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A Tale Of A Few Photos

About halfway to the hamlet I am heading for this morning, the path through the fields skirts a sugarcane crusher and joins a wider dirt road. From here, I can see the road as it winds through the village, some distance ahead. The hamlet -- just a few huts, really -- lies some more distance still beyond the village. It is early, and the crusher is silent, still. I stop for a moment to breathe in the fresh morning air, to soak up some of the silence that lies lightly all around.

Just as I stop, I hear a soft call: "Ohe!" A young voice. I turn to my left. Standing on a path through the fields on that side, two little boys in school uniforms are waving at me, broad smiles on their faces. I recognise both from my previous visit, though I remember the name of only one: Sarang Yatinga Shinde. As soon as they catch my eye, both hold their hands up to their faces, unmistakably miming taking a photograph. Have you brought any photographs, they ask. No, I call back. Shall we come with you now? they ask. No, I say again. You go on to school. I'll be back in the evening anyway.

I walk on. Just past the village, a teenager comes around the bend on a cycle too big for him. He is also in a school uniform, a Gandhi cap on his head. Seeing me, he brakes and dismounts with some difficulty, nearly falling down and nearly running me over in one enormous clumsy motion. This is Ughadya Izranya Bhosle, another fellow I had met on my last visit. How are you, he asks, have any photos? I shake my head, mildly puzzled. Should I follow you then? he asks. After all, I will only spend an hour in school today. No, I say. You go to school. I'll see you again when I return this evening.

I walk on again. What is it with these inquiries about photographs?

A few months earlier, I had visited these Pardhis in their clutch of huts that lie outside the village of Rajale. It was a bright morning and I had my camera with me. So in between chatting with them and writing notes in my diary, I took a number of photographs of them. Posing in front of their huts, stiff at first but more boisterous as I went on clicking, they made some delightful shots that day.

Returning to Rajale a month later, I had brought those photographs with me. I walked over to the Pardhi hamlet with them one evening. They proved a big hit. The women pored over them excitedly, pointing themselves out to each other, laughing at one or another image. The pictures, and my bringing them here, turned out to be something of an icebreaker. A little wary of me before this, just slightly reluctant to talk freely -- who was this stranger, after all? -- the group suddenly warmed to me, chatted with a new familiarity.

That same evening, Mithun Gongajya Shinde, a serious young man in his twenties, looked through the photographs and then came over and sat next to me. Tell me, Dilip-saheb, he began, have you published these pictures in every newspaper in Maharashtra? Tell me, he said, his voice gaining volume and urgency, have you shown these pictures on every television channel in the state? Have you shown them to all the ministers in Bombay? No, I answered, and I had not even thought of it. Why do you ask?

Because, said Mithun, everybody in Maharashtra must come to know the condition of Pardhis, the way we live, our poverty, the way we are harrassed. Now please, when you go back to Bombay, please take these pictures to the ministers. Hold a morcha if necessary. Make them understand our plight.

Three months later, I am on my third visit to the Rajale Pardhis. Clearly it was those photographs on the minds of Ughadya and Sarang when they ran into me this morning. Today, as I walk on after making sure that Ughadya remounted his bike and pedalled off shakily towards his school, I remember my previous visits, the excitement that both posing for my camera and poring over the results had brought. Obviously, the three boys I had already met remembered that too. Clearly they associate me with photographs. To that extent, it is not surprising that they asked me if I had brought any more.

Still, there was something just slightly puzzling about their questions, their behaviour. Oh well, I will find out soon enough -- I am nearing the huts and I can see some of the Pardhis emerging, looking at me walking up the path.

Biscuit Giranwalla Bhosle, a 35 year old I have chatted with a few times, is the first to hail me as I get close. Come, kaka, come! Come and sit here. Biscuit has quickly swept clean a space in front of his hut. Now he lays out a neatly folded blanket and motions to me. Sit down, kaka! Two or three other men, the women and a host of gap-toothed kids gather around, waiting for me to take off my shoes and settle onto the blanket. Through those few seconds, I am conscious of an excited murmuring, a kind of breathless, pregnant tinge to the air.

I sit.

Comes the flood. They all begin talking at once, gesticulating and waving their arms about in indignation. It takes me a minute or two to follow what is going on, time in which the one word I can hear everyone using is "photo." The police came here about a month ago, they say. They raided our huts and took away all those pictures you gave us! One young man keeps saying, over and over again, that the "politicians" had come and taken away the photographs. Initially floored by that, I realise that he, too, probably means the police. Not politicians.

Now I know why Sarang and Ughadya had shown an inordinate interest in cameras and photographs a few minutes earlier. Their photographs had gone, they thought I had either brought more or would take some more today or both, and they wanted to be there when that happened.

The young man pipes up. Can you go to those politicians who took the photos, apply some pressure and get them back? I look at him more closely and recognise him. This is Mithun. The same man who, on my previous visit, had been so insistent that I show the pictures to all the ministers in Maharashtra. Now he is going on about politicians stealing his photos.

And why did the police take your pictures, I ask when the flood abates somewhat. Who knows, chorus the Pardhis. Every now and then they come here and accuse us of committing some crime. They raid our huts, they take our things. This time they took away all those photographs. They said they would not return them until we improve ourselves. See, kaka, says Biscuit, this is what happens to us because we are poor. This is what happens because we are Pardhis. Now they will use those photos to remember our faces easily and harrass us wherever we go.

It makes no sense to me. The police come harrass these Pardhis, most Pardhis, often enough. But why confiscate 15 or 20 photographs? Could the fear Biscuit expressed be valid, that simply because they are Pardhis and therefore automatic suspects in district crimes, the police will use the photographs to help identify them? After all, the police station in nearby Phaltan has a board full of photographs of wanted criminals.

When I visited some months before, a constable there gleefully pointed out the Pardhis in that collection. These two are Bablya Dahitya Bhosle and Kublya Gudan Shinde, he had said, wanted for housebreaking and dacoities all over the district. That one is Shera Narayan Bhosle, their ringleader. We caught him after 15 years. After we gave him some "degree-vagairah," he confessed to four dacoities.

So would my photographs of these Pardhis be similarly used? The thought of them as police station wanted board material had not occurred to me, but who knows?

A spindly woman squats before me and interrupts my thoughts. I remember her too. There had been two pictures of her and her children. She lives here, but isn't a Pardhi herself. On my last visit, Alka Suryakant Nimbalkar had told me that she had been deserted by her husband. When will things change for us? she had asked me then. People like you come and talk and write things. But we will die like this, the way we are. Nothing changes.

Today, she doesn't seem to have lost any of her pessimism. She looks me in the eye and says, very businesslike now: Listen saheb. I'm a Hindu, these people are not. Here, a few of the Pardhis nod their agreement. I'm a Maratha, a Nimbalkar, a Hindu. So you can trust me. Why don't you give me Rs 100,000? I promise to return it to you, doubled, in two months. See, now that you have come back, you might take some more pictures of us, or even get the police to return the ones they took away. But will pictures fill our stomachs?

The Pardhis nod some more, still in agreement. Alka must see something in my face, because she lowers her sights rapidly and dramatically. Give me Rs 5,000, she says. I'll write down my promise to you, that I will return it doubled in two months.

I don't take her up on that. Nor do I let on what else I remember from my previous visits: Alka is illiterate.

Mithun pipes up again. Dilip-saheb, he says, just get our photographs back from those politicians.

This article is part of the project Dilip D'Souza is pursuing to study India's Denotified and Nomadic Tribes as a National Foundation for India Fellow for 1998-99.

Dilip D'Souza