We Come From Wind • Coonoor&CoWe Come From Wind

In the valley that was her home, the wind took on many forms depending on the season. Hethey recognised the sounds of the wind, the way she could identify her family members by their voices. When the seasons changed, she could predict the intensity of the monsoon rains or the period of dry season.

Hethey belonged to the people who could perceive the pattern of the winds; they connected to the element with all their senses, and when it felt different on the pores of their skin, or if it tasted different on the tips of their tongue, they knew change was around the corner. To them, wind wasn’t just a life-giving element; it was revered, celebrated and respected. It steered livelihoods and commanded destinies.

In Baduga, the word for wind, air, or storm is gayi. The word wears many layers of meaning. Originating from the larynx, when spoken, it flows effortlessly like the wind, necessitating a short inhale and an exhale.

“Gayi!”, my toddler (a preteen now) would run into the house from our porch, suppressing her giggles, indulging in a game of chase with the wind. Yessu gayi (how much wind!) Sadha gayi (Loud wind), Hhaa gayi (wind that hits), she had her own vocabulary for the wind at 2. She also had a strange fascination with the wind— watching it land on her tender skin, sometimes trying to grab the gust into her palms. I have seen her peers lose enthusiasm when they played together, but the wind continued to enchant her, and it still does.

For the people who lived in the mountains long before my grandparents, it was the wind that guided their living and showed the path when the pasturage had to be shifted. When the men walked across the hills with their buffaloes, in search of favourable conditions, they listened to the wind; they knew its path well enough to pick up the clues. They understood the land intimately, like a part of themselves, and perceived when there was a change in the wind currents. Certain places were named after the wind. What is known as Gray’s Hill Road in Coonoor was once called gayi maru (wind drift). Fingerpost in Ooty was known as gayi maaru kambe.

It was the wind that brought my great-granddad along with his herd of maley emme (a breed of mountain buffaloes) from his hatti of birth to a new settlement, a point connected by mountain ridges, an uninhabited space surrounded by a large stream. His herd and his family multiplied there, and today, it is a fully grown hamlet with several families. It all began with him listening cautiously to the wind.

Around the same time, a few hills away, my paternal great-grandmother came back from work in her field one evening after tilling the land. The next day, when she could not get out of her bed, it was declared that she was touched by the evil spirit—gayi uduadathey, which literally translates to hit by the wind and it was often referred to diseases that affect the mobility of humans, like paralysis or rheumatism. After a week of gayimadduthu (healing the wind that hit) did not work, she passed peacefully, leaving behind two young sons.

It was the wind that showed the way for survival and it was the wind that snatched away the lives of the young. I often wondered why certain diseases had a reference to winds. Maybe the movement and agility linked to progress needed the energy and blessing of the wind spirits.

When I went outdoors with my scalp wet, Hethey often cautioned about the same wind. She referred to the noise of the wind from indoors before the warning. I have a faint memory of the words she used during those times, not enough to conclude about the characteristics of the wind. Many a time when I did not heed to her words, I came back home nauseated. “Alladha gayi,” she often lamented during those times—precarious winds; you were warned!

“It is almost time for the wind spirits to arrive. Turn the lights off and sleep,” Hethey often warned during our vacations. The four of us cousins, including my sister and I, gathered at her house to spend our holidays. We listened to her stories about guardian spirits and wind gods with intense interest as kids, and those tales became something we could laugh about as we grew. But one day, when we were old enough to tease Hethey about her speculative tales, we heard the sounds—the ones she always warned us about.

It was our bedtime. The noise that was faint and distant in the beginning turned loud and clear in a matter of seconds. It was a clear jal jal jal, not a perfect rhythm, but sounded more like dancers with heavy anklets in a frenzy before their performance. This was the sound of the wind god she always warned us about. The sound faded as quickly as it descended. That night was my only experience with this mood of the wind that descended on Hethey’s hatti. We hit the bed almost immediately and never spoke about it again.

Hethey’s hatti was in a valley surrounded by tall peaks, two of them considered sacred, adjacent to a mountain pass neighbouring a stream. Just beyond these passes is what people of another generation called Huchu Kadavu, a point where crazy winds pass. Some elders say that the wind currents of both the River Bhavani and the Moyar meet here, giving it its name.

In Hethey’s hatti, their wind spirits took on many forms. I remember the mini whirlwinds from my childhood- the spirals with beautiful patterns carrying mud, bits of dried dung, paper and some of our clothes left to dry. It would be stagnant for a few mesmerising seconds before swiftly moving downhill with everything it had gathered. Sometimes, we never recovered some of our clothing. I also remember the chaos, and huddling into the nearest houses when the whirlwinds arrived, and the bolting of doors and windows. A grand aunt once told me that those whirlwinds were harbingers of change.

One pleasant summer, sometime in the 90s, while seated in the shrine of our ancestral deity, my cousin and I tried to determine the wind's direction by how our dresses flew. We were interrupted by a boy in our grandma’s hatti, “Wait for the gust to turn heavy, spin around with your arms outstretched, move slowly down the slope and say loudly, ‘May there be hailstones big enough to break pumpkins.’ Repeat louder each time, until your voice gets louder than the wind.”

He also told us that each time we did that, the gust would grow stronger and hailstones would fall. I don’t remember if we ever brought the hailstones with our chants, but Amma remembers the same chants, calling to the wind for hailstorms, and for them to arrive.

Many decades before I came to belong to that hatti, when millets were widely cultivated, it was wind that came to rescue after every harvest. Gayi budhutu (letting air in) was what winnowing was called. After the harvest, the grains were spread in the keri, and to complete the day’s work, people were at the mercy of the wind. Hethey used to recount the times when they would sit for close to an hour waiting for the wind. Then they would all collectively call out, “Gai Devuru, baaa! baaa!” (God of the wind—come! come!) Like heeding a command, a blast would rush through the valley to collective cheers.

For centuries in the mountains, the people in my community paid attention to the wind to decide the right time for mappu habba, the ritualistic cleaning of streams around the hattis before the monsoon set foot. When the dry gust carried the first hint of moisture, they knew it was time.

In a valley belonging to my paternal lineage, a few kilometres away, wind is a manifestation of a deity. Legend has it that a seer lived in the sacred valley and depended on the people residing in the hatti for food; but he insisted that the meals brought to him not be tasted by anyone else. One day, while delivering food to him, an ancestress carelessly ate a few mouthfuls of roasted barley. Upon learning, the seer fled, infuriated. People chased after him, and he disappeared into an ancient underground grain silo far away from the mountains. When the people pleaded for him to return, he said he would return once a year, on the day of the fire-walking ceremony. As a farewell note, the seer said he would make his presence known.

As people assemble in this valley every spring on a Monday closest to the full moon, they wait for the sign—the presence of the god who once lived here. Amidst the crowds, the strong rays of the sun and the heat emanating from the sizzling coal left to cool before the first walker steps on the shallow pit, the deity descends—a strong, swift whirlwind, fleeting through the valley. For a brief moment, everyone feels the sudden chill in the air. The wind, a sign from the world of the gods, is greeted with cheers and applause. Then the festivities begin; music and chants fill the air.

In my adulthood, when I entered sacred spaces in Hethey’s hatti along with her, many a time we were greeted with a light flurry. She had once mentioned that such sudden flurries are signals from the world of spirit beings, the ones our ancestors went to. “Who knows, maybe they are greeting,” she smiled. “Have you noticed, they come only when we enter certain sites?”

Last year, I walked through the familiar deep forest and steep slopes to Rangaswamy Peak after a decade. I had missed the giri habba on the peak and decided to visit the place a week later. There was a constant drizzle as we ascended the hill, and the mist made our path almost invisible. As I panted my way up the slope and set foot on the rocky peak, I was greeted by a blast—intense, filled with moisture, sweeping through the peak. The quiet afternoon turned cheerful as the less than fifty Badugas and Irulas gathered there cheered, whistled and whooped. I remembered Hethey’s words.

I do not know how or when winds came to be seen through animistic eyes, but, as in times of yore, they still command power, hold their space, and continue to write the destiny of the mountains.

Wind no longer guides the bandha (shifting pasturage); diseases are no longer connected to the evil spirits in the wind, and people no longer call on the wind to help separate the chaff from the grains. The world of my great-grandparents has changed drastically—sacred peaks are devoid of medicinal herbs, streams are no longer perennial, and the holy groves have only a handful of native trees. However, the winds still linger- unperturbed, the only remnant of a once-rich mountain land.

In those moments when gusts and squalls are welcomed in sacred spaces with the enthusiasm reserved for screen idols, I know what it is to truly belong. Perhaps, as Hethey says—a sign from the other worlds, of being acknowledged by the land, the truest witness of our lives. A reminder that those we came from see us and watch us; that though our lives are fleeting, they carry echoes of the elemental and timeless, for the wind never sets.

Certain Baduga names of the places mentioned in this essay were given by Reverend Philip K Mulley.