Title: Chakmak
Author: Ramesh Karthik Nayak
Publisher: Red River Books
Our Tanda Our tanda is a bird’s nest our homes: broken refuges and our lives are feathers swirling in the air. The moon and the sun hatch time so long as they wish and flee, leaving folds, on the lips of time. Mirrors raise our hopes showing ourselves break our knuckles quietly shatter into fragments and prick hearts. Goats, cows, buffaloes, sheep and hearts, all dig out rivers of forests with desires as kids draw winged horses on the black of night with fingers dreaming of sugary peppermints or custard blobs. Mothers sing lullabies, oil-lamps embellishing the night to sleep. Fathers guard homes one eye on the house the other eye on the field with their heads out of their windows they turn into flaming torches. The ippa flowers grieve releasing inebriety listening to the story of our tanda. Chakmak I There were a few chakmak at the window, ants and insects wandered among them. Whenever I visit the window, I licked the chakmak, no sweetness touched my heart, nor did smell hit my nostril, though they look like candy jellies. I picked them and threw them out of the window. Daada picked them up, took them again into the house and placed them at the sill. I thought of doing the same again. He taunted our hen indirectly — I could understand that the hen was me. I thought the mysterious relationship of our folk remains untold, hid in the skulls about chakmak. II One day when daadi was busy in stitching her tukri she kept the chakmak beside her sharpening the needle on a chakmak. I sat beside her staring at the chakmak — darkness and light played about, I was astonished by the sharp light emitting from them. The beads were placed in front of daadi on a piece of cloth for stitching them on her tukri, they stopped singing and rolling, were trying to peep into daadi's honey eyes. The needle writing the joy of tukri on the chakmak, white stains swelled out from the black chakmak when accidentally her sweat fell on it. She saw me and asked me to sit beside her, started narrating the tales of chakmak, as I continued staring at them. III Birth after the water broke — you crept out of your mother's womb with stains of the eternal world giving her womb to rest from the eternal sea. This black stone gave you the world, cut your umbilical cord but it suffered by your birth, fevered, it one day burnt our hut. At the age of two when the moon was peeping into the rice squeezed in my hand with milk, my hand filled with moonlit serpents crawling down that trembled in my blood tunnels. Your daada sang a song — the red stones brought joy to earth, consoling the hard skin of daada's hand, illuminating his loneliness Then you got an invitation to the wonderland, and there you slept in the bed of the red stone's reflection. At the age of five, we were summoned by the monsoon and started migrating. We were stuck in the forest you weeping of darkness and hunger, in the fierce night. Flesh-coloured stones devoured the darkness, sprinkled its hunger on your fear and roasted a few onions for you. At the age of eight, you were anxious about seeing the lunar eclipse — the milk stone dragged the sky in its reflection. She kept on stitching her tukri. I was plunged into gazing at the chakmak, my heart sensed something strange strange is about to happen. IV I picked the chakmak into my palm. The curves in the palms and lines on the chakmak are trying to mate, and the curiosity in me reached my neck. A cleft appeared in the chakmak. I checked others for any more. After a few minutes, a butterfly soars from stone, a man falls from its wing. I take him in my hand, he turns into a flute made of animal bone. I train my ear to hear him. A voice from the bone flute starts talking from the rusted past, how we vanished from our identities, how we were sheltered in the tortoise shells and hung on horns of deers. 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.
Canvassing the Lives of Banjaras
By Surya Dhananjay
Banjara is an indigenous ethnic tribe of India. Banjara were historically nomads and later established settlements called tanda. Generally known as Gor-Banjara, they are also called Lambadis in Telangana, or Banjaras collectively across India. However, they are known by different names in various parts of the country, including Banjara, Gor, Gorya, Tanda, Laman, Lambadi, Sugali, Labhan, Labhana, Baladiya, Ladniya, Adavi, Banjari, Gypsy, Kora and Gormati, among others. The other names also indicate synonyms and signify the principal nature — wandering of Banjaras in various parts of the country.
Banjaras generally suffix Nayak with their names, along with other surnames such as Jadhav, Rathod and Pawar. Nayak was a title given by the local kings, Britishers and Mughals, as the Banjaras were warrior transporters, who transported essential commodities, such as salt, food grains (as well as weapons) on ladenis, bullock caravans for their armies. The titles were bestowed in appreciation of their honesty and hard work. Over time, the title has become the traditional name of many of the Banjaras.
The word Banjara is derived from the Sanskrit word Vana Chara — wanderer of the jungle. The word Lambani or Lamani, by which our community is also known, is derived from the Sanskrit word lavana (salt), which was the principal product the community transported across the country. Their moving assemblage on a pack of oxen was named tanda by the European traveller Peter Mundy in 1632 AD.
Historically, they were the original inhabitants of Rajputana, Rajasthan, and professional cattle breeders and transported these essentials to different parts of the region, using crucial transport routes. They are known to have invented Laman Margass1.
They then migrated to North India, East Asia and Europe in the ancient periods and to Central India and South India in the medieval periods along with the armies of Mughals from thirteenth to eighteenth century.
Banjaras lost their livelihood during British rule when the railways and roadways were constructed and they became the victims of predatory capitalism. Banjaras who were uprooted by the British government from their transportation profession were forced to indulge in petty crimes for their livelihood, which invited the wrath of the British and brought them under the ambit of the Criminal Tribes Act of 1871. Later, abandoning their traditional Ladeni profession, they settled wherever their Ladenis had halted in the colonial period and established their tandas, dwellings.
Traditionally, Banjaras depended on the pack of bullocks and bullock carts, called balder bandi in their Gorboli, for carrying out their ladenis and the cattle and oxen only were their properties for the ages, on which they built their livelihood through centuries. Many generations of Banjaras have taken birth on the balder bandi and have used it as shelter too.
Their language is called Gorboli, an Indo-Aryan language in addition to their own culture and traditions.
Gorboli has no script, it is either written in Devanagari script or the script of the local language, such as Hindi, Marathi, Telugu and Kannada, etc.
Most of their populations are concentrated in Maharashtra, Karnataka, Telangana, Andhra Pradesh, Bihar, Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, Tamil Nadu, Himachal Pradesh, Orissa and West Bengal.
As such the local languages have much impact on their language, the words of which have found their way into Gorboli.
Owing to the fact that it is a dialect, the Banjaras do not have much written literature either. However, they keep their songs, lyrics, and literature alive orally. As there is no written literature available to the outer society about Banjaras, the chances of knowing their history, sentiments, culture and traditions are meagre.
Banjaras show a unique lifestyle, holding steadfast to their ancient dress code, perhaps the most colourful and elaborate of any tribal group in India.
The versatile and colourful Banjaras are found to be interspersed amidst tribal and non-tribal populations and yet tenaciously maintain their cultural and ethnic identity. Their dress and decoration and social practices have remained almost unchanged through the ages despite the habitation shift from northwest India to across India. Banjaras are a strong and virile race with tall stature and fair complexion.
The Banjara women’s dress and jewellery are auspicious and the whole outfit consists of elaborately embroidered and studded phetya or ghagro (skirt), kaacnhli or kaali (blouse), tukri and ghunghto (veil stitched in patches of cloth of various colours along with mirrors of different shapes, cowries and beads).
Women also wear baliya, bangles made of ivory to save their lives from wild animals. They wear many ornaments like topli, hanslo, rapiyar haar, wankdi, kasse, ghughara and phula pawla, which weigh nearly 20 kgs or more.
Banjara men (maati mankya) wear turban on their heads, a few wear babli (earrings) on the top of the right ear, kameez (white shirt) and dhoti, kolda (silver fat ring wrapped to wrist) in turban they hide chutta (cigar), tobacco, beedi leaves, cotton and chakmak (flint stone), etc.
Tattoos on their body parts define philosophies and memories of childhood. The main intention of tattoos is to sell them and buy food after death in heaven or hell. They make sacrifices to the earth and stones because they believe that God is in nature.
Banjaras have their own culture and traditions that reflect their life and beauty. Banjaras celebrate the festival of Goddess Seethla Matha (starting at the time of the rainy season to save us and our cattle from seasonal disease and for good yield) at the end of the rainy season.
They celebrate Teej Festival, a celebration of wheatgrass grown for nine days in bamboo baskets by maiden girls to get married to a good groom in the presence of Goddess Jagdamba,
Baar Nikler/ Baarand khayer is a feast in the forest, exposing the love towards nature that protects them.
Historically they had a big struggle to settle down since they led a nomadic life for centuries. During difficult times, they ate grass and clay. Their regular diet consists of grass poppies, leafy boiled dough-made baatis (chapattis), bran, maize, jowar, deer, pigeon, rabbit, fish, hen, turkey, peacock, tortoise, turtle, porcupine, goat, sheep, radish, raw onions, wild onions, green chilli, roasted potatoes, red clay, black clay, tamarind sprouts, rela pulu (golden shower flower as used to make curry) and monitor lizard.
Few folks sell their children, lands, traditional dress, ornaments and even wombs and many girls and women are known to have faced human trafficking. Many people have slaved as daily labours, women were sexually exploited, many of their tandas were wiped out and they have been killed.
Though The Constitution of India had provided many rights to the tribes, the provisions are unknown to these people who lead their lives as daily labourers, selling firewood and children for food, becoming street vendors, roadside chapati-makers and the like. People who do not know this stare at them. A small percentage of people use the reservation benefits, and most of them are subject to discrimination and exploitation.
As such, not much is spoken about in media channels and newspapers about the atrocities of land evictions and exploitations of Banjaras. This still happens throughout the country.
Only a few scholars have written books and presented papers on their lives. Few non-fiction collections have been published in Telugu, Kannada and Hindi languages. But no creative literature has been produced from the community.
This effort of bringing out the poetic illustration of the life of Banjaras is made by Ramesh Karthik Nayak, a young member of the Banjara community.
He hails from the small, remote village of VV Nagar Tanda of Jakranpally Mandal of Nizamabad District. He has published a poetry book, Balder Bandi (Ox Cart) and a short story collection, Dhaavlo (Mourning Song), canvassing the life of Banjaras in Telugu.
Both books have been received well by the literary world and have since opened the doors to Banjara literature. Within a short span, he has been able to bring before us this wonderful poetic format, which shows his interest in bringing out the historical, cultural, traditional and contemporary issues of Banjaras before the world.
I believe that he is like a popular flower called kesula (moduga puvvu in Telugu), which is seen brightly among all the trees in a jungle.
According to my knowledge, this is the first poetry collection written on the lives of Banjaras in the English language which brings out the rawness of Banjara’s lives and the poems are brilliantly written. It is a rare drop of honey from a kesula flower, in which the lives of Banjaras are carved transparently.
I believe that each poem of this collection is a chakmak, flint stone, which ignites many endless thoughts in the reader. I hope that this poetic creation of Ramesh Karthik Nayak will also definitely be received in a big way by all the literary minds. I hope this introduction about Banjara tribes will help you understand the tribal communities a little.
Finally, without going into the depth of his poems, I would like to quote a few lines from his poem ‘Tanda’:
Our tanda is a bird’s nest our homes: broken refuges and our lives are feathers swirling in the air.
In this poem Ramesh has carved the picture of the status of the lives of Banjara tribes in the present-day context and earlier days. Banjara lives are indeed shattering day by day.
About the Book
Ramesh Karthik Nayak’s poems are marked by rich imagery, poignant stanzas, and moving stories about his people. I enjoyed reading his poems. — Hansda Sowvendra Shekhar
Ramesh Karthik Nayak distills all the pains and fears of his tribe to create a poetry of intense suffering and profound communion with nature. There is something primal, elemental, about his poetry that helps the reader distinguish it from the dominantly urban Indian English poetry. The poet brings a fresh voice, a new tone, and timbre seldom seen in traditional English poetry in the country, without making his poetry less sophisticated. — K Satchidanandan
Through his poems, Ramesh Karthik Nayak presents the celebratory life of the Banjara people; at the same time, he questions his existence. The questions he poses to us are both poignant and plausible. The poet expresses the truth with spontaneity and ferocity that if we are untouchables then, from nature to your vitality to your body, everything in this world has been touched by us. — Sukirtharani
Ramesh Karthik Nayak’s poems represent the dimensionalisation of Indian poetry in English. It’s appalling to think that a mature collection of poetry from a tribal/nomadic tribe poet had to wait for so long after Maucauley’s initiatives. Anchored in his cultural inheritance, Nayak documents with elan his dreams for the future. — Chandramohan S
About the Author
Ramesh Karthik Nayak is a Banjara (nomadic aboriginal community in South Asia) bilingual poet and short story writer from India. He Writes in Telugu and English. He is one of the first writers to depict the lifestyle of the Banjara tribe in literature. His writings have appeared in Poetry at Sangam, Indian Periodical, Live Wire, Outlook India, Nether Quarterly, and Borderless Journal and his story, “The Story of Birth was published in Exchanges: Journal of Literary Translation, University of IOWA. He was thrice shortlisted for the Sahitya Akademi Yuva Puraskar in Telugu.
Chakmak is his first collection of poems in English.
The poet can be reached at rameshkarthik225@gmail.com
- A type of map ↩︎
Click here to read the review of Chakmak and interview with Ramesh Karthik Nayak
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