Anarchic recipes for change?

Brahmin cooks preparing food at dalit feasts in conservative Bolangir and Nuapada? It is happening. Class and power relations have combined to dent some old attitudes, and economics has induced a degree of social accommodation. Something's cooking in west Orissa, says noted journalist P. SAINATH.

BOLANGIR AND NUAPADA (ORISSA):

IT was a tense and embarrassing moment. Alanda is a conservative village. Even by the standards of Bolangir. And the brahmin pada is the bastion of social rigidity. Yet, here we were, talking to a leading professional cook. About to ask him - in front of his caste peers - if it was true that he prepared food for dalits outside the village, if he accepted assignments to do so at their weddings and feasts.

We had heard about it in Khariar and had come down to check it out. Maguni Panda, also called "Nona", seemed unflappably calm. That was a help. He did not look like he would explode if we asked. Yet, questioning him right here could prove damaging. Would he say yes if it was true? Suppose he did, wouldn't it land him in trouble in this pada? We had no right to do that.

And whoever heard of a brahmin in this caste - bound region cooking for dalits anyway?

We tread warily. We had heard of Nona Panda's fame as a cook. Was it true that he handled huge feasts on his own? "Certainly. I recently cooked for 1200 people with just two helpers. I made everything right down to the many sweets at the end." The helpers mainly looked after the fire and stirring. The cooking was all his.

"I often cook for many people at one time. I work in a hotel at Sindhekela. Earlier, I was in coastal Orissa where I gained a lot of experience." He speaks with quiet pride of his professional skills.

Did he cook for a great number of different people and functions? "Oh yes. I've worked for all kinds of people. From various communities." Even dalits?

The pada was having none of that. Several voices spoke at once. "Not for harijans. All others, yes. But not for them."

Nona Panda looked at his neighbours, mild surprise in his eyes. Then he turned back to us. His calm had not wavered. "Of course I cook for the harijans, too. I have done this work at their feasts and wedding parties."

Didn't he as a brahmin, we asked as deviously as we could, have a problem with cooking for dalit households? "Not at all. All types of people come to me. I do not differentiate between them. They're all the same to me. It's a professional thing, you see."

Nona Panda agrees this would have been impossible just a decade ago. His father would never have done it. Even today, most brahmin cooks will not do it. But a growing number of them, like Nona, are adapting to changing realities.

Economic pressures are vital among those changes. Nona's unspoken logic is simple. The village bania treats dalits as untouchable, yet sells them goods from his store. He loans them money and gets it back with huge interest. Then why should brahmin cooks not sell their services to dalits? Yet, though this logic seems anchored in the village, it has surfaced only recently. Nona himself says none of this was possible just a few years ago.

Something is cooking in this belt of western Orissa. And it has a complex recipe. Certainly among better off dalits. In both Nuapada and Bolangir, they are throwing parties and feasts that large numbers of people attend.

And the cook is always a brahmin. This is emphasised when inviting guests.

When Keshabha Naik went around asking people to his son's wedding in Khariar, he stressed the same thing. A brahmin would cook the feast. Naik is a clerk (a munshi) with a senior advocate here. He has a standing in this town. But if he wanted his guests to attend, he had to do two things.

"The feast has to be held outside our mohallah. And the meals cooked by a brahmin. Otherwise, people won't come", says Naik. "So when we invite them, we have to tell them this has been done." Other communities, too, appoint such cooks for their feasts. But dalits, suggests Naik, cannot dream of drawing non- Scheduled Caste (SC) guests without a brahmin cook.

Won't they eat if there is another good cook? "Eat? They won't even sit down." Most of the non-SC invitees to his son's wedding were not very important government servants. Three of them missed the party. Later, he laid on a feast for them at the house of a Yadav. They ate a meal prepared by the Yadav. But why not at the munshi's house? "I was not sure they would like that. And I did not want to insult or hurt them inadvertently."

Would these guests have come if dalits had brahmin cooks at their feasts, say, ten years ago? "Ten years ago, we could not have afforded these cooks. And anyway, neither cooks nor guests would have come."

"Just a few decades ago, we could not have imagined inviting non- SC guests. All we did was sweep their houses, do their menial labour, run their errands, perform their chores and shut up no matter how we were treated. When I was a child, our non-SC friends could, on rare occasions, come to our mohallah and see our homes. But we could never dream of entering theirs."

The problems are still there. "An office party is fine. There, things seem to be alright. But when we go to their houses, they will not wash the glasses after we have drunk from them. We know that. They will get their maid to do it. In our homes, there are no maids. Our women wash everything themselves. So mostly, we ourselves avoid going to non-SC homes."

"In my village", says Bijay Sahis, a journalist and himself a dalit, "we avoid having food with non-SCs. Why? Because there is an unwritten understanding that after it is done, we will wash up. They do not make that demand of others. But with us, just as we are finishing the food, they put an extra glass of water next to the plate. Which signifies that we have to do the washing up."

Yet, the region's brahmin cooks have begun to accept assignments from dalits. What accounts for that?

Lots of things, says Naik. "Literacy, awareness, political clout, all these have grown amongst us. We are better off now. The scheduled castes may be untouchable but their money is not."

In fact, Nona Panda and other cooks we spoke to more or less confirmed this. "The dalits buy all the provisions and keep them separately", Panda has said. "Only then do we cook. "It was Nona who had cooked at Naik's son's wedding.

While Nona Panda is a novelty in that he lives in a small village, Khariar has more than one such cook.

The most seasoned of them is Kusha Panda. "I have been in this line 20 years. However, cooking for dalits is a recent phenomenon. My father would never have done it. For me it is no problem at all. I see it as a professional matter." He was the first cook here to go this way. Khariar has a SC population exceeding 6,000 people.

How did his community react? "At first, people expressed some reservation. But when I explained it was a professional thing, it was accepted." "In my home," he laughs, "they begged me: 'if you must go, do not drink any water or eat anything.' That was silly. I was doing the cooking!"

But would he accept water or chai if his dalit clients offered those to him? "Certainly. Why not?" (Later, some brahmin cooks admitted, off record, to even getting drunk with them).

How did Kusha Panda's own attitudes evolve? And those of his community?

"Earlier, we saw the scheduled castes as untouchable. Then we saw them in government. Next, as big officers. This certainly influenced our perceptions. We saw some powerful dalit government figures who had brahmin cooks at home. In the early days that was more common because the brahmins felt they had some anonymity working at dalit houses rather than at their feasts.

"In my case, I worked 17 years in Bhubaneswar and Cuttack. I used to work at the house of former Public Works Department (PWD) Minister Karan Singh Deo. I saw ministers of the upper castes eat at the same table as harijans. There seemed to be no problem. I have cooked at meals where Bhakta Charan Das (former minister and a dalit) ate. Of course that reshaped my thinking."

Kusha Panda may not know it, but he makes a fine case for affirmative action and the impact it has on social attitudes. His own position might well be against "reservations". Yet, all the dalit officers and VIPs he names are people who emerged with the help of that process.

Power relations have played a huge role in these changes. So has class. "Changes had also begun with brahmins. We started looking at our own situation. A few began doing pujas for the harijans, but not cooking. These were usually poorer brahmins. Meanwhile, we saw dalits do well in government. Brahmins worked under them as peons. "What happens in government structures clearly has a great influence on community attitudes.

"Even now, older brahmins won't work for harijans. But for me they are same as anyone else. Me? I would go to their mohallah and cook. No problem." Clearly, this professionalism has come with changing power equations. Economics has induced a degree of social accommodation.

Kusha Panda handles 30 and 40 weddings a season. And may be eight to 10 pujas. "There are two seasons for feasts. November to February. And then April-May." At least one of his assignments was at a dalit IAS officer's house. Nona Panda, too like Kusha, gets a lot of such jobs during the season.

Significantly, both have lived and journeyed extensively outside the Kalahandi-Bolangir region. Travel and migration, too, have brought their own logic and change to this belt.

The altered economic status of some dalits has also had an impact. The brahmin cook is a status symbol here. And the scale of the symbol stretches with one's purse. At Naik's feast: "We had 100 SCs and about 20 non-SCs. The baman (brahmin) cooked only for the non-SCs. He charged Rs. 10 per person, roughly. For our own caste folk, we cooked ourselves. Separately, of course."

On the other hand, a senior dalit officer here had over 200 guests at a party. Kusha Panda cooked for all of them. The officer could afford it.

Class and power relations have combined to make some kind of a dent on attitudes here. It is not a gigantic change, but a significant one. As Munshi Naik says: "Untouchability has gone down 50 per cent in my view. But let's remember the other 50 per cent is still there. Yes, sir, even in the towns and cities. In the city, it has more disguised forms. In the village it is more explicit and in the open."

Some clients at his office would address a brahmin munshi differently, he feels. With the latter, there is an exaggerated respect. With Naik, "There is an undertone: you are who you are and we know it."

"But it is changing and will change further. Fifty years ago, we were at the mercy of caste society. Any work we had came from them. They could throw us five rupees at the end of it and that was that. We just had to accept it.

"Not now. More and more of our people are getting educated. Increasingly our youth refuse to accept old rules. Yes, the growing political clout of dalits has also had a big effect on all this. Our votes are important. Our voices have to be heard."

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