Thamizh Nadu – Rich Rural Cultural Tradition – Rekla Race

 

Thamizh Nadu – Rich Rural Cultural Tradition – Rekla Race

About three decades ago when my mother was on her death bed, down with cancer, on Deepavali night in Delhi, I tried sound-proofing the house we were living in with anything and everything I could get my hands on, including the quilt (except the one my mother was using). I was afraid that her heart might stop beating when she heard a loud sound from a cracker. My fear was not irrational.

I was then a newlywed, at the age of two months short forty six years and my wife was new to Delhi and may at best have known only a smattering of Hindi. She may not have understood what I was doing but was with me all through that night. My mother dying on us that night could have been the worst of the worst situations. None would be available to help out, any which way. Fortunately it happened only a month later.

The morning after Deepavali in Delhi is not for the faint of lungs. The smog (combination of fog and smoke) suffocates. I do not remember whether I was in a way thankful to the then Delhi government for curbing the noise level and also limiting the hours in which crackers could be burst. Yet, the whole population must have turned “boys”, and it was the usual, “Boys will be boys”. My thanks to the Delhi government, if I had offered, would have gone in vain.

In the next few weeks, when winter truly sets in and fog (and smoke from automobile exhausts) got severe, many in my office were complaining about smog. I was not one of them. The following is the logical train of thought that connects that winter in Delhi and the image below.

 The above is a picture from a newspaper showing what is called a Rekla Race (do not ask me from where this name came). This is a sport, a competition, in rural Tamil Nadu. How would I connect this to the Deepavali smog in Delhi? I will and my genius should be appreciated!

Bursting crackers is an age-old tradition, a cultural event marked prominently in calendars printed in India (the dates may vary by a day given that India has a long east-west spread, even if we do not take the North-eastern states into account). The reason the function is celebrated in the northern states is distinctly different than the one justifying the celebration in the southern states. How old is this tradition? Millennia, if you were to ask me.

My argument against the general feeling was the tradition is so ancient and has survived that it deserves to be continued. There is nothing intrinsically harmful in it, if ...

... people do not go overboard and create problems for everyone, including ironically those who create the problems. It is in the “going overboard” the problem lies. This shows that we do not care for our neighbours. A lack of appreciation of one’s civic responsibilities. It is also an issue of social competition, “keeping up with the Joneses” syndrome, of showing off your status vis-a-vis you neighbours, your peers in the office and others.

There is also the commercial/economic aspect; new threads, sweets for relatives, visiting them across the city (if one is unfortunate to have relatives living in the same city), gifts to your corporate clients (never to your subordinates!), to good neighbours, besides the crackers themselves! Growth through consumption model of development plays its part in such excesses. Lastly, doctor’s bills and medicines. Note that the function is asymptotically ceasing to be a religious function.

The Rekla Race fills a niche in the cultural calendar of people of rural Thamizh Nadu, could be associated with a temple. Here again, the “if ...” factor comes in. If only the competition aspect of the race is only moderately celebrated, and the fun aspect is highlighted, this should be OK with me, though I claim to care for animal rights.

Our pop culture items, to be precise, movies play a part in valorising these culture-based competitions. For example, in one movie the Thamizh filmdom Superstar Rajnikant wins the hand of a fair maiden, the heroine, by winning a Rekla Race in a village. Nowadays, a few movies pay at least lip service to animal rights by claiming that no animals were injured in the making of the movie (AI comes to the rescue). This is a good thing, but too little too late, perhaps.

Yet, my concern for animals does not make me hesitate to slap down a cockroach with my footwear. This is out of revulsion, not fear! Of course, I would willingly go on an African safari to come face-to-face (from inside a caged van) with a lioness (lions are tame in comparison) if someone can foot the bill. When I was young I saw the movie Hatari, and I still love the music and scene of baby elephant walk (the music and the scene still bring a yearning-accompanied smile to my face). I cannot be sure but I believe that the herd of elephants filmed for this clip were in their natural habitats doing what comes naturally to them. This unconfirmed belief lessens my discomfort, of course!  

We are, per our own vanity-driven definition, stand cognitively well above animals, and necessarily makes us distinct from insects (which, I think cockroaches are). This justifies the Rekla Race, the argument goes. I do not buy it, at least not enough to avoid a reasonably severe cognitive dissonance.

Again on the cultural front, I have, the Jallikkattu, an age-old bull-taming tradition in Thamizh Nadu that is somewhat less brutal than the bull fights in Spain. Yet, what I have heard about how the bulls are treated prior to being tamed repulses me. They are irritated to such an extent that if done on a human being that human being would become a mass murderer. Does my culture deserve this anvil around its neck? I would think not. Yet, as freedom to enjoy one’s culture is an inalienable part of one’s freedom, it must be allowed.

Yes, anything to do with culture has to straddle a divide; I accept, with an exception.

Religion. That is for another write-up.

In ill-defined moderation, crackers are OK during Deepavali; Rekla Race and Jallikkattu too are OK in the culture of Thamizh Nadu (perhaps nowhere else).

What is definitely not OK is leveraging these issues for political benefit.

Raghuram Ekambaram