In Conversation with Ramesh Karthik Nayak, author of Chakmak, with an afterword on Banjaras by Surya Dhananjay and art by Ramavath Sreenivas Nayak, published by Red River.
They always wish they wander into black clouds like Banjara Tribes: the people with no address on the earth, gypsies in the tales of time.
Here are stories of a people who have never voiced their lores in English. The Banjaras had oral folk lore as old as the hills. They relocated to various places in the world. One group wandered down to the South, where some learnt to write their spoken language — Gor Boli — in Telugu. To this group belongs young Ramesh Karthik Nayak who has given us a wonderful book of poems describing the life of Banjaras as well as concern that in the process of integration, they seem to be losing parts of their heritage. Called Chakmak[1], the book leaves a lingering aftertaste not just with words but also with the vibrant artwork by Ramavath Sreenivas Nayak and an informative essay on Banjaras by Surya Dhananjay.
You travel with the book to a place of wonder and yet it’s not all smooth sailing as the poems introduce notes of accord and discord into the conversation. Reality and discontent creep in.The poetry is layered with images, simple and yet of a definitive flavour. There is poignancy in the poet’s lines when he says:
The ippa flowers grieve releasing inebriety listening to the story of our tanda*. *tanda: settlement
And:
No ghunghtos* were left in the tanda, all have disappeared along with the people who were born and grew within the ghunghtos. *ghungtos: veils
And yet the culture seems to have had an innate wisdom as the tribe harmonised with nature:
The thunders devour our huts and us. So, to threaten thunder, we howled. We should raise our voices whenever we need to. Or else we die.
In the titular poem ‘Chakmak’, Nayak tells us about his life as a Banjara and then reflects:
The world is trying to heap the chakmak together, ransack our tribe for stones and change the tanda into a haat* of banjara tribes. The chakmak in the haat were ready to burst with chronicles untold. You gather the people. The flute disappears. I try fabricating the remaining tale. *haat: market at a fair
Nayak for all his flavour and wisdom experiences a severe disconnect and finds himself in almost perhaps, an immigrant’s world, where it is hard to adjust to the reality of the ethos that connects him to the larger world and he feels an outsider in the world that he was born into. Torn between these two, the young writer is fascinated by death. He tells us –
Since my childhood I saw death as an untouchable
In this candid conversation, Ramesh Karthik Nayakn– a young lecturer, presenter on Doordarshan[2] and an upcoming voice for a people who have remained voiceless over centuries following oral traditions — talks of this strange position he finds himself in. He tells us more about his people, his perceptions and his poetry.
Congratulations on being the first Banjara writer to have done a full book in English. Reading your book, one gets a whiff of Banjara life as it was in the past. Can you tell us about their life and beliefs? The creation myth seems unique… maybe you can tell us a bit about the colours you have reflected in your poetry?
Thank you. There is a vacuum in indigenous literature. Not enough indigenous literature has been produced till now. This vacuum won’t be filled until we the insiders turn outsiders. After some time, when we question our identity, we start seeking our own history and go back into the past. In this process, we practise a few things (writing, singing, painting, dancing or sculpting) which slowly turn us into an insider.
Each and every colour has a significance in our lives. All colours will be seen in our attire. If there are any colours missing, they will be reflected in the mirrors embroidered into our garments while we travel.
There are many beliefs and occupations seen among us.
If, the calf’s ceremony (Bhessi Puchre). When a buffalo gives birth to a calf, based on the calf’s gender, after 5 or 7 days, we conduct a ceremony with seven triangle-shaped stones (Shaathi Bhavani [3] :Manthrali, Kankali, Hinglaj, Mariamma, Thulja, Sheetla, and Dhavalagar) by offering lapsi (rice boiled in milk and cooked in jaggery). The Saathi Bhavani look after their children (who share their arts and crafts with nature for free) and their cattle safely and provide them with natural resources abundantly. Only after this ceremony, the milk from the lactating cow can be shared with others. Until then, no single drop could be shared outside the home. If the milk was shared with others before the ceremony, the calf’s life would be in danger. Thus, we respect animal needs too.
Another very distinctive ritual is a death ritual of a young married person. Friends or family members of the deceased pierce pins under the dead person’s feet so that the corpse is hindered from walking back without pain. They believe that the young person will have a yearning for their hamlet and children. So, the ghost might want to haunt their homes. Also, while taking the body to its final destination, the deceased’s friends throw mustard seeds along the way. While coming back home, they pluck off the pins off the feet and pick up each grain. They keep picking the grains the whole day. The cycle keeps repeating.
Did Banjaras — who at the end you call gypsies — ever grow roots and become farmers? You have a poem about a farmer. Did your ancestors give up their nomadic lifestyle to opt for farming?
Our ancestors used to sell salt by wandering from place to place. They used to thatch roofs and transport stuff from place to place. They sang songs handed down orally and embossed traditional tattoos. They would stitch clothes with infinite designs, etc. Now everything has turned upside down. Now, we are growing up eating many types of leafy and root vegetables, rice, corn and sorghum instead of our traditional foods.
In Telangana, wherever you travel by the highway, you will see Banjaras on both sides of the roads selling fruits and vegetables. Other common occupations among us are farming, driving auto rickshaws, selling crafts, making bricks in kilns, etc.
Your dialect/ language Gor Boli had no written script and I read in the afterword that the traditions were oral. So, did you learn about your culture purely from oral traditions? Are your two books written in Gor Boli written in Telugu or in just plain Telugu? Which language are you most comfortable in? Which language did you grow up speaking?
I have learnt many things by seeing and listening. Whenever I ask my parents about something they simply smiled instead of giving an answer. They did not want to share any cultural things about our community. They always asked me to concentrate on my studies. That might be one of the reasons that I always keep thinking of my people and their history.
I grew up with the Telugu language. In 1999/ 2000, I was sent to a private school for my education. From then onwards, I thought I was a Telugu. Later, I realised I’m a Gor (Banjara/ Lambadi). Now I am a hybrid Gor. I want to localise myself from hybridity. I have published two books in Telugu. One is in English. These three books are just an introduction to an existing community. To write down the sensibilities and other things, I think this life won’t be enough. There is only one book which I haven’t been able to publish yet, written in Gor Boli with Telugu script. I’m comfortable with Telugu. People tell me that I stammer when I speak Gor Boli. They also say my way of speaking is like that of a child. Nowadays, I believe I’m comfortable with Telugu, Banjara (Gor Boli) and English.
In your poem, ‘Who am I?’, you mention eviction. Did you or your tribe face displacement? Tell us your story.
Yes, it happened with my grandparents. Before that, they used to stay in abandoned lands. They would stay in one area for two to five years and then migrate to a different place to get enough grass for the cattle or herd they had. Earlier, my grandparents were settled near a hilly place, where there was a pond. Then, in 1970s, the then-state government relocated my grandparents to Jakranpally Thanda, also called VV Nagar Tanda, near to the highway road NH44 and a village Jakranpally (now known as Mandal) near to our tanda.
Still, in our state, some nomadic communities face eviction.
The Banjaras depicted in the art in your book seem to be a musical lot. Does music impact your poetry?
Yes indeed. Women are trained to sing their plights in a song, which we call Dhavlo. This was the name of my short story collections in Telugu. The event could be happy or sad, but everything would be sung in a song. Some of the lyrics can be so heartrending that listeners could start to cry. Our people cannot survive without singing. Some people also misunderstand our Dhavlo as Rudali’s [4]song. Each and every moment is made into a song for self or for children or just to survive. I hope the flow of my blood has music, then automatically my words would atleast carry a little bit of music with it. So that could turn into a poem that you read.
You seem to be steeped in lores from the past, and yet you bring it all to us in English. How did you develop your fascination for words? Tell us how from a tanda you moved into school textbooks?
It started when I was admitted into private school. I stopped talking to others. I would stare at our school ground, where there were some other nomadic families sheltered in the tarpaulin tents. I felt like going to them. They were not Banjaras, but they had donkeys and horses. I still remember the scene. In the summer, near our school, a canal was being dug. Accidentally, a boy fell under a heavy vehicle and died. His mother picked him and kept him in her lap and wept.
I was fascinated. I thought of killing myself. And in this way, death always put herself first in my words.
Later, as I changed many schools, I grew lonelier and started drawing landscapes. I started writing to create captions for my drawings. Thus, my drawing drove me into writing. Writing turned into a habit; later it became a compulsion. When I came across Toni Morrison’s quote, “If you find a book you really want to read but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it”, I could connect and also to the stories of Mahasweta Devi. Because of my writing, I have developed my skill in Telugu and English — at least I can express the way I feel. Later, after getting published, with the help of my friends, Aparna Thota and Chaitanya Pingali, the Balder Bandi (Bullock Cart) attracted readers and an autonomous college prescribed a poem in the under-graduate curriculum and the book was prescribed in the post-graduate curriculum.
Why did you name your book Chakmak, a flintstone. Is the poem named as such at the centre of the story you want to share with the readers?
In our community, we bow down to the earth in front of a rock or stone to offer ourselves. We also use the rocks for other things like I have mentioned in the poem. So, in our community, things which are regarded as sacred should also be useful in other ways. They should not sit idle or be untouchable. In our daily lives, we do see many stone and pebbles, but we don’t even take a look at them, instead we kick them off. I wanted to highlight that even rocks have history.
Also, many rock were getting blasted in our areas. We are just losing our natural resources. We are losing the peacock and fox cries that echo from the top of rocks.
I sensed a sense of regret in your poems for the loss of a way of life. Do you feel that it is better to stay indigenously and not integrate with the mainstream? Do you think it helps integrate with the mainstream?
I’m afraid for my people. They are losing their sensibilities. Their fascination for modern lifestyle is making them disregard their identity as Banjaras. Sometimes, I even feel like I should go to each and every one and explain to them why we should choose ourselves as we have been. Being segregated from the mainstream is also part of our identity. So, I hope for now there will not be any integration with the mainstream population. Of course, you may be wondering that Ramesh Karthik Nayak is now living with mainstream society and telling this. Yes, I’m living with this society, where I feel suffocated with the artificial lifestyle. I know I will be just a guest to my land, where I keep cheating my people, writing their lives on paper. Mainstream society once had pity on indigenous communities, but now it has turned envious, because our people are getting benefits like reservation from the government.
In ‘A Day in the Rainy Season’, you have spoken of a rain ritual where people howl: in ‘Roseland’ you have written of how roses is not what Banjaras grow and in ‘On the Forest’, you reaffirm that the Banjaras are in harmony with the green. Given the need for a greener world, would you say that Banjaras lived in harmony with nature? If so, how?
Nomadic or Adivasi people always believed in nature. And they still insist that they are an extension of the greenery, which is a quarter part of this cosmos. And the harmony that the reader experiences in my poems cannot be explained except as part of our traditions. But I want to make a point. In tribal communities, love and hatred are two different things that resonate at different wavelengths. Their way of living reflects love always to the outsiders. Without beliefs and rituals offered to the trivial things, you cannot even imagine a single day in the life of tribals. It will be incomplete.
You have mentioned untouchability. Have you or yours ever faced it in the present day or is it something from the past? In ‘Death’, you equate death with untouchability.
I have had my education in distance mode. So, I don’t know about the discrimination that happens in schools and colleges. But I heard many things related to discrimination from friends. Now, I regularly hear that these nomads (Banjaras) migrated from somewhere and they even have reservations now. They don’t belong to this land, they say.
To support my studies, I used to distribute leaflets in bus stops. I used to work in a photocopy shop operating machines, sold books at events, did catering, and helped as an air-conditioning mechanic. While working, few people did not want me to work for them because I was a Banjara.
In the past, our people were herders. They were not allowed to touch the water that the owners’ animals drank. And they were always accused of stealing. They were always treated as thieves and murderers (Criminal Tribes Act, 1871) in some areas. In some areas of course, Banjaras were treated with due respect because of their hard work. However, there have been times when they would not be allowed to get into the bus to sit with others, especially when they were in Banjara attire.
In 2016, I visited a tanda near Medchal. On my third visit, a group of women told me their plight about selling fruits and vegetables, how people bargained with them because of their indigenous identity or because of their broken Telugu, how some people took credit and never paid. Later, an older woman, Kokhli, talked about the well. Whenever these Banjaras want to fetch water from the well, which belonged to a landlord near their tanda, the farm workers used to excrete into the water so that the Banjaras could not quench their thirst. But unfortunately, they had no other choice. So, they had to draw from the same well for drinking. The same thing also happened recently in Tamil Nadu. I’m trying to record all these in my stories and poems.
Since my childhood, I have had a great love towards death. I even dreamed of dying many times. That’s how death came and repeated more in my poems.
What are your future plans? Any other book in the offing?
In our Telugu states, we have 35 tribal communities, which includes Girijanas — nomads dwell near to the hills or abandoned lands, and Adivasis — people dwell within the forest (Gond, Koya, Nayak Pod, Gutthi Koya, Pardhan, Banjara, Matura Lambadi, etc). I want to write more about all the tribes in Telugu and in English languages. It might be in any genre. Sometimes a single topic can be expressed in multiple formats like in a poem, short story or essay.
Presently, I am co-editing (with Prof Surya Dhananjya) a compilation of Telangana Banjara stories in Telugu. I am also working on my second short story collection Banjara Hills in Telugu along with English poems (which I am rewriting from Telugu).
Thanks for giving us your time and for a brush with your people through the book.
[1] Flintstone
[2] National TV network in India
[3] Seven Goddesses
[4] Mourner’s songs in Hindi
(The online interview has been conducted through emails and the review written by Mitali Chakravarty.)
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