Flooded
Warm and fuzzy childhood memories, mixed feelings about the joys and trials of filial duty as well as solitude, colour, silk, food and laughter, and annoyance at cooky relatives and the shit that goes on in the name of tradition. That’s what the last few days were awash with, when I travelled down south in Karnataka to my ancestral town Bagalkot for a cousin’s engagement ceremony.
One of the fringe benefits of a year-long sabbatical - you get to attend ceremonies that are not held keeping the US academic holiday schedule in mind! I saw people I haven’t seen in ages - some mercifully the same as they were a decade ago; others depressingly unchanged, still others quite unrecognizable. This was, of course, a mere appetizer; the wedding with the full extended family in attendance will surely magnify all these feelings ten-fold. Here are some snapshots - and there’s more where these came from.
No doubt, all family reunions are inundated with such mixed feelings. But this time I also encountered a literal flood. Since my last visit over a decade ago, much of Bagalkot has been submerged under the backwaters of the Almatti Dam over the mighty Krishna river (which, incidentally, takes its birth in the town where I grew up, several hundred kilometres to the north!). Hundreds of thousands of people were resettled 10 km away - at Navanagar, lit. newtown, designed by fancypants architect Charles Correa. There have been concerns over the quality of resettlement, and there continue to be severe conflicts between different states over the fate of the dam’s catchment areas during periods of low and excessive rain. But the dam did not witness the kinds of protests and politicization that have marked big dam projects in India; folks I encountered seemed excited about the prospects of a newer town in exchange for their crumbling buildings. I wonder how many voices of protest also got submerged along with old houses.
Old Bagalkot, for its part, was not a shining example of semi-urban bliss, and those parts that have remained, stubbornly maintain this feature.
Navanagar, despite being all about right angles and wide roads and long-term planning, is a tangle of electric poles and an overall feeling of malevolent dust that my camera resolutely refused to capture. Sort of like the utter hideousness that is Gurgaon, but for poorer people, with all the flat ugliness and none of the skyscrapers or crass malls. The electric poles were like so many hopeless fishing boats afloat in a dead sea of dry brush. The folks who live there are upbeat about all the possibilities for the town, which is fast growing into a major centre for educational and administrative institutions in Karnataka. Meanwhile, this is what remains of the road leading to our old house:
And this is where the house used to be.
I am not a nostalgia hound, and rose-tinted, sepia-tinted memories of joint family tradition bore me. Set-piece family photos and stories about large meals and festival gatherings always make me wonder cynically about how many women toiled to make endless cups of tea to keep the conversation oiled. But it was still shocking to actually see all the changes, and the old bungalow and neighbourhood, with all its pigs and dust, just gone.
Some classic features of old Bagalkot, however, happily remain - the photos (more here) below are for my dear friend Sepoy. He will be annoyed at the lack of food pictures, but I think these will do nicely in their place:
i can’t tell you how much i am enjoying reading your blog these past weeks.
as a child, (in 1960) i went to ireland.
the good news about ireland was it wasn’t involved in WWII and had no damage.
the bad new was–no damage meant nothing was rebuilt, and the city had a victorian air..(and was still a small city)
at the edge of the city was not suburbs, but farms, (and for my grandparents, there was garbage and waste (food waste that was separate, and collected by the pig farmer, and recycled into pig food.
there were still horse, (and carts) and too much water (and too little).
India is nothing like Ireland–and Oh so much the same as my memories–and central to it all, Family.
I love the precisely laid out green leaves–that’s the sort of scene that you sort of wish you could hang out up in the ceiling in order to get a geometric picture of it all.
And I very much hope that that black cow gives birth soon, because she looks uncomfortably full! (Assuming, of course, that I can diagnose cow pregnancy from a picture, which is deeply uncertain.)
Awesome, great, post. I will just geek out on the fotos in flickr.
How very wonderful. You have some of the best pictures!
Reading your blog today reminded me of my TISS years. My first year practicum work was with the tribal settlements around the Bombay-Pune expressway. Every Monday and Tuesday was in the eye of the storm - the protests, voices…and in sometimes, the death of those voices.
Great post. I never lived in a small town in India but visited several, and your photos capture the feel perfectly. Again, jealous that you get to spend so much time there.
I have to say that seeing the photo of the priest gave me a start. I have this strange concept in my head now that everyone in India is thin (maybe because I’ve gained weight since moving to the US). A pic like this reminds me that plus size (and partially clothed) does exist there too!
Hear, hear about all the hungama surrounding Indian weddings (well, every traditional ceremony and we Indians have a ton of those!!) The din of the banging drums and trumpets (or wind instruments of various shapes) somehow always seems to remain in the air even after the last dried petal has been swept up!!! Brighter, noisier, louder, that’s what these festivities are, but always loads of fun, especially all the sweets!!!
The picture of the Sumopriest - priceless!!!
Love, without context: night shot of the tanga. With context: the last-minute check of the eating preps. And Almatty dam was where I spent a night in a stationary truck: bruising country.
It’s great to get such different responses from folks - to see what thoughts the different photos set off.
Ami: context-ta ki? I once rode in a small, open truck for about three hours from Huttgi station to Miraj, when the Ghataprabha was flowing over the bridge and the road was closed in the monsoon. It was indeed bruising country!
Helen: (I remember you from Knittersreview - so great to see you here!)
Spud: That cow does look really full, no? No wonder she was totally immovable there. Those banana leaves are like the calm before the storm. You should have seen the chaos there approximately ten minutes later!
Rima: what was strange was really not finding very much at all about any protests - although it is likely that it was covered a lot more in the local Kannada newspapers than anywhere else.
Deepa and Preeti: isn’t that Sumopriest incredible? I couldn’t stop taking pictures of him, he was so jolly and moved remarkably fast for his size.
Sepoy: am glad you liked the tanga pics
Happy Divali Desiknitter ji!!!!
I had a dream the other night that I was flying above India and could see Pune from the air. The land was like a political map superimposed on a geographical map, and I remember thinking to myself in the dream, oh look, there is all the flood water and the rivers. This certainly wouldn’t have happened without your lovely photos.
hi,
loved to read your post. I was in Belgaum in md 90s ( i was there for 4 1/2 years for my medical college) and the sign post brought meomeries back, of Kolhapur and Pune as we used to go to these places …. overnight journey.
south is beautiful and i love the greenery we have there, its not so green in Delhi.
keep posting