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| Tibetan shoppers at Mundgod Bazaar Day |
August 16, 2010.
It is Monday today, the monastic weekly holiday that coincides with Bazaar Day at the dust-tarnished simple village town Mundgod, South India, where Dogueling Tibetan Refugee Settlement is situated nearby. As pre-planned yesterday, I walk to the Tibetan taxi stand under that huge but precarious tree to catch one there for doing some shopping, especially to buy Dosa, one of the famous South Indian snack-cuisines, for the aged sick monk I have been taking care of. He has been asking me to get it since the past days, as he must have found it mouth-watering when I had it at the roadside restaurant in Hubli during a break for his check up at the hospital a week ago. All that drives me to get it for him is motivated by this motto: To fill what is empty, given the fact of his craving at such time now.
The six of us, three facing three, in the comfortably spacious canvas-topped new model one that spares wider space between the protruding knees are monks except an Indian woman in a dark floral spotted synthetic Saree and a beige tight upper wear of the sort made of cotton, so short revealing the part of her naked waist. She is one of the two taxi inmates, the character profiling for this piece of writing, who draws my attention just by her preparing Pan Supari stuff that arouses contorted reaction from the monk beside me. She is on the opposite far side facing the monk beside me. The monk tries his broken Hindi and says incoherently, “Acha Hai, Acha Hai!”
She remains unresponsive doing her thing, pressing cream like Chuna, the white burning stuff, from a small transparent plastic sachet on to the half torn Pan, the leaf, in her dark thin hand. She seems to be in her early twenties but married. She wears the fresh mark of Sindhur, turmeric yellow powder and the red one finger impressions, between her eyebrows, a ritual mark of her faith Hindu. Despite the sort of rejecting reactions she tries to remain untouched bearing a forced countenance of self dignity that veils her self-consciousness reflecting in her dark lovely eyes. They revolve from side to side with a slight knowing smile gathering around her shut but moving mouth busying with grinding the stuffed pieces of betel nut after doing the fingers work of re-peeling and scrubbing each tiny piece.
As one of the other monks I think she doesn’t know Hindi. The monk asks her so in Kanada. But she nods saying she knows it.
“He is asking you if it’s good”, I ask in Hindi.
“Just taking it so, but……,” she says in this part of Hindi.
I translate so to the monk saying it must be of a habitual one for her like smoking, but she doesn't seem to be enjoying it from the way she talks.
Later she presses out more Chuna on her finger tip and rubs it bit by bit on her red tongue. Is it for making the stuff in her mouth stronger or redder? I see her thin dark wrist revealing the bulged veins. Despite her slender medium built she is undernourished.
I find this core part of social interaction through the overture of friendly conversation is utterly ignored from the both sides, the local ones and us.
*
At Mundgod: I am having my favourite strong Ketee tea, Karag Dhud Pati, at the roadside restaurant with the wide front opening. I see the dashing tightly packed vans with those local Indian villagers coming in and going out of this local market day frenzy. It has remained backwardly underdeveloped but we always have a friendly vibe maintained despite how it looks to an outsider. Yes, I remember my friend Sopa telling me about his Russian female friend saying once when asked about her impression of the place, “I feel like walking back to Dickens time”.
In the rearmost seat of the Indian jeep taxi up to Tibetan camp 3, the livelihood demarcation laid for Indian and Tibetan taxi drivers (between Mundgod and camp 3 and between camp 3 and Drepung; Rs.8 and Rs.5; for Indian taxi drivers and Tibetan ones), I find the second one for character profiling but rather by chance. In the sputtering old Commando jeep-taxi, almost like going to break down on the midway, I find the chubby Tibetan guy with the sleepy tiny eyes and paunchy stomach rather unfriendly. But he proves different from the half way; a conversation is lit up between us after the two passengers alight at Gaden leaving us alone.
He is in a faded light blue polo shirt and dark trousers. I find later from his paper he is in his early fifties but still wearing an easy going air. No, I find only later he is tipsy. From his hairstyle, navy cut, and light personality I happen to ask him, “Are you an ex-serviceman?”
He just nods smiling vacantly. Yes, he is and still keeping his style intact as an identity of pride. So it can be as much hyped as BSF Jawan, frontier force, during the Kargil war.
And so it can be for the color of his backpack, khaki.
“There isn’t any rain at Mundgod but here," he says ignorantly.
“But there is rain at Mundgod”, I say.
“Oh, I must be at the police station at the time”, he recomposes quickly.
“I am there to apply for ex-serviceman certificate and ID. I have lost my certificate”, he doesn’t bear any sign of concern.
Unzipping the front part of his backpack, he takes out a folded paper and shows it to me. Apart from the ripped small ones stapled with the full one of Bon paper, a legal paper with money-note head, I find on the latter one he had served as frontier force, BSF Jawan, from 1972 to 1987, when he left not being able to add the remaining years for a full service term, 20 years. But I learn he still has a sort of stipend rather than pension.
“You must have fired many…..,” I ask rather both playfully and anxiously.
“Many countless times……this sort of things, shooting and firing…….,” he says smiling amid the running reverie. Showing me the upper part of his right chest with the bullet scar, he says, “It ran piercing out from my back. If one isn’t to die, nothing can be done. Strange! I was hit many times,” he says, showing me the same scar on his left arm. He also says there are on his upper thigh and hip too. And especially I find he seems to be moved by my keenness so far. Why? Does an army really have this distress of being ignored or slighted in the lax social tide outside his regimented world?
I find him jolly, friendly and yielding if not for being tipsy. When he alights near the gate of Dogueling Representative Office, I can help lifting and handing over his backpack to him. He thanks me. As the jeep taxi sputters nosily ahead, I cast a quick glance towards him, who is walking inside the gate to finish the paper work for getting his ex-serviceman ID.
Sorry, I forget to ask his name!
