The Corona Fieldwork
Short Story
Anirudh Deshpande
I
Nine women sat on their haunches singing a bhajan and cooked the sweets in nine cast iron kadhais in a makeshift kitchen near the new temple. Nine selected village lads who had gathered the firewood for the earthen stoves stood in a polite semi circle before the women with folded hands. Dressed in ironed white kurta pyjamas, the sun burnt boys sported red vermillion tilaks on their foreheads. Long saffron bandanas, as symbols of impunity, hung from their necks. Wafer thin boys in crew cuts, faded jeans, T shirts and leatherite sandals recorded the ceremony on cell phones from various angles. In between they cast curious glances at the two visitors from Delhi and their driver. Sanjeev Mishra noticed that some of them wore saffron T shirts and baseball caps inscribed Boycott Chaina which he had seen advertised on social media.
“You bet the stuff is imported from Shanghai by Gujarati traders,” Lalit, who was scared of being identified as a JNU student in public, whispered to Sanjeev who nodded with his eyes fixed on the ceremony which he found fascinating.
After the ritual the unburied ladoos were shared as prasad. Each ladoo was carefully crowned with nine cloves in imitation of the media image of the corona virus. The cows in the vicinity were adorned with red tilaks and haldi by the women and fed first. Later some leftovers were thrown to the greedy dogs.
“Kaun jaat ke ho?” the tough grandmother asked, looking suspiciously at the stocky bearded Lalit Kishore Mandal through thick well worn glasses.
“Pandit hain. Mishra!” Lalit blurted a half-truth deflecting attention to Sanjeev who grinned and nodded a yes silently.
“Angrez laagat hai. Chalo, koi baat nahin, sab log prasad khai leo,” the matriarch placed two ladoos each on their outstretched right palms.
Sanjeev washed down the sticky besan ladoos with some mineral water.
“Super sweet all the time!” he muttered under his breath but nonetheless Lalit heard him.
“A few years in Oxford have made you a full Angrez or what? Have you already forgotten the laung latika at Gopalan’s?” he said teasing his friend.
“Come on, they don’t stick in your mouth like these. You know that very well,” Sanjeev replied remembering the varied moods of JNU with a smile.
The week-long trip to Patna had included clandestine evening drinks, meals and a shared room in the budget Hotel Ajanta Residency. An allowance for the fieldwork had been arranged from the college research funds at Oxford with the help of Sanjeev’s thesis supervisor, a kind hearted Englishman.
“I don’t want the money. You know I have a fellowship” Lalit had protested looking straight into his friend’s expressive eyes.
“It is part of the allowance and won’t hurt anyone” Sanjeev threw an arm around his friend’s shoulders and pressed the Indian equivalent of two hundred British Pounds into his broad rough palms as they drove to the hotel from the airport. In Patna, a taxi was hired with the help of Lalit’s local contacts for day trips to the villages and the young taxi driver and Lalit exchanged memories and notes in Bhojpuri from the moment they sat in it. The resourceful driver procured two bottles of Blenders Pride and took them to the Champaran Ahuna Meat Hotel on Fraser road which became their dinner and gossip centre in the city every evening. Total prohibition in the state had enhanced the joy of drinking quietly in the room before dinner. On a couple of evenings the driver had joined them for a small drink.
“Chatting with the driver is my fieldwork” Lalit had announced after two Patiala pegs one evening. “He speaks in detail of the migrants who returned home in 2020 you saw on TV. His father’s elder brother died of dehydration, dysentery and suffocation in a special train that started from Surat and reached the station near his village after seven days.”
They saw young pilgrims with matkas and plastic bottles of Ganga water walking briskly to the numerous multi-colored Corona Mata temples from the taxi. The driver was often asked to stop the car to make photography easier.
The saffron temples, Sanjeev was informed by the driver, belonged to the upper castes. The white ones were funded by the prosperous cattle keeper Yadavs. The Kurmis had constructed cow dung coated khaki colored temples which spoke of their love for land. The blue ones, often seen situated outside the villages, had been consecrated by the Harijans who could not be left behind the other castes in this act of great national importance.
“You mean Dalits?” Sanjeev indignantly asked Lalit while the driver glanced at him in the rear view mirror.
“In Bihar no one uses that word Sir. Everyone calls us Harijan or Acchoot” the driver added from behind the steering wheel.
“India was ordered not to use that term in 2018 when you were in Oxford. In fact, there is a government notification to the effect” Lalit sneered.
“Fascist bastards” Sanjeev cursed loudly in Hindi and the three laughed.
The Corona Mata temples flaunted the motifs of steel utensils and diyas. On top of each entrance ‘Go Corona Go’ was scrawled in both Roman and Devnagri. Some statues inside the squat structures resembled dainty Chinese women draped in sarees.
On a couple of inner walls they saw crude maps of Ladakh and sketches of bleeding Indian troops.
“This is serious stuff Lalit!” Sanjeev exclaimed, clicking photos.
A WhatsApp forward that two acres for a Corona Mata temple had been bought near the Sitala Mata Mandir in Gurgaon by a rich politician was circulating throughout the country. Enthusiastic TV anchors had identified the spot and masked locals had begun an early morning ritual on it but the Government remained tight lipped.
“It is called Gurugram these days. Once a village, always a village,” Lalit winked.
“I know Gurgaon. I have some drinking partners there,” Sanjeev replied remembering the government approved drinking ‘palaces’ in the new rich town.
In many districts funds had been raised for the Corona Mata temples. Hundreds of unlettered, semiliterate, graduate and post graduate men and women were employed on these new public work sites of globalized India.
“The government has left us with nothing else to do” the sweating men confessed with dirty gamchas tied around their faces in Hindi and Bhojpuri to the visitors. Many posed with shovels in their hands and were eager respondents to their questions. It was evident that the worship, which began during the pandemic, had continued as thanksgiving. While the sobbing, starving, limping and bleeding migrants returned from the dystopian Indian cities to their villages and grubby small towns Corona Mata temples arose on the bleached plains of north India.
The task of burying and cremating the infected human corpses had become practically impossible. The signs of this were strewn across the countryside. The visitors often saw forlorn human cadavers half eaten by animals lying in the shallows next to the roads from the taxi in silence and were forced to cover their noses.
The stench of rotting human and animal cadavers had become unbearable at places.
“I wonder why they do these things. Do they really believe that this new goddess will save them from the illness?” Sanjeev asked Lalit on the last evening in Patna.
Lalit allowed a piece of slow cooked mutton to dissolve in his mouth before looking up at his expectant friend. “It is in their nature not to live without worship and historical experience tells me that when older gods fail new ones are manufactured by humans. Is that not what social anthropology teaches you in the Western Universities?”
“I suppose so” Sanjeev replied, looking at the nocturnal crowd on the road and thinking of Oxford.
II
Sanjeev shut his laptop and fell silent for some seconds before the expectant audience. At the end of the paper his voice faltered and he looked at the chair occupied by the emeritus Professor of Social Anthropology David Parker more than once. After a long pause, he gathered himself and finished the presentation.
“Many thanks for listening to me patiently. I admit that my fieldwork in Bihar for this paper was a humbling experience although I have lived all my life in India. I do admit that living in Delhi sometimes does not prepare you well enough for life in the provinces.”
The two day seminar on Exploring Possibilities in the post Covid-19 Turn in the Social Science, attended by a large number of students and faculty, concluded with The Resurgent Cult of Corona Devi in Bihar: A Subaltern Response to Disease in Post Truth India, 2021. Everyone clapped and waited politely for the Chair’s remarks and permission for questions. Wizened Parker waited for the applause to end. Then he slowly raised a white long eyebrow and peered at Sanjeev from a comfortable high backed chair on the stage. He exchanged a momentary glace with the speaker who was reminded of what his father had said about Parker.
For a moment Sanjeev felt cold and apprehensive.
“Be careful with that old fellow Parker. He is known to be blunt and acidic when it suits him. And don’t forget that he is a seasoned brilliant man brimming with intellectual energy and wit even at this age,” the recently retired Sociology Professor had warned his son on the messenger the previous evening. Parker usually chaired papers with a benedictory smile fixed on his face which confused those who were new to him but senior faculty, who knew him well, wore poker faces in his presence during such events.
A smile appeared on Parker’s dark brown lips encased in a thick white beard which partially covered his long thin face. The patron-saint of Oxford Social Anthropology twisted his arthritic back and stared at the screen impassively. For a fleeting moment the smile on his face was replaced by a grimace which a stranger to his character might have ascribed to a painful arthritis condition he suffered.
The expression reminded Sanjeev of the Parker anecdotes his father was fond of narrating.
Manohar Mishra had been tutored as a Rhodes Scholar by Parker’s colleague at the Balliol College in Oxford. Later, armed with a Ph.D. on the oral traditions of a tribe of the Western Ghats in India, reportedly patterned on the work of a famous Belgian social anthropologist, he taught South Asian Social Anthropology at Yale and Princeton where he married an American girl after a long romantic relationship. When several attempts at securing tenure failed he returned to India as a Professor at the IIT Delhi with Sarah Wilcox-Mishra a Feminist sociologist and a nine year old thoughtful son fond of reading and talking to everyone in IIT including the stray dogs.
Behind Sanjeev a white screen displayed a PPT slide divided into two frames. The title of the slide announced: Corona Goddess Pooja In Progress. On display were sari clad Indian women squatting behind neat rows of round sweetmeats kept next to small holes dug in the ground. Their heads were covered by the saree pallus. A broad shouldered bearded youth of medium height in jeans stood behind them. In the background were salivating stray brown mongrels with tongues hanging from their half open mouths. At some distance half a dozen emaciated cows with shrunken udders and protruding hip bones were visible. One frame was occupied by a temple which had un-plastered brick walls. Sharper photos of the various caste-specific Corona Temples had been shown during the paper earlier.
“Splendid! I dare say, a sensitive and informative paper indeed. Sanjeev deserves a big hand for this,” Parker drawled and paused before adding softly “and his exemplary courage”.
“I hear Covid is still rampant in parts of India?” the well informed don fixed an inquisitive gaze on Sanjeev.
Sanjeev nodded, “Yes Professor Parker, though the pandemic is officially over cases keep pouring in at several places and the number of those dying from infection is quite high. In states like Bihar the situation is rather grim as my slides pointed out. In several states correct mortality figures are unknown”
The audience had been shocked into silence by the sights of the half eaten corpses.
His parents had advised him not to go to Bihar. “Your immunity is low because you spent our lockdown in relatively safer Oxford,” his father had said, while his mother looked worried. Finally they relented and he went ahead with the fieldwork in the company of Lalit who was treated as family by his parents.
In twenty minutes the post seminar interaction ended and everyone clapped again. People murmured and rose from the ergonomically designed chairs. Some appeared serious and others smiled a little nervously. Many were happy that Oxford had held an offline innovative seminar on Covid-19 so soon after the end of the pandemic. The two day seminar had come as a breath of fresh air after a dreary season of lock downs and long webinars and the audience was in the mood to celebrate.
“Everyone is invited to some refreshments in the garden,” Jignesh Patel, Secretary Seminar Committee announced in clipped academic English. His business family had sent him to a fancy private school with a political ambition in mind but he had drifted into the Department of Asian and African Social Anthropology in the College. He got along famously with Sanjeev and both spent numerous evenings driving around the countryside in his sports car discovering new pubs and 19th century farm houses.
Student volunteers had placed an assortment of wines, beers, ales and platters of tuna, ham and cucumber sandwiches on two long wooden log tables under the gentle English sun in the garden. Cheese cubes, slices and shreds and Sainsbury crackers were placed in large shallow white bowls.
Garden chairs and tables had been arranged at a distance from the tables for everyone to enjoy a long pleasant evening.
“It is a great idea Sanjeev. I hope to see this develop into a rigorous argument about contemporary and innovative popular religious practices in south Asia” the bearded Parker said, a glass of Chablis in his mildly shaking hand.
His work on the comparative cultures of the forest tribes in Central Africa and India was internationally known and, as a young wiry man fond of cross country hiking and tropical forests, he had spent years among the Gonds of central India. He had heard their stories, gone hunting with them and eaten fresh game cooked in earthen pots with tangy ant chutney. He understood them better than most Indian tribal experts and the Gonds considered him their prodigal son.
“I feel this paper has great potential and Sanjeev has the language advantage, David,” curly haired Salma Malik informally joined the conversation. Patel, in a light grey designer suit, concurred.
“What language do they speak?” freckle faced Richard Goodwin queried. Sanjeev’s paper had given this research student some ideas. He had recently written a chapter on Ethnic Islam and Boko Haram as part of his thesis but knew no language other than English. Everyone knew he was eyeing a research position at the Institute of Atlantic Peace and Conflict Resolution situated on three floors in a grey lugubrious building near the British Library in London.
His uncle, rather fond of the nephew, was a Professor of International Studies at a private university in Sussex.
“Bhojpuri,” Sanjeev addressed Richard after a long swig of Foxtrot Lager.
“How do you do it in India? Never been there myself,” Richard wanted to know more. His own fieldwork in Nigeria had begun and ended with some interviews conducted in English in humid intimidating Lagos.
“What do you mean by done in India Richard?” retorted Salma whose ambition was to serve the third world as a United Nations functionary. She found herself romantically drawn to Baluchistan from where her Leftist grandparents had fled first to Turkey and then Britain in the 1960s.
“I know what he means. You get a visa, medical clearance and visit the field with an Indian friend. For me matters were easier because of my Indian passport and familiarity with Bhojpuri,” Sanjeev responded to Richard without much enthusiasm.
“I would like to read your questions because they might help me re-interrogate Christian and Islamic practices in Nigeria. But I have one question,” Richard said to Sanjeev.
The small group of students around Sanjeev stared at the future media expert on West African politics. Salma, who was extremely protective of south Asian subjects, scowled at the interloper from Africa.
“Go on. Search me,” said Sanjeev finishing the beer and wiping his frothy lips with a napkin.
A Bangladeshi friend Anwar Mushtaq returned from the tables and handed him another Foxtrot. Sanjeev raised him a toast and the others joined him.
“Your paper reminded me of the Warlis,” Parker had returned from the table with a refill and two cheese cubes skewered on a toothpick.
“There are Musahars in Bihar, not Warlis,” Sanjeev responded to the comment politely.
“Who are these Musahars?” Richard asked, mispronouncing the word he heard for the first time in his life.
“They are an innovative tribe of rat hunters and eaters. Settled peasants use their skills against the pests. I knew them well, my dear Richard. I suggest you try a grilled bandicoot sometime. Quite agreeable, I must say,” Parker looked at the startled Englishman with unconcealed condescension.
Salma looked astonished and Anwar nodded in agreement. He knew that certain tribes in the Bangladesh hill tracts ate a variety of animals including large rodents.
“But I was referring to something else Sanjeev. Never mind,” the octogenarian was obviously relishing a memory with the cheese.
“By the way, what are your plans after the PhD?” Parker peered at Sanjeev from behind a pair of round spectacles.
“I don’t know,” Sanjeev replied.
“What did those devotees of this new goddess ask you?” Salma broke into the exchange.
“They asked me why I wanted to know what they were doing. Toh ke kaahe jaane baa i kul? Tu kaa karbaa i sab gyaan le ke? The women asked me,” Sanjeev replied in a serious tone impressing everyone with this Bhojpuri declamation.
“And, may we know by what stratagem did you satisfy their natural, or may I say political, inquisitiveness?” Parker asked and his eyebrows rose in anticipation.
“They were told I would publicize the worship and the suffering of Bihar and that is what I have done,” Sanjeev sounded confident with two beers in his stomach.
“You could have told them your slides would help you obtain a position somewhere in America or England,” Parker cracked a joke and everyone, including Sanjeev, laughed.
“What’s with that talk of getting a position in America?” Salma asked Parker turning her head towards the building they had left a few minutes ago. She often walked the old man home and had tea with him before returning to her room in a college staircase.
“I remembered an Indian who finished a Ph.D. under the late Patrick Rover, my former colleague. His students made good use of his influence in the United States,”
The old man looked up at the Chestnut leaves rustling in the gentle breeze and remembered the tall sal trees of the central Indian forests singing in the monsoon breeze. He almost heard the animals welcoming the rains.
Thick grey clouds had gathered in a corner of the fickle English sky.
The old man took a deep breath. “It might rain, let us hurry,” he said to Salma.
“The unshaven young Castro look alike drank rum and smoked bidis before becoming a follower of Gandhi. He plied the Warlis with rum and cigarettes to elicit their testimonies and they spoke with loosened tongues to his tape recorder but after some days a sober young man asked him the reason for his field work. Everyone, including Castro, burst out laughing when Rover said he should have told them that their story would help him get a job in the States at a department seminar later” Parker finished the story.
“Did he?” Salma was curious.
“What do you think?” Parker retorted with an enigmatic smile.
III
The 2021 summer arrived after a bitter winter. People thronged the streets and parks. They shook hands, exchanged cheek kisses and thanked their stars only as survivors of a pandemic do. The government had proclaimed herd immunity and UK citizens were planning vacations after an unreal time. Young boys and girls played football and cricket on lush green fields. The flowerbeds spoke of gardeners back at work. Dogs frolicked in open spaces. The elderly and homeless saw the world go by from street side benches. The first few brave tourists from Europe were checking out the shops.
Sanjeev remembered the day he had arrived in Oxford enjoying these sights before the pandemic changed everything. He observed these scenes again and his solitude increased.
He sat on a bench, lit a cigarette and called Lalit on WhatsApp, switching on the video.
“What’s up my Angrez friend? How did the paper go?” Lalit beamed in Hindi from the Ganga Dhaba, a white LED light shining on his face.
Sanjeev heard and faintly saw some students conversing in the background. A joke was shared and someone laughed loudly.
“Just felt like being in India and speaking with you. Papa advised me to finish the Ph.D. and apply for something either here or in the US a few days ago.”
“And you?” Lalit spoke over the background noise.
“I am not too keen. Maybe I am not cut out for academics. In any case I never had anything worked out in my mind,” Sanjeev spoke from his heart.
“And what is Aunty’s opinion?” Lalit inquired.
“She is okay with whatever I do. After all, she settled in India with Papa against her parents’ reservations. She never regrets it,” Sanjeev answered thinking of his mother’s contented face and his grandparents who nonetheless came to India every Christmas to enjoy the sunshine, food and the exchange rate.
“Finish your thesis and then decide. No point in getting distracted at this stage. There is still time,” Lalit spoke reassuringly.
“I guess you are right Lalit. Thanks for being there for me all the time. Now enjoy your company. Will catch you later,” Sanjeev said disconnecting the call because a few drops of rain fell on him. He threw the cold cigarette stub in a trash can and walked to his room with the new goddess, her worshippers and the stinking cadavers crowding his mind.
The End
