The shaman, his tune and the rats.

A boy with his steel plate

The taali and thalli bajao is an expression in animism of the Indian public that is peeing in its pants, shit scared of an alien powerful force that is hard to control. The Pradhan Choukidar / Shaman has managed to direct people into this tribal ritual primarily for these reasons, it would seem.

1. He can later ask people for example to eat baked human shit if he convinces people that they are doing so for their own good and for the country.

2. More pertinently he shifts the responsibility of solving the issue in hand to the people themselves. By a mere collective animistic ritual we have now forgotten to ask questions as to what the government has done to tackle the issue - things like how are additional beds, ventilators and other respiratory machines, health care personnel, safety equipment are being managed; how is the money being managed for the next coming weeks when there might be a deluge of sick old people wanting medical attention. This is apart from other questions like the intelligence to foresee what is coming and getting prepared to it, especially when we knew about the Chinese experience two months back.

The ritual came in very early, for we are just starting to feel the impact of phase three of the Covid 19 virus spread. But who knows, when the impact hits us hard in the coming days, there might be a similar ritual, a grander one that would act as a bigger smoke screen. The Shaman (a person regarded as having access to, and influence in, the world of good and evil spirits) has built in a foundation. 

And I bet we would collectively oblige - like the rats in the Pied Piper story - by participating in the ritual in an ultra nationalistic fervor thinking that asking questions is politicizing things and is 'bad' for our own survival and that the Shaman knows the best.