Stories from the soil

Aradhika Sharma

When one of India’s most beloved vilayatis writes a new book, the legion of his desi fans are naturally agog to grab a copy and see what this Indophile, who loves Indian culture, society, gastronomy, faiths and history and knows its polity and people better than even most Indians, has to say. Armed with his immense journalistic experience as BBC’s bureau chief and a much published author, Tully can get under the skin of the Indian people like few other authors, even Indian ones, can.

The stories are set in the period between the late 1980s and the early 1990s — the time when India was poised on the brink of sweeping changes in the economy, and consequently in the politics and society. Upcountry Tales: Once Upon a Time in the Heart of India follows Tully’s bestselling collection of short stories, The Heart of India (1995), after more than two decades. As in the previous book, Tully visits the rural territories of eastern UP (Purvanchal), and in the process he introduces the readers to some pretty extraordinary characters. 

His protagonists are ordinary peasants, farmers, policemen, small-town middlemen and wannabe politicians. All as real as can be! The intrepidness of these unlikely heroes is quiet and modest. Budh Ram, who is a bhangi by caste, takes on the might of the Gosains in The Battle for a Temple to build a modest shrine to the patron saint of the Dalits, Sant Ravi Das. After much struggle the temple is built. There are vested interests that facilitate the construction of the edifice, of course, but in the end the will of Dalits prevails. However, they do agree to build a much smaller temple than the one where the higher castes worship. 

In Murder in Milanpur, the local thanedar is not convinced about the easy solution that the CID men give regarding the murder of the powerful Thakur. A local himself and knowing his fellow residents well, he knows this explanation doesn’t hold water. Despite opposition from his superiors and the local goons, he sticks to his guns and eventually finds the real murderer. 

The stories are about simple people leading simple lives. While the country is dealing with great political and economic changes, these people from small towns and villages are trying to eke out a living and hold on to the lives that they have always known in the face of the fast oncoming modernisation. But eventually they have to succumb, as in the case of Tirathpal in the story, The Ploughman’s Lament, who would rather use bullocks to plough his fields than use tractors. On Tully’s platter of stories there is some romance, too, though in The Reluctant Lover the protagonist, a teacher, chooses a more traditional life over the love of a good woman.

The women in his stories are not all victims — the strong willed Thakurain in Murder in Milanpur,  Radha, Tirathpal’s determined wife, in The Ploughman’s Lament and Aruna Joshi who helms the struggle to save the train to Santnagar in Slow Train to Santnagar — they are all robust women, not ready to succumb to patriarchy. 

The stories, set in the 1980s, have an authentic feel to them. There are references to institutions such as the PCOs (public call offices) and direct translations of colloquialisms such as “Are you a man or a pyjama?” Tully offers us an array of experiences of the small town and village lives. His ease and comfort with the milieu that he writes about is obvious and if the stories are linear and not very complex, the Indian-ness is undoubtable.  In fact, that seems to be one of the reasons he chose Purvanchal as the setting of his stories because he says “There’s a great deal to be said for Purvanchal and Purvanchalis.”

And then he goes ahead to say it in the seven stories of his book!