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Inhabiting the Konkan region, the Halvakki Vakkals have an
intriguing, if somewhat shrouded past. Today they dabble in faith and
herbal cures which, judging by the vast number of patients, is a
thriving occupation.
The priest one of the temples of the
Gokarn Complex sits on the cowdung-plastered floor of his
low-ceilinged, freshly white-washed house and offers to read our
horoscope. He is a polyglot, he claims and proceeds to utter sample
phrases in Sanskrit which he described, not very modestly, as the
purest, Hindi with a distinguishable southern slant; Konkani which
differed somewhat from my Goan variety; and English-a brand which
would assure professor Higgins a lifetime tenure. He wisely presumed
that we would not understand Kannada or the other languages of
Tamilian stock, all of which and their many regional dialects he knew
well, or to use his own words, the bestest.
In which language would we like our
past disclosed and future unraveled? We propose, instead, we talk
about the myths and legends of the Kanara and he could charge us a
fee for it if he had to. He felt offended at the suggestion. Which
good son of his good mother will take money to tell you his own
mother’s story? He asked with what we thought was not mere mock
indignation.
Anyway… when all world was water,
Gokarn was created. Go means cow and karn ear and from the ear of the
cow were the holy men born. Gokarn is to the Gowd Saraswati Brahmins
a very holy land. Here came their ancestors in the last lap of their
long track from the silted Saraswati river across the Gangetic
Plains, through the coastal strip of the east and then, across the
forbidding Palghat Pass, into the west coast and then on to Goa, the
promised land created by the hammer-wielding god, Parsuram.
The Halvakki Vakkals of Karwar, about
55 kilometers away from Gokarn, had an even more glorious myth about
their origins and of the land of their forbears. They were living on
the land much before anyone else. They made the seeds from which
milk-white rice is grown. Mike-white in their language languages is
halu, and rice is akki and that is how they came to be known
as Halvakki Vakkals, the famous of white rice.
The Halvakki Vakkals might not have
been as princely as they fancy themselves, but like all tribals, they
certainly are the elite-that-was; before they were subjugated by the
more powerful ethnic groups who arrived later. In their case, it was
the Aryans who, forced by historic circumstances, raided the Indian
peninsula. As elsewhere, the new elite was less than keen to
understand their customs and ethos. The Kanwar Gazette of 1883,
edited by James Cambell, taunts them as the likely progeny of Having
Brahmins and Havakki mothers. F. Buchanan, who wrote in the 1800s
Journey Through the Northern Parts of Karnataka, perceived in them “a
Malyali connection”. E.Thurston, the author of The Castes and
Tribes of South India, though the Halvakkis were cousins of the
Budubudike described in the Mysore Census Report of as gypsy beggars
and fortune tellers from Maratha country who pretend to consult birds
and reptile to predict future events. The Mysore Census Report
elaborated: The charlatan soothsayers duplicated the chirping of
birds through a small kind of double-headed drum which is sounded by
means of the knotted ends of strings attached to each side of it.
Quite complkicated, to say the least, but certainly ingenious.
But P.F.de Sousa and P.Fernandes had a
different opinion of the Halvakkis. It was said, they recorded, that
eleven of them went to the forest on a Ganapathy day to collect fruit
and flowers and not being able to count beyond ten, they kept missing
one every time they took a head count. So they presumed that Ganesha
(elephant-headed Hindu god) had spirited one of them and in
disapproval of the divine misdemeanor, gave up his worship. More
sinned against than sinning perhaps. But truly, the Halvakki Vakkals
are a very united community and fiercely protective of their land and
their rights to it, which to their mind are eternal and ought to be
recognized as such. Several of them have gone to court to resist the
acquisition of their lands. They were extended offers which many
would consider irresistible, land for land and a new settlement,
complete with a school, a health center and a shopping complex. But
as the Halvakki Vakkals say, their bodies are part and parcel of
their land; the land is a gift from the gods. Their favourite totem
which continues to be venerated, even after their conversion to
Hinduism, is an unhusked coconut and they worship daily the basil
plant. But now they also accept Venkatramana of Tirpuati, a
manifestation of Vishnu, as their collective pride was revived by the
famous Vaidya Shivu Gommu Gauda. Gauda, a pejorative in Goa, is an
honorific as far as they are concerned. They suffix their names with
it to establish their pedigree. Once, only the headmen had a right to
use it. Their Gaon cousins were less fortunate in their endeavour to
gain social acceptability.
When there still were tigers and
cheetahs, they draped themselves with their skin and it huge down
their backs. Writing in the Madras Census Report of 1891, H.A.Stuart
stated that Gauda and Gaudo are really two distinct castes, the
former being Cavarese and latter Uriya. The mind boggles at the
vicissitude suffered by their ancestors. Even the etymology of their
caste-name was scrambled by history. Dr. Gustava oppert contends in
his original Inhabitants of Bharatvarsha, that the word Gauda might
not be derived from the Sanskrit word go, meaning a cow, but possibly
from gauda, a Dravidian word meaning a mountain.
But Vaidya Shivu Bommu Gauda’s
story is worth listening to. Two hundred years ago, his ancestor was
sitting in his freshly harvested paddy field when a sanyasi suddenly
appeared before him and asked him for a medicine for his ailments.
You are mistaken, replied the humble peasant. I know of no medicine
for any ailment. But the sanyasi insisted andurged him to follow him
into the forest. Once there, he introduce him to rare roots, barks,
herbs, resins, spices, pods and seeds. And he put them together in
the famous Belambar magic oil for paralysis and rheumatic pains.
Shivu Bommu Gauda says his great-grandson, the present dispenser of
the magic oil, treated and cured Mahatma Gandhi when he went to
Ankola, five kilometers from Belambar, for the second Salt Satyagraha
in 1927. The greatful co-villagers erected an idol like memorial for
the Vaidya and it is held in great reference even today.
The fame of the magic oil has spread
far and wide-Bombay, Bangalore, Goa, and even further. The old hut
has been replaced by a concrete structure, known as the Memorial
Hospital. It has 17 rooms which are always full and the waiting list
is impressive. So are the cures claimed by Bommu Shivu Gauda, the
present Vaidya. Among those cured are some famous industrialists and
mine-owners. On the day we were there, we met an Arab who was going
back to Oman, after seven days of treatment. He had come on a
stretcher and was now walking, with a painful limp no doubt, to the
cab waiting to take him back to Oman.
Once, as written in Madras Mail in
1907, there was a Halvakki Vakkal whose predictions were couched in
the chants he recited. The chants had been gleaned from the warble of
the feathered songsters of the forest. It prognosticate peace, plenty
and prosperity to the house, the birth of a son to the fair,
louts-eyed housewife and wordly advancement to the master whose
virtues were as countless as the stars, the power to annihilate
enemies and the tempting prospects of coming joy in an unknown shape
from an unknown guest.
Belambar now holds the tempting
prospect of return to health and near normalcy to patients tormented
by excruciating pains in the joints and the fear of permanent
disability after a paralytic storke. A famous cardiologist and a busy
neuro-surgeon we spoke to, though that the oil message might help,
being a physiotherapy of sorts but the actual formula of the oil
massage might help, being a physiotherapy of sorts, but the actual
formula of the oil perhaps had nothing to o with he so called magic.
If at all, the oil might contain skin irritants which, through
rubefaction, activate peripheral circulation and give the kind of
relief liniments are known to provide temporarily. But they thought
that the Shivu Bommu dynasty-the names, their order alternated every
new generation have remained unchanged for 200 years-probably thrives
on its capacity to motivate faith cures in the patients who have in
any case nothing to lose.
Perhaps. We saw at Belambar Lakshamana,
hardly 20, from Shirwad who was till the day of his fall from a tree,
four days before we saw him, a very promising shehnai player. He
delighted people at wedding ceremonies and now he was an invalie. But
his father was full of hope. See, he told us, he can speak. Indeed,
Lakshamana uttered some sounds. They were unintelligible to us and
perhaps he would never be normal again. But how does one tell it to
doting relatives and admiring fans who see no reason not to hope for
the best?
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