Being a Delhiite, born in West Bengal, who lived in Uttar Pradesh and whose family is from Bihar, I have always had a sense of the rich diversity of India – how the clothes and the food flavors change every few hundred miles. But since I’ve spent most of my life in Delhi, especially the years when I was old enough to understand cultures and their intricacies, I’ve only microscopically experienced them, and this one week in a small town in Maharashtra has been a learning experience, as fresh as the cold morning breeze that flows here.
Jodi McKay, National Chair of Australia India Business Council, during an interview with IndusLens, reiterated her well-known love for sarees to me. Her collection of over 150 sarees, bought from different regions across India, attests to the fact. But I remember feeling a sharp ache when she confessed her disappointment at not seeing many Indian women in cities embracing their traditional clothing for daily wear. In hindsight, the ache was a product of nostalgia for seeing my mother, neighbors, and female teachers wear sarees daily years ago, my love for India’s culture and dresses, and my fear of sarees becoming a heritage preserved in museums and books in the near future. During the conversation, Ms. Jodi said that initially, women from the Indian community in Australia helped her drape a saree, but now, she has not only learned to drape it herself but has also become an expert at managing it comfortably throughout the day. It became a reminder for a 25-year-old Indian girl to learn to drape the saree that she loves seeing on others.
However, a city in the 21st century has a place for heritage clothing only at special events or on Instagram stories. So, when I went to Pandharpur and saw 95% of the women wearing sarees and almost 60% of the men wearing dhotis, I felt like I had traveled back in time. And, oh, how comfortably they carry these clothes. Don’t get me wrong! It is not so bad that urban people embrace traditional dresses during festivities and celebrations; it is also an important way of preserving and continuing the culture – but I fear that turning sarees and dhotis into exotic dressing might make it disappear altogether in a few decades, just like it happened with dhotis.
But clothing is one of the many ways in which the town of Pandharpur has preserved India’s fading culture. People in the village always enter barefoot into their kitchens, to cook and eat. Because the food’s first portion is offered to God as prasad, they consider cooking a form of worship; hence, no slippers are allowed near the kitchen area, even if you’re entering to eat in an adjacent space.
Even the owners of general shops, like those selling kitchen utensils or medicines, enter the shop without slippers. It reminded me of how sportspersons and artists pay respect to the playground or stage before entering to do their work, their duty. I even saw doctors, nurses, and patients entering OPD wards after removing their slippers at the door. There’s no exception. Although that one might have a hygienic reason behind it, it was beautiful nonetheless to watch people forego slippers like they were just tools and not a necessity in the 21st century.
As a person passionate about sustainability, I’m delighted to note here that I am yet to see a single plastic spoon here. After a week of hopping between restaurants and eateries across the town, aluminum spoons are ever so prevalent and rarely used. People love looking at their delicious meals and enjoying them with their hands, licking the last traces of the scrumptious and spicy curries off their fingers and delightfully smiling, fulfilled. Moreover, every eatery, even the small ones, has handwash available for the people dining.
Cleanliness is, of course, a big part of the homes, but so is adoration and remembering their God in everything that they do. Walls on either side of the entry gates of the homes here usually have a drawing of ‘Dwarpals’ (gatekeepers) – a feature popular in ancient temples built in India – to draw dwarpals on the entryway is to symbolize that the home is under the protection of those gatekeepers. They are not as professionally drawn as you would expect in a painting hung on the wall in a city, but they are beautifully drawn nonetheless and successfully capture the loving and culturally rich hearts of the homeowners and the artist. Moreover, every morning, after cleaning the house, people here draw a small rangoli. My landowner here said that the rangoli’s purpose is to adorn the house that they love so much because, just like how we like to wear good clothes and jewellery after a bath, they arrange and adorn the house after cleaning every morning. In modern terms, it is similar to how you take special care in arranging and presenting your Instagram accounts today. The difference is, in addition to doing it for possible guests who may arrive at your door, the people here do it for their God, to extend an invitation to Him daily, instead of just during Diwali. It’s interesting to note here that even further down south in India, people continue another ancient tradition of drawing rangolis on the entry gate with rice powder as an offering to insects.
As I list these points, I realize that there’s no possible end to the list of things that I loved in Pandharpur. The more I live here, the more I learn the wonders that India holds. Beyond the city hustle, the richness of village life has the warmth to keep one happy and content – we just need good enough work to help us survive. When locked in a 400-square-foot room or a 50-square-foot cabin in a metro city, we believe that we are THE MAIN CHARACTER on this earth. While travelling to and from work, earphones inserted, heads stooped low, and eyes glued to our phones or closed from the tired day, we continue to live like lifeless machines, only with much ego. Even when we travel to temples, parks, mountains, and beaches, it becomes all about dressing up, the perfect lighting, the perfect angle, and the perfect photos.
Consumed in the glory of our efforts that we went somewhere, popular or different, we rarely stop to see other lives unfolding before our eyes. A father teaching his daughter about the different Tulsi plants in a park, a cab driver who starts work at 5 and sleeps in his car to save rent, a son who visits his mother every weekend to buy the best fruits and essentials while keeping his job in the city, a woman who finds time to sew and paint after household chores, or the hospital guard who prepares for SSB while doing two jobs.
I believe that I was caught in a similar circle – a circle of giving myself too much importance, or as my previous employer used to say, “becoming a horse for the long run.” As much as the 21st century would like me to believe that it’s a race, small-town life has broken that mirage for good, or at least has helped me take off my blinders. There’s more to life, I have come to believe – perhaps, things like community, trust, innocent traditions, breathable air, raw vegetables with unique taste, clear skies where you can see the colors that sunset paints, and softness in Hari’s name.
