Last week, a friend of my son in the market for a job caught the Volvo to Jaipur not to appear for an interview but to buy from a cousin twice-removed, a weather-beaten and climatically challenged vehicle, an open jeep, the likes of which have no possible use in a city like Delhi, but which are plentifully seen in Rajasthan. These, what we in the family refer to as bana jeeps, are a 21st century anomaly, largely constituted of junked army jeeps that have had a makeover by specialists who know the tastes of the public of this formerly royal state.
Why a boy with no possible connection to Rajasthan, a Bengali to boot, someone who grew up in Delhi, wanted a bana jeep is something I’ll come to in a bit, but before you understand it, you must comprehend the full weight of the term bana. Young Rajput males have the term bana appended to their names, adding to their nomenclatures a sense of history and hierarchy. These were heirs, often to fortune but certainly to grandeur and power and pomp and circumstance, and it is this inheritance that empowers the word (and their deeds, as we shall see).
In Rajasthan, the banas still flourish, though there may no longer be kingdoms or indeed even fiefdoms. The bana is a peculiar creature, groomed by the family to behaviour that is unique to the species. The typical bana is to be found driving through the streets of Jaipur or Jodhpur or Jaisalmer in an open jeep, observing the rules of the road (unlike the louts who cut through traffic and crash red lights), to head out into the open, for what is the bana jeep but a vehicle that has been specially assembled for a bit of (illegal, true) shikar.
For the bana — public school- educated and polite to a fault, charming even, a great raconteur of historical deeds and misdeeds when under the influence, unable to keep a job because where’s the honour in such drudgery — likes to dress up in fancy togs as much as he likes to live just a wee bit on the wild side. A.22 is a constant companion (which, for city-bred readers of this newspaper, refers to the gun he likes to take along on these shoots), and there’s nothing like chasing a herd of foraging cheetals through the dunes, a bottle of rum in one hand, the steering in the other, before bagging one for a bit of jungli maas, which, for those not familiar with the jungle book of gourmet feasts, is the best way to cook venison, though with the environment-wallahs creating a nuisance with a ban on shooting and protected species, they’ve had to modify it for bakra in the pot, which just isn’t the same thing.
Nor is the bana an endangered species yet, though he is increasingly marginalised for failing to understand the hullabaloo about taking potshots at a fellow for talking back, or trespassing through his estate, none of which will land him in jail because there’s still enough loyalty among the ji-hukams to accept badli and go to prison in lieu, instead. Nor is the bana debauched — good gracious, no, hardly that — and the baisa he will marry, in every way his equivalent, but female, someone who will drink him under the table and still stand, or shoot, straight, will ensure he stays in fine fettle.
Yet, the bana’s life is at odds with the pace of the big cities, so it’s strange that my son’s Bengali friend should attempt to follow in their footsteps. Already, his parents and his girlfriend have refused to sit in the open jeep, under the bright sun, so it would seem that banas cannot be made, they have to be born.
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