Mela

I walked with my Dad through his home village of Dhudike, where we always stay for a couple weeks in the house he grew up in with his seven brothers. Dhudike (DU-di-kay) is quite large now and still growing, but it retains the feel of a village in its narrow streets with slimy gutters on either side, dust everywhere, doorways framing courtyards that shelter the household buffalo and the dung patty-burning stoves. The dung patties, laced with straw and molded into large saucers, lie drying in little plots across the village, waiting to be used for heat, cooking fuel, even cremation. Recently interested in India's social hierarchies and sanctified division of labor, I asked Dad whether families generally made their own patties or bought them from established makers.

Dad answered that many produce their own patties, since it is customary for families who can afford it to keep their own buffalo for milk and status. Cows are all over in India, in the cities as much as the villages, oblivious of their holy status but nevertheless taking advantage of it, vying for space along the crowded streets. But the buffalo that can be seen through many of the entryways of houses in Dhudike stand apart with their size and strength and shining coats. So it turns out that buffalo are an informative social index in Punjab.

For all its village-ness, agriculture has treated Dhudike well, and the village is pretty wealthy. Even the low-caste neighborhoods are studded with newly built houses, and late model Scorpios SUVs navigate the lanes along with the motorbikes and bicycles. And this brings us to the town fair, an indication in its own way of the vibrancy of the village. It's happening now, scheduled to coincide with India's Republic Day. One of my uncles' donation to the fair links our family to the proceedings--our grandfather is featured on the main promotional poster. So we'd been looking forward to attending, especially since it's not just a lame carnival-game kind of thing. There's barely any advertising, and sports are at center stage. The thing has been going on for over 50 years, but it's only more recently, since 1990 or so, that bullock cart racing has been an event. My dad took this as a sign of success in Dhudike and Punjab in general--a village backwater can't sustain a big fair, let alone a capital-intensive competition.

Bullock cart racing is sort of the village equivalent of horse racing, but replacing all the aristocratic trappings with farmer rowdiness--a downgrade in class, upgrade in style. (By some standards there are humane concerns with these races; they would be dwarfed in number and severity by everyday practices in the country as a whole). One similarity with horse racing is that it is a hobby borne of some wealth (one can't raise an ox dedicated solely to racing without some money in the bank), gleaned from fertile soil and government-gauranteed price minimums, and likely also leisure, perhaps facilitated by some hired labor. I'm not sure, but similar races may happen in poor areas as well, though I doubt there that oxen are raised solely to race, as at least some are here. Last month we'd visited a neighbor and were shown his racing ox, which spent its time doing nothing but gaining strength and aggression in the lead-up to the race. As for the differences with horse racing, pictures tell it better.

The racing happened on a farm road about 1km out of town. A wheat field lined one side, potatoes the other. Spectators filed in from town to watch.















Seating was improvised. Some people populated the small lanes branching perpindicularly from the race road. Others lined the irrigation canals in the fields. The organizers had rigged up a sound system.















The bulls were escorted to the starting line,














as were the carts.















The drivers seemed to in a pre-game focus mode. Many walked alone.














And they were off. Even with the build-up of the gathering crowd and the teams' preparations, I hadn't expected this. It was almost like the drivers were using a temporary state of insanity to supplement strikes on the bulls' backs, trying to get the most speed and stamina from the animals. Pretty, pretttty awesome. The audio is sketchy, but Dad believes this driver is yelling something about the ox's mother.