The dispossessed and disinherited

 

The ironsmith nomads, gade lohars, are finally seeking to settle down in a world that is fleeting faster than ever. In this jet-setting space age, their lurching, creaking carts are left too far behind in the race of excellence, progress, growth and development.

They sometimes stay for months at a time at a little square in our village. That adds cross-cultural colors to the society for a brief period of time.

Their women and girls are beautiful in raw, exotic ways. These days they allow the vagrants from the settled streets to flirt with them. Earlier they used to have a tart, befitting reply for the eve-teasers. But times have changed and the once-famed gypsy pride of their womenfolk has diluted to allow the so-called civilized settled men to take mischievous pot-shots at them.

The green glens of gypsyism are gone. The large swathes of free-roaming regime now cluttered in narrow unsurpassable paths. It’s a slight but subtle compromise to allow life to take a tolerable shape in a world where the distance between them and the rest of the world has increased with a dangerous speed. A little allowance to strum the chauvinistic heartstrings of the settled males. A harmless prick on their once rock solid pride and chastity.

Once, when they were staying in village, there was this lavish marriage of two gypsy girls in the camp. The bridegroom arrived in a bus with the marriage party from a Delhi suburb where they had fixed their old gypsy cart in a mud and brick structure by the pavement to finally dock the ship.

The marriage was an exciting affair. The nomadic girls danced well much to the delight of the boys and men in the village. The marriage feast was also great in taste and variety and the villagers enjoyed it heartily.

The villagers burped and smirked: ‘Ancient gold and silver which they keep hidden in the wooden frames of their sturdy carts!’

A lovely panoply of images of harmonious existence and blending of cultures.

The dera then moved ahead on it journey.

They arrived again after a couple of years. This time an old woman from the camp died during their stay at the village. But the villagers won’t allow the homeless dead to be cremated at the site of the settled people.

The gypsies sullenly moved on to cremate their dead at a place where nobody would raise any objection.