Journeys to the Edge: In the Footsteps of an Anthropologist

Seeking the Quiet People

Seeking the Quiet People First Steps With Trudy and baby Heather safely situated atop the hills, I could begin looking for groups I might study. In 1908, F. Dahmen, a Jesuit, published a thirteen-page article on Paliyans, some of whom were employed at a Jesuit-run coffee estate midway up the Palni Hills. Within a few days I learned that the coffee estate remained in operation. Better yet, I heard that a dozen Paliyan families still lived and worked there. Busing part way down the hills again, I walked in through the savannah with an elderly Basque Jesuit who offered to show me the way. He was a good guide, years in the hills having turned him into a fountain of practical lore about the plants and animals we encountered. After half an hour’s brisk walk on our grassy footpath, I saw a middle-aged man approaching who could only be a Paliyan. He was diminutive beside the old priest, yet what struck me most was that he stood tall, looked the priest straight in the eye, and spoke in a direct and confident voice. This surprised me, given his people’s reputation for being quiet and timid, but I knew nothing at all yet about their manner of interacting with those whom they trust. It was a great relief to me not to be drawn into their conversation, for many of their words and their pronunciation were strangely unfamiliar. You can imagine my excitement, though, as I watched and listened. When we reached the coffee estate, some quarter of an hour later, it was more modest than I had expected. I still have a mental image of the 22 compact cluster of simple stone houses, sheds, and a whitewashed church, overhung by ancient shade trees and surrounded by small fields. Because it was Sunday, many of the workers were sitting quietly in the shade. The residents of the estate appeared to be solely Paliyans and European priests. And, the Paliyans . . . oh joy! In their part of the tiny settlement I found men, women, and children of all ages. When I approached them, several adults and youngsters came forward cheerfully to find out who I was, without being bid by my companion to do so. Although the adults dressed in the well-worn clothes of Indian laborers, they were much as I had expected in physical appearance. The tallest men stood barely five-foot-two. Their facial features were diverse, but distinctive; many had short, tightly curled hair, unlike the straight locks of the Tamils; and they were not as dark as most of the people I had been seeing in the neighboring plains. During the half day I spent there, I learned that one Jesuit was a renowned hunter who knew the hills and forests intimately. He was a person called to help when a tiger in the region became a man-eater. Between them, the Jesuits and the estate Paliyans described the nature and approximate whereabouts of some ten Paliyan bands and then gave me the names of individuals in each locale who could help in contacting the groups I sought. This was a solid beginning. Their leads and the sketch maps we made were detailed enough to launch me on my own effective survey. Plunging into Another World Using country buses as far as they went, then continuing on foot or by rented bicycle, I paid brief visits to several of what I judged to be especially promising groups. This survey plunged me into another world economically as well as culturally. I would set out on my survey with a hundred rupees in my pocket (approximately twenty dollars in those days), travel by bus, stay in hotels and hostels, eat in restaurants, and buy such things as cups of coffee and toothpaste along the way. When I returned home, two weeks later, I would usually still have a quarter of my money left! The slow, open-windowed country buses cost only one cent a mile; a three-course dinner of rice with vegetable curry, then with miLagutaNNi1 (literally “pepper water,” the basis for the West’s mulligatawny soup), and finally with buttermilk, was a mere nineteen cents; Seeking the Quiet People 23 and a brass tumbler of the superb rich south Indian coffee cost but three or four cents. The hotel beds even had mosquito nets. So-called Brahmin eating hotels soon...