A Brief History of Rakhi

When the wolves in the woods die of mass diarrhoea, do the doe and the deer sing dulcet tunes and dance in delight, or suffer dreadful dullness and dolefully dream wistful dreams of deadlier, more dangerous days? I do not know. All I do know is that it's that time of the year again, and a strange emptiness fills my heart. I've never known a rakhi day when I wasn't slinking away from the postman's knock or the beckoning beauties or the new grad students whom the sirens use as their messenger. (The last mentioned are the most psychologically challenging: you know you've got to hate the smirking face that hands you the rakhi cover, but deep down, your heart cries for him. Did you not, with similarly unseeing pride, deliver rakhis for Haritha Hazaarbhaiya last year, and will not this trusting lad suffer the same cruel blow next year?)

I should perhaps explain my lament to my non-Indian readers, if any be so loserly as to read a brown man's blog. The rakhiis an ancient North Indian custom, and like all ancient North Indian customs, it has a history of horrible bloodshed and suffering behind it. It's a long tale I'm going to relate, my friends, and I beg your indulgence.

It is well known that the sex ratio in India is slightly skewed, there being about 51.3 men to every woman. Long were the lovely dark tresses of the ancient Indian woman, and longer still the snaking queues of lustful lads longing for the merest glance from the lissome lass. Of course, a lady can't like every suitor, and so it is that some were put to labour and some to death. But there came a time when ladies tired of saying no, the Hindi phrase for "no" being Chullu bhar pani me doob maro, shaitan ke santan. Further, reports had reached the ladies that some men found being fried in oil a touch uncomfortable, and we all know that the Indian Woman won't tolerate discomfort, even to an excessively persistent suitor.

A gentler, more humane way to refuse proposals was needed. Many ideas were considered, some of which have led to various contemporay conveniences like cold fuel, sweetened rat poison, musical electric chairs, and so on. But the breakthrough idea came, as breakthrough ideas always come, from a burger-selling, hair-gel using Gujarati called Piyush "Bobby" Shah, who was looking at quite a different problem.

It is common knowledge that North India is a strife-torn land, where killing is common and bloodshed blase'. After all, the Hindi word for the commonplace "chop off his head, drink his blood, feed him to the dogs, save the remains for shahi korma" is katl, while the Hindi phrase for the abstract and unusual term "peace" is kya ghaati batein kar raha hai, be! Dimaag ghas char raha hai kya. In such a land, people from different villages of course had to kill each other, but tragic and too frequent was the accidental killing of brother by brother, comrade by comrade, neighbour by neighbour. Brown-skinned people, as you might notice in any high-tech firm, tend to look sinister and suspicious, even when they're just going to take their hourly leak. When you sight brown skin, it's always better to lop the head off first, and ask questions later.

It was this problem of incestuous killing that Piyush "Bobby" Shah solved by using the colored turban. Each village was to have a friendly color. All the residents of that village got to have that color dyed on their turban free of cost. If, for some reason, two villages, say Rampur and Srirampur were to become friendly, then Rampur's people could wear the sporty light saffron color of Srirampur on their turbans, and Srirampur's citizens could proudly bear the sportier lighter saffron color of Rampur on theirs. One look at a man's turban, one quick look at your own village's "do not kill" list, and you knew whether to throttle or embrace this dusky stranger. Also, to avoid cheating, it was your duty to kill anybody who wore the colour of an unfriendly village.

Like all great ideas, Piyush's brainchild pervaded popular culture. To this day, North Indians celebrate Holi, a one-day voluntary ceasefire when people daub each other with all known colors, indicating that all villages are to be on friendly terms that day. On Holi day, all men are brothers and one can go on unarmed into the lush green fields of the Great Gangetic Plains and relieve oneself without fear of gruesome death.

Seeing the stupendous success of the color coding scheme, the gentle ladies of ancient India wept for joy and decided to adopt this idea for their Humane Suitor Refusal campaign. Their requirement, was of course, much simpler. It was not necessary to indicate who had refused a given man, merely to indicate that he is being refused. Colors, with their costly need for dyeing, were not necessary. A mere token of refusal would do.

And thusly came into being the lovely custom of rakhi. When a woman wished to refuse a man, she simply gave him a piece of thread, marked red tilak on his head, and called him bhaiya. Like all other Indian customs, this one is deeply symbolic on multiple levels.

1. Bhaiya in Hindi means "sucker! loser! The next batch of grad students is in. They can wash my clothes and do my dishes. And Sameer next door has bought a car, so I don't need you to give me rides. I have no more use for you. Become scare. Drrrr.!"

2. The red tilak is applied to all animals before they are slaughtered. The color red, of course, indicates blood, but also refers to Ek Handi dal chaval which tastes very good with fried fingernails.

3. The piece of thread says, "I should actually kill you right here and right now, but the smell of rotting flesh interferes with my digestion, and cremation is both costly and environmentally unfriendly. Kindly have the good sense to go far away and hang yourself. This rope isn't long enough, but this is all I can spare at the moment."

It is understood that the rakhi, once given, is final. The recipient of the rakhi, even if he be so ungentlemanly as to not move out of the district, should maintain consistently a cold attitude towards the giver of the rakhi, going any length to avoid even being seen by her. In other words, he should treat the giver of the rakhi like he would treat his own sister. Thus it is that the word bhaiya, explained above, has also come to mean brother in contemporary Hindi.

This beautiful ancient custom, started first in the sixteenth century B.C., has survived to this day. So it is that Indian lads, in a touching but vain effort at prolonging their license for lustfulness, try to go undercover on rakhi day. They go to Timbuktoo, practise deep undersea diving, take a cruise to Antartica, become astronauts and escape into deep space, hide in manholes and septic tanks, attend classes, go to work, visit their parents, and conceal themselves in other unlikely places. But long is the reach of a resolute lass, and many that have imagined themselves safe have had rakhis delivered at the very last moment. As Bill Shakespeare has wisely said, "Verizon hath no coverage like a woman determined to scorn".