Special issue with the Sunday Magazine
From the publishers of THE HINDU

TIME OUT : May 2, 1999

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Simple pleasures

Kausalya Santhanam

Time Out, for them, is not an activity to be planned months ahead. Journeys undertaken after poring over maps, inching forward through mile long hours at booking counters or taking days to pack "bare necessities".

Time Out, for those inhabiting the vast, sun-drenched spaces that make up our rural landscape is not just a once-a-year affair. It is woven into the serene tempo of their lives, and is a matter of each day's quiet measure and grace. For the rural people, leisure and recreation are generally plaited into the very fabric of their existence. Ask them about relaxation and holidays and you will meet with a blank stare. The concept of vacations is an urban one that is totally alien to them - the conscious activity to get away from the stress and strain of life, through weekend outings and annual holidays. The compulsive need to escape from the grind is absent or unknown to these simple folk.

Here, the clock does not dictate the frenzied regimen of life. The sun that rises in awesome splendour on the horizon is the visual time-keeper of the day's activity. As one walks through the fields at dawn, through the narrow tree-lined lanes of the village, birds call and goats pick their way daintily by. Nature is all around and ever-nourishing. The clear air, uncongested paths and the greenery provide a feeling of freedom and space. The mooing of cows and the clip-clop of the bullocks' hooves replace the noise and clatter of city life. The whirring wheels of an occasional bicycle and the frenzied barking of the pie dogs are the only sounds that break a silence that is therapeutic.

Time Out here is present in the richness and variety of the songs. It is interlaced with the laid-back indoor games the women play and the rigour and simplicity of the men's sports. It is seen in simple pleasures - an outing to the weekly shandy, the preparations for a ear-piercing ceremony or a wedding. Festivals are the high points of life where the spirit of worship is combined with joyous activity - song, dance and music - to unwind. The tedium of the routine is broken and the spirits revitalised.

Most activities that signify a break from the routine are for the rural folk, inextricably associated with the worship of the Supreme whose power is manifest in water and fire and whose form is glimpsed in four-footed creatures and fleeting winds.

Festivals express the feelings of thanksgiving and celebrations, for the grace of the Mother Goddess who has given a bountiful harvest and made the fields gleam with sheafs of grain. They are the vows and prayers undertaken to make the heavens spill forth. And to keep at bay the wretched spectres of famine and drought, disease and death.

The festivals are events that are generally clustered together from mid January to the end of April. But there is time in everyday life to find one's space, though the work is endless and back-breaking. The women have hardly a moment to spare, what with agricultural and household work to do as well as the tending of children and cattle. But the songs sung while planting and the lullabies, soothe and refresh.

As we enter Gowripatti, in Sivagangai district in Tamil Nadu, the village slumbers in the midday heat. The youth who emerge from the distant huts are quite well schooled in the Kummi songs that are rendered at festival time. Kumaresan renders a few melodious lines and then adds apologetically: "This is old fashioned. Perhaps you would prefer a song set to a film tune". Manimurasu, Ayurvedic doctor of the nearby village who accompanies us rues the manner in which cinema and the antenna of TV have scythed down most rural arts that had remained unchanged for centuries. Almost every panchayat in the district has a television set. Entertainment in the evenings in many villages consists of watching the garishly dressed hero and heroine belt out songs which ironically have originated from the very soil to which they have returned in travestied form. Although the electronic medium has brought awareness on various subjects to the rural populace it has mowed down a medley of cultural notes to produce a single, flat tone.

Valli, a middle-aged woman whose husband farms a small plot of land, has a vast repertoire of lullabies. But does her daughter know them? "No. Now, the children are all sent to Balwadis and at night, mothers impatiently shush their children to sleep."

Aditya Dhawan

But in the interior villages, the old practices continue. As the child is gently rocked in the cloth cradle, the mother lulls it to sleep. And feels lulled herself by the soft, gentle cadences of the tune and the magic images it evokes. Of gifts of pearls and gems brought back from distant lands by loved ones for the precious little one and of the vows undertaken for its birth.

Games played in the cool dark thatched interiors bring family members closer. Sticks, stones and symbols of life's renewal - tamarind seeds and dry berries - as also cowrie shells, that bring the swirling waters of the wide oceans into the humble hut, are the markers and the instruments of the games.

"All the folk songs and activities combine instruction with joy," say Drs. Navaneethakrishnan and Vijayalakshmi Navaneethakrishnan of the Department of Art History, Aesthetic and Folk Arts at the Madurai Kamaraj University.

"When the women link hands and sing songs parrying questions and providing answers, energy is renewed. The arduous hours spent in planting and harvesting are forgotten in these welcome breaks."

While the young have a whole lot of games to engage their attention, the men traditionally have resorted to sports that will keep them trim. "Memories of distant ages when warriors fought back the enemies who led away the cattle are reworked in the Jallikattus (bull fights)held in Madurai and Ramanathapuram district where the cattle are tamed."

At the other extreme, are the cards and other games of chance that continue to mark time for the field hand or worker during off-season. Or once the day's chores are done.

Not so long ago, for the little girl leisure meant hopscotch played with friends or quaint games that dated back to the times when kings walked incognito among their subjects. Kolattam, a dance-cum-song performance accompanied by the rhythmic beat of sticks meant entering a dizzy world of fun and skill. For the viewer it provided kaleidoscopic swirls of colour as the girls in their bright skirts twirled around.

Chatting and idly exchanging gossip has always helped the rural folk unwind. On the raised platforms of verandahs or within the enclosed courtyards of houses, women chat companiably at dusk. Under the sprawling banyan that has seen generations gossiping under its shade, the men gather to talk in a desultory way.

Apart from daily activities, weekly outings are generally in the form of visits to the local shandies or fairs. To Gandhi Mary and countless other women, the shandy is an outing that combines the functional with a mild flavour of fun. Sometimes friends accompany her instead of her dour grandmother. "Then we stop by for a sherbet or a cup of tea." These are the inexpensive refreshments and small pleasures that strike a note of change in her life.

Dhirendra kumar/Fotomedia

All night Theru-k-koothu and drama performances both entertain and instruct through the depiction of the familiar and the well-loved. The story of Harischandra and the ordeal of Draupadi never pall as they depict the power of truth and help bear life's trials. And these are plenty.

The annual trip to the shrine of the family deity or Ishtadevata is an event undertaken with dedication that astounds the molly-coddled urbanite. "When the thought strikes us that we want to visit Palani, we just drop everything and set off," says 45-year-old Udayammai, an agricultural hand. "How?" "By foot." "All the way?" "Yes, all the way. It takes us eight to ten days to make the to and fro journey, a distance of 150 km from our village."

Just equipped with a change of clothes, the women carry their meagre possessions in a bundle on their heads. "We leave our children in the care of our husbands or in-laws and take a male escort with us. We eat when we feel hungry at food stalls on the way and then move on."

This is truly travelling light, a trip that refreshes them for the year ahead, equipping them with the strength to tackle the failure the changing seasons might bring.

The activities and Time Out of each rural area in the country are linked to the customs, the climate, the culture and the agricultural activity.

But all of them are geared to paying obeisance to the Spirit that pervades the universe. A great unity with their natural environment distinguishes the rural people. They are at one with the rhythm of Nature.

So soothing is the rural ambience for the harried urban resident that the visit to the villages of Tamil Nadu was truly Time Out for this writer. As it would be to any resident of the maddening metropolis. City dwellers remember childhood visits to grandparents or relatives in the rural areas with great nostalgia. The memories of skipping along the canals and eating fruit fresh off the trees are evergreen as also of watching grain pour down from roof to cellar in a golden shower.

Then, there is the other less pleasant dimension. In the final analysis, is there really a thing called Time Out for the poorest of the poor? "I can barely make my way from my village to the weekly market three km away. I haven't seen any other place in my life. I would get lost if I ventured further," says Muthu, a grey-haired old man.

"Leisure? Recreation? Outing? What do you mean?", laughs a middle aged rural woman derisively. "Will you pay me for the time lost while I take a break? If I'm able to get a few hours of rest, that's more than enough for me, thank you. Sleep is the only Time Out for me."