Durga Puja and the Assamese “Story” Today, the “mark on the face…”

Durga Puja and the Assamese “Story” Today, the “mark on the face…”

Sanjeev Kumar Nath

“Wherefore rejoice?…….

You blocks, you stones, you worse than senseless things! ……..”

(Marullus speaking to two rejoicing commoners in Act I, Scene I, of Julius Caesar by William Shakespeare)

Leaving Guwahati during the Durga Puja holidays, I am at my home in a small town in Upper Assam, hoping to rest in peace for a few days : away from the traffic jams and the sudden floods of the city, away from the noise and bustle of the city.

The small road in front of my house comes alive with a lot of movement during certain times—as when the kids go to school or when they return home. Otherwise, it is quiet most of the day, and I am used to sitting in the front verandah and thinking what Khagen Mahanta would perhaps sing when he saw this curved road and a house at the end : সৌটো বেঁকা বাটৰ মূৰত সোনটিহঁতৰ ঘৰ……

Morning: I was sitting there early in the morning with a book in my hand when I was startled by the sound of a group of children, approaching the bend on the road. Then they appeared: a brightly attired group of some five kids of various ages, both boys and girls, two or three carrying toys and balloons.

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What? Are they on a morning walk in such dress and carrying such stuff? No, they are out to the Pujas. But so early? Then came more : in twos and threes and whole gangs, youngsters of various ages, teenagers, also some groups occasionally accompanied by adults. There seemed to be no end to them.

Noon: I am writing something on my computer and through my window I see more and more groups of people merrymaking, going to or coming from the Pujas. The noise and bustle of the city seem to have arrived here, too.

Afternoon: I go out to buy some essentials, and have a tough time negotiating the car through the crowds of people marching, riding, driving towards the town, some to the Puja pandals and some to the numerous shops that have mushroomed everywhere, mostly selling trinkets and fast food.

Evening: Hoards of people have taken to the streets, flooding every little bye lane and the highway, entering Puja pandals and shops, eating, shouting, merrymaking, or aimlessly wandering.

Night: As I lie in bed, I hear the non-stop chatter and movement of people, and I wonder: “From where have all these people descended on the little town? Must be from all the villages in the vicinity. But why are they so relentless throughout the day and the night? Don’t any of them have anything to do except just wander through the streets, eat street food and chatter and do the same things over and over again?”

I also noted that ninety-nine per cent of the merry holiday makers are indigenous Assamese people. I am not against merrymaking and not against celebrating Durga Puja, but the spectacle of the crowds set me thinking……….

In Chinua Achebe’s last novel Anthills on the Savannah there is a story about the story. To a group of people trying to fight the dictatorial government of a fictional African country, a village elder tells a story, and then asks a question. He says that if there is a war, first there is the town-crier, who comes and beats his drum and shouts out to everyone to get ready for war.

He warns them of the presence of the enemy, and asks them to get ready to fight. Then the warriors get ready, pick up their weapons and go and fight the war. Finally, after the war is over, the storyteller comes and tells the story of the war : what happened, who won and who lost, and so on. Then the village elder asks his audience who they think is the greatest among these three classes of people : 1) the town-crier, 2) the warrior and 3) the storyteller.

The audience, all young rebels fighting the oppressive government, say that the warriors are the greatest. Then the village elder tells them that their age and experience of life have prompted them to give that answer, but he doesn’t think the warriors are the greatest. He says that if age has taken away certain things from him—such as bodily vigour and strength—it has also given some other things to him : such as wisdom.

He says that with the wisdom of his age he knows that the storyteller is the greatest. It is the story that tells the community of what went wrong and what was right. It is the story that can guide them in the future. Without the story, they would be like blind beggars, fumbling in the bush; they would not know their way.

After establishing the relationship between a human community and the story or stories of that community as the relationship between a blind man and his guide, the village elder stretches the analogy further, and says that just as a blind man does not own his guide, similarly, a community also does not own its story. The story is superior, not the community. He says that the story is also the mark on the face of the community. Mark on the face?

Just as we remember a person by the mark on his face, by his looks, in the same way, a community is known by its story. In this sense, a community’s story would be all the distinctive things the community is known for. It may be known for the clothes it weaves, for the rites, and rituals it performs, for the language is speaks, the food it eats, and so on. In other words, a community’s distinctive culture is the mark on its face, that by which it is identified. That is its story.

Then the African village elder goes even further in glorifying the story. He says that you can’t tell the story of the community even if you want to. For you to be able to tell the story, first the story will have to choose you as the storyteller! Has the village elder gone mad? No, he hasn’t. He is saying that the culture of a community itself gives birth to its storyteller. The storyteller, the keeper of culture, is a product of the culture.

Since Anthills of the Savannah is Achebe’s last novel, and since he began his novelistic career with Things Fall Apart, a novel that tells the tragic story of an imaginary Ibo village in Nigeria, and is also pitted against the “story” that Joseph Conrad had told in Heart of Darkness, Achebe may be suggesting that Africa’s story can be told only by someone whom African culture has produced, not a Polish-British in his highly ornamental English.

To sum up this story of the story:

i) The story as the “mark on the face” refers to all the distinctive elements of culture (including language) that make a community recognizably different from other communities;

ii) Just as the guide of the blind man is not owned by the blind man, and just as the blind man is dependent on the guide, so also the collected wisdom of a community is its guide for the future, and the community is dependent on that wisdom;

iii) The story selects the storyteller, i.e., the culture of the community itself produces the special keepers and practitioners of that culture.

But my interest here is not so much with the issue of African literature, culture or African storytelling that Achebe seems to be alluding to. My prime concern here is to ask a few questions about the “Assamese story”.  Taking the connotations of “story” in the manner summed up above, we can perhaps ask

i) “What is the mark on the face of the Assamese community? How are the Assamese recognized in terms of their cultural practices? What is distinctive about Assamese culture?

ii) What is the inherited wisdom of the Assamese people?

iii) How is the continuance of cultural practices and wisdom ensured through knowledgeable and skilled persons produced by the culture?”

The reference to Assamese culture will perhaps make many proud Assamese remember the gamosa, a symbol of Assamese culture, made much of my Narendra Modi and Yogendra Yadav, but how many of the gamosas being gifted or sold originate in Assamese looms today? As a little child, I would often play near my mother who would be busy in her loom.

When I grew up, I helped her out with small tasks associated with weaving, and was eager to learn her art, but of course, events in life made me go away from Assam for a pretty long time, and my lessons in the loom remained incomplete.

Since I haven’t been successful in utilizing the opportunity of learning this art, I cannot perhaps rant and find fault with others for not continuing the lineage of arts and crafts like weaving, but the fact remains that without continuous transference of skills from generation to generation, a culture cannot remain vibrant and alive. Gujarat provides us with gamosas and chadars today; many of us don’t even know and many don’t care.

This is just an example. The “story” is the same for most things about Assamese culture. Magh Bihu used to be a proper community event for the entire village. Today, the community feast has either been abandoned or is a low-key event, with small groups of friends and relatives partying with drinks and gluttony.

Of course, bhela ghars have suddenly become exotic things, with groups and clubs vying with one another to construct Taj Mahals and aeroplanes and what not. Was this the Assamese “story” at all?

Rongali Bihu is now about citizens following government instructions regarding the time up to which Bihu functions can be held. Were functions a part of Bihu at all? Gone are the days when young and old alike would gather and form husori groups. In the middle of the night, you would hear the hari dhwani of the husori group, wake up and rush to the front-yard to enjoy the jubilant dancing and singing.

No one would be drunk, but everyone would be happy. Today, any celebration calls for drinks first, and the government has also made things easy for everyone, letting wine-shops grow in every nook and corner. There was a time when you could see husori groups cycling to distant villages. It was a marvel that the young people were so full of vibrant energy, ready to break into song and dance, even after commuting long distances on their bicycles.

Today, if you want to see the vigour and strength of people celebrating anything, you will have to watch the Bol Bom crowds (with both Assamese and non-Assamese members) in the streets of Guwahati at night. Of course, much of their vigour and strength is derived from alcohol and drugs.

And then there are the non-Assamese business groups and “artistes” who perform their own brand of Bihu with full impunity both inside and outside Assam!

Many of the young people today perhaps do not even know what Kati Bihu is. Kati Bihu is not fun in the new sense of “fun”: drinks and gluttony.

Fortunately, my neigbourhood kids (We are a huge extended family, so most of the neighbours are relatives) have kept Kati Bihu alive. They come in the evening and sing “Tulasi Tarani” before the decked up Tulasi bheti,  and receive prasad. I don’t think there are many neighbourhoods like that in Assam today. Many kids in towns and cities have seen Kati Bihu only on TV.

Our food has changed. We run after fruits sent from other parts of India and even abroad, but don’t care about our indigenous plants and their products. Villagers have sold their land to big businessmen everywhere, so even village children today rarely get to eat fruits like pani jamu, golapi jamu, leteku, kordoi, rohdoi, etc.

The variety of things we have! Jackfruits can be huge, one fruit yielding enough stuff for 20 people, and can be really small, so that one person can eat one.

How many of us today know the difference between bor thekera, kuji thekera, mahi thekera? Our water bodies have been invaded by predator fish from other parts of the world, and the local varieties of fish are becoming a rarity. Heavy use of chemical fertilizers has resulted in the loss of fish populations in paddy fields and in the little ponds in the fields that used to be the delight of youngsters learning to catch fish.

So when it is evening, the Assamese householder goes with a bag to the local market to buy literally “foreign” fish, like the piranha originally from the Jambesi in Africa.

Our joha rice varieties have lost their sweet fragrance because of the excessive use of chemical fertilizers and insecticides. Many indigenous rice varieties have become extinct because the farmers have not continued to cultivate them and preserve the rich variety we used to have.

Many of us are now regular consumers of rice brought in from other parts of India, not Assam or the Northeast, one of the first areas on the planet where paddy cultivation began in the remote past.

That is the Assamese “story” today.

The mark of the face of the Assamese has changed, perhaps unalterably. May be three generations from now, no trace of the distinctive marks of Assamese culture will remain. Of course, I do not want to be proven right on this.

(Although this discussion about the Assamese “story” is in English, a language preferred over their own mother tongue by some Assamese, the writer doesn’t entertain such ideas about the supremacy of English.)

(Sanjeev Kumar Nath, English Department, Gauhati University, sanjeevnath21@gmail.com)

[Images from different sources]

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