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| This week can be neatly divided into 3 activities: round the clock threshing, on
the trail of 'Gujarism', admitting defeat in the face of superior sunshine and changed
sleeping habits. The week began with my host rushing to get his wheat crop threshed as soon as possible. He has been dsitracted by work outside the village in recent weeks and was disappointed to see that his labourers had not worked as well as he was expecting. As a result of this he began round the clock threshing of his wheat. Since he was unhappy with his labourers' performance the solution is for him to be at his kilara (gathering place) day and night. I resisted the temptation to sleep out there with him since I have been feeling a little behind in other things going on in the village. I did go out to see him at 5:30 in the morning however and stayed out there with him until 11:00 at night. It was interesting to watch the way he varied between bullying, teasing and sympathising with his labourers. He knows that these men have been working for several weeks now in the heat, first cutting the wheat and then gathering it all to the kilara, so he is sympathetic to the fact that they are tired and some are literally at the point of exhaustion. However this is his family's income and if the threshing takes too long it starts to cost his family a great deal of money. His villagers may complain now that he bullies them but they may complain louder in a months time if he can't provide the generosity they expect from him. So I spent the first few days of this week going back and forth from the village to the kilara. I somehow found myself gone for two entire days in the middle of this week. Each time I was told our trip would take only a few hours and then a few hours somehow got transformed into 10+ hours (and who said alchemy was dead!). It turned out to be useful as I was with one of the major proponents of 'Gujarism' in the village. This is essentially a sort of resource network based on caste affiliation as far as I can tell (see the May Monthly Report for a bit more on this). The first day we spent visiting a Gujar who was leaving for London the following day. This man has been a good friend in my time here and I've thoroughly enjoyed his company when he visits the village. Although I had promised many times to go to his village (and genuinely wanted to go) I never found the time before this week. so we went to pay our respects and on the way I heard more about the various values of Gujars (fierce, intelligent, independent and pretty much any other positive adjective you can come up with). This man, unlike some proponents of Gujarism, does not make absurd claims about Gujars or Gujaree language. He is very positive about Gujars but all his claims can at most be labelled as biased. Some of the things I have been told are difficult to listen to with a straight face (apologies to all my Gujar friends-- I don't mean this as a detraction of Gujars). This man is also the one first adopted me as a Gujar (Steve Gujar)-- an adoption I'm proud to accept even if it's only valid in Bhalot. During out long drives to and from the village that day he filled me in on a great many things about Gujars in Pakistan. So perhaps I've hit upon an anthropological technique that should be written into methodology books-- go for long drives with people whom you don't normally get to speak to and just listen. The problem with this technique is that it's awfully difficult to take notes while driving on a Pakistani road. The following day we decided that our departing friend needed an escort to the airport. So we left Bhalot at 4:00 in the morning (I vaguely remembered that one could actually wake up at that time of day). We then headed for breakfast in Islamabad with serious Gujarism Gujars. These men have directories of all the important Gujars in government and business. They were delighted to have us drive up to their front door and honk the horn at 7:30 in the morning. All day they more or less abandoned their jobs to treat us well. I have no pretensions that this was for my benefit. This was because I was with the Chairman of the Gujar association and he's a big shot in the Gujarism world (at least in the Potohar and Federal regions). We finally made it back to the village near midnight and the only thing I wanted to do was find a bed. When I woke up the next morning all ready to write down what had happened I found that my sheet of paper with keywords made a lot less sense than it usually does. A mistake. A lot of interesting things happened that day and now I'll just have to wait for them to happen again or hope that something prods my memory. So here I'll tip my hat to Nici Nelson at Goldsmiths' College, University of London who told me in 1992 that I could not rely on my memory and I had to write up my notes as soon as possible. I should have listened to Nici. After my exhausting day I realised that I was tired out of all proportion. It was not just two long days in a row. It was this sleeping pattern which I bragged about last week plus the sun plus some long days. I just have to face the fact that I cannot go for long periods of time only sleeping in 4 hour chunks-- no matter how many of them I get. There is something in me which demands 7 hours of uninterrupted sleep sometime during the 24 hour cycle. That sleeping habit did allow me to get more work done for a while but at a price in the medium term. For one thing once people discovered that I was getting up earlier they started coming to see me earlier. This is touching and I admit that I am constantly amazed at how nice Bhalotis are and how welcoming and forgiving they are. However, it meant that if I wanted to find time to write things up then it had to be even later and even earlier-- I was already at my limit so I did what Bill Watson told me not to do. I retreated. I went to Islamabad to get as much uninterrupted sleep as my body would allow (turned out to be only 5 hours without waking up but I forced myself back to sleep). To beat the heat I did something another good friend of mine would disapprove strongly of-- I bought a day pass to the swimming pool at the poshest hotel in Islamabad (no reason to give them free publicity so they'll remain nameless) and spent an entire afternoon being a fish. While I freely acknowledge that this is antithetical to the ideas of total immersion and thrusting yourself wholeheartedly into your chosen field area I also recognise that I was getting crankier and less happy every day. Not with Bhalotis who remain, in my honest opinion, the best people one could ask for in anthropological field work-- cooperative, eager, articulate, and ridiculously generous with their time-- but rather with the heat, the mosquitos, the lack of sleep. I had planned a few days in the city for a break in June to try and organise things for the summer so I can make the best use of my remaining time, so it was just a matter of pushing that break forward a few weeks. For now I stand by my decision since my days in Islamabad have refreshed me more than I could have hoped for and I have been able to get a grip on a number of things that have just been bumping around randomly in my head. As always I am open to criticism of this or any other decision I make-- but you'll have to make a pretty convincing argument to persuade me that I should have stayed in the village and suffered. for all those past anthropologists who have stayed and suffered and managed to get over being cranky and hot all the time-- well done, you have my admiration. So having admitted I'm a weak thing when the temperature gets above 40+ and having cooled my poor brain off sufficiently to get back to village work I'll carry on. Next week the plan is to concentrate on the Qazi biraderi in the neighbouring dhok. I have a partial genealogy and a sketchy history. There are only about one hundred residents in the dhok so I hope to get a vastly more complete picture within a few days. As with all good plans however, I must expect it all to come falling down around my ears as urgent things come up from every direction. So far my collapsing plans have ended up revealing something far more interesting than what I'd set out to do-- if that happens again then I won't be upset. |
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