Kantara trail: The Bunt Conundrum ….
The bell-bottomed young man in the first scene of the movie, with a fancy hair style-clearly an imitation of either Vinod Khanna or an Amitabh Bachchan in the seventies complete with ear locks and a strong representation of rebellion in a society that was just getting back to normalcy after the series of wars faced by the country; is the character that struck me in the movie “Kantara”.
Recognised as the distinct representation of the youth counterculture which flared at all that was conventional and traditional, the young Bombay returned stereotype in the movie, also flared like the bell-bottom fabric. Those were the years when the young superflared and rejected the origin of their culture. The fifties, sixties and early seventies in particular hit the coastal regions of Udupi, Kundapur and Mangalore harsh. This region is where agriculture was the main occupation and where society was seeped in tradition and religious practices. These were the years when there was a burst of migration of the young from these coastal regions to the city of dreams: Bombay.
Bombay evolved like Dubai of the eighties and nineties, when every youth of these regions dreamt of establishing themselves and growing big in the city. Udupi restaurants mushroomed all over Mumbai and flared like the bell-bottoms and migrants from Udupi did not mind being even categorised as ‘Madrasis’ in the city of dreams. Youth from larger manor houses who had fire in the belly and who desired to make money and change the status of their family, were overwhelmed with the opportunities in the city of Mumbai. Added to this was the changing agrarian relations in these regions and the sweeping land reforms. Larger families meant distribution and redistribution of all the farming lands. With subdivision and fragmentation of land holdings and limited resources to fuel the dreams of the young and the need for seed money to go and start an enterprise in Mumbai; youngsters started demanding their share from their elders or surreptitiously grabbed their share of land for sale to garner resources to move to their city of dreams.
The flip side of this argument is the fact that the accent in all the Bunt families is on women; as ‘Aliyasantana’ (matriarchal lineage) exists in this community. So the women took major decisions and supported their men in their social standing, economic independence and drastically contributed to the dream of their men. With this, family values, religious practices and certain traditions and rituals like the worship of the demi-gods, the traditional ways of life and prayers was abandoned by the counterculture followed by the youth. Rejection of the mainstream culture was best embodied in the families that moved for a decade and more to some of the cities like Mumbai. Those families who could afford the resources, chose to send their children for higher education. Either which ways, young Bunts migrated to the city of Mumbai and other affordable cities to become entrepreneurs or for higher education with the silent pledge of not wanting to return to their roots.
While some of them came back occasionally to support their families and build their ancient manors, majority of them stayed away from their family homes, religious practices, sold their ancestral homes and also allowed the influence of art, music, culture and language of their new homelands to influence their mother tongue and their lifestyle. In the bargain, gods and demi-gods were forgotten, folklore and tradition was aborted and manor houses which housed the gods were sold unceremoniously.
A movie of the stature of “Kantara” brought back all the recountable stories that our elders had to share. A grandfather in the family, who was to be the matriarchal head, who moved to the city of dreams and made name and fame for himself, of how he gave away to greed of building his own life and career, of the disintegration of the family because of one wrong move, the failure to even attempt to buy back the ancestry house once the dream was achieved and the gruesome death and suffering thereafter. Everybody spoke in hushed tones about the wrath of the spirits, the Bhutas and the Daivas for the wrong done by the matriarchal head; it was believed that he was informed about the wrath of the Gods when he was ailing by the ‘Grama’ priest; but to no avail. The curse returned and the family was disintegrated, the royal lineage rejected while the manorial house and the titles transferred to those who had no claim. Memories that survived in rituals and cultural practices were lost.
Did the spirits and the gods and the demigods stay quiet? Could the Bunts afford to forget their roots. Very soon, old nostalgia returned as families have now started to revive their old and lost rituals and culture. After a century and more in some families, people reunited to renovate and restructure their old manorial houses, invoked the ‘Daivas’ and reinstate the worshipping ceremonies. So naga thambilas, kolas, nemas, mandalas, kamblas have been brought back sometimes under the garb of family gatherings by the Bunt community. The supernatural forces have forced us back to nature and to the worship of nature and to our roots.
The idea that we come from somewhere which our ancestors forgot has come back to haunt us. As individuals, movies like “Kantara” have enabled us to understand the importance of our roots, the need to find our roots or else the greatest learning is that: we will deprive our future of their enriched cultural soil, destroy the very premise of who we are and where we belong as individuals.
Well a tree can never live without its roots and hence a tree can never forget its roots, so then how can we as individuals? And so the story continues with: Once upon a time there lived a king……
