Lasur is hot, scalding hot. I’d
have thought February would’ve given Aurangabad
district a break from the traditionally hot summer months of March-May.
Maybe it is the time of the day,
past noon. Maybe it is the geography; bordered as it is by Ahmednagar, Jalna,
Jalgaon, and Nashik, none known for being green, at least not in the sense the
Konkan stretch is.
Maybe it’s the topography, with
the Deccan Trap lava flows of the upper Cretaceous to Eocene age covering the
district, much of it bare of rivers, rivulets, and streams, at least none that
I could spot along the way as we chugged toward Aurangabad
even though it’s located in the Godavari and
Tapi river basins.
Maybe it’s the farming, tracts
denuded of forest vegetation to support agriculture.
Maybe I expect too much, having
travelled through the Konkan more times than I care to remember where rivers
and rivulets snake as densely as the lines in the palm of the hand, where the
green is spread around as widely as the blue overhead.
Even so the landscape is
stirring, like the one in the Deccan Plateau, with fields stretching a long way
off, a succession of neatly cut rows of livelihood, nuanced by the crops sown
and harvested, enlivened by the stark contrast of farmers dwarfed by the land
they till, slight figures embraced by a landscape largely emptied of human
presence, spotted only because they break with the uniformity of the land that
dutifully conforms to the character the farmers lent it and one they strive to
retain in the harshest of times.
And it does feel hot the moment my
eyes, having trawled over the landscape seeking typical rural signposts of
carts, cattle, homesteads, and farmhands, withdraw for respite from finding
none or too few and far between in the miles that abound.
Monotony is not so much endless
uniformity, as it is a lack of contrasting elements inhabiting the uniformity.
It’s a landscape to lose oneself in
without being truly lost. It’s a landscape to be truly lost in without actually
managing to.
But I had little to complain for,
past Lasur, approaching Potul, the land rounded on me just as surely as my
eager anticipation of sighting cotton fields had propelled me to the door no
sooner we left the Nashik district behind.
The contrast of cotton with the
earth, heightened by memories of regularly wading through cotton fields a long,
long time ago, and most recently from the sight of white puffs cascading the earth
past Raichur in Karnataka, this was the closest I came to reliving those
memories the moment I conceded, concluded really, that these must indeed be
cotton fields even though they were nowhere as profuse with whites as those
others I’ve seen and been in before.
Among the sparse trees, I sought
for signs of farmers. While there were plenty of signs of their presence, hay
stacked high, bullock carts left out in the Sun, bullocks grazing in what
little grass there was along the edges of fields, bullocks sitting and chewing
cud, charpoys laid out in the shade of trees outside rustic tenements, of the
farmers there was but little sign.
Maybe I missed them in the
contours of the land as they rested in the shade of trees, turned over on the
side for a nap on the charpoy while children played in the shade, their voices
ticking time just as surely a clock would.
Maybe I missed them in the brown
of the fields, the colour of their skin turned to the very shade they tilled, made
one with the life they shaped to shape their own. In time the land makes each
its very own but not after they’ve made peace with it, making its moods their own.
There’s a reason they Sons of the
Soil came to be used in competitive electoral parlance, and it’s not likely to
be long before Soil Of The Son creeps in as well if it already hasn’t in other
forms.
The poetry of life in the Deccan,
like it must be elsewhere in the hinterland, finds its metre in the cyclical
nature of rhythms that pulsate the land, its cadences shaped as much by the
seeming monotony of the landscape as by the unchanging nature of life it
sustains, redeemed by the simplicity that must pervade to sustain life through
the vicissitudes of nature and the hard bargains that market drives with
farmers.
I lift my head, pointing my nose
up, as if seeking word from silences that roam on the wind. I’m caressed and
let go, returning me to watching for life in the uniformity of livelihood that
pervades the hinterland.
Even so, every now and then, the
fields revealed their masters of the moment, men and women rendered stationery
by the distances that separated them from me, the flashing scene laying over
another contiguously. That’s the nature of a land that stretches past one’s own
journey.
A farmer and a woman watched over
the cotton field by a bullock cart. The bullocks were nowhere to be seen. She
had wrapped the pallu of her sari around her head to shield from the Sun. A
large white sack stood beside her. Cotton? Perhaps. The farmer wore a white Gandhi
topi. Behind them the earth had bumped up the field, elevating it head-high
before flattening it out into cotton crop. White wisps clung to dark stems.
Not far from Lasur and Potul, in
the weaving centres of Aurangabad, the wisps of cotton that stubbornly cling on
to dark stems acreage after acreage, gathering the dust the wind deposits from its
meandering about the Deccan, while showing little promise in the scalding sun
are transformed into elegance, examples of which we were to see later at the Himroo
Weaving Centre in Aurangabad.
At one time, more so before than
now or so it seems, Aurangabad
came into prominence for its Himroo saris and shawls.
It was no coincidence though, for
Himroo textiles drew from cotton grown locally and together with silk, the
fabric that eventually emerged from the handicrafts industry, owing as much to
its unique designs as its texture came to be sought after besides lending
Aurangabad prominence through the middle ages, from as far back as the reign of
Mohammed Tughlaq and Malik Ambar.
Paithani saris are the other
product Aurangabad
is well known for.
Weaving looms attached to
showrooms are rarely functional, at least not the ones I’ve seen. They’re
displayed more to sate curiosity of travellers bussed to weaving centres
returning from visiting monuments, here the Ellora caves.
In their silence, and loneliness,
I imagine faces that once sat at the loom, eyes fixed on the wooden supports
and the warp thread that flow from above, weaving the geometry that
distinguished Himroo textiles from the rest.
Standing in the middle of richly
woven textiles it takes more than just academic imagination to make the leap
from the cotton fields of Lasur and Potul to the vivid designs stacked in neat
rows of shelves on the wall.
It’s no less easy to make a
similar transition from the farmers in the middle of the field and the
salesperson rolling out Himroo shawls and saris for potential customers.
I return to the landscape teasing
me. I tire not from gazing out. I tire not from the unchanging terrain. In the
seeming monotony of the landscape I merely see the beauty of the vastness that
time repeats as a function of distance. I could keep looking on for ever, and
ever.
Gods planted in the shade of
Neem, a sight nowhere as common in Maharashtra as in North Karnataka, where
there’s barely a field which isn’t inhabited by a small, waist high temple with
tapering tops in the shade of Neem trees, softened the landscape with the
belief and hope the farmer must invest in his offerings of obeisance to the
deity before beginning sowing, and praying for a successful harvest.
There’s no one at the small
temple located in the corner of the field where dykes proportioning the field
meet at right angles. There’s a quiet air to the place.
An idol of Goddess Lakshmi sits
outside in the sun, leaning against the wall of what appears to be the site of
an older temple dismantled in favour of a new one built adjacent. I expect
there’d be another idol inside the temple, or merely a stone picked up from the
field and worshipped symbolically as Lakshmi. Yes, stones.
At first, as a schoolboy
meandering in fields in North Karnataka, finding stones anointed with the
traditional offering of haldi and vermillion but bereft of any shape remotely
resembling any of the gods from the Hindu pantheon would greatly confuse me as
to the deity they represented until a farmer revealed their origins, and
purpose: to be worshipped before beginning sowing and at the time of harvest,
and in between depending upon the need for reassurance and blessings.
“It’s Lakshmi we worship,” he had
said. These are not temples where communities form a line in front of. These
are temples of relevance to the farmer who built it. But that is not to say
that offerings made are not offered to fellow farming neighbours. And for most
part the temples in fields enjoy the solitude of a silence enjoying a quiet
siesta.
Incarnations of Lakshmi are
worshipped for prosperity. In all likelihood, as it might well be in many other
cases, the farmer would be happy to merely cover his expenses if not a modest
profit to pull him and his family through the year.
In the vast landscapes of the
Indian hinterland, faith is a necessity to make sense of the vicissitudes of
nature, the constant in whose power time twirls.
Trees, those silent sentinels
that keep watch over their shade from dawn to dusk, lend permanence to the land
that alternates from being harsh to forgiving to nurturing.
Soon it untangled itself from my
gaze and floated into the grasp of another’s.
