in primitive peoples. Once in the mountains the modern world is only a bad memory, for there in the unspoilt forests are tribes living in harmony with nature and each other. Each tribe has distinct characteristics which enthuse both Lewis and Ranjan. One tribe permits promiscuity among teenagers who live together in dormitories, another forbids the wearing of clothes, but in virtually all of the tribes women are seen to be equals to the men. In fact in one tribe which traditionally marries off young men to older women it is the women who are in charge. Ranjan as Lewis has suspected all along is in love with a Sarjput girl that he met on a previous trip to the region. Their romance unfolds amid rituals and dances and celebrations. The joy and freedom of these tribal peoples is a sobering and sharp and welcome contrast to the violent strife ridden world left behind.
Lewis (and Ranjan) are excellent guides and the friendship of these two like minded individuals gives the book its personal charm.