Learning My Role

It has been an extraordinarily full month in Ukhimath Block. I'm actually not writing from Ukhimath (there's no internet there) but have come down to Dehra Dun for a few days to buy warm clothes, since in Ukhimath my size warm clothing isn't availabe. Ukhimath Block, so called because it is really a central bazaar with very small attached town and then dozens of villages close by that all cycle through the Ukhimath bazaar everyday, has a population of approximately 1600, though I'm not sure how many of the nearby villages are included in that figure. It's big and small at the same time, I guess. It is about 6000 feet in elevation, two thirds of the way up the side of a small mountain valley, and looks down onto the Mandakini river and then across the valley at Guptkashi. In the middle background are medium sized little mountains (approx ten thousand feet at the top) and then set at the back and visible on a clear day are the biguns, the ones that are starting to be covered with snow and whose tops are i the 15000-20000 range, which are as the crow flies abou 40-50 kilometers away.

I have, in the space of a month, been catapulted from social obscurity to semi-public figure-tude, by virtue of several key, chance events. Courtesy of a german anthropologist whom I had met in Delhi, I met a couple of local twenty somethings who are part of a folk theatre group that perform scenes from the Mahabharata all over Garwhal, special in a scene called the Cakravyuh, in which Arjuna's son Abhimanyu plays a key role in the defeating of the enemies' super tricky troop formation, because he had overheard his father talking about how to defeat this arrangement while in his mother's womb. Unfortunately for Abhimanyu, his mother went to sleep halfway through and so he learned how to pierce through to the center of the Cakravyuh but not how to escape from it afterward. So, Abhimanyu, the bright eyed 16 year old Pandav, dies at the hands of the Kauravas it is the death of youth and overconfidence, much like that of Icarus. So I went with the troop to, I thought, see the performance (which takes about two and a half hours and has maybe twenty or thirty actors and as many musicians and voices (the dancers lip sync and behind them are voices with microphones), and much to my surprise and consternation ended up playing a small role (non speaking pandit's helper) in front of thousands of villagers, on top of a small mountain, amidst much sound and fury and drumming, much rain having just fallen. I have since come to know that they want me to keep playing this role! But this was just the start.

The biggest event in the Ukhimath calendar is the return of the Madmaheshvar dholi (palanquin containing the mobile form of the deity Madmaheshvar who is a form of Shiva) to Ukhimath to stay for the winter. It is actually much more important for locals than the return of the Kedarnath dholi, much to my surprise. The day before the return of the dholi I was again pressed into performance, this time (as before in full costume-- pictures will be forthcoming at some point) as Nandi (Shiva's animal vehicle, the bull). As Nandi I carried a pole with the deity Bhairav's face on the top of it in the procession escorting a fake dholi modelled on the real one that would come the next day, and as such I was seen by hundreds of locals, and apparently made the local news. I'm noticing that people REALLY seem to get a kick out of dressing me up. That was all in the first two weeks. Then the next day when the Madmaheshvar dholi came for real I walked with it for the day (the last day of a three day journey made on foot from the summer residence of the deity), and witnessed people welcoming the form of Shiva into their midst to which they felt closest, as if a member of their family. Flowers and oranges and wheat sprouts and lotuses were offered, old women sang songs of welcome, and sometimes (overcome by some combination of sadness and relief and perhaps, to distort William James, some kind of intimate Moreness), women would start sobbing. It was intense.

My more daily routine has been tending to involve going down to the Omkareshvar temple (the big temple in Ukhimath) and sitting with various priests and temple associated people, talking about this and that, recording interviews some times, some times not. I"ve made small trips to outlying villages to talk with people that people think I should talk with. I"m starting to have a circle of people who know me and with whom I have long, interesting conversations about Stuff.

There are also many challenges. My Hindi isn't perfect, and while it's getting a lot better I still wish I could just do another year of strict Hindi study. But, ironically, what I need to do even more is get up to speed with Garhwali, which I have started to do but so far haven't had much time for except in the course of conversations. So I'm getting really great access and conversations but don't yet have the linguistic skilll set to be fully competent in the situations in which I find myself. I'm still looking for a research assistant, which is complicated by the fact that all of the smart sensitive types in the area actually have their own gigs. What's been more common are sort of accidental research assistants-- for example about a week ago I went to a village to record some songs that old women sing in garhwali when the deity palanquins come to their village. I walked most of the way there with a friend whose village it was, then he handed me off to an elderly male relative who walked me into town and corraled four old women who ended up, several hours and many chais later, singing for me and giving me numerous blessings that I get married soon. So there's been a lot of that type of thing, and it's getting so that speaking in Hindi feels like a relief from trying to understand garhwali (almost like English used to feel when I was starting Hindi!).

The dream of the intrepid fieldworker is taking a beating. On the one hand I get to sit in the temple, in people's homes, see cthonic snake deities, see cakgravyuh performances (on yet a third occasion I was forced to sing in front of about 60 people). On the other hand I can't sit cross legged for very long without pain, I"m allergic to dust and smoke (which in this region means cigarrette smoke, fire smoke, and almost all kinds of bedding), I try to drink boiled water and try to avoid having to eat massive quantities of rice for fear of constipation, and don't understand a lot of what I hear. So on the one hand I feel extraordinarily lucky to be hear and to be doing what I'm doing, on the other hand I wonder whether I'm competent to stay the course and find it very difficult to handle being important and honored, which happens to me a lot. And lots of what happens here is centered around marriage and family, which given my current "status" tears at me a little.

My current plan is to stay in Ukhimath throug the end of december and then go down to Delhi and Pune for about a month and a half for some necessary library work, then be back up in UKhimath by mid-February (before Shivaratri), then stay in Ukhimath until the Kedarnath pilgrimage season starts (April- May, approx).

I'l end with an anecdote. I've just a few days ago come from visiting a friend at his natal village during a wedding of one of his relatives. Before leaving we were sitting and chewing the fat, so to speak, and I said hey, what was that roaring sound this morning and yesterday morning at about 4:00 am? He said oh, that was me. WHenever I'm at home our family deity Narsimh (the man-lion avatar of Vishnu) usually comes inside of me early in the morning. No matter where at home you are? I asked. He said, Yep, whether I'm in bed or doing puja, wherever, around 4 am he comes inside of me, but only when I'm at my natal home. Then we continued on to talk about how really in the mornings I should just bathe with cold water, since its healthier.

I hope this finds all of you well, and do write.