Nine Lives (20 page)

He added, ‘The lampblack from the lamp that glows in this way is very powerful. It can be used to heal anything.’

It was the old primeval link between storytellers and magic, the shaman and the teller of tales, still intact in twenty-first-century Rajasthan. ‘So you are as much a healer, a curer of the sick, as a storyteller?’ I asked.

‘Of course,’ Mohan said. ‘But it is thanks to Pabuji. It is he who cures. Not me.’

Five years after this first meeting, on the morning after Mohan’s night recitation of the epic in his home village of Pabusar, the
bhopa
and I sat down on a charpoy outside his house. The bright sun of the day before had given way to massing cumulus, and a strange grey light played over the desert and the village. The sun was now the colour of steel.

Mohan had sung the epic until dawn, and had slept for only four or five hours before being woken by the visit of a neighbour, a family of bangle sellers who had dropped in for a chat. Now it was mid morning and we sat looking out at a very rare but highly auspicious event in Pabusar: clouds massing for the winter rains. Rarer still, a few drops were actually falling on the ground.

‘We call this rain the
mowat
,’ said Mohanji, smiling brightly. ‘Even a few drops are wonderful for the wheat and grain. One or two showers will give enough forage and fodder for the sheep and the goats until the monsoon. Four or five showers and even the cows will be happy.’

‘Aren’t you tired?’ I asked. ‘You were performing all night.’

‘Sleep doesn’t bother me,’ he said. ‘We are friends of sleeplessness. I’ll happily do another performance tonight. After all these years I’m used to it.’

Chai was brought, and
parathas
, and as we sat eating our late breakfast, I asked Mohan to tell me about his childhood, and how he had first come to be a
bhopa
. As we talked, his younger children and grandchildren began to cluster around to listen.

‘I was born and brought up right here,’ said Mohan. ‘For three generations my family have held this land, and this is where the family have lived and died.

‘My father was a
bhopa
before me. He was very famous in his time – his name was Girdhari Bhopa.
He used to be called to give performances even 300 miles away, and he made a very good living.
All my ancestors – my grandfather, his father, his father before him – all were
bhopas
of Pabuji, but it was my father who made the family famous. He had all the three different skills you need for reading the
phad
: dancing, reciting and playing the
ravanhatta
. When he performed, he was such a fine dancer people would look at his feet.
When he sang, they looked at his face; and when he played, they looked at his
ravanhatta
.

‘We are of the Nayak caste. Our ancestors were close to Pabu, and used to look after his horses. Ever since the time Pabuji ascended to heaven in his palanquin, we have glorified his name, and read the
phad
which commemorates him. No one can learn the epic from outside our caste – it is impossible. You have to be born to this.

‘That said, not everyone born to this family has the heart – the
hirtho –
or the head, to remember the epic and to do this work. Of my five sons, only one is a practising
bhopa
. Other jobs are easier and pay better. But if you have the heart, and
can perform well, then this is still a good way of making a living.

‘The first step is to teach a boy to dance. He should come to as many of the
phad
readings as he can, and help to entertain the audience by dancing beside his father. By the age of twelve you can see whether the boy is suitable for further training. You can see if he has a sense of rhythm, can handle a
ravanhatta
, and if he has a good memory.

‘It was my father that attracted me to become a
bhopa
. He was so good! I was very proud of him, and learned the
phad
inspired by his example. I was the youngest of four brothers and as a child this left me free to do what I wanted: to play
gindi –
village hockey – or to take my father’s herd of goats out to graze. I was always with all the other boys of the village. But even at that stage in my life, when they were playing
gindi
or cricket, all I really wanted to do was to read the
phad
. I always tried to see my father’s performances, and during the day, when my father was out, or perhaps was sleeping after a night of singing, I would pick up his
ravanhatta
and repeat a few songs or lines, the way we all saw him doing.

‘I was too shy to play or to sing in front of him, at least at first. He was a very kind man, but he would quickly point out if I had missed a line, or pointed at the wrong image on the
phad.
I learned the epic line by line, and knew it in its entirety by the time I was sixteen. I also knew where every incident was located on the
phad.

‘The
phad
is very complex, but if you learn very young, the complexity does not become a burden: instead you learn to appreciate how wonderful and abundant and full of life it is. I love the richness of it, and a good audience appreciates the complexity too. Having so many different layers gives pleasure to the audience.
But if you leave learning it too late, you may never remember it properly, and eventually give it up. Luckily,
I taught Shrawan the same way my father taught me, and now Shrawan knows the
phad
nearly as well as I do.

‘I got married at the age of sixteen. But I didn’t start reciting the epic professionally until I was twenty, because my wife was only nine when we got married. Batasi was of course then too young to perform with me, so I had to wait until she grew up and learned the epic. At the age of twelve she was brought to my house, and from that point I kept us both busy by becoming her teacher. Although her father was also a
bhopa
, she didn’t come with much knowledge of the
phad
from her parents: she had learned only a little from her mother, along with some
bhajans
. So every morning, early on, I would sing to her and she would follow me, repeating the same stanza, just as we do at a performance.
She picked it up very fast, and within three years she was able to sing while I played the
ravanhatta
for her.

‘In our community, we marry young. The choice of a wife is a great gamble, because at nine you can’t really tell whether a woman can sing or not, yet this woman will have to be your professional partner in the reading of the
phad
, as well as your wife. A man cannot recite Pabuji’s epic on his own. He needs his wife to support him, or else people will not enjoy and appreciate the performance, however good he is. My father was very lucky: my mother was a great singer and had a wonderful voice. Few women could sing as high as her, or maintain such a pitch for a long period. I was also very lucky: Batasi also had a very nice voice, though to be honest she is not quite the equal of my mother.

‘As with so much in a man’s life, the choice of a wife is all. Performing together gives a great opportunity for a couple to come together. We actually get into a competition as to who sings better, or picks up the transitions more cleanly. That game goes on all night, and brings love between us.

‘Sadly my eldest son has not been so lucky. He wanted to become a
bhopa
but his wife turned out to be completely tone deaf, so he has had to become a manual labourer: he now works building roads. He only sings occasionally in hotels for a little extra money. There is no question that if his wife could sing, he would now be reading the
phad
, and probably earning better money
.
But there is nothing to be done.

‘By the time I was twenty, my father’s fame was such that it was easy for me to find work. People assumed that I would inherit something of my father’s talents. But there were drawbacks too. When I first began to perform, everyone wanted to hear my father rather than me. Even if he was just listening in the audience, and I was performing with Batasi, still my father would be made to come up and sing a few songs. He had a wonderful voice, and I can’t even begin to equal him; but I do think I have become the better
ravanhatta
player. His had only two tuning pegs and just look at the number of keys on mine!

‘It is very rare that the whole
phad
is sung these days. People want to hear individual episodes, and you can sing them in whatever order you like. But it is good to have continuity in the episodes, and you have to learn to get the timing right: certain episodes should only be sung at certain hours of the night: for example the episode of Pabuji’s marriage should always come at midnight, if at all possible.

‘We Nayaks are from a very low caste. At some point in our history we became nomads, and so fell from the high position we once had: people never trust nomads. Still to this day we cannot eat or drink in the house of many of the people in this village. But when we recite or perform as
bhopas
, this brings us respect.
I may not sit at the same level as the Rajputs or the Brahmins, but they come to see me here, they commission me to read the
phad
for them and they are happy and proud about my success and my fame in the villages nearby. They tell everyone that in Pabusar we have the best and most powerful
bhopa
in all the Shekhawati.

‘Although it is our singing and performance that people talk most about, sometimes I think it is our healing powers that people are most grateful for. My father in particular found that reading the
phad
of Pabuji gave him the gifts of prophecy and healing. There was one case when a boy was bitten by a cobra. My father was fifteen miles from where this took place, but he had an insight that something had happened and he immediately stopped what he was doing, and set out in the midday sun to walk to that village.

‘He passed through two villages on the way and they all called out to him: what brings you here, Girdhariji? He replied, “Someone needs me, otherwise a calamity will happen.” When he arrived at the village in question, he went straight to the headman, saying, “Bring the boy that is ill to me in the shrine of Pabuji immediately.” By this stage the boy was very swollen, but they brought him to my father on a stretcher, weeping and wailing as they were sure he would die. But my father took some bitter leaves from his pouch and fed them to the boy, assuring him and his family that all would be well. By the following morning, the boy was completely cured.

‘There were many stories of this sort about my father. He was a great healer: headache, body ache, stomach ache, indigestion: he could cure any of these with a night reading of the
phad
and a handful of herbs.

‘I am not the healer he was. But people still come to me, especially for curing their animals, and for exorcising djinns. I find this work very easy. I don’t do much with the animals: just open the
phad
, give it some incense, put a
tanti
of Pabu around the neck of the animal and let Pabuji do the rest. It is the same with exorcism: it is not so much me as the
phad
of Pabu that does the work. As soon as I spread open his
phad
,
all the djinns and bad spirits fly away from its power. Some djinns take longer than others, and several times it has taken a full recitation of the epic to take the spirit out of the person; but I have never yet come across any who can resist its power completely. Sooner or later, I will touch the person with the
phad
and the spirit will flee, shouting out, “I am burning! I am burning!”