What is the taste of the meat of dead cattle?

Baluta, by Daya Pawar, first appeared in print in 1978. The book is set in Mumbai and rural Maharashtra in the 1940s and ‘50s and describes in detail the practice of untouchability and caste violence and how the Dalit communities featuring in the book fought for their dignity. In this excerpt from the first translation of the book by Jerry Pinto (Speaking Tiger, June 2015), Daya Pawar, born into a Mahar family, is made to go back to his childhood by a question posed to him about a Mahar eating practice.

"So have you eaten the meat of dead cattle? Tell me honestly, how does it taste?" I was asked recently by an intellectual at Sahitya Sahvas, a writers’ colony in Mumbai. The question took my breath away. I answered in some confusion: "When I ate it, I was not at the age at which one remembers tastes. I only knew how to assuage my hunger, by filling the hole in my belly. During a famine, Vishwamitra ate the leg of a dog. During the great war, the Maratha platoons ate the meat of horses. So I won’t talk about the dead cattle that I may have eaten."

But it is true that the death of cattle brought great excitement to the Maharwada. It is also true that if the animal had died falling off a cliff, the excitement was even more acute. Such an animal’s flesh would be fresh. News that an animal had died in the wilds did not take long to get to the Maharwada. It would pass along faster than the telexes of today. When the vultures and kite began to circle, like aeroplanes, the Mahars would locate the fallen animal. They would rush to get there before the birds picked the carcass clean.

How many vultures? Fifty or so. Their wings flapping, they would make strange sounds, ‘Machaak machaak.’

[Social reformer] Annabhau Sathe has compared vultures to the velvet-jacketed sons of money-lenders. If you threw a stone at them, they’d flap and move away a little but their greed drew them back to the body. They probably hated the Mahars. After all, we were snatching food from their claws. Their cruel eyes, their sharp beaks! Were they considering me as a possible snack? I would wonder. "It’s been a while since we’ve had a good cut of meat in the Maharwada," many an aged person would be heard saying. "I’ve forgotten what it tastes like." Taking whatever was to hand, pots, pans, dishes, ghamelas, the Mahars would run. Until the last strip of skin had been cleared, no one took a break. The women would chatter excitedly with each other. Children our age would be delighted for an entirely different reason. Just under the hide was a membrane that could be used to make musical instruments like the dafli and the dholak. A piece the size of a lota or an empty rolling board was enough. Stretched out and left to dry in the sun, it would thrum like a percussion instrument in a day or two.

Carrying a dead cow is killing. Its dead weight is enormous but only two men would carry it. All four of its hooves would be tied and a bamboo would be inserted between them, a huge needle threadled through the gap between its legs. It looked as if a palanquin were being carried. When it was a cow, the sight of those pathetic eyes turned sightlessly towards the sky would chill me. Those eyes haunt me still. My mother’s eyes and a cow’s eyes showed remarkable similarities, it seemed to me. When it was our family’s turn to carry the carcass, my mother would have to do it. I could not bear to see her struggle for breath. I wished I were a little older, so I might be able to lessen her burden.

The carcass was distributed among the entire community. It was divided according to annas in the rupee, so that one Maharwada meant one rupee. Each family had a different share. One family might be entitled to half—or eight annas, as a rupee then had sixteen annas; another might get just one-and-a-half anna. These divisions and entitlements reflected our social structure. If a family was large, it got a smaller share.

Within a family, the male siblings were entitled to portions of the share. If you had a larger share, you were worthy of respect. Those who got large shares were seen as our elders and betters. Our share was two annas in the rupee, one-eighth of whatever the Mahars were given. The suffering of those whose share was one or two paise (one-hundredth or one-fiftieth of the whole) was inhuman. Into some houses, half the carcass would go; into others, it would only be the intestines, the cartilage, the offal.

The animal was divided according to the gudsa ... a name for the animal’s bones. I remember some of those names even today. The one near the back, we called "dhharya." The one above the fetlock, we called "chaaklya" and the one above the knees, "metya." The Mahars would fight over these bones. Sometimes blows were exchanged. The women would pull each other’s hair, and abuse each other’s mothers. Even today, the struggle for the bones continues. It’s a struggle over who should get the cut of meat with the gudsa. And everyone curses and swears, so much abuse flowing that it covers the whole carcass, from the tip of the horn to the end of the tail. I remember one of the scenes of this division.

There was a huge boulder in the Maharwada. There were hollows in it, which looked like vessels of different shapes carved into the stone as if it were wood. Some old ladies would recount their childhood memories: "We would sit and eat on this boulder. You could break the gudsa easily on the edge of the boulder. The gudsas of those days! How thick the blood that oozed out of them." Who knows why but this would bring back my school history text books.

Illustrations of primitive men sitting at the mouth of their caves. A fire in the middle. The carcass of an animal on the spit. Teeth tearing into the meat. I could see a relationship somewhere, or so I would think.

The Mahars worshipped Bhaadhava, whose origin was recounted in folktales that were full of magic and miracles. Balls of flour would be boiled and then worshipped. The story goes that at some time in the distant past, a Mahar had killed the patil’s buffalo. It was in the month of Bhadrapad (around August-September), a time of hunger for the Mahars.

The villagers suspected the Mahars and came to the Maharwada to check. The aroma of meat came to their noses. How could it not? It was being cooked in every Mahar home. The Marathas were jubilant. Now they had the Mahars where they wanted them; they would beat them to within an inch of their lives. At that very moment, the Mahars were praying for Bhaadhava’s intercession. "We will never forget you," they promised. And that was it! Every vessel, every plate was filled with snow-white balls of dough where once the meat was. And since he saved us from this difficulty, we began to worship Bhaadhava.

But consider this. If half a carcass were to be brought into a Mahar home, it would not be consumed in one sitting. And where did they have fridges? So what did they do with so much meat? They would dry it. They would cut it into thin strips called chaanya. These would be dried by the fireplace. The smoke would turn them bright red. I don’t know how the Mahars learned to do this but when I read that they smoke pork in the West in the same way, I felt proud of the Mahars. When the chaanya were dry, they would be cut into pieces which were called todkya. These were held in reserve for the bad months of Shravan and Ashadh. Sometimes, a beautiful white fungus would grow over the todkya, or maggots would sprout on them. The young ones were given the job of drying them again in the courtyard, guarding them with sticks. Not one part of the animal would be wasted. The fat was reduced and burned in lamps in the houses and the bones were sold to the Muslim who came to the village.

You’ve probably read of the way the yak is used in the tundra. "Chaanya," "todkya," these must sound like new words to you. This brings back a joke about these words from childhood. Dhondu Bapu’s tamasha group from Kothul was famous in those days. Bapu was a colourful character. His face bore the marks of the goddess and was as black as the bottom of a frying pan. His eyes were squint. He played the songadya, the clown. When the king sentenced him to death by hanging (phaansi), he would say, "Oh I’ll take faashi with pleasure." The audience would roar with laughter.

The Mahars got the in-joke. Faashi was one of the tastiest bits of an animal. The higher castes, of course, didn’t get it. While they might not have known these words, some of the Marathas had developed a taste for the meat. A Maratha youth would drop by our house. I won’t use his name, for these revelations might hurt him. He would eat beef on the quiet and then threaten us with dire consequences if we told on him in the village.

One day, I filled my pockets with crisply roasted chaanya and went to school. I was going to sneak off to the back of the school in the break and have myself a feast. All went as planned but a Brahmin friend turned up and asked, "What’s this? Eating alone?" I flushed with embarrassment and mumbled, ‘Oh nothing, just some crunchies’ for want of a better answer. "How do they taste?" he asked. "Come on, give us a taste." I didn’t know what to do. Here I was, about to pollute a Brahmin. What if the village found out? Now he began to plead for some. I gave in, gave him some "crunchies."

He loved the taste. He spread the word to his friends. They were also Sonar-Shimpis, upper-caste boys, and they wanted the "crunchies," too.

When the examinations were close, all of us would sleep in the school. The teacher would conduct night classes. He would rouse us at dawn. When Aai came to sell fodder, she would bring my lunch with her. She would grind mutton on the grinding stone and place the cooked mince on a bhakri.

One day, who knows how, a couple of my friends got hold of my bhakri and wolfed it down. They grew to enjoy the taste. So that I might not starve, they would bring me their poli-bhaji in exchange.

It was easy to tell the difference between the taluka and the village. The upper-caste boys treated me as an equal in the taluka school. I had the run of their homes, except for the kitchens. Mhase and Shahane were special friends.

It wasn’t that I had some agenda; that I wanted to pollute my high-born friends. It was all innocent, childish fun. And later I would realize that my friends had known what they were eating all along but did it all the same.

[...]

While on the way to the Agasti Temple, I remember seeing a procession of about four to five hundred men on their way to a meeting in a nearby maidan. Some had blue caps on. Their leader was carrying a blue flag. Some were shouting Dr Ambedkar’s name in praise. I remember seeing Babasaheb Ambedkar at Kawakhana: fair face, high forehead, a long sherwani and surwaar, a stick in his hand. He was giving a speech at the neighbourhood community house. I was too young then to remember what he said. Even his face is vague in my memory. At this time, when I should have been attending his meeting, I was flirting. This is one of my intense regrets. I don’t even remember what the subject of the meeting was but I did see Dadasaheb exercising his authority over everyone. Sturdy, fair, young, in a double-breasted coat, he looked as noble as a character in a play. But I did not repeat the mistake I made that day. I began attending meetings of the Republican Party of India.

I remember that at the time of the Agasti Temple fair, there would be a meeting at the Mahar kund. The one in front of the temple was the Ram kund. I did not know why the other was called Mahar kund. Later, I learned that when the Mahars came for the fair, they were not allowed to drink from the Ram kund. It is said that they fought the temple trust and got a kund assigned to them. The land around this had been usurped by farmers who were ploughing it illegally.

This was an issue that caused much heated debate. Babasaheb had come to Kotul, a village beyond ours, and left again. His radical views were beginning to have an effect on the hinterland too. In village after village, the Mahar community stopped stripping carcasses and eating the flesh of dead cattle. Revolutionary songs were driving social change.

The community was shedding its old ways, as a snake moults.

One of Babasaheb’s stories, the tale of the drumstick tree, had reached every Mahar home. There were once four brothers who felt ashamed to do any work. Outside their door grew a drumstick tree. In the night, they would sneak out and break off its fruit and manage somehow. One day a relative arrived and cut down the tree. Only then did the brothers set to work. This story illuminated what our share—our baluta—had done to us. Refusing to do the traditional work that was expected of us began a revolution in the villages.

If I was attracted to revolutionary movements at a young age, the credit must go to Javji Buwa. He was an old man but made of stern stuff. His body was as hard as an iron rod. He was like a grandfather to me. His one-storeyed house towered over ours. And in just such a manner, Laxman towered over the movement in the Maharwada. He had been elected to the local board. This duo—Laxman and Javji Buwa—travelled tirelessly to spread the word in the taluka. They would go from village to village, urging the Mahars, in the language of the unlettered, to refuse demeaning labour, to live with self-respect. They had gathered some young men and divided them into groups that went into each village. Those who still did the old jobs went in fear of them. Those who stripped dead cattle or ate its flesh were called to the village square. Kerosene would be poured over the dead animal so no one could eat it. If the offenders listened to reason, well and good. If they did not, their faces would be blackened. Then they would be made to look at their faces in the water in a clay shard, since there were no mirrors.

An excerpt from Daya Pawar's Baluta, translated by Jerry Pinto. Reproduced with the permission of Speaking Tiger.