wandering men and a very old story -- Jogi part 1

(insert yellow vest photo... )

After two months in Jaisalmer, I’m still looking for the right group of ghummakers -- for anyone who is still moving or is interested in talking about that life. I move through towns and through the colony asking my questions, looking and looking and trying to understand who these people are and what they are doing here. No matter who I ask about nomads and khanabados, eventually we speak about Jogis. Each time the conversation is so different it seems to me that every begger is a jogi and that no one could possibly be a Jogi. This term is rich.

Regardless of whatever else is said about them, Jogis are poor. Very poor and untouchable. Like other extremely low caste people in India, they seem to be talked of often, but never spoken to and hardly seen at all. Most Indians that I am “working with” at the museum and in town are surprised that I want to meet these people and to walk with them.

Here is what I am told about Jogis from various residents of Jaisalmer:

They are beggars.
They are dirty and uneducated.
They are lazy and refuse to work.
They are snake charmers.
They are musicians and dancers.
They can’t play any instruments and hardly dance.
Their women dance in public and are prostitutes.
They are holy men and ascetics.
They are cheats and will steal all my money.
They are very holy and live off alms alone.
They have hunt with fierce dogs and are very dangerous.
They eat meat and are unclean.
They only eat three day old rotis that dogs won’t touch.
They are Kalbelias.
They won’t talk to me.
They are not very interesting.
They live on the street.
They live in the desert.
They don’t live here.They don’t exist anymore.
They They have to beg for land to bury their dead.

When I start asking too many questions of Imam, my default expert, he completely uncharacteristically says that he doesn’t know anything about them. I’m shocked. For weeks Imam has had an answer and a story for everything. Two days later we start interviewing Jogis together. But it’s a difficult business.

I am still hung up on this question of why? Why did these people become wanderers? Why did they keep this lifestyle for hundreds of years, through periods of massive change in India and why are they giving it up now? What has changed?

For the jogis, it all comes back to a very old story. Like all great origin stories, it is one that everyone in the community knows and that everyone tells differently. So when ten elders and three outsiders get together in a room it is a very confusing affair. It is not a folktale, but a bahut purana bhat (a very old story). We struggle together through the telling and retelling because they want me to understand it.