Nine Lives(40)

Mohan smiled, and twirled the ends of his moustache. “The phad is his temple,” he said. “The deity resides there, asleep until I wake him with the dance. Sometimes, when we recite the epic, towards dawn the lamp glows white. It happens when we reach the crux of the story—when Pabuji gives water to the stolen cattle that he has saved. At that point we know that Pabuji is pleased, that things are starting to happen, and I am empowered. It’s usually around 4 a.m. Then I can glimpse the future … But it’s very rare, and happens only when we do a complete performance. When this happens, and I complete the phad, there is a wonderful sense of well-being, and complete peace.”

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 midmorning 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.