In USA, barring few exceptions, we cook our own food, even make our own tea. Being cooked and served these by someone for a difference feels very different. So invited for lunch I didn't want to miss such an occasion during the last throes of my vacation. It was the day of making a trip to my ancestral village of Biranchidashpur near Sakhigopal on way to Puri to attend a function, which in local lingo means a social event.
The drive on the 4 lane expressway was impressive as it has cut down the time of traveling by half to the village compared to a decade ago. But there were signs of "old habits die hard" not yet dead. There were drivers who could be seen coming from the opposite way on the same lane, against the tide of the one way traffic. Unnecessary roadblocks by man made barriers and animals like gangs of cows and stray dogs were strewn around - all prospective causes of accidents.The sun was striving hard to force through the misty air during the early hours of the lazy, holiday afternoon, as the fog painted the horizon in white like a broad brush on a blue canvas. The smiling white KASHATANDI (Saccharum spontaneum), a lanky flower on sandy soil with a white broomlike top and the coconut groves waved at us through the haze. We passed through golden yellow paddy fields, the harvested ones forming cylindrical crop circles. Drove past SUANDO, the native village of Gopabandhu Das, though the meandering pucca roads under archways of coconut groves, as the banana and palm trees swayed by the afternoon breeze.
After a long time got a glimpse of life in rural Odisha. Curious women and urchins gaped at us as we drove past them. We encountered greenish village ponds every other miles. Children were jumping on to water, while ladies bathing struggled to cover themselves as our vehicle passed by. On the village outskirts, cows were strapped to tiny poles as a bull was inspecting them for insemination.
All roads to my village lead to the conclusion that communication technology has come a long way. I saw many cyclists and bikers in GAMUCHA and LUNGI (loincloth), head tilted with a cell phone tucked between their chin and shoulder.
Cricket has penetrated deep into rural India, Odisha being no different. Due to salubrious weather I saw at least half a dozen cricket matches by the roadside. On the village roads kids and adults alike were playing gully cricket. We passed a guy on bicycle, holding a cricket bat on one hand and handle of the bike using another, eager to arrive on field.
Felt awesome connecting to my roots as it was my first visit to my village after 2018, before the cataclysmic Cyclone Fani changed the flora of our village like a bull in the China shop. Earlier the houses were dwarfed by the coconut trees. Now there are hardly any thatched roof left in village.
Houses built of concrete dwarfed the few coconut trees which survived Fani. I had my moment of embarrassment when the strings of my sandal, part of which was eaten by stray dogs came off while walking on village road. I had to cover some distance to the temple in bare feet limping slightly, dragging myself forward and come all the way back to Bhubaneswar in bare feet. Luckily for me, the January sun spared my feet from getting burn from the scorching asphalt road. After long time I ate seating cross legged on floor and loved every bit of it. I thought it would be inconvenient for me, but I passed the test in flying color.
I am a bibliophile who has a decent collection of books at home in Bhubaneswar. As they are gathering dust, I wanted to donate those to our village library. But I was sad to learn the sad state of the library which has now become defunct. Unlike the libraries in Alexandria in Egypt, Athens of Greece and Nalanda of Bihar, they were not destroyed by any outside invaders, but by the villagers themselves. The destruction of the famed libraries was seen as the harbinger of the demise of those civilizations. The decapitated village library doesn't augur well for its future. All the books were stealthily stolen as neither the books and sometimes the borrowers themselves never returned.
From what I heard, the goats on the ground and monkeys above are the major nuisance for our villagers. Goat rearing is very popular these days, for their ever growing demand in the ever growing Bhubaneswar. They roam around, munching with impunity whatever comes on their way, entering and destroying the kitchen gardens of the hapless village folks.
If goats are pain at the bottom, monkeys are pain from the top. They come in droves, eat and destroy all fruits, especially the prized cash crops like coconuts, papayas and betel nuts. All the methods to drive them away, yelling, beating BAJA (drums) and bursting fire crackers only succeeded temporarily.
Yet goats are far easier to handle, as they are dispenible, destined towards slaughterhouse. It is another thing about monkeys. Being the descendants of Lord Hanuman, no one dares to earn the wrath of our "Monkey God". So someone came with this creative idea to outsource the killing of the head of the clan of simians to a group of Muslim hunters. The later managed to track and kill the monkey chieftain.
The villages were spared from their the menace for a while. Within a few days they returned, not the monkeys but the hunters filled with remorse. The hunters have now become the hunted. They narrated that ever since they killed the monkey, misfortunes one after another have struck them. A bout of diarrhoea attack killed few from their community. Many of them Butchers by profession lamented in Urdu laced Odia "LAXMI CHHAADGEIS" (Laxmi, the Goddess of wealth has left us) as their business plummeted.
Since they beat the monkey to death their meat business had taken a severe beating. They were convinced that Lord Hanuman's wrath had been bestowed upon them with Laxmi following the suit, leaving them. It was amusing to hear the local Muslims scared to death of Hanuman and talking about the subsequent loss of Laxmi. No more Monkey business for them. Loss of life and business trumps over religion. Slowly the monkeys kept coming back. No one in our vilage or its surrounding ever wanted to repeat the fiasco as monkeys still mean business. Never say " Mere Monkeys" ever again. More later...
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