Fieldwork in the Forest – II

The Monsoon is in full flow in Sirsi and the rains continue through the days and nights. At the field station, the continuous pitter-patter on the roof breaks through the calls of various insects and animals, and drowns out the sounds of the small stream behind the station.

Raghu has come early on his bike today, ready and dressed with his raincoat, ankle-high gumboots and a cloth covering for the boots on which he will sprinkle some red chillies before he enters the forest to ward off the leeches. He has got an extra pair of these cloth shoe-covers for me as well.

My first day inside the forest, I had gone into the forest with a false sense of bravado, in sneakers. By the time I got back to our field station, leeches had overwhelmed my feet. The same mistake would never be made again.

Breakfast is in a small family-run dhaba in the next village, some 2 kilometres from our field station. The settlement consists of a few houses, a couple of shops for daily essentials and a this dhaba. This is our usual breakfast spot, which doubles up as an evening outpost for chai. Our morning staple at the dhaba is simple yet delightful, a local variation of fried wheat flour served with coconut chutney. Chai, as usual, is on point. I make sure to have 2 cups, for I am never satisfied with one.

We set off for our field site on his bike, passing villagers who are calmly walking down the road, gunny sacks over their heads to shield them from the rain. A few kilometres down the road, we take a nondescript turn where the road ends and a muddy trail begins. The bike gamefully persists on the trail, finding relatively dry spots to pass over, spots which still exist only because of the dense canopy we are under.

Progress on the trail is slow, but we are in no hurry either. Remote inside the forest, there is a hut which serves as our checkpoint. Raghu parks his bike, and we put on our leech safety gear. The cloth shoe-covers come on, and red chilli is lightly sprinkled on them. On we go!

Monsoons, and the season for the vipers to come out. It is dark with the dense canopy on top of us, while we had started out from the field station to a much brighter day. The change is stunning and hardly subtle. I am careful with using my hands to navigate among the trees and bushes, since the vipers are known to be coiled on branches and camouflage extremely well.

This is our field site. The canopies bear the brunt of the rainfall, while we get on with our work on tree inventories with some wildlife for company.

Fieldwork in the Forest – I

The journey is on its last legs. The front vipers work vigorously to help the driver navigate the winding turns on the way to the bus stand. Inside the bus, some people are already on their feet arranging their belongings, while others are waking up from their sleep with a yawn. I am reaching Sirsi, a small town in north-west Karnataka. I have come down with the overnight bus from Bangalore – ‘executive class’, as the bus proclaims. The night has been rough – my seat proves to be sticky and refuses to recline, and the bumps on the roads do not help. My lower back grumbles and complains, and calls out for its all-weather antidote, a cup of chai.

People are taking shelter from the rain in the tin sheds of the bus stand through unrelenting rainfall. The dhaba at the bus stand is just about opening its shutters, and getting started for the day. I am one of its first customers today. I approach the guy behind the counter. He is busy with his morning prayers, head bowed to the statue of a deity he has neatly kept on the side of the cash counter. He finishes, and looks up at me. I ask for chai, and in return he nods and gestures towards the empty tables, some still having the chairs kept upside down on top of them. His eyes remain fixated on me, a guy with a backpack and a plastic fishing rod in the middle of the Monsoons in rural Karnataka. Is he crazy?

I am here for fieldwork in the forests which surround the small town. These tropical evergreen forests are part of the Western Ghats, now a World Heritage Site. The month of June, in the peak of the Monsoon season is hardly a good time for this, but this is the best that time and my project allows. Its peak humidity and continuous rainfall. You want the rain to stop, but then the humidity is unbearable, so you want the rain to continue to escape the humidity. It’s a vicious circle.

Meanwhile, I ask for some idlis with my chai. I am waiting for Raghu, my field assistant, who lives with his family in a small apartment in town. A middle-aged guy, he is incharge of our field activities in the region. He soon arrives at the bus stand on his motorbike and joins me for breakfast. His presence is timely, for he navigates the conversation about who I am and what I am doing here with the owner of the dhaba smoothly. Soon, we are on his bike and making our way towards our field station.

We arm ourselves with raincoats for the rain continues. Even my backpack gets a rain cover for itself. The ride to our field station is serene. The town is left behind quickly, and soon we are riding along lush forests on both sides. Raghu has a helmet for himself, and he has got a small one for me too. With the rain lashing you left, right and centre, it would be impossible otherwise.

Our field station is a beautiful farm house on the highway to the famous beach town of Gokarna. Sloping roofs, even a cow shed towards the back. There is a ready supply of freshwater – a small river flows behind the farmhouse. Since the rain does not subside, we settle down to make a few more cups of chai and watch the Monsoon clouds envelope everything around us.

The Indian Wedding

How it went down:

02.11 Morning – Devgon (starts late, stretches into late afternoon).

02.11 Evening – Mehendiraat (ends at 0500 the next morning, I accept defeat at 0330).

03.11 Morning – Recovery and rehabilitation.

03.11 Evening – The Wedding (starts post-midnight, ends in daylight the next day. I surrender again at 0400).

04.11 Morning – Ghar achun (mostly a blur, but with great food).

I have come down to Delhi from Vienna for the wedding of my 1st cousin. It is the first wedding on the mother’s side of my family – been planned for months, and talked about for a year. Some bumps on the way, but it is finally happening.

My trip lasts all of 4 days. People at work are amazed at the relationship between the distance covered and the length of my trip, as they are about what’s going to unfold. They have only heard of the Big Fat Indian Wedding; this is their case study. They have a lot of questions and they want to see graphic evidence. Evidence of food, festivities, events, clothes, people. I feel like I am representing an idea and an event, and have something to live up to. No pressure.

I arrive straight into the wedding. The whole family has shifted into a hotel, the venue for all the events. It is the wedding takeover, a destination wedding without an out-of-town destination. The hotel can scarcely handle other guests, we ourselves are about 80 people.

I have seen a few Kashmiri weddings, but none have probably been as traditional as this. There are some rituals which are there at a common Indian wedding, but some are truly typical and by 2018 standards, increasingly rare.

The 1st event, the Devgon, is a ritual routinely seen at Kashmiri weddings. I ask everyone about its significance, but nobody has a clue; we do it anyway. For the Mehendiraat, I see my mother going around with a plateful of henna, applying it to people’s hands, representing celebration, joy and a household in festive fervour. As my sister’s aunt, she has this ‘honour’. Every hand she puts henna on, the recipient rewards my mother with money and blessings.

Sufi singers have been called in from Jammu to sing traditional Kashmiri songs through the night. They come with a whole entourage – backup singers, percussionists, harmonists. A stage has been prepared for them, and carpets have been laid out for us patrons to sit down and enjoy their renditions over cups of traditional Kashmiri teas – the kehwa (a sweet tea with dry fruits) and noon chai (a pink-coloured, salty tea) and bread specially sourced from Jammu for the occasion. The singers are delightful – their beats make everyone stand up and dance. The whole setting is from another time.

The wedding ceremony itself takes place in the wee hours of the 4th. I can barely keep my eyes open, and the coffee is too mild to help. The priest expects utmost seriousness during the course of the ceremony, but laughter breaks out when he describes the responsibilities of the bride and groom to each other. The bride and the groom share a sheepish grin themselves. The ceremony goes on for a little over 4 hours, at the end of which there is the vidaai (where the bride goes off to the groom’s house). The first rays of sunlight have broken in through the haze already.

The final event, the ghar achun, passes off in a daze. Some more gifts are exchanged, some more tears are wept. Relatives are seen making plans are made for the next eligible bachelor/bachelorette to get hitched. Because when they all leave, one feels a strange emptiness – you were living with your extended family for days, and then suddenly you weren’t.