ISSUE 44

It was grievance day at the district collector’s office. A crowd, with a host of problems, had gathered seeking help. People were waiting in rows in the verandah and under the trees outside. Everyone seemed preoccupied with their worries.

It was sultry, and I was breathless and drenched in sweat. Frustrated and more and more restless with every passing second, I felt an anger that was not directed at anyone or anything. I walked to the corner of the verandah, went to the washroom and cleansed my face, which made me feel relaxed, and I looked at myself in the mirror.

Wide nose, broad forehead, and curly hair – father may have looked like this too when he was my age.

If he were alive now, we would have looked like brothers. I heard that my thatha hugged my father tightly and happily when I was born. ‘You proved to be of your clan’s blood! Bravo!’ he said, and gifted two bulls to my father. He then took me in his hands, and showed me proudly to the forest, saying, ‘Here is my prince. Here is the emperor of the forest,’ and evoked all my ancestors.

My birth was an event not just for my family, but for the entire village, I was told. Thatha was the village headman, and had three sons. However, both the older sons had only daughters, and I was the only male issue, born to the youngest of his sons.

I am trying to remember …

I remember sitting on Thatha’s shoulders and roaming in the village like a prince, holding his curly hair in my hands. He carried me along, singing songs, playing the kinnera, using both his hands. Sitting on his shoulders, amidst the many beats from the tudumu around me, I saw new places, new hillocks and new areas of the forest. When he played the pinlakarra, I heard my ancestors sitting on his shoulders. The whole village revelled in watching us like that.

I was told that our doorway was decorated with a festoon of leaves for my naming ceremony. Ejjodu recited the holy chants to invoke our family goddess. In the brightness of a lamp, Thatha took me from my mother’s lap. Holding me in his arms, he started spreading grains of rice on a winnowing basket and lit the incense. Ejjodu sprinkled some water from a small pot and invoked all the gods singing the traditional hymns. He then started listing the names of all my ancestors. For each name, he threw one grain of rice into the pot. The villagers and relatives gathered there were eagerly looking into the pot. I will be given the name at which the rice grain sinks into the water.

Mangadu …

Baariki …

Lakkaayi ….

Sannayi ….

Sukku ….

Sombara …

The grain drowned in water. The village turned to festivities, and everything looked bright. Thatha jumped with joy. He paraded me in the village. Wearing a tudumu kunda around his waist, he drummed all night and fell asleep sometime early in the morning. The name the gods gave me … is his own name! That was the reason for his joy.

‘My grandson will live up to be my tribe’s pride.’ He died with this belief.

‘Robert … Robert!’ Someone was calling me.

They are calling me. It’s me. It’s me!

My fists tightened. I thrust my hand forward. The mirror on the other side broke … like my heart.

Today, my name is Robert Wilson. Yes. Robert Wilson.

The name that took me away from myself. The name that made me an alien being. The name that pricks me like these shards of glass.

I vaguely remember how I became Robert Wilson from being Sombara.

My father came with me to enrol me in a school hostel. I had already dropped out of fourth grade in another school. So, the schoolmaster refused to admit me unless I got a transfer certificate from the other school. He also offered an alternative – to register me with a different name. He started listing the names of film actors, to see if my father agreed to a name.

‘Don’t recite all those names, sir. Just write it as Robert Wilson,’ said a voice from behind.

A man in a white cassock was standing there, holding a black book. A cross was hanging from his neck. I remembered that he frequently visited our village, and had become a regular visitor to our family too in the recent past.

‘What is this strange name?’ the schoolmaster asked my father.

My father hung his head down, staring at the floor. I still remember his innocent response – ‘We have converted to Christianity.’

Convert to a religion? Who converts? Why? What is this conversion business? What is this religion? How did it appear in our village??

What did our village look like in those days?

There are several questions and doubts. Like the number of broken glass pieces with my reflection in them. Like the outpouring of sorrow from my broken heart.

I saw my village in Thatha’s stories. It is four hills away from the current highway, closer to the forest. There were just three rows of houses, surrounded by farming fields. Those who had lands farmed in them. Those who did not, practised shift cultivation in the hilly forest. The villagers made a living by selling tamarind, handmade brooms, jackfruit, and mahua shoots in the nearby fairs. Everything depended on the rain. If it rained, we ate. Otherwise, we lived on empty stomachs. Our people believed that mother forest gave us rain, and our ancestors witnessed everything from above. If the ancestors bless us, the mother forest will bless us too. It will rain. Otherwise, it will be drought.

Festival is when we pay respects to the elders and receive rain as a blessing.

Festival is all about converting our hamlet’s heartbeat into drumbeats, for the entire forest to hear.

Festival is all about thanking the ancestors for every grain that grows, by playing our songs on the flute.

It is all about paying our respects to mother forest and telling her we are a part of her shadow, through a dhimsa dance.

That is it. Mother forest is our goddess. All our ancestors are our gods. Religion is just living under the watchful gaze of these gods, in the lap of the goddess.

And now?What does my village look like?

On paper, it is a tribal hamlet. But it has all the modern facilities like tv, cellphone, refrigerator, motorbike….

Before all these appeared, and before the road that brought all these appeared, a cement building appeared in our village. It was not a school or a panchayat building. It was a church!

The colourful building stood grandly in the middle of a green forest. Kneeling around it were all of us and our thatched huts.

It was a cold night. We could hear sounds from the tudumu drumbeats in the wind. The night flowed into the streets of the village along with campfires around us and portable warmers under our beds. Young people gathered to perform the dhimsa dance.

I couldn’t stop myself after thinking about these. Breaking the shackles that bound me, I walked towards our hamlet, without informing my father.

There, I saw the home we left when we moved here, in all its sadness. I saw Thatha who had many dreams for me. I saw his footsteps. I saw a lively hamlet and an active community.

Why did we separate from this beautiful hamlet?

After Thatha’s death, my father, who was also one of the village headmen, practised farming as well as business. No businessman came there as the village was far away from the main road, in the middle of the hills. So, my father bought stuff at the nearby fair, and sold it in the village. He started doing this for the village, not for profit. He used to barter all sorts of forest products such as tamarind, pigeon peas, mahua shoots, and brooms and sold them at the fair.

He had studied only until fifth grade. The ITDA offered him a job as a cook in a hostel, but he soon realised that it didn’t pay him and he had to live off the leftovers in the hostel. So he quit the job and developed a hatred towards the ITDA. Every Monday, the villagers used to go to the grievance day at the ITDA. But he never went. Perhaps he thought that they didn’t work for our benefit.

In those days, a man wearing a white cassock entered our village. I learnt later that this new religion entered our hamlet through him. He was a frequent visitor to our home, and was close to my dad. I also learnt later that he provided financial support to my dad in setting up his business. If someone in our village fell sick, he read the holy word and prayed for them. Sometimes, he also gave some medicine. If someone got better with the medicine, he attributed that to his prayers.

Slowly, he set up a small society with a few people in the village. It came to a point where they all gathered, read the bible together, and prayed.

One day …

My father saw several hundred rupee notes in his hands, when he opened his eyes after prayer. That man was standing in front of my father. ‘Why?’ my father asked. ‘From now on, you should convey the villagers’ problems to the lord. You should lead them all to the lord’s abode. You should pray for everyone,’ he replied.

Soon, my father and a few others left for training.

You should pray daily. Women should stop wearing a bindi on their forehead. We should shake hands with newcomers. We should stop drinking liquor. We should not beat or touch the drum. A new doctrine entered the village.

My father got a salary every month. Along with it, songs of the Christ, bibles, colourful calendars – all in our Savara language, and other gifts arrived from unknown sources.

Who wouldn’t be happy listening to beautiful music and songs in their own language?

They suggested that the first fruit, the grain from the crop should go to the lord. Thus, everyone brought something along with them when they came to pray. So, my father also worked enthusiastically.

‘But how can we leave the traditional ways?’ A few elders did have misgivings.

But they had an answer for this. ‘What did you achieve by praying to these trees and herbs all these years? This is stupid and uncivilised. How long will you live like this without any change? If you have to have progress, you have to follow the lord’ they decided one day. They declared that they would build a new village nearby for everyone who converted to Christianity.

This is how our new village, Paul Nagar, was formed.

The villages are separated by some distance. It is far enough that if one person speaks from this side, the person on the other side can hear, but will turn away instead of responding.

I could clearly understand the distance soon as someone hit me on my back. The dhimsa dance and the drumbeats stopped. Everyone was staring at me.

‘What are you doing here? Don’t you know that we converts aren’t supposed to dance around like this?’ I still remember my father dragging me back into our ‘new’ village.

Those drum beats in my heart became silent. I can feel the anklets on my feet turn into shackles.

The drumbeat became a distant sound from the old village. Silence filled me.

The place where I live now is under the shade of the new God. It is a prison made by someone else’s rules and regulations. The drumbeats that moved my soul cannot be heard here. Those thunderous beats on tudumu cannot be played here. The kinnera that swayed the forest no longer exists. The pinlakarra that showered moonlight is not here either. There is no song and dance now. There is no excitement from the dhimsa steps anymore. Silence is everywhere. It is the silence of the midnight. You can only hear the sound of broken glass pieces piercing my heart.

The village met one evening.

‘Is Lazar here?’ the man in the cassok asked. That is my father’s new name. Lakkayi was his original name, which he has perhaps forgotten by now. He used to visit every hillock as a part of his mission. He knew every household. He went to all near and distant relatives’ homes, to pray and convert them to the new religion.

‘I guess not,’ someone else replied, since he is always outside the village, busy with his work. ‘We are boycotting Lazar from our society,’ the white cassock man declared, after clearing his throat. Everyone stared at him wide mouthed in wonder. Everyone knows my father’s nature. So this seemed implausible.

‘Do you know why? He drank alcohol despite our rules, and thus, he rejected our God’s grace,’ he said.

Yes, it is wrong to drink alcohol. But in the life of a hillsman, it is not a crime. We reach the hill before the day breaks, work all day, and return at dusk to end the day with palm toddy and dhimsa dance. It is a part of our life.

What is our tradition from the ancestral days? The hamlet would gather around a campfire at night, play our traditional drum, sannai and gogoi music, drink toddy to forget the hard day at work, and dhimsa away to glory. This is not new. Toddy drinking is in our tradition. It is a symbol of our unity to drink together. Offering toddy to a guest is a part of our lifestyle. If you drink too much, making it dangerous to yourself, it is wrong. But, would father have drunk so much? Is it a crime to drink a little bit to relax? Is boycotting an appropriate punishment for that?

Father learnt what happened after returning home. Initially, he did not take it seriously. Then, he realised how strong the boycott was.

He soon got depressed due to the lack of communication with neighbours, and their boycott during prayers. He realised that he was no longer the village elder, as someone else took over that role. He started to roam around in the hills all day, without bothering about food, hunger and home. Perhaps angry and frustrated with the way things turned out – he became a drunkard. He drank till he passed out in some bushes, and vanished for days together. It was as if he moved into the forest.

My mother used to go in search of him in the forest, leaving us at home, carrying some rice gruel. The search went on all day, and when she returned home late in the evening, my younger brother and sister rushed to her crying out of hunger, asking for food. When she went to ask neighbours to bring something for them while she prepared the food, they would turn away from us. I learnt then that if those who convert to this religion get boycotted from it, they witness hell right here on earth.

I never left the hostel because of this. My mother enrolled both my younger siblings too in the hostel, so that we all got food. I never interfered in anything in the hostel. I was worried about what would happen if the schoolmaster sent me home. I was afraid about not getting anything to eat. I was worried about the trouble it would cause my mother.

On that day, I washed my clothes outside, and returned to the hostel with the wet clothes. Mandangi mama was sitting at my desk, waiting for me. He reminded me of my mother and I rushed towards him.

‘Let us go home,’ he said.

‘Why?’ I enquired.

‘Hmm … nothing. It’s your father…’ he paused.

‘Did he come home?’ I asked.

‘Yes…’ he nodded.

When was the last time I saw my father? Long ago, he sat with us and our mother, and taught us to read the Bible. He used to sing songs to put us to sleep. Perhaps he came back as he missed us. He won’t talk about the Bible anymore, I guess. He would tell us stories. He would tell me about the responsibilities of the eldest son. He would tell stories about how he helped his father in his youth. He would advise me how I should take care of my mother.

We got off the bus and started walking towards our village. If we turn at the hill, we can see the village. If we cross two fields, we will enter the village outskirts. However, my uncle directed me towards the hill, not the village. At the foot of the hill, we could see a lot of people at a mango tree near a stone cave surrounded by smaller hills. Everyone gave way once they saw me approaching.

There, my father was, hanging from the tree branch.

‘Robert! Robert Wilson!’

Someone was calling me again, by the same name.

It is the name that made me a nobody. It is the name that took my identity away from me.

Isn’t our name some sort of recognition of ourselves? It is a part of our existence and character. A name indicates our culture and background, like it did for generations of people before me. But this name doesn’t have anything related to me.

‘Robert Wilson!’

Whose name is it? Which country’s name is it? Whose culture is reflected in this name? The traces of which race are seen in it? Whose descendant am I?

‘Are you a tribal hillsman?’ The interviewers in the teacher training program I applied to after my graduation asked me, skimming through my certificates.

‘Yes,’ I said.

‘How? You people don’t have these names. Tell me the names of some of your relatives.’ ‘Sannaayi, Kadaayi, Apparao, Annammi, Milanti, Sombara, Gayami, Jilki, Somesu,’ I recited the names I could remember. There is no name like mine.

‘The constitution offered you a reservation in this job as you belong to a scheduled tribe. To utilise that, you have to prove that you really are a tribal,’ the interviewer said, ticking something on the paper.

True, who is a real tribal? How can he be recognised? Is the paper issued by an MRO sufficient? If so, don’t we have enough papers like that?

What happened that day at the MRO office when they were issuing these papers?

‘This name looks different. Who is this guy? Call him in,’ MRO sir called me. I went inside.

‘Where are you from?’

I gave the name.

‘What is your father’s name?’

I told his name.

‘So, you are a converted Christian?’

I hung my head in silence.

‘Religion aside, what is the evidence that you are a tribal?’

‘…’

‘Where are you from? Where were you born? To whom? What are your traditions, festivals, and culture? We will enquire about all these and issue you a certificate. Okay?’ He got up from his chair.

Father, what did you do? By giving me this name, you just made me a nobody, and separated me from our tribe. I was born and brought up in the forest. Now, just because I have this name, why should I face all this agony and scrutiny? In my childhood, when people called me by this name, it all seemed new and colourful like brand new clothing. But now, I feel crushed under its weight.

After my father’s death, my mother just went back to our old village, and we followed her. We started living there like before, and the hamlet embraced us. I learnt then that the festival is the arrival of a raindrop, planting a seed, or ploughing the field, and seeing the crop grow. Festival is when a flower blooms or a fruit ripens. I realised then, that we walk along with nature in each step, and every moment is a festival. I am a forest person, and my culture is that of my ancestors.

Who are these people that are taking advantage of our innocence and poverty? Who is trying to take me away from my own culture? Who is hijacking my language in the name of religion? Why do we need religion? Is it necessary for mankind?

‘Robert! Who is this Robert Wilson? How many times should I shout your name? Where did you go? Are you the guy who applied to change your name?’ the district collector’s head peon enquired.

‘Yes,’ I replied and went inside.

Today, I say this –

making the sun of our forest as my tudumu

In the cadence of its music, I declare…

amidst the songs of my pinlakarra,

and the jingles of the tillakaya,

along with the rhythm of dhimsa dance …

I make my voice my gogoi and proclaim –

I am a human

I am an Adivasi

I don’t have a religion

My name is Sombara!’

The story was first published as నా పేరు సొంబరాా/nA pEru soMbarA in the magazine Praja Prabhatam in November 2013. This is the only English translation that exists.

Translator’s Note: Andhra Pradesh state is a home to many indigenous communities, speaking several languages and following different cultural practices. They were all influenced by the dominant cultures around them over time. However, there is very little contemporary literature from writers belonging to these communities, and none in English to my knowledge. In this context, when I came across Jagadeesh’s stories, I was moved and wanted to participate in making them known outside the Telugu speaking world, urgently. This story, in particular, depicts the arrival of a new religion into a tribal hamlet, and how it changes everything.