by katie bhujwala
If you blend the words mahua and music, you get something along the lines of Mahasingh, and there is surely no one who epitomises these two simple pleasures more than the man himself!
Mahasingh Uikey, pictured at Shergarh, May 2020 by Camilla Malvestiti
For twenty years before Jehan purchased the land upon which we built Shergarh, Mahasingh had been its sole caretaker. In those days, it was maintained as a eucalyptus plantation, supplying a local paper mill. Mahasingh’s role was to protect the plantation from tree poachers. Now, it was Jehan’s vision to remove the eucalyptus and allow the land to re-wild itself. The only building on the land was a little mud cottage, which the two of them shared; Mahasingh in the front room, Jehan in the back. After fixing the roof and greasing bureaucrats for a swift electricity connection, the next project was to dig a well. They would have to wait for the summer months when the water table was low enough to locate a reliable source. Until then, they collected their potable water supply in buckets from the hand pump in the village.
The mud cottage amongst the eucalyptus in 2001, just as the well was completed. Eucalyptus was introduced in India in the late 1700s. It is a thirsty, fast-growing tree that prevents the growth of other native flora around it.
One morning in those early days, Mahasingh told Jehan he was heading out for the day. When Jehan enquired what time he would be back, Mahasingh casually pointed to the sky, just below the level of the tree line and said “ मैं उस समय आऊंगा ” (I’ll come at that time). In that moment, Jehan’s sense of order was flipped as his wristwatch was rendered obsolete by the sun’s position in the sky. (To those who mock our ‘Bhujwala-time’, you now know why!) Of course, Mahasingh would actually stumble back at three in the morning, as merry as a berry. A whole basket worth of home-brewed Mahua berries!
In central India, there is no tree more emblematic than the Mahua. The succulent, berry-like flowers that plop down to the ground in March-April are collected and distilled in to a pungent, country-brew by almost every tribal household. PC: Sahapedia.
In his early years, Mahasingh and his family had lived inside Kanha National Park, in an area now known as the Bisanpura Meadows. It was the twilight of an era when hunting and gathering presided over farming. When the forest provided everything: food, shelter and medicine. When the danger of losing a young child to a leopard was a harsh reality.
In the 1970s, a nationwide project was enacted to address India’s plummeting tiger population. Kanha was one of nine parks to be declared a Tiger Reserve. Every village, including Mahasingh’s, was set to be relocated and assimilated with other existing villages on the fringes of the reserve. Each family was to be compensated with a plot of land to farm and build a house upon. In reality, it wasn’t that straightforward. Nobody had ‘owned’ land inside the forest, and there wouldn’t be a Forest Rights Act representing the rights of forest communities until 2006.
Like most meadows inside the reserve, Bisanpura denotes the site of an old village settlement. Trees of significance such as mahua, mango and the sacred ficus’ were preserved within the village and remain a beautiful feature of the meadows today. The grasslands that emerged allowed deer populations to flourish, including the once endangered hard-ground barasingha (swamp deer), pictured here.
When we talk about the tiger population today, we refer to the efforts and successes of the Forest Department, India’s wildlife institutes, researchers and biologists. It’s also important to go back in time and remember, as someone had once explained to me, that the reason we have tigers to protect in the first place, is because of the way tribal communities had lived in the forest. Through millennia, they coexisted with the tiger, living as part of the ecosystem, not separate from it. Nature was not viewed as an entity they could master or conquer but as a sacred system in which they assumed their place. Unquestioned. Loved. It may sound sentimental, but their traditional livelihood was successful because it was sustainable. The ancient tribal systems that defined India’s forest-dwelling communities broke down under British rule. With the forest strategically pursued as a source of revenue, the Government seized total control by introducing the Indian Forest Act in 1865. The welfare of the indigenous communities was disregarded on the pretext of wider national interests, and the forest was partitioned, classified and utilised. Fast-forward to today, and our remaining forests continue to be trapped beneath a tangled web of pressures for their resources and protection. As well as sustaining a rich and complex ecosystem, the forest (and what lies beneath) provides almost everything humanity needs and wants. It’s a battle between life and lifestyle.
Mahasingh represents the old world. He was borne of that soil. A Gond of Gondwana. A berry of the Mahua tree. Like many of his tribe, he continues to adjust and embrace change in a ‘spirit of acceptance’ that both breaks and heals your heart.
Celebrating Holi, 2016 - do press play!
While the younger members of our team at Shergarh have designated roles, Mahasingh holds a kind of honorary position, continuing to take care of the land and all the lives that have since arrived upon it. He delivers the start-of-season pujas. He removes ill spirits. The dogs follow him. No one really minds when he slips out of camp and returns in the middle of a random afternoon, singing and dancing, high on mahua! Our children adore him. He was their ‘babysitter’ in the evenings when they were small and we were dining with guests. It would bring such comfort to return to our cottage and find Mahasingh collapsed on our sofa in a mahua-infused coma, because that in itself had kept Kai and Ella safely and quietly indoors minding him, rather than sneaking outside in the dark to look for snakes. I would wonder what ‘social services’ would say.
Mahasingh with Ella and Kai in 2010.
Some years back, Mahasingh expressed his desire to see the sea. So, he came with us as far as Mumbai while we were en route to Kutch. His toes greeted the saltwater at Chowpatty Beach, but the enormity and unfamiliarity of that frenetic city made him sick, and he quickly abandoned the quest, returning to Kanha rather than travelling onwards to Kutch and the tranquillity of Mandvi Beach. Give him a trail through the forest and he’ll navigate intuitively, recognising an individual tree or plant like a landmark. Maximum City was a terrifying wilderness. Although, before leaving, Mahasingh did take the opportunity to procure one item that he’d had his eye on ever since those early days when Jehan first arrived in Kanha: a wristwatch!
In the midst of these extraordinary times, many of us are reflecting on the path forward. Mahasingh is in camp, growing vegetables, hanging with the dogs, taking things slow and enjoying mahua. Like always.