It is said that until the third epoch of human consciousness, people identified themselves collectively as a group and it was only during the fourth epoch that individualism surfaced. What does it mean to live and identify as a collective in modern times?
Landscapes of Wilderness is a discourse on land and the people deeply entwined with it. This is a chronicle of the author, Narendra’s three-decade experience of living in Abujhmad, a village in the Bastar region in Chattisgarh. In the thirty-nine short chapters that are in part an ethnographer’s note and part journal, Narendra (as mentioned in the author’s note) explores the wordless landscapes, intrinsic silences and their people.
How does one articulate the stillness of the landscape and the perpetual silence of the land? In the wilds of Abujhmad, inhabited by a small group of people, a certain stillness overshadows the villages. Life is simple; days are spent in the open, twice a week people go on food gatherings and the nights are spent in bamboo huts without doors. With limited vocabulary and not being able to count beyond five, rearing livestock that are not used for milk, Abujhamadians’ lives are blessed with an abundance- of time, solitude, restfulness and harmony. Living in the periphery, the author compares his time there with his village in Ghaziabad in the late 50s and 60s where he grew up.
Through the shades of Abujhmad, the author portrays the coexistence and animistic beliefs of societies living on the edges of wilderness, a life devoid of religion, its ideologies and dogma. For those people, their worlds were only as big as their house or village. Living here needed neither instruction nor learning, neither body nor soul to be known. National news, current events, political sentiments, democracy or sociology had no space here. There was no thirst to seek or to know of the world beyond the boundaries. This is how human societies have lived in the past. More often than not the reader is left to ponder about the onslaught of destruction enforced on fragile landscapes and people in the name of development.
With the objects, vegetation and people as his tools, the author paints an intensely profound picture of Abujhmad. The writer’s hut, the veeran, the graveyard, a tree, the blacksmith, Chandan Bhai, the self-proclaimed singer of repute, Sarup the person who runs errands and all their stories aid the writer in telling the story of this place. The people, their lives and the place are deeply interconnected. Like Sarup whom the author refers to as Neanderthal ( I wish this term was replaced) people are one with the stillness of the place and share the same drag and timeless weariness with the world. The landscape lends its svabhav (temperament) and people wear it graciously like a cloak. This intimacy is inherited and mutual coexistence is destined and the cloak is passed on to the next generation. The author narrates that this kind of wisdom which emanates from interconnectedness with the land as one that comes straight from the soil and the heart. The soil and the minds of people are one and inseparable.
Under such circumstances, the rights and wrongs are not defined or penalised. The social conflicts become irrelevant. The author has not encountered offences or punishments during his years spent in the village. Men and women undertake the same tasks, gender prejudices are unheard of and women have complete autonomy over their bodies. As utopic as this social organisation sounds, when seen through an urban lens, the wild has its fair share of challenges but as the author mentions wild obscures everything and living on the edge is not an abnegation of realism but the very substance of it.
Silence and stillness are the undercurrents connecting the chapters in this book. Apart from his time at Abujhmad, the author also narrates his journeys to Tamil Nadu, Puducherry, the ashrams he stayed in, the people he met, their warmth, and the lessons he learnt along the way. The writer also nudges us to think about the perils of modern-day identity, the importance accorded to rituals, scriptures and religions whereas a few decades ago, cultural identity was common and one didn’t know much of their faith beyond local deities.
The deeply meditative and lyrical prose forces the reader to pause, reflect and savour the taste before moving on. Much like the winds and veeran of Abujhmad that have no boundary, the narrative moves fluidly, unhinged by structure and loaded with metaphors. It could have been shorter as it lags in certain chapters.
The book takes a reader on a pensive journey and draws attention to the impact of land on societies and the effect of our collective choices on the land and prods us to ask the questions we often stay away from.
Monisha Raman is a freelance writer and editor.
