Visiting the Asur
Recently ,I got the opportunity to visit a hill station in Jharkhand known as Netarhat with my cousin who was there to know more about a tribe called the Asur. The very first thing that came to my mind was, “Are they really Asurs?” People always told me that Asurs are like monsters that kill people. I had lots of questions and very negative thoughts too.
When we visited their village to know more about them and their culture, I came to realise that they were actually very good people and very down to earth as well. They worship Ravan as a knowledgeable person. All the doubts that I had slowly got cleared.
We then met Sushma Asur (a poet belonging to the Asur tribe) and meeting her is now one of the biggest highlights of my life. She told us her story and her tribe’s story. They worship the Nature God. They use home remedies to solve many of their problems.
Local ways
One thing that stuck to me was when she said that during summer, they kept the leftover rice in water and they would later have it with pickles or saag or onion to make the body cool.
I related to this as my mother used to do the same thing. She used to say that it will protect us from heat waves. Every weekday, we would have our meal in a leaf plate (shakhua bat). Actually, my mother was adopted by a Sarna family (later converted to Christianity) at the age of 13. My grandparents passed away due to some disease.
