The history of my clan

 

Here is a brief history for my clan brothers, the Dahiyas. It’s better to know one’s roots. Well, the present-time Dahiya is a time-twisted derivative of Dahae. It was a central Asian nomadic tribe. Well, we have grown up listening to our elders telling us that long-long ago our ancestors migrated from central Asian steppes. Later on, academic research proved the substance behind those oral chronicles. The facts that are presented here are taken from many well-researched books and sources presented by many western and Indian scholars and historians.

The Dahae initially lived in the north-eastern part of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, in the arid steppes of the Karakum Desert near Margiana, alongside the Saka groups and the Sogdians and Chorasmians, and immediately to the north of Hyrcania. The name of the Dahae, attested in the Old Persian form Dahā, is derived from a Saka language name meaning ‘man,’ based on the common practice among various peoples of calling themselves ‘man’ in their own languages. However, one famous Western historian maintained that it meant ‘stranglers’. Well, there is a possibility of it meaning the both because in traditional patriarchy like the one found among Jat clans including Dahaes or Dahiyas, ‘men’ and ‘stranglers’ would come out almost the same.

The Dahae people lived in the region to the immediate east of the Caspian Sea. They spoke an Eastern Iranian language. The area was known as Dihistan and Dahistan during the Sassanid period. There is still a place called Dahistan in western Turkmenistan—the land of Dahaes, almost like Hindustan is derived from a literary expression meaning roughly ‘the land of the followers of Hinduism’. Then there is Dahestan in nothern Iran also. It was the area of a branch of Dahae who moved into northern Iran. My clan (the present time Dahiya, a derivative of Dahae or the people of Dahistan) was settled in the east of Caspian sea in central Asia around Oxus valley.

There is an ambiguity whether we were almost religionless nomads or the followers of a cult that allied with Zoroastrianism. Settled on the north-eastern border of the Persian Achaemenid empire, the Dahae people spoke a dialect originating from eastern Iranian language. According to the Babylonian historian Berossus, the founder of the Persian Achaemenid Empire, Cyrus, died fighting against the Dahae. But when it came to fighting someone who was considered a foreigner by all the feuding tribes in the area, that’s Alexander the Great, the Dahāe fought within the left wing of the Achaemenid army along with the Bactrians and the Saka against Alexander the Great at Gaugamela in 331 BCE.   

Saka coins from the Seleucid era are sometimes specifically attributed to the Dahae. They are the Dahae, who along with the Kangs and other Jat clans, fought Alexander the Great, on the north of Oxus river under their leader, Spitama. A whole division of Greek army, was cut to pieces at Samarkand in the valley of Zerof Shan. By the time Alexander reached there to take revenge for the ‘first Macedonian disaster’, he found only his dead soldiers to bury. He had to fall back and establish his camp at Zariaspa, but the valiant Jats under Spitama attacked his main camp, too. Alexander failed to defeat them, so this brave world conqueror started torturing the women, children and other non-combatant population. Meantime, the Achaemenid Empire fell at the hands of Alexander. Now he could focus on torturing the civilian population of the Dahae settlements.

Jat mathematics of ‘16 multiplied by 2 is equal to 8’ is still popular. You can imagine its crude version almost 2300 years back. They had a very easy solution. Alexander was torturing women, children and the old but the Dahae leader Spitama won’t accept submission even after the strong Achaemenid Empire had fallen to the great conqueror. Those simple Jats had a far simpler solution. The Dahaes themselves beheaded their unbuckling leader Spitama, and produced his head before Alexander. Only then he stopped the mean persecution of the general population. Many of them then joined Alexander of Macedon in his quest to India as mercenary soldiers. In this way a large number of Dahae Jats then joined the Greek army and when his Macedonian soldiers refused to fight in the Punjab, Alexander threatened to move ahead with his Jat (Bactrian) soldiers only. As per Greek writers, the Dahae under Alexander, were the first to attack the army of Porus in 326 B.C. This was not the first or the last time, when Jat blood was shed from both sides.

Jats are known to break each other’s head for the real illogical fun of it. They are highly prone to fight among themselves. I can still see this propensity opening out in street fights at a regular basis in Jat villages. So there were Dahae Jat soldiers in Alexander’s army now. But they had their own clan brothers who dreamed of breaking their heads. These fellas aligned with Porus. In this manner, following their querulous ways, the Jat clans, looking for better land and pastures, started migration to present time India.

I can still see the bloodthirsty craze for owning more land in my clan. Every Jat settlement has many bloody feuds for land that resulted in killings and lynching. But we are changing. Agriculture has been our only type of culture but now with education we see more cultural colors beyond farming fields. As of now, there is a tight clump of fifty odd adjoining villages of erstwhile Dahae, the dwellers of steppe plains and Oxus valley, who still hold their distinct identity in Sonipat district of Haryana. The Sultanate came, the Mughals came, the Britishers came but we kept sticking to the lands we had occupied before them. So near to the centre of power at Delhi! That shows our propensity to stick to our land. They also realized that these fellows will bite back if disturbed. So the seats in Delhi kept changing but our clan kept sticking to its chunk of land at all costs. They killed, got killed in return, kept on killing each other as well, but stayed there.

That’s how nationalities form. The bloody fluidity of changing border lines and people moving this way and that way. The Britishers were the wisest of the lot who occupied Delhi. They knew the art of human resource utilization. They knew that these people are very quick with arms and very slow with minds, as Rudyard Kipling famously said about Jats. So to pamper to the vanity of our ego they declared us a martial community and put batons, swords and rifles in our hands. Even within my memory, I have seen and heard about many family feuds for lands where people have been killed. There have been honor killings, far more than you would believe as per official data. The women and female children have faced a lot of discrimination. But now Jats have cultivating their mind like they did in the fields. We have hundreds of officers in prestigious all India services. There have been commendable fighters for the army. There have been Olympic gold medal winners and scientists. But still a lot has to change I can feel.   

That’s how histories are made, willingly unwillingly. We assume, we accept, we ignore, we selectively choose, we deliberately ignore. Just to justify our present. Or our goals that we hold sacrosanct and higher than others. The tribe from the steppes whose soldiers were recruited by Alexander the great now form prestigious fighting units in Indian military. Times change. The rulers change. Nationalities get redefined. Boundaries change. Names change. People change. Languages change. But what doesn’t change is the same age old virus of hate, fear and greed. It keeps alive in one form or the other. What drove people thousands of years ago to beat their basic fears still drives in a technology-sharpened manner.   

The Window

 

‘The Window’ is a beautiful Persian movie. No big efforts at super-heroism, no ironies of heart-breaks, no bombastic romance, no gooseflesh rippling drama, no thunder-stricken rigmarole of saving the planet from the aliens. It’s not about chafing thoughts, it’s all about the frolicking gaiety of common emotions in the life of common people.

Beyond the grinding millstone of bigger caprices, it’s about sublimated emotions. It creeps genteelly like a flowery vine. It’s a long-drawn painting of beautiful hills, smatterings of snow on the slopes, chatty streams, green pastures and a sense of virginal peace to tow all these along. There are no chivalric, lionized doctrinaires delving into deep mysteries of human existence. It’s a gently flowing painting on a self-absorbed canvas. The human characters simply add to the soft shades of the softly evolving painting.

In his small world, little Ali takes soft, chiming steps to be a nice human being. With a working-man’s prudence, he contrives a canvas and paints his simple pictures using pomegranate juice, egg yolk, charcoal and leaf paste. He paints to bring a smile to a girl who is bedridden and cannot come out to play. The old, reclusive painter who teaches him to paint has an unfinished painting by his son who has gone missing.

The missing young man loved portraying virginal, untouched scenes. He has left an unfinished painting of a lone tree on a hilltop against the background of snowy peaks. As a sort of gurudakshina for his old painting teacher, little Ali roams around the hills to find the location of the tree in the unfinished painting. He finds the place and this is where the old man comes across the grave of his lost son.

Then the caravan of life takes Ali’s family away. Before they move, little Ali gives their small TV set to the sick girl’s poor family. She already has started smiling looking at those softly drawn pastures, streams, sunrises and hills painted by Ali. Through his little acts he is learning to paint a real life beautiful picture.

Hunting for a Hunter

 

During our childhood, my brother loved birds, mostly as pets. Flying birds cannot excite a child like they stimulate the poets. He fancied catching a hawk and carry it as his pet. A boy with a hawk surely would go as the undisputed leader of the neighborhood urchins.

Shikra is a relatively smaller bird of prey. The wilderness around the village was yet to be tamed. It meant we had many shikras in the sky during those days. The bird hovered in the air—at one point in the sky like a helicopter—as it took aim at some field rat among the bunch-grass, sedge and shrubbery around the village pond.

The majestic hunter caught my brother’s fancy. He mustered up his band. They observed that the small hawk suddenly swooped down, literally fell over the rat. There would be a scuffle of few seconds before it took to air again with its take-away. And here the band of boys smelt a chance. They procured a big, wicker-worked fodder basin used to feed cattle. They planned to hide among the bushes and drop the instrument made of mulberry switches and canes over the hunter, while it struggled on the ground to tame its prey.

The thing was thrown hundreds of times over a period of weeks. And finally they had the catch. The cattle feed basin landed on an impressive cluster of bushes. The hawk made a timely escape. As they approached to retrieve their hunting gear, a big black snake hissed from under it. A snake being too much for a pet, they ran away leaving the snake with its nice kennel. An elder person had to go and fetch the thing after the snake had rejected its new home, finding it reeking with cattle saliva and sunlight filtering through the narrow chinks.

A Laborer of Love

 

The early winter of mid-November carries a sort of primeval magic and brings vanloads of smiles to the little garden. With its soft brush, the early winter seeks to iron out the flaws and wrinkles in our tangled fates. Everything seems fresh as if holding onto some newfound belief. There is a joyous yearning to bloom and expand.

The scarlet, yellow and orange marigolds are dew-bathed. They are unpretentious and decent in colors and soft in smell. They don’t lead an extravagant life and are the octogenarians of the flower world.

The festive spirit seeps into the Jesus thorn. The sorrowful writhings of its prickly stem take a backseat as its red flowers take the front seat in a modest show of flowery pageantry. It’s simple button-like flower with two dull red petals twirled around with a yellow centre. A kind of Taoist symbol of the merging duality. It’s aptly named—thorns on the stem and the Lord’s smile winning over the thorns.

The yellow English rose is shapely and attractive. It’s a hardy flower and stays for a few days. But there is no smell in it. The flowery soul is missing in the flowers that have no smell and look good only. The desi gulab is redolent with fragrance. It’s soft and malleable; its petals scatter without pain and sprinkle their perfumed existence on mother earth like in homage. The smell-less hardy English rose stays for a longer time. A kind of over-attachment. It turns into a piteous corpse while still clinging to the branch. It wants to retain its beauty. The petals start decaying making it ugly after a time.  

Coleus (mukundi or pather choor) appears to be an illuminating and intuitive plant. It has heart-shaped scarlet leaves with green frills around the edges. Its leaf itself seems a flower because it’s decorated as such. It’s said to cure many diseases ranging from cholera to cancer.

Did the honeybees go away for a few days to dupe the honey buzzard because he got greedy and started coming daily? They have returned now. It’s a bigger ball. Probably they allied with another little group of lost bees and formed a bigger one. This time they have chosen a strategically more secure branch on the curry-leaf tree. Late November has many flowers in my small garden and they need not go too far to collect pollen for honey. As I stand in the garden, a delicate fragrance of wild honey wafts around me. It’s better to have little winged visitors who go dancing on the flowers. It keeps your hopes alive if you have the delicate smell of honey wafting around you.

The birds also feel better. You can make it out from their songs. Asian pied starlings are very gossipy. They always land on a tree in a little group and are always very excited and talkative. They seem to have a lot of things to chatter about. But somehow they don’t seem bitchy.

The main advantage of having cats in the garden is that the squirrels stay away. They are great at stealing eggs, especially the eggs of scaled munias. The rufous little bird with a black and white checker-work on its breast is not quarrelsome. Their notes sound sweet even when they are angry. The nest is high on the branch where the cats cannot reach. So it looks a likely case of successful hatching this time.

These are hard times. To attract love one has to make a lot of noise and be at one’s showy best. The little guy, the purple sunbird, is in a flurry. He is excited to get some love. The Parijat trees have started to retain their flowers to make seeds as December approaches. The sun is emerging above the mist with its minute-by-minute evolving compassion to give warmth after a chilly night. The little bird takes a sip of the dew-laden white blossom. It then hops around in excitement, showing exquisite energy through its flitting and flashing maneuvers. It slightly twitches its tail and shakes its yellowish underside as the furtive notes of chik-chik-fich-fich-sich-sich-hitch-hitch pierce through the air.

Marvelous is the play of passions. Its magnetic appeal makes it both miraculous and mundane at the same time. Love, and oftentimes infatuation, keeps one hostage to the core of its melody. Flying with flamboyance, chirping out its ephemeral emotions, it is calling its partner. I hope she hasn’t ditched him for a handsomer bird.

You have to work hard and be serious to retain the love of your lady. Love might be mystifying but there are practical matters to attend as well. It jumps onto the banana cone, a scarlet leaf is unfolding at the upper end, exposing another row of tiny fingers with wispy, hairy ends. It takes a quick sip from a tiny banana finger and seems sobered a bit. It then gives quieter, sweeter notes of peek-peek-peek.

You cannot just call back your lady by being all out aggressive. Aggression is devil driven. It breeds emotional self-destruction. Pain and loss are its selfish sidekicks. You have to be magnificent, primarily with maturity. You have to show your softer side. It now looks a deadly charmer indeed. And there she returns, putting his soul at rest. They are very happy to be together again and go hopping around the neighboring trees.

A Miracle that Life is

 

The game of life and death is admirably enigmatic and stays as big a mystery as it ever was. The eldest woman in our locality is still going perkily to get her old age pension. A decade back her pulse was gone. It wasn’t tragic and scary for her family as one isn’t too serious about old people these days. She was very old even then. The only issue was that her daughter’s fire ceremony in marriage was just minutes away when she stopped breathing. The marriage function was irreversible at that stage.

A new beginning at the threshold and an old chapter closing. It made the situation a bit tricky for the family. So they shifted the corpse to an inner room without announcing the news of her demise to the public. The marriage ceremony was happily completed. The girl was seen off to go to her in-laws’ place. Then they decided to check on the corpse. They found her awake and in proper senses. ‘Why did you put me in the room, I couldn’t see the pheras of my granddaughter?’ she muffled her complain. ‘But you were surely dead!’ they exclaimed. ‘Yes, I was gone to a distant place but the big mustached fellow yelled, “It’s not your time yet, why are you here?” and they pushed me back.’

Well, a few people have shared a similar experience during their near-death experiences. But it remains a big mystery. Usually we take them as hallucinations of a brain struggling to survive. But I’m open to the idea that there may be more to the issue beyond the scientific explanations.