Change In Plans

Jodhpur - Rajasthan - India

BIRTHDAY PRINCESS AND NEW FRIENDS

This post is about our second day in Jodhpur, highlighted by celebrating our daughter’s fourth birthday. Thanks to India (the person and the place) it was a special day for all of us.

We were up early, and Tallulah got to read a flood of birthday wishes and e-cards from friends and family. Ever since we had a birthday-like fairy/princess going away party for her in June, Tallulah has maintained that she is already four years old. We have allowed this polite family fiction to extend into her proclaiming yesterday as her fifth birthday.  This drives her brother crazy, of course.

She also opened a few presents before breakfast, including a sparkly red Indian dress from our Mukut, our incredibly sweet (and competent) driver for the last ten days.  Tallulah put on the dress and refused to take it off for the rest of the day.

We drove about 40 km out of Jodhpur to a small village called Rohet.  We had arranged for a wildlife safari tour which ended up being much wilder than we expected: a natural, cultural, and mildly narcotic family experience.

Our safari guide, Ajitesh, drove us out in an open-top Mahindra & Mahindra jeep-like vehicle, with camouflage seat covers that read “Property of India Army.”  We were looking for black buck, which is a species of Indian antelope that was hunted nearly to extinction.  It has been protected for about 20 years, and now seems to be coming back strongly.

Unlike African safaris, there are no fences around Indian game parks.  In this case, we were not in a game park at all, but were driving around in  wheat fields, now lying dusty and fallow after the harvest.  We spotted dozens of black buck, some in a large family herd, others in a bachelor herd (of non-alpha males), and other males on their own.  If we had not known that they were so rare, we would not have appreciated that this was special.  Although they are beautiful and exotic looking, as they lazed in the shade they seemed as common and unremarkable as white-tail deer on the median strip of a New England highway.

The Rohet area had a relatively large population of black buck even through the species’ thinnest times. A small religious/agrarian community, called the Bishnoi, has been protecting them “for a long time.” I asked Ajitesh how long was a long time. He replied “At least 400-500 years.  The Bishnoi were the world’s first ecologists.”

We visited a Bishnoi farm very near where we spotted the antelope herd.  ”Bishnoi” is the Hindi word for the number 29. The name represents the 29 principles that the Bishnoi people live by.  Some of the principles are ten-commandment like (”don’t commit murder”),  but many have to do with sustainable agriculture and conserving the environment (”don’t cut a living tree”).  

The farm was small and relatively humble, but apparently the Bishnoi are almost always successful farmers, and have plenty of money.  They support each other, and are considered excellent neighbors, because their principles include helping others (Bishnoi or not) in whatever ways possible.  The children on the farm were healthy and very beautiful.  The parents put kohl around their eyes to ward off evil spirits, and to protect against eye infections.

BISHNOI FARM CHILDREN

We drove a few kilometers from the Bishnoi farm to a “Brahmin village,” which was an enclosure of several farm houses.  The compound houses an extended clan of 50-60 people. There were four new communal tractors parked outside the walls, and we saw scores of bags of recently harvested grain.  We toured the houses and the courtyards, admiring the small shrines and the photos of the clan’s patriarchs.  

Just as I thought we were going to leave, Ajitesh told Zola that we were going into the last house for “the opium ceremony.”  I assumed he was kidding, and headed for the jeep.  

Of course, he was not kidding, and so we found ourselves seated in a circle of male clan elders, watching them ritually make tea from opium.  Again and again, the master of ceremonies poured cold (bottled) water through a cheesecloth full of opium rocks.  The water got progressively more brown.  The men sang and chanted a little, and then decanted the tea into a small wooden vessel.  

The leader poured the tea into his cupped palm, and offered it up to Ajitesh.  He drank three palmsful, explaining: one in honor of the village, one in honor of the god Brahma, and one in honor of the ceremony itself.  

The other men all drank from each others’ cupped palms, and then poured for us. 

Ajitesh had told India and me that there was “basically no narcotic” in the tea. The government-issued opium rocks are of very low potency. Nevertheless, reluctance sprang from many questions and concerns running through our minds:Was this remotely hygienic? Was it legal? Was there really no opium in the tea? (That seemed unlikely, given the more-than-ceremonial enthusiasm with which the elders drank.) Would we become opium addicts? Even if we didn’t become opium addicts, would we get deathly sick from drinking out of a farmer’s hand in rural Rajasthan? Should we be ingesting opium in front of our kids, for heaven’ sake?

Politeness and the momentum of the moment won out over the questions, so India and I both slurped some down.  She stopped after a polite palmful, but I went with the ritual three.  Afterward, the men all smoked bidi cigarettes (a pack of 50 costs about 4 US cents), and we sat together for a while.  I don’t know what opium is supposed to feel like, but I did not feel any effects.  Maybe I will go into withdrawal tomorrow.

Later, Ajitesh told us that the men usually concoct a much stronger opium potion, or they smoke the rocks.  For us tourists, it was just show.

Finally, we came across, and were invited to join, a very colorful Hindu wedding procession in the village of Rohet.  This is considered a very auspicious sign on a birthday, so Tallulah is assured of a healthy and interesting year. I think she is having an interesting time thus far.

Happy Birthday, Tallulah!

INDIA (THE PERSON) PARTAKING IN THE CEREMONY