Young Mara came rushing to me in a very disturbed frame of mind. He was then studying in Class 3 in our tribal residential school. Mara was carrying his Kannada language textbook which had a lesson titled ‘Jenukurubas of Karnataka’. The lesson began with the photo of a half-naked child clad in leaves sitting on an elephant.
Mara emphatically said that neither he nor his friends covered themselves in leaves nor had they ever sat on an elephant. He wanted to know whether the description of Jenukurubas (honey-gathering tribes) in the textbook was erroneous or whether. . .