“Then it’s a good job Rani will be retiring before too long,” I said.
“That is what she told you?”
“She said she would get some land and some buffaloes and try to make a living from that.”
“Rani Bai?”
“Yes.”
“I shouldn’t really be telling you this,” she said. “But Rani is infected—she’s been HIV-positive for eighteen months now. I’ve seen the tests.”
“Does she know this?”
“Of course,” she said. “It’s not full-blown AIDS, at least not yet. The medicines can delay the onset of the worst symptoms. But they can’t cure her.”
She shrugged her shoulders. “Either way, it’s highly unlikely she’ll ever retire to that farm,” she said. “It’s the same as her daughters. It’s too late to save her.”
The Singer of Epics
The landscape, as we neared Pabusar, was a white, sun-leached expanse of dry desert plains, spiky acacia bushes and wind-blown camel thorn. The emptiness was broken only by the odd cowherd in a yellow turban, patiently leading his beasts through the dust, and by a long, slow convoy of nomads in camel carts, pursued by a rearguard of barking dogs.
Once, as we turned off the main Jaipur–Bikaner highway, we passed a group of Rabari women, in saris of bright primary colours, resting in the narrow shade of a single, gnarled desert tree; abandoned road-building equipment lay scattered all around them. A little later, we saw a group of three Jain nuns in white robes, with masks over their faces, pushing a fourth in a white wheelchair through the open desert as the heatwaves shimmered and slurred around them. Though it was winter, it was still very hot, and a hot, dry wind blew in from the scrub and through the open car window, furring our mouths and setting our teeth on edge, and gritting the seats of the car.
With me as we drove through this bleak land was my friend Mohan Bhopa, and his wife, Batasi (which means “Sugar Ball”). Mohan Bhopa was a tall, wiry, dark-skinned man of about sixty, with a bristling grey handlebar moustache and a mischievous, skulllike grin. He wore a long red robe and a tightly tied red turban. Batasi was somewhat younger than he, a silent, rugged desert woman of fifty who had lived all her life in the wilderness. As we drove, she kept almost all her face shrouded in a high-peaked red veil.
Mohan was a bard and a village shaman; but rarer and more intriguing still, he and Batasi, though both completely illiterate, were two of the last hereditary singers of a great Rajasthani medieval poem, The Epic of Pabuji. This 600-year-old poem is a fabulous tale of heroism and honour, struggle and loss, and finally, martyrdom and vengeance. Over time, it seems to have grown from a local saga about the heroic doings of a reiver-chieftain protecting his cattle to the epic story of a semi-divine warrior and incarnate god, Pabu, who died protecting a goddess’s magnificent herds against demonic rustlers. The cow kidnappers are led by the wicked Jindrav Khinchi, whom Pabuji defeats and kills. Pabuji also protects the honour of his women from another villain, a barbaric, cow-murdering Muslim plunderer named Mirza Khan Patan, and wins a great victory over Ravana, the ten-headed Demon King of Lanka, from whom he steals a herd of camels as a wedding gift for his favourite niece.
When this 4,000-line courtly poem is recited from beginning to end—which rarely happens these days—it takes a full five nights of eight-hour, dusk-till-dawn performances to unfold. Depending on the number of chai breaks, bhajans (devotional hymns), Hindi film songs and other diversions added into the programme, it can on occasion take much longer. But the performance is not looked upon as just a form of entertainment. It is also a religious ritual invoking Pabuji as a living deity and asking for his protection against ill-fortune.
The epic is always performed in front of a phad, a long narrative painting made on a strip of cloth, which serves as both an illustration of the highlights of the story and a portable temple of Pabuji the god. India has many other traditions of legends, stories and epics being told by wandering picture-showmen; but in none of the other traditions have the pictures been elevated to the status of an incarnate murti, equivalent in holiness to an image in a temple. The audience is primarily made up of the traditionally nomadic and camel-herding Rabari caste, for whom Pabuji is the principal deity; but other castes also attend the performances, especially the Rajputs of Pabu’s own warrior caste.
As we drove through the seemingly empty desert landscape, Mohan pointed out features invisible to the untutored eye of an outsider: here, he said, on this side, where now there were just a few stumps, stood until recently an ancient oran, or sacred grove. It was holy to Pabu’s ally and friend, the Rajasthani snake deity Gogaji, who also has an oral poem and a living cult in his memory. For centuries no one had dared to touch the oran, said Mohan, believing that anyone who stole the wood would be struck down by the snakes guarding it. But three or four years ago, loggers had come, chopped down all the trees and carted away the wood to Jaipur: “If people are no longer bothered by the threats of Goga’s snake bites,” he said, “how will they fear the anger of Pabu?”