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Tradition in Flux

By Rishi Kotiya '04

I want to incorporate this idea I came across in the New Yorker about Polish Jews coming of age, rebelling against the traditional ways only to have the holocaust annihilate the thing they were turning away from. It’s like the bottom falling out and you’re in free fall. To what do you try and grab a hold of? Where is the reference point. I want to relate this idea to the Indian-American experience: A culture in flux, with no readily apparent reference points. Where do you look to when the culture you thought you were rebelling against doesn’t exist anywhere, least of all in India itself. Example of the cultural programs, the traditional dressing that turns into minstrel. Turn away from this idea and write about the burial ritual. Juxtapose that with the stark reality of hustling for scarce resources in a region perennially on the brink of famine. Perhaps relate that to the futility of the project mission to preserve traditional arts. Everything is in flux. In the end tie things back to listening to the BBC World Service in the morning and their program on music and the eloquent commentary on so many types of music and the need for serious scholarly attention to the direction we’re going as a diverse, borderless people.

Kuju’s explaination of the burial ritual:

Take a gold ring and dip it into the water to purify it. Bury the women, then each man pours five hand full onto the tombstone. Then we walk back to the village. Before entering the village, must purify ourselves. Kaju marks our forehead with ash from the burial ground (the remains of the stretcher and all other tools and cloth used in the burial). Then in a symbolic jesture we use the gold water to wipe away the ash and cleanse ourselves from handling of the dead body.

As a teenager, I used to routinely skip out on dinner at home – lentils, basmati, sugary gujarati subje – and seek sanctuary at a friend’s. I feel regret now, but there’s no use in hiding it: in many ways I felt more at home there, surrounded by contemporary western art, a library of a survey of the western cannon, and an ease of communication between the generations that I was truly in awe of. They had a statue of Vishnu in their garden, and even then, at the age of 16, I was keenly aware in the irony of it all. On one front, I was escaping from my Indian-ness to the nest of American culture. And while in the brace of my western escape, I have the yearning to reach out and claim Vishnu as a part of my past, my tradition. But I didn’t know enough about that past for me to claim it. And here in lies the problem, I found myself not knowing what I was rebelling against. It was pure emptiness, vacuous, superficial, hollow. And I thought it was just of my own doing. Somewhere along the line I failed to pick up the knowledge I needed to call myself an Indian. Granted, I knew the bollywood films, the cultural programs, the garba rass, I went to Mandhir fairly often, but I was missing something. Then I realized that it was an epidemic. The culture was in free fall. A whole generation of people were rebelling against a hollow version of traditional Indianness. And as for those a step ahead of me, the ones who were reclaiming their Indianness, were reclaiming that hollow version. Some like myself, realizing that they were chasing a hollow dream, turned towards India. What do you do when the culture is in flux and there are no reference points. The culture you’re rebelling against doesn’t really exist anymore? More and more people are doing what I am doing, and that’s returning to the source, returning to India. Mid-twenties types are doing it in droves. Unfortunately, I’ll have to ruin it for them. They probably already dreaded the knowledge, but the truth is that that culture doesn’t exist here either. The reference was a false, it doesn’t lead anywhere.

One evening in late October, I had just finished dinner when I got word that the eldest woman in our village had passed away. The men of all the surrounding Meghwar communities had already gathered at her home. As is their practise, the body would be buried that night, within three to four hours of the death. I caught up with a group of the younger ones as they proceeded out of the village. We walked through the desert towards the small burial ground with the moon, in its last phase, providing a poignant glow. Each man carried with him two 3 meter by 1 meter pieces of flowing fabric, locally known as toowals, one to wrap around their heads as a turban and the other to drape on a shoulder. One man carried the pick and shovel we would use to dig. A burial sight was chosen, and a rectangle, roughly 5 feet by 4 feet, was outlined in the sandy soil. When it was my turn, I took off my Timberland sandals, took the pick ax in my hand, and climbed into the hole, surprised by its coolness and damp. Within two hours, the grave was ready. Around midnight, the funeral procession arrived with the old women supported on a makeshift cot and covered with an embroidered shawl. Runmilbhai, her son, along with three village elders supported the cot on their shoulders. They lowered the cot into the grave, Runmilbhai using his extra towel as a pulley, while the rest of us crowded on tip-toes around the open grave as if in a painting by El Greco? Carvaggio? Once the body was in the grave, another man offered his second towel to stretch over the open grave, shielding the body from view. A mantra was chanted and we began pushing dirt under the outstretched fabric and onto the body. Once the hole was filled, we walked through the desert picking out large stones to mark the grave. Once the grave was prepared, each man involved stood at the head of the tomb. When it was my turn, I pulled back my sleeve as Kujukaka poured holy water into the cup of my outstretched hand, letting the holiness trickle through my fingers onto the tomb. Once everyone had performed the rite, we walked slowly back towards the village as Runmilbhai stayed back set fire to the last remnants of the funeral – the cot that the body was carried in on, the towel that had touched the body, etc. We walked back towards the village, and before entering the village we brought buckets of water to cleanse ourselves of the funeral. We washed our feet first, then our hands, then our face. At the boundary of the village, Kujukaka placed a tilak of ash from the fire onto our foreheads. And, then, in a symbolic gesture, Runmilbhai gave each of us holy water in our cupped hand to wash away the ash from our face. Sufficiantly purified, we entered the village, congregated at Runmilbhai’s chowk and sipped on black tea through the night.

I spent much of my adolescence lamenting the Indian part of my Indian-Americanness – the puritanical rules on dating and marriage, the cash-heavy conception of the good life; fear of the individual. As a teenager, I used to routinely skip out on dinner at home and seek sanctuary at a friend’s. I feel regret now, but there’s no use in hiding it: in many ways I felt more at home there, surrounded by western art, a library of a survey of the western literary cannon, and an ease of communication between the generations that I was truly in awe of.

One evening in late October, I had just finished dinner when I got word that the eldest woman in our village had passed away. The men of all the surrounding Meghwar communities were already gathered at her home. As is their practise, the body would be buried that night, within three to four hours of the death. I walked in silence with the grave digging party through the desert, six feet of fabric wrapped around my head into a turban, the light of the moon overhead in it’s last phase. Sounds muffled, we took turns digging until the other men came with the body around midnight. As the body was lowered into the open grave, each of us peering over another in an el Greco like moment, we drew close to the opening to watch the body descend. The body buried, stones laid as a makeshift tomb, we then each took holy water in the cup of our outstretched hands to pour over the grave. We walk back to the village. First we washed our hands, then our face, then our feet. Kujukaka, the village elder, placed a stick on the ground. Another village elder placed an ash tilak on our forehead. We then took holy water into our hand to wash away the ash. Cleanzed of the the funeral rites, in a symbolic gesture we stepped over the stick and entered the village. We congregated at the son of the deceased and sipped on chai through the night. At 3AM, I tip-toed through the sleeping village back to my home.

I spent much of my adolescence lamenting the Indian part of my Indian-Americanness – the puritanical rules on dating and marriage, the cash-heavy conception of the good life; fear of the individual. Then, like many before me, I later reached an age when I turned back and tried to understand the source of the adolescent embarrassement. But there was no reference point. It’s a culture in flux. And in the hustle to update, the fundamentals are being forgotten. When you’re rebelling against a hollow version, where does that leave you, the rebeller when this is realized? It’s like the rug being yanked from under, and now a culture in flux becomes a culture in free fall.

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