A tribal family

–Avidha Goswami

While I am in college we were taken to a village called ‘Moukota’,some distance from our college to do our a study based survey. After reaching the village,everyone was divided into groups.Each of us was given 10 houses for the survey.I have done this kind of survey before and I would love to do it but that day became more and more interesting to me,because I saw one of those ten houses that fell on my part was the house of a tribal family.I got a few tribal classmates in school, college, but never got opportunity to go to anyone’s house, so this was my first chance.From the beginning, I was very interested to know about the people of the tribal community , I read a lot of details about their livlihood , and I am also known about their fantastic artistry and craftsmanship. Almost every tribal person has painted pictures of different designes like wild animals, flowers, creatures etc on the walls of their houses with colour or other materials.Then we entered their thatched shaded mud house, at first the eyes fell on the left wall , there was a dancing black lady’s sculpture,made with burnt clay or something else.Then I slowly started looking around, I saw a man sitting in a corner preparing food for their domestic animals,at the far end of the house there was a bathroom, toilet, hand pumped tube-well all of these, and next was a cowshed , on the right was a small garden of various vegetables and flowers,as opposed to a woman is sitting on the porch, eating something, most likely her breakfast.I heard from my mother that the houses of the tribal community are very clean,there was exactly the same.There was no expensive furniture in their house, nonetheless the surroundings were very beautifully clean and tidy.Seeing us, the man came up .
We introduced ourselves and he gave us a palm-leaf carpet in the shiny earthen court yard in the middle of their house to sit.The name of the man was Jodu munda,wife’s name Shivani Munda, and they have 4 children’s ;3 daughters and 1 son.A sweet family of 6 people.They are mainly belong to the munda ethnic group of India called Bhumij.Although they spoke pure Bengali, but their accent was very different from ours. Basically Jodu Muada’s real home is in old Singhbhum district of Jharkhand but they have been living here for four generations.Jodu and his wife both work on people’s land on harvest days but In untimely they sells their own handmade cane baskets and brooms or works on people’s house ,In this way, somehow their family goes away.Along with the Poverty they had many dreams. Jodu Munda said that he could not go far due to poverty but now their community have a lot of opportunities so he want to educate his childrens. Their eldest daughter is very good at studying, her name is Lokkhi,she will give secondary exam next year and she wants to be a doctor,but it costs a lot to study in medical line. Lokkhi’s school teachers and some wealthy neighbors have promised to help them as much as possible because they know that Lokkhi will easily pass the entrance exam,on the other hand, Shivani and jodu also started saving money little by little.Jodu said with pride, he had assuredness is that his daughter will be a doctor one day and will brighten the name of their community.That day they shared with us the stories of many joys and sorrows of their lives.After a while Shivani offered us some food and water ,but we couldn’t take it because we didn’t have much time .They were dissatisfied with it ,but we had nothing to do.we promised them we would go to their house again.

After leaving their house,we were completes our survey work in the remaining 9 houses and came back home in the afternoon.
The day was much more beautiful than I thought.May be I will not ever be able to go to Shivani’s house again ,But I will never forget the day I met them . In the house of every tribe or poor peoples should be born, father and daughter like jodu and lokkhi, those who never forget to dream In the midst of hundreds of misfortunes. I hope lokkhi will keep her father’s faith. I will definitely try to go to their house that day to congratulate them.

Another day I will write the story of those 9 houses. There every house had their own story.