Ovi — Kalyan Varma

An Ovi — a traditional Maharashtrian folk poem — that talks about the wolf and the Dhangars, and the beauty of both having co-existed since ages with acceptance and respect.

I tend my goats and my sheep
across these wide open grasslands.

The snakes move through the dry grass,
the eagles circle high above,
the chinkaras bound across the ridge,
the hares dart between the rocks.

I have walked this land a thousand times.
I know where the water runs sweet
and where the grass stands tall.

I have walked far, seeking good pasture —
across the plateau, over the hills,
through the heat of the Deccan summer.

And always, on the horizon,
or just beyond the fold of the land,
he is there.

We seek the same things —
food, water, safety, a place to rest.
We share the same grassland.
We have always shared it.

He keeps us on our feet, this apex predator.
The grassland is complete with his inception.

The Ovi is a form of traditional folk poetry from Maharashtra, sung by women during daily tasks — grinding grain, carrying water, tending children. Over generations, the Dhangars have woven their own experience of the grasslands into this form, creating songs that carry their ecological knowledge and their philosophy of coexistence.

This Ovi speaks of the relationship between the shepherd and the wolf — the same relationship Mahendra Kathal described when he first invited me to understand the grasslands. Not as predator and prey, not as enemy and victim, but as two creatures bound to the same landscape, each making the other stronger.

A Dhangar who loses lambs to wolves does not see the wolf as a threat to be eliminated. He sees it as a pressure that keeps his flock alert, his dogs vigilant, and himself attentive. The wolf, in the Dhangar view of the world, is what makes the grassland whole.

It is a philosophy accumulated over centuries of walking the same routes, season after season, generation after generation — a knowledge system as sophisticated as any written ecology, carried not in books but in song.