Perhaps the internationally renowned British anthropologist Harry Verrier Elwin had his wife Kosi in mind when he wrote on the Gond tribe 58 years ago. Kosi, a Raj Gond tribal, now walks with a stoop. She is 75, lives with her son and grandchildren in a tiny thatched hut of mud-plastered bamboo. And she calls how the anthropologist abandoned her when he was through with his work on aboriginals some time in 1950-51.

About 275 km from Jabalpur down the road to Amarkantak, a kuccha road from Karanjia leads to Raitwar village. The name of Harry Verrier Elwin won't take you to the house where Kosi lives. Her son Vijay Elwin's name will.

Sitting on a worn-out mat in a dark corner of a small room lit by a 40-watt bulb, she still feels shy talking about Elwin, whom she calls `Bade Bhaiya.'

``I used to go to his school at Patangarh near Karanjiain 1939-40. One day Bade Bhaiya came to me and told me that if he would marry anyone, it were me. I was then 13 and he was 40,'' Kosi says. Elwin, in his book Songs of the Forest written and published in January 1935, had admitted that ``the tribesmen of the forest do not yield their secrets readily.'' And several anthropologists and sociologists cite Elwin's example as ``participant observation'' methodology, according to which he went to the extent of marrying a tribal woman to minutely study the tribe.

Elwin's associate Shamrao Hivale talked to Kosi's parents. The marriage was in accordance with the traditional Gond rituals. After the marriage, she as per Gond traditions shifted to Elwin's palatial house at Patagarh.

``The house was too big with lots of servants. I never had to cook. But then I hardly used to communicate with him. He had just picked up Chattisgarhi Hindi and I was in the process of learning it. I used to play around and watch Bade Bhaiya reading and writing most of the time,''she says.

It is then when Elwin had written a book on the Baiga tribe, another tribe in this area. He was the first anthropologist to describe sexual behaviour of these tribes.

In the preface of one of his books, he wrote: ``This is one of the first books in which the sexual life of an Indian tribe is discussed with any kind of intimacy.''

In 1940-41, Elwin took her to Bastar, where he went as census officer and honorary ethnographer. But as usual, Elwin was more interested in studying the tribe. Here he ``used'' Kosi to understand the tribal people.

He wrote in Maria Murder and Suicide: ``Between 1935 and 1942 I made many tours in this enchanting land among these enchanting people. On the earlier tours, I was accompanied by my friend Shamrao Hivale whose amazing sympathy and insight helped me to catch my first vision of Maria culture. Later, I had the support of my wife who, being herself a Gond, was able to get quickly in touch with the people and immediately established a friendlyatmosphere.''

Kosi was taken to several places -- Calcutta and Bombay. She recalls living in a big Bombay hotel, which was identified as Taj by his son Vijay Elwin. She had met Jawaharlal Nehru there, her son says. She had two sons from Elwin. ``Jawahar resembled his father and Vijay me,'' she says.

She remembered Elwin's sister Eldith. ``She used to love me a lot and had stayed with us for several days,'' she says.

Some time in 1949-50, Elwin shifted to Shillong as Jawaharlal Nehru's special advisor on tribes. ``Vijay was one-and-a-half year old, when he left us. He took Jawahar along to Shillong, where he married another woman Lella,'' she says.

Kosi doesn't know why she was dumped by her husband. In her broken Chattisgarhi Hindi, she says: ``Jaisa likha hain vaisa hota hain (As luck would have it...).'' Her son Vijay says : ``We were told that father had mentioned somewhere in his book that he had divorced his first wife. He had taken ex parte divorce.'' Kosi knows how to read and write hername, but she does not recall that she was divorced.

``He had left us with Shamrao Hivale and had shifted us to a big house in Jabalpur. He used to send Rs 25 a month for our maintenance,'' she says. Elwin died in Delhi in 1964 after a heart attack.

``Hivale ill-treated us thereafter. I shifted along with my son to my ancestor's house here. Later, when Jawahar was ill-treated by his step-mother, he also joined us,'' she says.

Life continued to be tough. Jawahar had joined Assam Rifle as soldier. Vijay too joined the army. Both left their jobs, Jawahar because he wanted to be with his mother and Vijay to fight for the huge property that his father had left behind.

Jawahar began drinking heavily and died due to cirrhosis. Vijay opened a photographer's shop. Vijay claims that about 60 acre that belonged to his father in Patangarh was sold off by Hivale and the rest went to Lella. Vijay is now jobless.

Kosi lives with Vijay, his wife and three grandchildren. The MP government has started giving her amonthly pension of Rs 600. ``This is all I have to keep my family survive.''

There's no bitterness when she remembers her eight-nine years with Elwin. She has kept a passport-size photograph of Elwin, another of Elwin with Frank Moraes and Acharya Kripalan.