14/06/2012

Song of an aborigine in our times

By Remigius de Souza
(Originally published in Archetypes India)

Image 1: Bhills celebrate Holi Festival

In our ancestral Land and Waters
I am not a residue or a by-product,
of this monstrous civilized chaos
that challenges at every breathing
the honour and dignity of humanity.

We aren’t depressed or dejected
by our lack of wants; for us
Life rises above all artefacts.
Every breath is indeed an occasion
in deed for celebration
of Life forever to Rejoice

despite the chaos around so base.
It falls free at its own equations
and impositions, the notorious
and famous; all are about to be
washed off in time through
the floodgates of anonymity.

I assure you of my loyalty
to reach back in antiquity —
our spirits are ready to spring
O, my kinsfolk, in aboriginality.

Image 2: Bhill aborigine damsels’ impromptu dance

Image 3: Bhill aborigine damsels’ impromptu dance
Note: 
Image 1: Bhill aborigine tribe celebrate Holi Festival
Image 2 and 3: Bhill aborigine damsels’ impromptu dance at time of maize crop gets ready.
Images by Remigius de Souza

© Remigius de Souza., All rights reserves. Protected by Copyscape DMCA Copyright Protection

4 comments:

  1. Glimpses of some people who are also in our country, of whom, we do not know much or we have not cared to know much.

    Thanks for bringing this information to readers of your blog.

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    1. I am thankful for your visit and frank comment. I humbly reached adivasis to learn, not as a scholar or teach them my urban ways. And I am enriched by them.

      Your comment makes me more responsible and humbler. I have written many posts — prose, poems, pictures — on tribal, aborigine people on my other blogs. Please visit them when time permits.

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  2. Thanks so much Remi. I guess they keep us rooted wherever we happen to be. So, fortunate to meet few of them.

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    Replies
    1. Yes Maya! You are right!! Every mother in my clan told her child/children that 'we are Brahmins'. We have been persecuted for about two centuries, from Kashmir to Goa to Sindhudurg, by Muslim Sultan, then Inquisition and outcast by Hindus (because we drank well-water polluted by bread dropped by missionaries).

      My family was displaced and marginalized when I was six and my brother in arms. Since then I have searching my roots. I would visit those twelve vocational people - weaver, basket-maker, potter, barber, cobbler, iron-smith, copper-smith, goldsmith... regularly. The visit to shepherds at foothills near village was my fond spot to spend time.

      I spent nearly forty years to visit tribal people, on and off, again and again. They are my true foster-kin now! I keep singing songs for them...

      Thanks for visit! Do come again!

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