3. Of creatures and crosses

As the thin sheet of dusk would fall upon the fields, the stories would start filling the hearts of the people. Stories of the gods, stories of the goddesses and stories of the white ghosts that would send shivers down the spines. Amongst all other mythical characters that young Ramchandra’s grandmother told him stories of, the one that seemed to particularly encapsulate his imagination was Bhiwabali, the mighty, responsible for holding up the load of the entire universe on his strong arms. Wide shoulders, bulky feet and a hefty build, Bhiwabali was such that he could easily defeat an Irani henchman in a duel. The gods, his grandmother would say sitting under an umbar tree, resided in the heavens and controlled the cycle of life and death. They created mother earth and sprinkled it generously with a kaleidoscopic arrangement of flora and fauna. Death, like life was certain. One day, as the earth wept profusely, the gods ran down from the heavens for her. The world had become a ludicrously burdensome place. It had become too cumbersome for her to bear all the weight. Thus she wept. ‘Take some creatures off my body’ she pleaded. The gods had to produce a two directional path of life and death. They made

a list of creatures they would have to grant a death to. But Narandev or Sun, the lord of light pleaded with them that he was responsible for bringing day to the earth. Moon pleaded that he would bring the night sky to the earth. Sukesar, the lord of happiness pleaded that he brought joy to the world. The lord of wind pleaded that he blew over the world and helped the plants grow. Dhagesar, Gajesar and Vijesar the lords of clouds, thunder and lightning pleaded that they brought the rains to the world. Without them, the world would cease to exist. They had to be immortalised. What remained of the other lords were Thapesar, Lipesar and Khachesar the lords of building, plastering and pits for storing rice. They too had uses that were essential for the earth to survive. So the gods granted death to a man, Pandu who they had no use for. Pandu was a man with long hair and overgrown nails. He fled across the seven seas to escape from the clutches of death. His seven sons set sail in search of him, only to find an old ascetic who gave them plums. He told them their father’s location. The sons ate all the plums and planted the seeds in the belly of the earth. But none of them produced any fruit for the first seven times. They produced fruit in their eighth blossoming, but only to fall down as raw fruits. The youngest son got just one ripe fruit which all of them carried to their father. As they marched towards their father, they made him some bread and porridge. Pandu, the father succumbed to the smell of the fruit as soon as he was presented with it. The fruit bore the death of Pandu. Even as he tried to hide from it, he couldn’t escape the overarching embrace at the hands of death. Such was their fate too. Death was so frequent not only because of malaria, but also because of the hardships of the farm. He had heard a story of a man who got pierced in his heart by a crowbar by the henchman of a landlord because he had tried to steal money kept on a table. Moreover,

a genetic disorder called sickle cell anaemia, having a tremendous presence in the region made matters much worse. His people had very little control of their lives. But death was not a choice either. It was inevitable, and it could come at any moment. Even mother earth sank under the seas once. All the life on the planet ceased to exist. Even the birds disappeared from the face of the planet. Then the gods had to reconstruct the earth from mud balls. Mud balls, which only a gocheed1 would possess. The gocheed would not yield, so the gods had to threaten her to give them the mud balls. They collected the stones from the stone world and Narandev got hold of the goddess of the stone world. She agreed to supply the gods with as many stones as they would need to reconstruct the earth. Narandev secured the earth with mud and stones. The gods got Bhivda thakar, the stone sculptor who would make the pillars for the world, and Chavda the carpenter, who would craft the timber beams for the world. Dhanji the iron smith provided the gods with nails to hold the structure of the world. But the gods had to confront an important question. Who would be the architect of the new world? The sun, the moon, the wind, the thunder, all were ready to shoulder the responsibility, but none could see the whole reconstruction process through. Finally, the gods went to Gungheri raja (or Gondya Kumbhar) the lord of pots. Gungheri raja separated the different varieties of mud that Narandev got him from the gocheed using a golden sieve into separate mounds of sticky, red, black, milky, coarse and fine grain and soaked it in water for sixteen days. As the mud was ready to be moulded as clay on his golden wheel, he started kneading the earth into a ball. First the earth ball was the size of a sesame seed, then the size of a ricegrain, growing gradually into tur2 ,

1 Gocheed is a type of a gadfly that makes her home by gathering mud balls. 2 Tur is a type of a pulse grown commonly in the tropical region. Commonly referred to as pigeon peas.

val3, plum, mango, coconut, a room, a house, a house with a front and back yard, a hamlet, a village and hundreds of villages. Eventually, he completed the construction of the earth. A planet that lay barren. It had to be replanted with seeds. Isar and Ganga Gauri4 started planting the seeds in all the directions of the planet. They collected the seeds for the plants from the world of ants and squirrels. The earth proliferated once again because of the mercy of the gods and the nature. Ramchandra was sure that however inevitable death was, he, like all other Warli folk were always protected by the gods. Some gods needed to be seen around physically to feel safe in the form of shrines. The gods in the heavens were not the only ones to protect them. The most important of them was Waghoba, whose shrine was erected by Ramchandra in Ghatalpada. The tiger god was a lord of cow herdsmen. The god assumed the form of a tiger and moved about the forest. His watchful prowl kept the cattle safe while grazing. This did not mean however that killing a tiger was taboo. Ramchandra knew of a few people in the neighbouring villages who would hunt tigers. Along with the tiger god, Ramchandra had seen his mother adorn the plate where she placed Hirva5, a plate of silver smeared in red lead. Hirva was the lord responsible for their family. Every year his father would change the rice from the plate, placing fresh rice after the harvest. Hirva was known to have seven wives. They lived in the same plate as Hirva and had morphed into seven supari nuts placed around him. He would be offered the flesh of a peacock, which pardhi, the hunter lord would bring to him. Peacock meat was not uncommon. It tasted like

3 Val is a type of a pulse grown commonly in the tropical region. Commonly referred to as field beans. 4 Isar and Ganga Gauri are tribal names for the Hindu gods Shankar or Ishwar and his partner Parvati respectively. 5 Hirva literally translates to the colour green in the Warli variety of Konkani.

chicken. Ramchandra himself went to the forests sometimes to hunt for peacocks. Only when someone fell sick, their family tied a Hirva totem to the peacock. It was called kusa bandhane. No one would kill this peacock then. The spirits lived everywhere. After organisms die, they becomes a spirit and manifests themselves into the various elements of nature. Such spirits were known as the Cheda. There were five types of stone gods- Korvani cheda, Munjya cheda, Bata Vir, Cheda vir and Chokha vir. Sometimes the cheda took shape in the form of frogs or snakes and lived near the spot where he buried his treasures. If someone tried to dig open the treasure, that person would be bitten by the cheda and would lead to illness. The Girha lived near the palm trees near a river bed. If the girha held a grudge against someone, they would drown in the river. Sanvari was a female spirit. She would live in big boulders in the forest. Certain rocks with shendoor were the physical manifestations of the Dongar Sanvari Mauli, the goddess of the mountain who protected the forest. Sometimes Sanvari devi would lure young unmarried men into her trap and kill them if they tried to cut trees around her. She was supposed to have reversed feet. The thought of Sanvari devi harrowed Ramchandra even after his marriage. He would always go to the forest to collect firewood with his wife. Some trees were also spirited. Especially the Umbar, bel and peepul trees. While the Umbar and bel trees were considered sacred, the Peepul tree was the home of a Barambha, the male spirit who would entice and capture young women. The barambha was a white spirit with a white face and white robes. At times, an albino child would be mistaken as a barambha and he would be presented with offerings. Sometimes, there would be stories of a barambha resembling an Irani man.

It so happened that my first field visit to the hamlet had turned out to be completely unplanned. Earlier that day, I had visited an NGO’s office in Jawhar to discuss how to go about into the villages to begin my field study. Ganpat Ghatal, the person who I had met during the Raan Bhaaji Mohotsav happened to be there coincidently at the same time in the office. We spoke briefly and he invited me to his home in Ghatalpada. Ganpat dada was travelling with a friend of his, Sudhir Jadhav, a middle aged man from a village next to Ghatalpada called Khardipada. They asked me to follow them. Fortunately I had carried a couple of changes for the trip. So I accepted his invitation and we started off for the village at about four in the afternoon. This time I was wiser to not travel in a car. I went there on my father’s 110 cc motorbike I could trust with all my heart; a bike that would never give up on me on the belligerent roads of the ghats. As our bike engines whirred on the looping roads of the Western ghats to reach Ghatalpada, my mind kept sinking into an abyss of questions. Not only the complex ones to address and advance the research, but also simpler, much more fundamental ones. Where was I going to eat? Was there a provision for toilets? Where would I sleep? How was the village going to treat me? After all, I was going to show up at the village unannounced. We stopped briefly to buy some chicken from a small and the only chicken shop on the way. I felt myself feeling a sense of relief after I realised that there would be chicken for dinner. After riding for about an hour, we reached the shores of the Lendhi river. ‘Park your bike here’, Sudhir said and made some space in the front yard of his house ‘It will be safe here’. Sudhir’s home was one of the last homes of Khardipada, a hamlet slightly larger than Ghatalpada. He ran a small general store selling biscuits and essential goods from his home. As I

parked my bike next to his, Ganpat dada waited for me as he knew I would require help to cross the river. By this time, the heat from the sun had subdued as it had started its descent from the sky. We moved slowly towards the river, traversing through the boulders the river had crafted over centuries. As I reached Ganpat dada’s home, both of us found ourselves grappling arduously with the awkwardness that filled the room. The evening sun lit up the space dimly as the door was the only source for the sun to enter Ganpat dada’s living room. As Ganpat dada changed into his sleeveless bundi, the light rays highlighted his skinny yet strong body. He was a short man with a thin moustache. By no means did he appear as a person who could impose his presence in a room full of people. But his physical appearance was no measure for the respect he commanded in the village. Not only was he much more educated than other men in the village, but also was he a well travelled man. He was the only person from their village to visit Kerala in an aeroplane. Ganpat dada told me that he finished his Bachelor’s degree in Marathi from Thana and had plans to pursue a master’s degree. All the other younger boys referred to him as kaka and held him in great reverence. He had three sons, Ajay was the oldest, Arun was the middle one and Amit was the youngest. Ajay had finished studying till the tenth standard. Both the younger children were put in a school which he referred to as an ashram shala in Palghar where their stay and food were taken care of by the school itself. They had come home for the weekend and were about to leave for Palghar the next morning. ‘There was once a school here’ said Ganpat dada pointing at an old dilapidated concrete building across the street with crusty old walls. The teachers would have to come from a very long distance to the school to teach. There were only six pupils who would go to the school. So eventually,

they had to shut the school about three years ago. ‘The building is however used by the Gram Sabha of Ghatalpada to occasionally conduct their meetings’ he retorted with a somewhat sombre look on his face. The sight of chicken running around the house was not new to me this time. What was new however, was a set of four little birds, whose legs had been tied by a thread hanging upside down from a timber joist in his home. It was his younger son Amit who had brought them there. ‘These little kids!’ exclaimed Ganpat dada gently snickering at his son. ‘He must have brought it from some open nest on a tree’ he said. Then he picked the birds from the hook and kept them on the floor. He asked his wife Venutai to take them inside and feed them to the cat. I found the thought of feeding young birds to a cat quite unsettling. The idea of catching birds to feed your pet was not something I had ever experienced. But here it was. His demeanour towards all his sons was the same. But I sensed a certain affinity Ganpat dada shared with Amit, his youngest son. Ganpat dada offered me some tea. He said he had planted some lemongrass in his backyard and would like me to try it. I nodded. The teacup left a dark circular stain on the floor as I picked it up for a sip. It evaporated soon on the brown floor plastered with cow dung. The tea was black and bitterly sweet. He said that no one from the village or the surrounding villages has any milk. Milk was never a constituent of their diet. All the households had cattle. But their milk was reserved for the calves. Only in very rare cases would the Warli consume milk. All their nutrient requirements came from rice and other grain, fish and meat. Soon it was too dark inside the house. The cerulean sky above had started turning into a shade of deep blue. Venutai was inside the kitchen, beyond a dark room where the kanagi for rice was kept. She

called Ganpat dada to help her with the slicing of the meat. Ganpat dada switched on a CFL bulb in his living room and went inside to help her. The CFL bulb wasn’t bright enough to illuminate the whole room at all. It was just enough. One of Ganpat dada’s sons started the TV, an old cathode ray set which was kept on a small shelf in his living room. We found a way to break the ice as we found some solace in the TV. India was playing a cricket match against England and Rohit Sharma was giving the British bowlers a run for their money. As we watched the match, Venutai came from within the hearth of their home and served us dinner, hot rice and chicken curry, peppered with locally grown chillies. ‘This would not have been possible ten years back’ Ganpat dada said,’there was no electricity here’. In my head, I had assumed that since Ganpat dada had invited me, I would be staying at his home. But soon after the match was over, Ganpat dada said that he had arranged for me to sleep in a different place, a newly constructed hall where all the younger men would go at night to sleep. I was slightly taken aback by that. He said that there were minuscule insects in his home called vilki in his home that would trouble me at night. ‘These insects are so small’ he said, ’they can hardly be spotted by the naked eye’. They move slowly on the skin of an individual at night. He said that they will bother me if I was not accustomed to them. So we pushed towards the hall with flashlights in hand. The sky above was lit up because of the bright moonlight from the full moon. At one point we were surrounded by a swarm of kiooncha or jhingaoo.6 I could see the hall he was talking about from a distance under the light. There was a fence was made of woven strips of bamboo, behind which lay all the houses in the settlement in a small huddle. We crossed

the fence and continued to walk along a small paulvaat amidst a thicket of waist length grass. The flashlights attracted a hoard of small moths flying aimlessly around the rim of the torch. It was a longish structure, placed outside the fence of the village. There was no house around the structure. The roof was a sheet of corrugated steel. It had polished Kota flooring in the verandah and walls painted in white. The windows had sliding channels and frosted glass. There was also a small grill outside the windows. By no means was this building built in congruence to the traditional building methods deployed by the locals in this region. The language of the structure belonged to a much more modern perspective of imagining building technology. As we entered the structure, I realised that it was actually a small church. There was a giant red cross placed on the wall opposite the entrance. It was built some three years ago and was inaugurated by a reverend in that area. There was a carpet of patakas or paper banners hovering below the roof. As the fans started rolling, the patakas started fluttering wildly. The space was very well lit with energy saving LED lamps. It had a small raised concrete platform and a podium to address the people from. Ganpat dada said that I would be safe here from any pests. I was baffled at the sight of a church and asked him how come would a building such as that would come about in their village. Ganpat dada paused for a moment, and said that there were a few people in the village who had converted to christianity. I knew this was going to be a long conversation and thought that it would be best to let it pass for the time being. He handed over a small chataai to me to sleep on. Soon there were other young men in the room and the lights went out. The fold of the events of that day in Ghatalpada open a trapdoor into a network of faith based networks that have been operating here. Contrary to my belief of the community following a practice of

religion that has shaped and is shaped by the dependency on the forest resources, newer institutions of faith have been taking shape over here. This raises a few important questions. When did such institutionalised religious practices find a headway into the region? How have these religious practices start shaping newer relationships of the people with the forest? What relationship do the people following newer religious practices share with the locals still practicing traditional religion?

As Ramchandra shifted to Ghatalpada, the first thing he did was to construct his home along with Vadu. During the first days of monsoon, both the families shifted on the rice paddies to start the plantation process. As they returned, they discovered that the home of Ramchandra Ghatal was plundered. He shifted his home little further southward. A few days later, as both the families returned from fieldwork, they realised that Ghatal’s home was looted again. If this would continue, Ramchandra Ghatal would have to go back to where he came from and toil on Irani farms. This was out of question. Soon his neighbour, Vadu fell ill. Not only did Ramchandra find himself grappling with his own situation, but also could not understand the dynamic that was driving the situation. He was convinced that it was the evil doing of a spirit from the forest. It had to be propitiated. Ramchandra’s wife Lakhmi Janjar, hailed from a family of bhagats. She was the sixth child from the fourth wife of a renowned Bhagat,7 Devaji Janjar from her village. Devaji Janjar was a celebrated Bhagat. Some said that he was a man who kept herbs so strong with him that they could stop the bullets from the guns of the British forest

officials. He was looked upon as an arbitrator whenever there would be a dispute in any village nearby. His body was frail now. His beard had turned white like cotton blossoms. Now in his nineties, his power had waned over the years. Earlier, there were stories of him domesticating tigers in the forest. He would go and live in areas in the deepest, thorniest corners of the forest, where no one would dare to set their foot. It was said that he had taken his vidya from a saint who lived in the mountains. No one knew how he found the saint. But after all, Devaji was a man of mystery. So he started practicing the dark arts of Aghori vidya. He drank his own urine and consume his excreta to sharpen his abilities to spot out the bhutalis in the region. He could simply take the leaf of the Palas tree and a few rice seeds and look into the past and the future of a person. He had a deep understanding of the various medicinal properties of trees and herbs in the forest, so remote that hardly anyone even knew about the existence of such species. So strong was his magic that he was dreaded by the folk in the nearby villages. He started marrying women in his early teens. But they would all die one after the other of supposedly natural causes. Eventually he realised that it could be the wrongdoing of bhutalis or witches in the region who envied his vidya. Strange were the ways of the bhutalis. Witchcraft was an institution within itself. They formed secret societies within villages. They would pick young unmarried girls and train them to practice the dark arts. A young apprentice would be restricted to marry a man during her course of training as a bhutali. The bhutalis would not be restricted to practice their arts even after marriages. There would be stories that would float around of bhutalis placing hexes on individuals and the individuals dying of natural causes in a matter of a few days. If a bhutali was suspected of killing an individual, there were instances of

beating the bhutali to death within villages. In a way, a strong bhagat could undo the hexes placed by bhutalis. Devaji Janjar was one of them. He had three pupils that he had taken to teach them the art of being a Bhagat.

Ramchandra and Lakhmi decided to approach Devaji to provide them with a solution to their eeda-peeda.8 Devaji asked Ramchandra to initiate a Raval. A raval was an event which had two important attributes: it was a sort of an initiation ceremony for the senior bhagat to train his pupils and undergoing through a Rawal would free Ramchandra from any hex placed on him and the second attribute was that it was a sort of an ode to Kansari devi, the goddess of corn for a good yield in the next cycle. Ramchandra had seen what a raval was like as a child. He took a navas to uphold the raval. He went near a tamarind tree close to the river bed of the Lendhi. It was him who would have to bear all the costs for raising a mandap or math of the Kirmira tree for the raval to take place. He planted a bunch of makhval or marigold plants around the mandap.9 The ceremony was initiated at night with Devaji sitting along with his subordinate bhagats. About thirty to forty people attended the Rawal. They were all men. Devaji placed some wooden stumps into the ground to envelop an area. He threw some sand within this envelop while chanting some mantras. This was, he instructed, the area of the bhutalis and it should not be stepped on at any cost till the end of the raval. Bhutalis would try to sabotage such a ceremony according to some stories. But a strong bhagat always smelt the presence of bhutalis in the vicinity and drove them off. Every man was asked to take a bath in the nearby river before

8 eeda peeda translates to problems caused because of possession by an evil spirit. 9 Here, ‘math’ or ‘mandap’ refer to the physical setting within which a Raval operates.

starting the raval. All the men who were going to attend the Rawal were instructed to abstain from any sexual activity. Even basic conversations with their respective wives were prohibited. If there was a defaulter, the bhagat would know it. They would be unable to get possessed by the spirits of the jungle. Discipline was sacrosanct. It was the vare10 that would possess the individual during a raval. The vare could be any creature from the landscape, a tiger, a buffalo, a fish, a crow. Every vare had specific characteristics. If a tiger possessed a man, the man would jump on his place. If it was a buffalo, the man would go near the water and take a dip in the water. It was necessary for a person to be possessed. That spirit was the mode through which the bhagat would converse with the hex. There would be some men who would be coming in for the first time to such an event. They would have to first learn how to get possessed by a vare. The bhagat’s subordinates would induce the vare in their bodies. At times, they would violently shake their bodies to introduce the spirit animal into their bodies. At times, the spirit animal would change form. The bhagat would undo the hex by using his charms on the vare. The most interesting feature of the Raval was that all the men were referred to as Mauli or Mother. So whenever there was a Raval, all the men would be addressed as a mother. The raval continued till the Waghbaras.11 On the last day, all the men gathered at Ramchandra’s home. Every man brought a cock for sacrifice and some toddy which they themselves extracted as a fee for the bhagat. Ramchandra’s troubles magically got subsided because of the intervention of his father-in-law. His home was never plundered

10 Vare translates to Wind. So the belief is that possession of the body happens as though a wind enters the body of the person being possessed. 11 Waghbaras is the twelfth day of the dark half of Ashwin month of the Hindu calendar which roughly corresponds to September-October post harvest season.

ever again. Vadu however, failed to get possessed by vare. He had consumed too much toddy before the ceremony. He kept on falling ill. Eventually he moved away from Ghatalpada and started a small hamlet of his own by the name of Vadupada. Today Vadupada lies about a kilometre away from Ghatalpada. It is commonly known as Gavatepada.12

By around 1920’s the work of the Christian missions had already begun. Different missions like the American Wesleyan Protestant mission or the Jesuits from Poisar following Roman Catholicism had entered the region. It was through their work, that some of the Warli youth were freed from the debts of the landlords. The modus operandi of the missions was fairly simple. They would repeatedly visit padas and offer financial aid or distribute food. The missions also helped improve the level of education amongst the children in the tribal villages as they opened schools and churches in the region. Slowly, they would ask the people to convert to Christianity. Although the Warli loosely associate themselves to Hinduism, it was a an unorthodox method for practice of Hinduism, especially brahminical Hinduism. For a long time, the tribal communities have been looked down upon by the upper echelons of the Hindu society. The belief that they brought was that the new god would be kind to all and accepted everyone unlike their tribal gods who would get angry at them from time to time. The new god would not require any sort of animal sacrifice either. Regardless of the obvious benefits of conversion, most of the tribal communities opposed the idea of converting to a new religion. For Ghatalpada, the

idea of a new religion was too far fetched, for it was so far away and from the missions that had begun their work in Palghar, Dahanu and Umbergaon. Ramchandra hardly even knew about the new religion. Ganpat dada however, hailed from a very different time. He had finished his basic education unlike any of his ancestors. He was aware of the importance of education and the path that would ensue if he continued to study further. About ten years back, when Venutai gave birth to their youngest son, he was still attached to his original religion. But soon after, Amit fell sick due to a stomach disorder. Ganpat dada and Venutai were not going to resort to the Bhagats like their forefathers. Ganpat dada believed in western medication. He was financially not strong enough at that point in time and contacted the missionaries. The missionaries responded promptly and helped Ganpat dada with the medications. Slowly, Ganpat dada was convinced that it was the new god that would alleviate him from his poverty. About six years back he converted to Roman Catholicism. Soon after, Ganpat dada’s elder brother Vinayak dada followed. The Church offered them a stabler life as opposed to their earlier life. Looking at their cases, two other families from Ghatalpada followed. As soon as they changed their religion, their relationship to the village changed drastically. For all practical purposes, Ganpat dada and his family were as Warli as any other family in their hamlet. But they were targeted by the villagers for having changed their religion. Major fights broke out after their conversion. They were deserted. One of the family even shifted back to their original belief. Eventually, Ganpat dada had warned them to stop attacking them. He would have go to the police to lodge a complain for harassment. He never had to go though. Things had mellowed down before that. Ganpat dada’s relationship with the other Ghatal only improved

after he came to know about the the Provisions of the Panchayats (Extension to Scheduled Areas) or PESA act and how their village was eligible to become a beneficiary under the act. He, by the virtue of his education, was able to comprehend the scope of the act and implement it successfully within the village. A lot of young men gathered under his supervision to start conducting the Gram Sabha every month. The mountain that lies to the western side of the village is now officially referred to as Maalkicha dongar. This means that any forest activity that happens within the boundary of the hill has to happen with the permission of the Gram Sabha of Ghatalpada. With initial success to regularly conduct the Gram Sabha, he started regaining the trust back from the villagers who had once disavowed themselves from him. Looking at their village’s improvement, a few other villages like Khardipada and Kelicha pada also joined in to register themselves under the PESA act.

Fig. 3.1: Cheda, the stone god

Fig. 3.2: The shrine ofWaghoba

Fig. 3.3: The Church