A FATAL CHARM

 by v.s.gopalakrishnan

                              None imagined that death would be lurking so near for any of us. On a hot 115 degree afternoon, we left the Chandrapur town by road for the big Bhamragarh hamlet in the heart of the adivasi region. Chandrapur district is in Central India, and its HQ called Chandrapur town is south of Nagpur on the Chennai-Delhi rail-route.

As we drove on in a jeep, we found that the local adivasi people called Madias soon became visible in large numbers. Their huts are built in small clusters forming tiny hamlets. The road we took was actually a clearing in the jungle that consisted of very tall and majestic teak trees, for the plying of bamboo-laden trucks to the Ballarpur paper mills. The Government was constructing three bridges on the Chandrapur-Bhamragarh route so that it was not cut off completely during the rainy season.

The adivasis, Madias, appeared slight in build. As you drove, you came across comely young lasses with their bosoms uncovered, and in the presence of your colleagues you tried to turn your head away in a careful pretence of disregard. The Madia men are good hunters. They use two types of arrows. The sharp-tipped one is meant to kill animals. The flat- headed-arrow is used in order to hit and stun the birds.

Very strangely we found that this jungle was almost without any animals and birds, having fallen prey to the Madias’ gourmandize. Even monkeys were rarely seen as they were also eaten. Even the big red-ants are not spared from being eaten. The ants’ nest is tapped on the surface of a sun-heated rock and they make a ready roasted delicacy!

The Madias bury their dead. Their grave stones are of different sizes, big and small, depending on the importance of the dead person. Over the grave- stones one often came across a few things like an image of a bird or of a rifle etc. In that case the dead man was a hunter and their belief is that he would continue to hunt successfully in the ‘other world’ too. Very often, one came across standing columns of carved wood over the graves, looking exquisite and exactly like Mexican totem-poles.

We reached at last, after many gruelling hours of a long road journey in the heat, the big hamlet of Bhamragarh, right in the heart of the adivasi Madialand, We went at once to the nearby Indravathy river for a cool dip to counter the hot sun that we had absorbed. The river scenario was a sort of idyll that would have thrilled a landscape painter. We then carried out some government business. As the Madia-language was inscrutable for us, we used the local Forest Guard as an interpreter.

Later, we took the jeep and went much deeper into the forest. In order to kill time we chatted in the jeep as we drove. Someone related how the Madias never used the cow for milk but only for meat. So if a lactating adivasi mother died, the infant also had to perish since cow milk or any other animal milk is taboo for them.

At long last, at the sun-set hour, we reached a really interior hamlet called Binagunta where perhaps no government officer had ever gone. Many of the Madias there were notorious for practising shifting-cultivation. We allotted them some government land and asked them to settle permanently.

We returned to Bhamragarh for the night. The night passed in the company of mosquitoes and a petromax lamp. The next day we returned to Chandrapur town that suddenly looked like the height of ‘civilization’, with a sense of achievement.

A few days later, with the memories of Bhamragarh still beautiful and fresh in our mind, some of us suffered from an attack of malaria fever. A colleague who went with us sadly succumbed to it. We realized the fatal charm of the adivasi life.

(v.s.gopalakrisnan ph.d., IAS retd.)