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Finding Meaning in the Mahua and the Sal Tree

Arundhati Ghosh
Jun 10, 2018
As we hurtle down our paths of development at a bullet-train like speed, without pause for thought or rest for succour, we also erase the wisdom of the multiple other practices of time that are still prevalent among different communities.

Recently I read an article in The Hindu titled ‘Mahua goes mainstream‘. Mahua, a local tree in central India, worshipped by tribal communities, has beautiful flowers that yield a cloudy liquor with its very unique flavour, fragrance and intoxication. It is associated mostly with the Gond tribe and their myths, with its flowers offered in ritual practice to their deities. The making of the liquor is a process that goes back many centuries perhaps, and drinking it is an inseparable part of tribal living in this region.

As I read the article, a much repeated, predictable story unfolded in front of my eyes. Now Mahua will be packaged and sold in Goa. Slowly its demand will rise. It will start becoming unavailable to the communities who drank its distilled essence over generations. If the business does well, soon the land with Mahua trees will gain currency and come under the radar of big businesses. Governments will talk about ‘employment’ and ‘income generation’ for the tribal community, while making it easy for businesses to make this land acquisition possible. Then the people who made this land their home from ancient times will be displaced. If they protest, they will be massacred for standing in the way of development.

Right-wing parties and people will speak of the larger good this will do to the region while waiting for the initial public offering from the companies. Left-wing parties and people will at best stay quiet because they may not have yet figured their own relationship with land acquisition for big businesses, having committed similar disasters in the recent past. While some civic society groups may stand at public places in cities protesting, corporate social responsibility funding will open a couple of schools in the region to teach the remaining Adivasi children things which they have never needed to know nor has any relevance to their lives.

Mahua will then lead India into its economic superpower status and be number nine on the export list. Make in India will shine. Sold with simple tribal-tale-one-liners written on the packaging – stories embezzled from the people massacred and displaced – Mahua will reach the global consumer through liquor boutiques as the exotic Indian elixir. Elixir perhaps is a good brand name for the magic potion for good health and prosperity that has caused death and destruction in the community it has been stolen away from.

For me this news meant the death of Mahua and the world that it inhabits. And they say the memory of one death wakes you to another. I woke up today to a terrible news. The theatre community in India has lost one of its beloved artists, Sukracharya Rabha, to a massive heart attack at the age of a mere 41 years. I knew Sukra and his work in theatre well. After spending a few years as an apprentice under Kanhailal at Kalakshetra Manipur in Imphal, Sukra went back to his village Rampur in Goalpara district, Assam. He built the theatre group Badungduppa Kala Kendra and started creating performances there. Their work looked at tribal identities, ways of life and living, their relationships with nature and ecology – in search for contemporary meanings in the here and now.

He created a beautiful theatre space inside the forest of tall Sal trees, with a stage on one side made of earth, and benches on the other shaped out of branches and wood from the Sal trees. One would enter the forest, walk for a little while, and then suddenly come upon this theatre. If one looked up to the sky, one would see soaring branches with green leaves of various shades. The space for audience embraced the space for performance, much like the trees of the Sal forest.

Credit: Badungduppa website

The group led by Sukra started a festival Under the Sal Tree, which brought theatre from across the country to this little village in Assam. In 2011, India Foundation for the Arts (IFA), the organisation I work for, supported this festival to encourage theatre making across Assam, led by Sukra. Through a residency and workshops, four young directors from the region made plays, brought them together at the festival and travelled to various towns in Assam. I had the good fortune to attend the festival, and on the morning of the first day, was stunned to see at 9 am hundreds of people – women, children and men, across age groups – on cycles, vans and on foot arriving at the performance area to witness the festival. Coming from cities where theatre groups constantly complain about the dearth of audiences for their performances, this was a revelation.

I spoke with many of the audience members after the shows over the two days, wanting to know why they came to see theatre here. Some said they liked the stories; some came because it was a grand outing; while many others said because this was their own, a place they were proud of. This ownership, this belonging, was something special. I came back enriched in the knowledge that I had so much more to learn.

The next year we supported this festival again. But this time, the story was different. About a month before the festival, Sukra urgently called up my colleague Sumana Chandrashekar who was looking after his grant. He said the festival could not take place this time. On asking for the reason, Sukra responded that it was because the Sal trees that season had not bloomed! The festival could not happen without that and had to wait for the next season when the trees would bloom again. Sumana was stunned. As an organisation too, we had much more to learn.

That was Sukra, his practice of theatre, their way of life. Time has a different meaning in his world where nature, life and the arts as their expression are connected and intertwined in inextricable ways. Time acquires a different meaning when one drinks Mahua too. It slows down, it expands, it envelops the being in its ancient arms. And the practice of Mahua is entangled in the Gond way of life. I don’t think it is a coincidence that I read the heartbreaking news of Sukra’s untimely passing away the day after I read about the imminent commercialisation of Mahua. I too am ancient that way. I believe in omens, read symbols and make irrational connections.

The meaning of Mahua that rests in the essence of life of the Gond community is like the festival in Sukra’s world that can only take place with the blooming of the Sal trees. Without each other they are impossible, lost without their anchors. As we hurtle down our paths of development at a bullet-train like speed, without pause for thought or rest for succour, we also erase the wisdom of the multiple other practices of time that are still prevalent among such communities. Their relationship with the world they inhabit has not been alienated like ours, and the river, the tree, the air they breathe are entities with equal rights and shares in the cycle of life.

I read with hope that a country like Ecuador has amended its constitution in 2008 to adopt the rights of nature to ‘exist, persist, maintain and regenerate its vital life cycles’. And I am filled with the longing of worlds I am unable to fully grasp, but think must be the possibility of our future.

Arundhati Ghosh works and lives in Bangalore. She loves writing in Bangla and can rarely be inspired to do so in English.

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