This bittersweet story of hope is set in 1971, when snake-killing was suddenly banned by the government and the repercussions of an upcoming Wildlife (Protection) Act were drowning the simple snake-hunting Irular tribe of Tamil Nadu in sorrow.
Zai Whitaker puts the spotlight on Karadi and Rani, their two children Mari and Thenee, and their grandfather, Thatha. According to “a standard Irular description of age”, Karadi claims to have seen 20 or 30 monsoons, his son Mari is between 11 and 13 years old and Thenee is big enough to walk but small enough to carry.
Until Mari was seven, he used to think his parents’ names were “Listen and Look Here”. In Irular culture, taking your spouse’s name was not only “disrespectful” but also beckoned “evil spirits”. Mari and Thenee are yet to get used to the business of catching snakes and selling the glossy skins of cobras, pythons, vipers and rat snakes. They make it a point to flee their house when they are about to witness a gory scene.
The tribe is tired of being cheated. By the “gorement” (government), by “Enjos” (NGOs) and by unscrupulous traders who buy their prized catch for peanuts. Their distrust in everyone is so encompassing and intense that when Rani pushes Karadi to buy a torch, he complains that it was a waste of money: “…he grumbled even more when he discovered that you had to keep changing the batteries, or it would stop working. There is no limit to the way people cheated you.”
{{/usCountry}}The tribe is tired of being cheated. By the “gorement” (government), by “Enjos” (NGOs) and by unscrupulous traders who buy their prized catch for peanuts. Their distrust in everyone is so encompassing and intense that when Rani pushes Karadi to buy a torch, he complains that it was a waste of money: “…he grumbled even more when he discovered that you had to keep changing the batteries, or it would stop working. There is no limit to the way people cheated you.”
{{/usCountry}}That they will get cheated is something the Irular children pick up early. When Thenee, who is barely a few years old, sees a trader cheating her father, she tells her grandfather, “… We got cheated.” To which her brother replies, “We always get cheated… Don’t you know that?”
Even though they are consumed with worry because of the snake skin ban – what-will-they-eat, how-will-they-earn – the tribe continues to be kind to nature, to the birds and animals around them. They refer to them as people, and even speak to them. Thatha tells Mari that these “jungle people are very clever, not like humans”.
Snakes are never subjected to a cruel death. “Don’t want it to hurt,” Thatha tells Mari as he passes on the unique Irular skills to his grandson. On another occasion, he instructs Mari, “Here put this person into a pot.”
Despite their poverty and the many other hurdles they encounter on a day-to-day basis, their dark humour is a constant companion. Thatha often jokes about the caste system among termites, that it is better than the human one. “…because termites can switch castes, but we can’t.”
Whitaker effortlessly transports the reader into their unlettered and unpretentious world – where they have to pick a person wisely, someone “who looks both kind and literate”, to tell them which bus to take to the city, even as the world has begun to look up to the tribe as a treasure trove of knowledge. The Irular know about sacred roots and herbs like no other. They know how to make antivenom and may have a cure for cancer too.
Thatha, in particular, is a man of wisdom. He can tell the size and species of the snake from its track, exorcise spirits, and communicate with goddesses. He is generous with the odd researcher who wants to know about forests or medicinal plants. He tells his fellow tribesmen that knowledge is to be shared.
The city folk not only cheat the Irular tribe as they cannot read or write, they also treat them badly as they hail from a “lower” caste. The traders and the middlemen lust after their prized catch, but make them feel small and unwanted. The one time the tribe is invited to the city after the enforcement of the Wildlife (Protection) Act in a bid to woo them (as Irular could get special licences to gather and sell forest and animal produce such as snake venom from which antivenom is made), they refuse to eat the food served to them by uniformed waiters. To the tribesmen, the waiters look like policemen. “We might get into trouble if we take their food,” they say.
One of the main villains in the novel is Prabhu Sir, who dupes the tribe and sells off their snakeskins for handsome profits. “(he) reminded the visitors that he was a busy man who was giving up his valuable time for them… Prabhu Sir said he was busy, didn’t have time to explain numbers and prices to them. He rattled off a long calculation. Did they understand? No?”
The tribesmen had no option but to pocket the few rupees handed to them.
Even in these dire circumstances, they put the lives of the “persons” they trade in, ahead of themselves. When Prabhu Sir tried to sell the idea of buying snake venom from them – it was needed to make antivenom in the laboratory – Thatha was worried: “How will the snake eat after that? If we have taken away all their venom? This is their way of killing the animals they eat, this is why they have venom in their body. To catch and eat their food, not so that these people in Delhi can steal their venom.”
The tribals were also unwilling to part with the sacred root which could fight cancer cells as their goddess had told them not to. Their circumstances begin to change when Thenee, the little girl who loves nagging everyone, decides to enrol in school. An Irular getting admission in school was unheard of. Also, the family couldn’t afford the additional expenses involved. But Thenee gets lucky as she accidentally goes to the school on Adivasi Day. She made for a good photo-op and was admitted with a promise of free uniform and stationery.
Soon enough, Thenee was asking all the right questions: “Appa, Thatha, can you listen to me please? If this cheater Prabhu Sir can go to that yellow building and get a paper for catching snakes, why can’t we?”
Whitaker’s prose is simple and stark. She manages to engage the reader by prudently featuring the sorry condition of the Irular, and succeeds in generating feelings of empathy. She quietly slips in a line, here and there that makes the reader smile even though it is a chilling account of the miserable lives of the Irular. One such gem: “…Irular inherit the art of digging the way high caste people inherit gold.”
It took the author 10 years to write this work of “fiction based on truth”. She had moved to Chennai just as the Wildlife (Protection) Act of 1972 was being enforced, and says she had “a balcony seat in this particular drama” when the snakeskin trade, the only skill the Irular knew, was banned. “Their lives aren’t easy and it’s a subject I am emotional about; so writing about them wasn’t easy and it took me 10 years to complete the book, with many drafts along the way,” she writes in the afterword.
Unfortunately, five decades later, not much has changed in the Irular world. They still hunt rats and termites, and spirits and shamanism remain an important part of their spiritual life.
Whitaker is a conservationist and the managing trustee of the Madras Crocodile Bank, which she co-founded in 1976. Her 20 books include The Snakes Around Us (with Romulus Whitaker), Kali and the Rat Snake, and Andamans Boy.
A cleverly-crafted book that ventures into the extraordinary world of the Irular, this is an excellent read.
Lamat R Hasan is an independent journalist. She lives in New Delhi.