Life Imitating Art

Devy introduces the reader to the tribal imagination with a prose rendering of the Santhal song of creation. Binti narrates the tribe’s evolution beginning with the times when the world was nothing but an expanse of water. The Myth and Legend section carries excerpts of some of the enduring stories that are crucial to the cultural memory of tribes. The oral tradition is also the tradition of story telling. Myth and history intertwine to produce a rich tapestry of song and story. The Mahabharat of Bhills and Ramayan of the Kunkana community have all the familiar names and tales except that the Kunkanas have allowed Krishna to dabble with Ravana’s life in their Ramayan. It is not known whether it was the Kunkanas or the translator who allowed Ravana to be seized by malarial fever and Siva to sit down take a pen and paper and write about the King of Lanka’s death. The few short lyrics included are meditative enough to stand on its feet in translation and isolated contexts. Here is a Saora song: When they take the body from the village/ The place is lonely/ We give it company to the burial ground/ The goose flies on alone/ You gathered stones/ And made a place/ People said, He has a house/ But the house was not yours/ The house was not mine/ Our stay here is like a bird’s flight. For tribes, literature is not an instructive exercise but a journey in the twilight world of memory. The human is part of an imagination that gives equal space to the sun and stars as well as trees and rivers. Speech is rooted in life and metaphors earthy. Kil’s sister wears her hair in a bun/ A bun like the nest of the wasp/ But the whiskers of brother Sin/ Are like the flowers of the maize.

The autobiographies includes excerpts from the works of writers/ activists from the denotified tribes. Upara (Laxman Mane) or Uchalya (Laxman Gaikwad) are now every much part of the mainstream in the languages in which they were written. They are not just social documents, but scathing indictments of the criminal behaviour of civil societies in oppressing communities that refuse to abide by the accepted norms of living. Devy has also included a play produced by a DNT group a few years ago. Budhan, based on the custodial death of a Sabar tribe, is a scream — the cry of pain as well as protest. One is reminded of Nadugaddika, a play that reworked a ritual of a Wayanad tribe, which shocked the Establishment in Kerala some years ago by its powerful expose of exploitation of Adivasis. Nadugaddika was produced by a non-tribal (K J Baby), yet its language and form were derived from cultural core of the tribal imagination.

Devy’s preface and short introductions to the various sections not only prepare readers to understand the context of the songs and stories but provides the framework needed to view the otherwise disparate voices as part of a unique sensibility. Painted Words begin in an ancient memory where man lived the life of a bird and ends in a quest for that very same freedom. Art, as they say, is life.