Restrictions such as these govern most interactions here. We meet other villagers only when we have some work. And if the person is of a lower caste, Im cant even sit on the same charpai. So the question of friendships does not arise, says Shiv Balak Tiwari, a Brahmin from Jagannathpur. Tiwari reminisces about his friend Mohammad: We still invite each other for marriages, but I have never even had water at his place, he says.
There are severe negative sanctions in store for people who break these norms. If I have water from a dhobins hands, my family will consider me as impure as her, says Kesha Devi, a bania. Restrictions about mingling with lower castes or other communities are common. But even people of the same caste have a prescribed format to adhere to. Another classmate of mine, also a Brahmin, was my closest friend. But weve never called each other by our names. I call him bhai, and he does the same, says Tiwari.
In fact, within our village, everyone is considered related by bonds of kinship (marriage within the village is considered incestuous), and is referred to as such. So a man of a senior generation is chacha, and one of a younger generation is bhatija.
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There is, however, an unwritten distinction between actual family and designated family. One may call ten men chacha, but how can he forget who his real chacha is? asks Tiwari.
However, things are not so cut and dried. First, low interaction does not mean no interaction despite caste and religious distinctions, villagers still come to each others aid. The significance of calling a man in my village chacha is that if an outsider threatens him, Im duty-bound to help him. And he would do the same for me, says Tiwari. So when two men from the same village meet in a big town, they embrace as brothers. Second, the result of such social restrictions is that villagers translate most relationships into kinship to make them socially acceptable.
Once, the man who works in my house was smoking a beedi with another. When I asked who he was, he replied, Hes my brother. I didnt know your brother worked in the factory, I said. Hes not my real brother. Hes my fathers younger brothers wifes brothers son, said he. And so friendships worm their way past the not-so-rigid-after-all social norms.
There are occasions when secular interactions are approved of marriages, births and deaths bring the village together. Festivals like the kajari also require that the women get together and sing every evening.
But such occasions are few the rest of the time, villagers live securely within their families and among the myriad chachas, mamas, babas and their wives and children, pretending virtuously that they have no friends.