May 4, 2007

Jagannath Odissi's land of dancing prayers

I drafted this as part of my feedback to the one-laptop-per-child OLPC team. I include it here, as first drafted, with pictures.

During a drought in Bihar state, a religious relief organization thought it'd go in and dig wells. It wanted the locals to discard their doles-dependency habit. It asked they do some token manual work at the well-sites. The locals said, "You've come to do good. Then do good. Don't tell us what we have to do."

There are many more examples but I shall pass them to tell you how I encountered and - countered - this mindset in a village. The villagers said, "Look the government has done nothing here in all these years." I said, "You're stupid if you're waiting for the government. You should consider yourselves lucky that you've been left alone, untouched by this corrupt and corrupting machenry that you call the government.

They - "How can we do anything. We don't know anything. We are ignorant. We have no learning."

I - "F**k the learning" (That's the translation of what went across not the exact words) "Let me look at your heads and behinds. I want to see your horns and tails."

They - "But we don't have horns and tails. We are not hoofed animals. We're human beings."

I - "That's it! Didn't you know that our religion says you belong to the one and only known "Doing Category"? All the other forms of life are in the "suffering catogries" (Karma Yoni - Bhog Yoni). So now, you start the doing and the learning will happen. I am simply here to jump-start you guys. I am not going to do any other thing here except drink lots of tea, talk and play with your children. Settled?"

They said, "If you say so.!"...

By the end of it all several months later, during which I visited them infrequently, what followed was nothing sort of a 'world-first' kind of miracle of precasting and assembly....

The villagers even borrowed a camera from the neighboring village to take pictures of what they were doing because I told them I wasn't there to take pictures. If they wanted to keep a record of what they were doing for posterity that was their funeral not mine ...

On assembly day, they wanted me to be there for them; said my presence would be a great help. I agreed with feigned reluctance and on the condition that I'll sit there with my back to their site, playing with their kids and drink. No one was to approach me to ask a question or seek help....

They asked me to 'break the cocount' (meaning I should propitiate the gods and things will go auspiciously). I said, if you guys want to listen to me, nix on my breaking the coconut. Let the guy who worked the hardest do it...

After it was all over, this is how they complimented me: "You're smart. You made us do everything. You know, had you been supervising, we'd've been tense and would've made a few more mistakes than we did. I said: No, no, I didn't make you do anything. You all did it on your own. Get this into your heads. All I did was drink tea and play with your kids.."



No comments: