Of little people, rolling stones and leaf huts

As I walked towards the little leaf hut, few kids ran before me to show me their house.  I entered the hut (Kumbha) and found that I could barely stand up straight.  My head almost touched the roof.  An earthen pot on a small wood fire was the only asset I found inside the hut. In the little time I got to rove around my eyes across the room, I remember, I did not find anything else.

I came out and went to the nearby brick building where some men and women had gathered for a meeting.

There was an array of brick houses built from Indira Awaas Yojna, which lined the settlement. The houses looked quite empty.

“We got the houses from the BDO” informed one of them.

“So, why don’t you live there?” I was curious.

“We don’t like living inside a brick house.  We prefer our leaf-houses” I was told.

“So, what do you do with the brick houses made from the Yojna?”

“We tie our goats there!”

I was in a little hamlet inhabited by the Birhor tribe, in Chouparan block in Hazaribagh.  I was working with a Volunatry Organisation which was working with this community in thrift and agriculture. That is why I could visit the hamlet and peek into their amazing life, at times.

I would always find them outside their huts. They were mostly found sitting under warm sun, all of them together.  Apart from the little agriculture work, they were mostly engaged in rope making.  The kids lolling on the sand did not go to the school and were around the hamlet all day.

This hamlet had a women’s thrift group and had elected a smart, smiling lady as the President.  Although I do not recall her name, I still remember her pleasant disposition and her confident gait when she walked up to the cluster meeting, one day, with her accounts registers and small metallic cash box, to get the accounts of the group, ‘audited’. She had found a silver earring lying somewhere, on her way; she had picked it up and wore it in one ear, flaunting it.

There was another Birhor hamlet in the Barhi Block.  The group had a smart young guy, who had been to the Block Development Office and the Barhi market. So, he had seen enough of the world.  He also led the hamlet in most of the community construction activities and was very much a modern man.  I had accompanied him to his hamlet once for some work.  While the hamlet residents were busy in the construction work, I sat by a small stream with a young girl of the community.

On that particular day, I remember, I was quite down, emotionally.  I was missing home, the weather was bit gloomy and I sat quietly by the stream, reminiscing about mundane as well as serious things in life.  I had been picking some small stones which were rushing past, in the stream.  In few minutes, the stone would turn into small sand and wash away.  After sometime, it became a play and I enjoyed doing that; letting the sand gush out of my fingers along with the stream.  

The Birhor girl was talking to me about the forest.  About the birds, the countless herbs which grew,  which made all ills well and how they were losing the wisdom with each generation because no one wrote them down or documented anything what-so-ever.  When she saw me involved with the tiny stones, she said, “These are weaker stones which flow away with the water, as sands.  They are dead rocks.  Alive are the rocks which do not break down even if the flow is fast and the water hits them hard.” That day, in that gloomy late afternoon, sitting in the forest, the nameless Birhor girl rendered to me, life’s lesson which even she did not know, she did. Only I knew how much I needed the lessons on that particular day.

In the same hamlet, was an older man, by the name Rajkumar Birhor, who had been suffering from serious cough. Our colleague accompanied him to Barhi and decided to get the blood checked.  We all doubted tuberculosis and wanted to start the treatment early.  However, Rajkumar was furious at the idea and shouted, “Maine apne baap ko kabhi khoon nahi deeyaa…tumhare aspataal ko doongaa?” (“I have never spared a drop of blood for my father; do you think I shall donate it to your hospital?”).  Such was his fury that our colleague treated him to his favorite rasgullas to ease the tension.

The challenge was doubled, when the blood test reported everything okay.  Even as we sighed with relief, we were equally worried that Rajkumar, knowing that he had no TB, would be very angry that some of his precious blood was drained unnecessarily! 

Our organization had been trying to introduce Japanese method of rice cultivation, among the Birhors.  In our project site at Karma village, the activity took up speed and the project team consistently discouraged them from what they would otherwise do: begging door to door. We thought we had settled them into a decent livelihood, when suddenly one day our team member, found some of the residents begging at the office door. Worth mentioning is, when they realized that it was our office, they took to their heels and later totally denied having begged even once.

Such was the interesting life of the Birhors.  Life stood still at the hamlets while the world hustled and bustled on the Grand Trunk Road, barely 2 km away from them. Even when the glitters of a modern life slowly approached them, in the guise of Government Projects for settling them, our Birhor brothers and sisters found warmth around the hearth inside their little leaf Kumbhas.