The women of the Baiga tribe have intricate tattoos etched on their bodies from the ages of seven or eight, because they believe that when they die and go to heaven, they will be recognised only by their tattoos. The tattoo is known as the ‘godna’, and the artists who make them are called ‘malhars’. It will soon become hard to find either artist or art, as the practice slowly becomes extinct in the tribal outposts of Jharkhand and Chhattisgarh.
Tracing eleven such dying professions is a book called The Lost Generation , by a young and enthusiastic new author, Nidhi Dugar Kundalia.
And what about the Baiga men? Don’t they need tattoos to be recognised? “No”, said Nidhi, with a smile. Apparently, men are such superior creatures that they need no markers in heaven or anywhere else.
The author, who was in Chennai recently to launch her book at an event hosted by the Madras Book Club, was enthusiastic, unpretentious and refreshingly honest in the way she responded to questions both from film critic Baradwaj Rangan, who interacted with her, and the audience.
The same charm comes through from the book as well. I picked a chapter at random, the one on rudaalis , the professional mourners of Rajasthan. The ominously silent village, the Thakur headman and his coterie of chelas , his refusal to let the writer talk to the women of his household, the fact that girl children are routinely put to death because having a daughter means having to “lower your head” some time in life — Nidhi has listed these things simply, but in their very matter-of-factness, they convey a chill that drama might not have done. Young widows, servant girls, girls who survive infanticide, lower caste girls — they become the mistresses of Thakurs and other upper-caste men. And also become their professional mourners because high-born women cannot be seen weeping in public.
From the kabutarbaz (pigeon breeders) of old Delhi to the street dentists of Baroda to the iftar wallahs (perfumers) of Hyderabad, this book promises to tell the stories of an older, slower, conservative and now-vanishing India. Interestingly, Nidhi is not on a nostalgia trip. She sees the rampant gender and caste inequities of a society that generates these jobs. She simply plays the role of dispassionate chronicler of professions, not mourning their death, but recording their existence for future generations, vividly and truthfully.
After a long while, it felt good to encounter a book and a writer who were both without affectation.
