The last time we were in Kanha, the closest we came to spotting a tiger were a couple of pug-marks. This time however we got lucky when we least expected it: a Tigress very conveniently parked herself on the dirt-track, whereupon she proceeded to strike a number of rather 'sexy' poses for our viewing pleasure. This video- peppered with SNT's highly imaginative running-commentary- captures our excitement at making this totally unexpected discovery. The footage has been shot by Dr. Saibel Farishta.Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Showing posts with label snt. Show all posts
Showing posts with label snt. Show all posts
Sunday, February 01, 2009
Tiger Tiger Burning Bright...
Monday, June 23, 2008
Saibel on my Takhatpur Visit
Note: Dr. Saibel Farishta recently accompanied me to the final match of the district-level floodlight cricket tournament held at Takhatpur, a quaint little township some twenty kilometers from Bilaspur. He has put his observations on his blog, which I am reproducing here:On 15th June 2008 - I had accompanied Mr Amit Jogi and Mr Shailesh Nitin Trivedi on a political visit to Takhatpur in Bilaspur district, where Mr Amit Jogi was invited as the Chief Guest in the closing ceremony of an annual Cricket Tounament Function. I was stunned to see the mind-blowing enthusiasm among the young Congress party supporters of Takhatpur. The customary felicitation ceremony was held on a cricket ground in the central part of the town, as the local Govt. authorities had refused the organizers another School Ground, where Dr Raman Singh was supposed to deliver speech during his 'Vikas/Vinash Yatra'.
On several occasions, Mr Amit Jogi's entourage was cheered and welcomed by a huge number of young Congress workers. A lot of people from the minority communities, esp. Muslims & Sikhs, were also seen welcoming Mr Amit Jogi.
Mr Amit Jogi, Mr Dharamjeet Singh and others briefly spoke to the audience. Amitji emphasized on the power of youth in today's politics and how Mr Rahul Gandhi was spearheading a campaign, to join & re-unite the country's youth in Congress Party. Amitji also disclosed that another budding & upcoming youth organisation - 'Aam Aadmi Ke Sipahi' had been formed by Rahul Gandhi, to connect with the common man's problems.
The Congress supporters thronged Mr Amit Jogi's car from all directions and the vehicle's doors were dented from outside.
There was an amazing atmosphere of 'Genuine Respect & Good will' for the Jogi family, as a whole. In between all of this - loud noise of a musical band, chanting of slogans, bursting of crackers, garlands and Congress flags - I was moved, when my eyes fell on some rurals, who just stood at a distance, far from the maddening crowd, with their hands joined, welcoming & staring at Mr Amit Jogi. Their eyes glittered with a ray of Hope for them & The Poor Man's Party - Congress.
I immediately sensed the Mood Of Chhattisgarh - CONGRESS will WIN in Chhattisgarh. Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Monday, March 24, 2008
A Day in the Life of Amit Jogi
People often ask me what I do for a living. This is what a typical work day looks like (thanks to SNT):
16th February, 2008
1100: 100th Anniversary of Christian Mela, Matkudeep (70 kms)
1200: Teravi function of Siyaram Kaushik's father, Bilha (30 kms)
1400: Anjor Singh's father's Dasgatr, Dalli Rajhara (70+90 kms)
1700: Dedication of Bajrang Bali temple, Parkhanda (Kurud) (90 kms+40 kms)
2100: Ankit Bagbahra's wedding, Raipur (40 kms)
2130: Prakash Pagaria's son's wedding, Raipur
On this day, for instance, we drove about 400 kms across four districts (Raipur, Bilaspur, Durg, Dhamtari) to attend 2 weddings and 2 funerals, & 2 public functions where I was required to make speeches. Not surprisingly, by the time we reached Parkhanda, we were already 4 hours late.
Most visits follow a pattern: you are welcomed to shouts of Zindabaad, drum beats and the lighting of fire-crackers, then you walk in a procession to the venue where they seat you on a stage, about 40-50 people- the notables of the village- garland you as people come to you with applications and other sorts of requests, then the speeches begin ending with yours, following which the organizers present you with a shawl or some such memento. After that- if you've still got time- you might be taken to the organizer's home for tea, snacks and a photo-session with his family and followers. This pattern, I believe, has endured unchanged from the days of Mahatma Gandhi, India's first mass-politician (if not before!).
The stage, for me, presents a dilemma: on the one hand, it does increase your visibility (i.e., even the back-standers can see you) but the flip-side is that it creates a 'distance' between the people seated on the ground and those atop the stage. That is why I make it a point to go through the crowd where it is at its thickest- shaking as many hands as I can while chatting with them randomly (specially the youth and children)- on my way to and from the stage. More than anything else, this last aspect tells me what I need to really know: to share in the lives- the joys and sufferings- of the people who've given my family so much love.
This clip above shows pictures of my visit to Parkhanda.
AJ
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Sunday, March 23, 2008
SNT's Holi Milan: I Dance!
SNT threw one helluva Holi party last evening. Anuj got his friend, Vivek Tank, the national award winning flutist, to perform for us; Amit Tiwari organized bhajias and thandai; and VN flew in some excellent kebabs from a joint in Mumbai. Needless to say, the occasion called for a certain amount of joie de vivre: in this clip, the youthful Dr. Farishta (Saibel's father) persuades me to dance.
Readers will note that despite my best efforts, I am no Travolta.
AJ Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Thursday, March 20, 2008
Kanha Escapade
After an exhaustive non-stop tour that began on the 16th of December last year, I decided that it was finally time for some rest. Consequently on the 25th of February, SNT, VN, Anuj and I sneaked off to the Kanha National Park: we spent one very happy day (and night) in the wilderness before a phone call rudely interrupted our brief idyll. These are some pictures of that time.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Sunday, December 23, 2007
Art: Untitled, c. 2007
This is my first oil in almost half a decade: it took ages to conceive and less than three hours to paint. Despite the obvious dissimilarity, this is the closest, I guess, the males of our species shall come to experiencing Birth.Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
The unchristened work now belongs to my father's political secretary, Mr Shailesh Nitin Trivedi, for whom it was painted: a labor of love.
AJ
Monday, August 06, 2007
Personal: Celebrating One Year of Orkuting
Reluctant Convert
Truth be told, I’ve never been a great admirer of the virtues of virtual communication: it is my paramount belief that there can be no substitute for actual face to face- mano à mano- flesh and blood, contact between two or more hot-blooded human beings (a fact, needless to say, epitomized by the sexual act). So, it was only after my Inbox was regularly carpet-bombarded with automated emails inviting me to join Orkut, Google’s social networking website, from the never-say-die, Rajesh Dulani, that I finally overcame my initial skepticism, and yielded (if only as a token of my inevitable appreciation for Mr. Dulani’s patient persistence).
During the past year, Orkut has helped me revive old (not to mention, cold) intimacies with long lost friends (at last count, 95), and allowed me to befriend many more (555 and counting). To illustrate, while on a pilgrimage to the khanqah of the venerable Sufi saint, Moin-ud-din Chisti, at Ajmer-é-sharif two days ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from a college-mate, Aseem Andrews, who is, as it turns out, presently working for the United Nation’s Resident Coordinator at Windhoek, Namibia: when I inquired how he had managed to find me after an absence of about a decade, he exclaimed from beyond the oceans, “Thank God for Orkut!” Not only that, since Mr. Andrews seemed to know all about what’s happened to me in the interregnum simply by reading my somewhat dense, soap-operatic profile, we could resume our dialogue as if it had never really been discontinued.
Party Poopers & Gate Crashers
Now, as regards the rapidly-mushrooming Galaxy of Friends I’ve never really met, well, the experience hasn’t been quite as enriching as I would have liked it to be: to put it plainly, it’s more quantity than quality. Let me explain. It’s like meeting people at a rather large party where nobody (including the host) knows anybody: with most, one runs out of things to say after exchanging the first few pleasantries (hi!- how are you?- I am fine, thank you, how are you?- I am fine, thank you ad infinitum). This sort of conversational impasse is not unlike the dozens of automated messages we are flooded with (on say, Friendship Day or Diwali), where the need or the motivation to respond simply doesn't exist. (See my entry on 'From One Computer to Another: Shubh Diwali, Eid Mubarak etc...')
To take a pointer from Dale Carnegie’s bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, we simply fail to move onto the next strata of 'virtual-proximity', which must, I guess, necessarily be based on a mutuality of shared experiences and interests (which college did you go to?- Stephen’s- O! what batch?- 1998- ah, I am your senior by a decade. Way before your time, kiddo’- Wow! is that so!- boy, do I miss those mince-cutlets!- etc. till one of them invites the other for a drink).
On the left-hand margin of its Friends section, Orkut provides a neat little hierarchy pertaining to ‘levels of friendship’. Virtual friends can be successively categorized into the following levels: haven’t met (555); acquaintances (51); friends (30); good friends (8); best friends (6). If one remains actively involved with Orkut, then there’s a fairly good probability that a lot of people in the haven’t met-list will move up to the acquaintances-list, who will in turn rise to the friends-list, and so on and so forth. As the numbers I’ve indicated in the brackets above show, the greatest hurdle is to migrate from the haven’t met-list to the acquaintances-list. From there on, it becomes relatively easier. In my case, of the 606 persons who were originally on the ‘haven’t met-list’, only 51 became acquaintances. In most of these 51 instances, I must admit that the ‘initiative’ to do so has almost always come from the other party. To enable this upward movement, Orkut offers two rather interesting options.
First, there are tens of thousands of ‘communities’ catering to every conceivable interest-group, from Harry Potter to ‘Against People Who Hate Sonia’ (a community formed in response to its rival, ‘I hate Sonia Gandhi’). Every day, hundreds more are being added (‘Free Sanjay Dutt’). It would seem that all one has to do to move to the next proximity-level is to join any of these communities that might be of interest to you. I am now a member of a staggering 115 communities (three of which were started by me). However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I actively participate in all of them; or even that most of these communities have activity of any kind going on. A majority of them are quite simply, defunct. In retrospect, the only reason why I joined most of these communities was the exact same reason why I joined Orkut in the first place: not only to stop people- ‘friends’- from stuffing my Inbox with invitations to communities that couldn’t possibly be of interest to me (‘Raipur Property Developers’) but also to avoid offending these gentle souls.
Of course, there have been a few praiseworthy exceptions: SNT’s ‘Jai Chhattisgarh’ community has done more to revive a love for Chhattisgarhi-culture and language among our youth than any other forum, virtual or otherwise, I know of. However, to get it off the ground, he had to take out several hours from his daily schedule, sending invitations, posting topics, conducting polls, and even telephoning friends to join. Needless to say, not many of us can put in this kind of singular dedication and time, which is a requisite to keep a niche-group like this one alive. In contrast, a community named ‘India’, which doesn’t really cater to any particular interest or sentiment, doesn’t require this kind of effort: yet, of its 447,417 members (!) only a miniscule percent actually participate in any kind of community-discussion. So is there an alternative to ‘communities’?
To use an analogy, if ‘communities’ are akin to ‘parties’, and you don’t really feel like going to one, then Orkut offers you a second option: its rather powerful ‘search engine’ allows you to look for, and directly get in touch with, like-minded individuals (as opposed to communities), with whom one might share a hitherto undiscovered niche. For instance, typing ‘à la recherché du temps perdu’ will fish out all those who, for one reason or another, love Proust; and then, you can while away time musing about Cambray in chaste provincial-French. Chances are you will both also like listening to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1: ‘I love the way it opens with oooo such aplomb, and then quietly disintegrates into near-oblivion’. And what’s true of Tchaikovsky also applies to most virtual dialogues I’ve endeavored to sustain: for better and worse, their disintegration into ‘near-oblivion’ has been inevitable.
The reason, I believe, lies in an unavoidable ‘structural blockage’ inherent in all virtual communication. And the only way to overcome it is to quite literally, step out of each others’ computer monitors, shake hands, and embrace. Needless to say, this requires a ‘leap of faith’: what if, for instance, this person who loves Proust and Tchaikovsky turns out to be Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant psychiatrist from Thomas Harris’ novel, The Silence of the Lambs, who preferred to eat his patients’ ‘liver(s) with a nice bottle of Chianti’ on the sole pretext that their ‘therapy wasn’t going anywhere’? Well, unless and until one decides to meet, there’s no other way to find out, is there? And this is precisely where most people chicken out, and rightly so. As things stand, web-based social networking is fraught with a variety of dangers, both foreseen and unforeseen. Allow me to share three anecdotes (one involving me, and two concerning friends) to elaborate on what I mean.
Three Anecdotes: On Being Deceived, Demonized and Deleted
After all these years, I still try to laugh the whole thing off. But somehow I can’t. Perhaps, this is the principal reason why I’ve had to turn-down requests from ‘females’ who, however valid their reasons for doing so (personal safety?), cut-and-paste a Catherine Zeta Jones photo on their profile. The fact is that ‘virtual communication’ allows you to be dishonest- to project an image of not what you really are but what you would much rather want to be- in ways that real communication simply cannot. As Amit Tiwari remarks in a particularly incisive blog-entry, "We become someone else in the virtual world." (What he doesn't quite answer is whether this someone else is actually more representative of our true selves?) Whatever be the case, any relationship based on a lie, howsoever big or small, cannot endure. Understandably, after this ‘experience’ I haven’t really had the heart- or the stomach- for similar misadventures. The risks, physical but also, more importantly, emotional, are far too great, as another friend, Mohit Singhania, was to discover to his chagrin, thirteen years later.
The point I wish to make here is this: unlike me, neither of my friends went looking for trouble. Trouble, it seems, found them. It’s kind of like that Sandra Bullock film, The Net: a cat-and-mouse tale of deception where Ms. Bullock’s character finds her entire life erased by a band of cyber-terrorists who, typically of Hollywood blockbusters, are out to take over America’s computerized-civilization. The fourth installment of the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis is also based on a somewhat similar premise (I will spare you the details, assuming that those of you who haven’t seen it might want to do so at some later date). Unfortunately, such tales are not confined to celluloid: if newspaper reports are to be believed, then instances of Orkut being involved in anti-social activities- narco-jamborees, hate-communities, classroom harassments, even homicides- are becoming increasingly rampant in metropolitan India.
And Two Antidotes?
Not surprisingly, the Mumbai chief of the ultra-right party, Shiv Sena’s youth wing, Abhijit Panse, recently agitated to get Orkut banned: his raison d’être has little to with crime per se; instead, he believes that Orkut is, well, ‘anti-India’. Nothing could be farther from the truth: more Indians use Orkut than any other social-networking website (as a matter of fact, the number of Indians on Orkut is next only to Brazilians, and we are fast catching up). If anything, Orkut has become a powerful medium for Track Three Diplomacy (more commonly known as, P2P, or people-to-people diplomacy): the ‘India-Pakistan Friendship Club’ has 83,594 members. In fact, Mr. Panse would be better advised if he were to emulate his party’s alliance partner, the BJP, which has obviously realized the immense potential of Orkut in promoting itself among its predominantly youth members: while the ‘BJP Supporters Group’ has 7997 members, its parent-body, the RSS boasts a membership of a whopping 22,853 (which is more than all other political parties combined, Congress included). Even Lok Paritran (formed by IT-savvy IITian do-gooders), a relatively insignificant political outfit in the real-world most recognized for its anti-reservation stance, has a membership of 10,185. In contrast, the ‘Dalit’ community, whose members support affirmative action for the depressed communities, number only 505. In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that Orkut is fast becoming an ideal representative of what’s happening in- and to- Urban Upper Caste India. And even as Orkut continues to draw parts of this India closer to each other, and to the world, it also shows us how fast and how far this India is moving away from its Rural, Exurbian counterpart.
As I enter my second year of Orkuting, my effort, therefore, shall be twofold: first, at a personal level, I should like to make a conscious effort to convert my virtual friendships into real-life friendships, believing that the Good in all of us cumulatively overpowers the Bad that might exist in some of us; secondly, I would want to explore ways in which this immensely powerful medium could be used to ‘sensitize’ my Urban Friends, both real as well as virtual, to the needs, the hopes and aspirations, of the India that doesn’t quite have the luxury of connecting to the world on Orkut.
AJ
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Truth be told, I’ve never been a great admirer of the virtues of virtual communication: it is my paramount belief that there can be no substitute for actual face to face- mano à mano- flesh and blood, contact between two or more hot-blooded human beings (a fact, needless to say, epitomized by the sexual act). So, it was only after my Inbox was regularly carpet-bombarded with automated emails inviting me to join Orkut, Google’s social networking website, from the never-say-die, Rajesh Dulani, that I finally overcame my initial skepticism, and yielded (if only as a token of my inevitable appreciation for Mr. Dulani’s patient persistence).
During the past year, Orkut has helped me revive old (not to mention, cold) intimacies with long lost friends (at last count, 95), and allowed me to befriend many more (555 and counting). To illustrate, while on a pilgrimage to the khanqah of the venerable Sufi saint, Moin-ud-din Chisti, at Ajmer-é-sharif two days ago, I was pleasantly surprised to receive a telephone call from a college-mate, Aseem Andrews, who is, as it turns out, presently working for the United Nation’s Resident Coordinator at Windhoek, Namibia: when I inquired how he had managed to find me after an absence of about a decade, he exclaimed from beyond the oceans, “Thank God for Orkut!” Not only that, since Mr. Andrews seemed to know all about what’s happened to me in the interregnum simply by reading my somewhat dense, soap-operatic profile, we could resume our dialogue as if it had never really been discontinued.
Party Poopers & Gate Crashers
Now, as regards the rapidly-mushrooming Galaxy of Friends I’ve never really met, well, the experience hasn’t been quite as enriching as I would have liked it to be: to put it plainly, it’s more quantity than quality. Let me explain. It’s like meeting people at a rather large party where nobody (including the host) knows anybody: with most, one runs out of things to say after exchanging the first few pleasantries (hi!- how are you?- I am fine, thank you, how are you?- I am fine, thank you ad infinitum). This sort of conversational impasse is not unlike the dozens of automated messages we are flooded with (on say, Friendship Day or Diwali), where the need or the motivation to respond simply doesn't exist. (See my entry on 'From One Computer to Another: Shubh Diwali, Eid Mubarak etc...')
To take a pointer from Dale Carnegie’s bestseller, How to Win Friends and Influence People, we simply fail to move onto the next strata of 'virtual-proximity', which must, I guess, necessarily be based on a mutuality of shared experiences and interests (which college did you go to?- Stephen’s- O! what batch?- 1998- ah, I am your senior by a decade. Way before your time, kiddo’- Wow! is that so!- boy, do I miss those mince-cutlets!- etc. till one of them invites the other for a drink).
On the left-hand margin of its Friends section, Orkut provides a neat little hierarchy pertaining to ‘levels of friendship’. Virtual friends can be successively categorized into the following levels: haven’t met (555); acquaintances (51); friends (30); good friends (8); best friends (6). If one remains actively involved with Orkut, then there’s a fairly good probability that a lot of people in the haven’t met-list will move up to the acquaintances-list, who will in turn rise to the friends-list, and so on and so forth. As the numbers I’ve indicated in the brackets above show, the greatest hurdle is to migrate from the haven’t met-list to the acquaintances-list. From there on, it becomes relatively easier. In my case, of the 606 persons who were originally on the ‘haven’t met-list’, only 51 became acquaintances. In most of these 51 instances, I must admit that the ‘initiative’ to do so has almost always come from the other party. To enable this upward movement, Orkut offers two rather interesting options.
First, there are tens of thousands of ‘communities’ catering to every conceivable interest-group, from Harry Potter to ‘Against People Who Hate Sonia’ (a community formed in response to its rival, ‘I hate Sonia Gandhi’). Every day, hundreds more are being added (‘Free Sanjay Dutt’). It would seem that all one has to do to move to the next proximity-level is to join any of these communities that might be of interest to you. I am now a member of a staggering 115 communities (three of which were started by me). However, that doesn’t necessarily mean that I actively participate in all of them; or even that most of these communities have activity of any kind going on. A majority of them are quite simply, defunct. In retrospect, the only reason why I joined most of these communities was the exact same reason why I joined Orkut in the first place: not only to stop people- ‘friends’- from stuffing my Inbox with invitations to communities that couldn’t possibly be of interest to me (‘Raipur Property Developers’) but also to avoid offending these gentle souls.
Of course, there have been a few praiseworthy exceptions: SNT’s ‘Jai Chhattisgarh’ community has done more to revive a love for Chhattisgarhi-culture and language among our youth than any other forum, virtual or otherwise, I know of. However, to get it off the ground, he had to take out several hours from his daily schedule, sending invitations, posting topics, conducting polls, and even telephoning friends to join. Needless to say, not many of us can put in this kind of singular dedication and time, which is a requisite to keep a niche-group like this one alive. In contrast, a community named ‘India’, which doesn’t really cater to any particular interest or sentiment, doesn’t require this kind of effort: yet, of its 447,417 members (!) only a miniscule percent actually participate in any kind of community-discussion. So is there an alternative to ‘communities’?
To use an analogy, if ‘communities’ are akin to ‘parties’, and you don’t really feel like going to one, then Orkut offers you a second option: its rather powerful ‘search engine’ allows you to look for, and directly get in touch with, like-minded individuals (as opposed to communities), with whom one might share a hitherto undiscovered niche. For instance, typing ‘à la recherché du temps perdu’ will fish out all those who, for one reason or another, love Proust; and then, you can while away time musing about Cambray in chaste provincial-French. Chances are you will both also like listening to Tchaikovsky’s Piano Concerto No. 1: ‘I love the way it opens with oooo such aplomb, and then quietly disintegrates into near-oblivion’. And what’s true of Tchaikovsky also applies to most virtual dialogues I’ve endeavored to sustain: for better and worse, their disintegration into ‘near-oblivion’ has been inevitable.
The reason, I believe, lies in an unavoidable ‘structural blockage’ inherent in all virtual communication. And the only way to overcome it is to quite literally, step out of each others’ computer monitors, shake hands, and embrace. Needless to say, this requires a ‘leap of faith’: what if, for instance, this person who loves Proust and Tchaikovsky turns out to be Dr. Hannibal Lecter, the brilliant psychiatrist from Thomas Harris’ novel, The Silence of the Lambs, who preferred to eat his patients’ ‘liver(s) with a nice bottle of Chianti’ on the sole pretext that their ‘therapy wasn’t going anywhere’? Well, unless and until one decides to meet, there’s no other way to find out, is there? And this is precisely where most people chicken out, and rightly so. As things stand, web-based social networking is fraught with a variety of dangers, both foreseen and unforeseen. Allow me to share three anecdotes (one involving me, and two concerning friends) to elaborate on what I mean.
Three Anecdotes: On Being Deceived, Demonized and Deleted
(1)
I first got involved with the Internet thirteen years ago, in 1994. In those prehistoric cyber-days, chatting on Yahoo! was the ‘in-thing’ (if not the only thing one could do with the then irritatingly-slow internet); likewise, at that age- 17 being the time when one’s testosterones are just firing-up- one chatted mainly to ‘get hooked’. And so it came to pass that I fell head-over-heels in ‘virtual love’ with “smittenkitten”, the chosen nom de plume of the enigmatic object of my affection (or what is more commonly known as chat-ID). We’d spend hours chatting endlessly through moist summer-nights. I learnt that she lived in Bombay (was this before they changed the name to Mumbai?); despite being vegetarian, was supremely intelligent; had a wonderful, if slightly warped, sense of humor; studied FY-Eco (short for ‘first year economics’) at Wilson’s College; and hoped to become, of all things, a fashion designer. I kept begging her to meet, and she finally consented. On the pretext of attending a friend, Ravi Patodi’s sister’s wedding, I managed to fly to Bombay; then I sneaked away from the wedding, to a restaurant on Queen’s Necklace Road (a.k.a. Marine Drive) called New Yorker. I waited for two hours, slowly drowning myself in six tall glasses of excessively-sugary milkshakes to justify my occupation of the extremely hard-to-get table, and left, thoroughly disenchanted. When we ‘met’ again for PM (private messaging), I was quite naturally furious at her. But her explanation put me at rest: “do you remember the guy on the table next to yours,’ she asked, ‘the one in the dark blue polo shirt?” “Not really,” I typed back, almost shattering the keyboard. “Well, that was me.”After all these years, I still try to laugh the whole thing off. But somehow I can’t. Perhaps, this is the principal reason why I’ve had to turn-down requests from ‘females’ who, however valid their reasons for doing so (personal safety?), cut-and-paste a Catherine Zeta Jones photo on their profile. The fact is that ‘virtual communication’ allows you to be dishonest- to project an image of not what you really are but what you would much rather want to be- in ways that real communication simply cannot. As Amit Tiwari remarks in a particularly incisive blog-entry, "We become someone else in the virtual world." (What he doesn't quite answer is whether this someone else is actually more representative of our true selves?) Whatever be the case, any relationship based on a lie, howsoever big or small, cannot endure. Understandably, after this ‘experience’ I haven’t really had the heart- or the stomach- for similar misadventures. The risks, physical but also, more importantly, emotional, are far too great, as another friend, Mohit Singhania, was to discover to his chagrin, thirteen years later.
(2)
Mr. Singhania was an ardent Orkutian, and like the me of thirteen years ago, keen on ‘getting hooked’. However unlike me, most of his real-life encounters with his virtual friends were going splendidly, thanks mostly to the relatively deserted ‘VIP Road’ (leading to the Raipur airport). That was before he discovered that his Orkut Identity- his photos, his interests, his life- had been, for lack of a better word, copied by a perverted nymphomaniac: soon, this copycat-Mohit was hosting a conglomerate of sex-communities soliciting the participation of petite Raipuriyan femmes fatale in expectedly-depraved orgiastic rituals. To use Mr. Singhania’s own words from his hedonistically funny blog-entry, ‘Why I left Orkut’: “this guy had the balls to use my snap on his profile and then join adult communities on Orkut and finally harass the limited number of females on my friends list. Already the number of females was limited and thanks to him, I was almost about to look like a total gay on Orkut with 99% male friends. Can somebody get me this guy’s address?” Well, as it turned out, another friend, Amit Tiwari, was able to find Mr. Singhania’s elusive bête noire, after which I am happy to report he is back to his good ol’ philandering ways on Orkut. He’s even found a way to ‘talk to chicks’ behind his somewhat nosy ex-girlfriend’s back: rather than scrap, he now ‘messages’ his nice little sonnets to them (like his beefy t-shirts, he’s discovered that ‘one sonnet fits all’).(3)
A third anecdote involves Mr. Singhania’s benefactor, Mr. Tiwari himself: it illustrates how even a relatively minor ‘dispute’ can turn grotesquely ugly. Like most men of his age, he is a man of strong opinions (to see what I mean, do visit his aptly named blog, 'Chaos and Creation'): he breathes Nietzsche (but thankfully, is spared the Great Philosopher’s descent into madness). Without going into its context, Mr. Tiwari found himself engaged in a somewhat heated textual-parley with a Raipur-based Sikh boy studying at IIT, Powai. Unable to beat him in this debate, the IITian then proceeded to ‘hack into’ not only Mr. Tiwari’s Orkut account, but also his email accounts (which he used for business purposes), and quiet skillfully, deleted them: suddenly, Mr. Tiwari was without a ‘virtual identity’. As with Mr. Singhania’s case, he ultimately managed to locate his nemesis in the real-world, and persuaded him to restore his virtual life. The point I wish to make here is this: unlike me, neither of my friends went looking for trouble. Trouble, it seems, found them. It’s kind of like that Sandra Bullock film, The Net: a cat-and-mouse tale of deception where Ms. Bullock’s character finds her entire life erased by a band of cyber-terrorists who, typically of Hollywood blockbusters, are out to take over America’s computerized-civilization. The fourth installment of the Die Hard series starring Bruce Willis is also based on a somewhat similar premise (I will spare you the details, assuming that those of you who haven’t seen it might want to do so at some later date). Unfortunately, such tales are not confined to celluloid: if newspaper reports are to be believed, then instances of Orkut being involved in anti-social activities- narco-jamborees, hate-communities, classroom harassments, even homicides- are becoming increasingly rampant in metropolitan India.
And Two Antidotes?
Not surprisingly, the Mumbai chief of the ultra-right party, Shiv Sena’s youth wing, Abhijit Panse, recently agitated to get Orkut banned: his raison d’être has little to with crime per se; instead, he believes that Orkut is, well, ‘anti-India’. Nothing could be farther from the truth: more Indians use Orkut than any other social-networking website (as a matter of fact, the number of Indians on Orkut is next only to Brazilians, and we are fast catching up). If anything, Orkut has become a powerful medium for Track Three Diplomacy (more commonly known as, P2P, or people-to-people diplomacy): the ‘India-Pakistan Friendship Club’ has 83,594 members. In fact, Mr. Panse would be better advised if he were to emulate his party’s alliance partner, the BJP, which has obviously realized the immense potential of Orkut in promoting itself among its predominantly youth members: while the ‘BJP Supporters Group’ has 7997 members, its parent-body, the RSS boasts a membership of a whopping 22,853 (which is more than all other political parties combined, Congress included). Even Lok Paritran (formed by IT-savvy IITian do-gooders), a relatively insignificant political outfit in the real-world most recognized for its anti-reservation stance, has a membership of 10,185. In contrast, the ‘Dalit’ community, whose members support affirmative action for the depressed communities, number only 505. In fact, it would not be incorrect to say that Orkut is fast becoming an ideal representative of what’s happening in- and to- Urban Upper Caste India. And even as Orkut continues to draw parts of this India closer to each other, and to the world, it also shows us how fast and how far this India is moving away from its Rural, Exurbian counterpart.
As I enter my second year of Orkuting, my effort, therefore, shall be twofold: first, at a personal level, I should like to make a conscious effort to convert my virtual friendships into real-life friendships, believing that the Good in all of us cumulatively overpowers the Bad that might exist in some of us; secondly, I would want to explore ways in which this immensely powerful medium could be used to ‘sensitize’ my Urban Friends, both real as well as virtual, to the needs, the hopes and aspirations, of the India that doesn’t quite have the luxury of connecting to the world on Orkut.
AJ
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Monday, July 30, 2007
Village Diary Preview: Pictures from Tala
Note: I am grateful to Mr. SNT, Mr. Anuj Sharma and Mr. Ardhendu Mukherjee for the following photographs from their one-day visit to see me at Tala; Dr. Saibel Farishta has written his account of the trip, which can be read on his blog.
L-R: SNT, Saibel, Self, Ardhendu at the entrance to the Garba Grha of the Devrani Temple, 29.07.07
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Rudra Siva as seen by Ardhendu Mukherjee, 29.07.07
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A Room with a View: A Donga on the Maniyari
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Self aboard the Donga (also seen: the MLA Mr. Siyaram Kaushik's back, Gopal Aggrawal and the village sarpanch's back)
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Tour Guide: Self explaining the intricacies of an early Haihaya sculptor to the Chhattisgarhi superhero, Anuj Sharma (seen here in his underpants) and the BAG correspondent, Ardhendu Mukherjee
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Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Saturday, June 30, 2007
Voices from Tala: Village Diary Preview
Recently, the IANS/Reuters correspondent for Chhattisgarh, Mr. Sujith Kumar, wrote a piece on my stay at Tala, entitled, 'Amit Jogi Toils With Tribals, for Career's Sake', which was carried by a variety of newspapers (22.07.07). On the whole, it offers a somewhat different perspective of things, projecting a motive where none in fact exists.
AJ
June 21-22, 2007
Mr. Kuber Yadu, a longtime family associate handpicked by Papa & SNT principally due to his incontrovertible ‘Chhattisgarhi’ credentials, accompanies me to Tala; enroute, we halt at his village, Marrakona on the banks of the river Seonath. At Mr. Yadu’s farm, I am given a crash course in the three kinds of sowing prevalent in the region: khurra (dry-sowing, before rainfall); batar (after rainfall); and ropa (wet-sowing, i.e., transplanting of saplings raised in a nursery, tharra). He insists on my paying obeisance to the local deity, Mawli Mata.
After crossing the river Maniyari, a tributary of the Seonath, we arrive at our destination, Tala (aka Ameri-Kapa). Well, not Tala per sé. My host, Mr. Siyaram Kaushik, who is also the local MLA, has lodged me in one of the rooms of a newly constructed temple-complex adjacent to the historic- and only one of its kind- statue of Rudra-Siva (more about this later; photo above). To my disappointment, he has had a rather noisy water cooler fitted in it. Happily though, for ablutions I must, like the rest of the village folk, rely on the Great Wide Open. Or, as the locals refer to it: bahi-dahar (literally: out of the way, or outskirt). It is well past midnight by the time dinner is cooked: it comprises a simple but fulfilling meal of rice, dal and beans (sémee) with a relish of raw onions.
My desire to sleep outside is summarily dismissed citing snakes: the ghodi-karayat variety, which is small, jet-black and deadly poisonous, is more fearsome than the asadhiya, which is long, fair and has the cumulative effect of a shot of marijuana (weed). Mr. Yadu fondly recollects that this reptilian analogy was used by his late father, the freedom fighter Mr. Parasram Yadu, to compare my father with his rival, Vidya Charan Shukla.
I wake up at 5:30 a.m. Bravely, I venture out into the unknown for my morning ablutions; with a little help from Mr. Yadu, I find a nice little spot to defecate. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I remain constipated for the rest of the day. After a quick bath at the local bored-well, right in the front of the historic Siva statue, we head off to the nearby fields: here, I try my hand at the Nagar, the neolithic plough still in vogue. It is pulled by two bullocks: to make a right-turn, shout Arra to the bull on the right; for left, it’s Tatta to the bull on the left; and to stop, Ho-ho. If they don’t obey, simply use the stick (tutari). For a first-timer, I do OK.
I also learn a little bit about how farmland is divided. Apparently, the revenue department has got it all wrong. Instead of the patwari’s maps (khasra), villagers prefer to follow the rule of the incline (slope): water flows downwards from the pakhar to the ghansa; accordingly, the field on the side of pakhar (upland) is called pakhar-bhata; likewise for ghansa. The problem, really, pertains to ownership of the raised piece of land that separates the fields, called med. According to the law, all owners have equitable rights over the med. This is easier said than done, and quite naturally, becomes a major cause of disputes: who, for instance, owns the mango tree growing on the med? Now, according to the custom of chanda-munara, each farmer has rights to two of the four meds, one of pakhar and the other of ghansa. This example illustrates the precedence custom- or common law- has over formalistic (land revenue) regulations.
In the evening, we take a bullockcart (bailagadi) ride to the village to participate in the evening ritual called ‘gudi ke goth’ (literally, talks of the village square). The commands Arr-Tatta-Hoho apply equally to the Nagar as well as the bailagadi. At the gudi, where I sit cross-legged on the ground with the rest of the village folk, the entire atmosphere is marked by a refreshing frankness: more than the men, it’s the women who do the talking. The politest way of starting a conversation is to ask: “ka saag rangath has?” (what’s cooking?) Soon, I am in the midst of a culinary class. The staple, basi, or left-over rice from last night soaked in water, is also the favorite: it tastes absolutely marvelous with a jojo (fried-chutney) of tomato, red-chillies or (as Papa likes it) garlic, a bhaaji (sautéed green leafy vegetable) and some curd. As a rule, womenfolk are expected to carry a batki of basi on their heads along with these condiments to the menfolk, who are working hard at their fields, at precisely twelve ’o clock. This hour of midday rest is called thad ki béra (ironically, thad means to stand upright, no doubt an allusion to the sun's perpendicular position).
The womenfolk, comprising all castes, gather around the choura (sacred platform), to dance to the Sua. From the lyrics, it appears that Suas are intensely religious songs, not very different in content from the monastic evensong:
Ayodhya mein Ram khélé hori (Ram plays holi in Ayodhya)
Mati mangalé, Choura bandhalé (Get the mud, Build the Choura)
Ayodhya mein Ram...
Chaanti bechara dohara mati (Even the poor ants bring mud)
Ayodhya mein Ram...
Jahan bajé nagada dason jodi (Where drums resound is ten-pairs)
Ayodhya mein Ram...
As we walk back to the temple-complex, a distance of a kilometer and a half, we stop at a house. Here, we are given a demonstration of three household implements found in almost every village home, by the family’s venerable ‘mayaru bhouji’ (beloved eldest sister-in-law): the jata (used for grinding flour); the déki with its iron-pounder called musar (used to dehusk paddy); and the konéta jata (mud grinder used for dehusking the relatively softer kodo, an excellent diabetic-substitute for rice). There is also the gorsi, an earthen vessel in which cowdung cakes are burnt, to roast rotis, or simply to keep warm during winters. All these implements are made at home by the ladies. On the road, we are crossed by the dreaded ghodi-karat. As with every other omen, this is interpreted as a sign of good luck.
Tomorrow, we intend going fishing with the Kevats & Dhevars. The prospective catch, comprising of Tengna and Kokhiya, promises to be appetizing. Naturally, I am rather looking forward to it.
June 23, 2007
It’s almost four p.m., and there’s no sign of the boatman: the geriatric sarpanch, it appears, has bungled gloriously and wishes to makeup with extra-doses of ‘Chhattisgarhi’ lessons, which I am understandably in no mood for.
Consequently, I spent much of the forenoon with the daily-wage laborers, beneficiaries of the REGS, constructing the embankment. The female laborers are called reja. It is their job to carry an iron-basket called dhamela filled with the mortar on their heads; the headrest- a piece of rolled-up cotton scarf- is called gurri. They are paid Rs. 60 per day. Hardly adequate compensation, I should think, for them to afford the anthi (a silver bracelet, less thick than the harayya), the Rupayya (a necklace of silver coins) and the four-beaded (ladi) kardhani (silver waistband), with which they are all adorned. Indeed, I am in no doubt that they are better economists than the chaps sitting in the Finance Ministry.
The rains prompt a group of young girls to play Fugri. The game begins with a song that ends with one of them asking the question: tor beti ké ka naav hé? (what is the name of your daughter?). The answer- Shree Kajar Mati- initiates the next phase, where the squatting girls quickly start to move their legs, one by one, in a fast kicking motion; and the one who does this the longest wins. Mr. Kaushik very wisely informs me that games such as these help prepare pubescent women for natural child-births.
The boatman arrives at 5; his oar- kirwar- is located by 5:30. The boat called Donga, part of the state government’s Nava Anjor doleout, is large; it is also extremely leaky. “The wood,” the dongahar or boatman explains, “dried up in the summer.” At considerable risk, then, we ride upstream to the old dolomite overbridge below the national highway. Unlike the donga, this relic of the Raj is in excellent shape. All of us are quite wet, not because of the rain (which has momentarily stopped) but because of the copious amount of water in the boat. Under the circumstances, it is only natural that our conversation turns to Alhan, or mishaps. An alhan, if not stopped, turns to Karlai, or tragedy. In a karlai, the appropriate lingo is: “jeev kalla gé” (soul is shaken). By the time we set anchor (after a nearly-missed alhan with an unseen rock), I am thankful that this truly soul-shaking excursion has finally ended.
June 28, 2007
I have been truant, dillydallying confiding my sojourns to the Diary. Given the rigors, mostly physical, of rural life, it’s no wonder that most villagers don’t bother keeping one. There are times, like when we made an excursion to see the ancient Chaturbhuja Vishnu statue excavated on the banks of the Arpa at Mangala-Matiyari, when I wish they did: the keeper of that temple professes to be 122 years old (I couldn’t help wondering that he was born in the same year as when that Mandarin, Alan Octavian Hume founded the Congress); he lives all by himself, and complains of having been abandoned by all but his deity, whom he serves relentlessly. I must mention that the banks of the rivers Arpa, Seonath and Manihari, all of which crisscross this constituency, are a hidden repository of untold treasures- entire archaeologies of long lost civilizations, now buried under the sands of time- that demand to be excavated, restored and preserved for posterity; if nothing is done, then we- those who live in this Age- are alone to blame.
But I am getting ahead of myself: the narrative must recommence from where I left it: a visit to Matku Deep, a riverine island on the Seonath with an area of about 40 hectares. For reasons I haven’t been able to decipher, it is now the site of an annual Christian Méla (fete). To get to it, we have to ride a dongi (a two-seater donga). The ride itself is somewhat precarious, as the hon’ble MLA discovered much to his chagrin, when the dongi overturned and he very nearly drowned: the correct expression is, he got choro-boro. Thankfully, the water was only waist-deep (kaniya-bhar); and yet another alhan was avoided. Later, after lunch comprising of bankukuri (jungle-hen), we explored the ruins of the haveli of the local zamindar, Akbar Khan, at his capital at Sargaon. As it happened, we scared a bunch of village-alvain (miscreants) busy gambling in one of its several rooms. It was to one of Akbar Khan’s descendants that the Congress turned to, to defeat the formidable Barrister Chedilal, who (if the memoirs of DP Mishra are to be believed) was tricked-out of the state’s chief ministership by Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla. The other piece of trivia that is worth reporting concerns the christening of the sole railway station of this area: Dagori. The story goes that Akbar Khan challenged the British that his horse, Gauri, was faster than any rail-engine. Our British overlords accepted his challenge, and lost. However, true to form they did name the station after Akbar Khan’s legendary equerry, and in time, “The Gauri” became “Dagori”.
Pradeep (Choubey) Uncle took charge from Mr. Yadu on the 24th. Unlike the latter, Pradeep Uncle insisted that my rural-education must be caste-blind. I am thus instructed to ignore all Hanas (village sayings) with casteistic undertones. Here, I beg to dissent. Hanas, after all, provide an invaluable insight into the dynamics of village-life: how people see, and interact, with each other; what divides and unites them? Also, unlike Mr. Yadu, Pradeep Uncle’s primary language is Hindi and it was not uncommon for him to ‘slip’ into Hindi at the slightest instance. However, his knowledge of Hindu culture made him an informed guide during our visit to two temples (on the 25th), one of which- the Chaturbhuja alluded to above- is of vast historical importance. The other is a rock that has jettisoned out of a field at Belbhata, which the villagers worship as a Shivlinga.
On the 26th, we journeyed to the village of Bamu, some seven kilometers downstream from the dam at Kutaghat (Mummy’s constituency). Although this wasn’t exactly part of our initial itinerary, the fact that Mr. Ramesh Kaushik, the newly-elected chairman of the district Cooperative Bank, is possibly the only farmer in this region to have already begun ropa plantation (transplanting of saplings, alluded to before) on his fifty-acre farm made his invitation irresistible. Most others will do so only later next month, with the onset of Sawan (when the monsoon peaks). His reasons, I believe, are twofold: first, unlike others, he doesn’t believe in the efficacy of consulting the deva-panchanga (the traditional Hindu calendar)- with its not always arbitrary emphasis on the Anjoriya (bright) and Andhiyar (dark) paksha (side) of everything- on matters of agriculture; two, his farms proximity to the dam and the more than ten tube-wells he has dug here ensure a constant supply of standing-water, necessary for this sort of cultivation. I use this opportunity to plant tharras (grown saplings from the nursery) with my feet knee-deep (madhi-bhar) in the slushy water; and also learn to plow and level (jotai-matai) the field using a tractor. Compared to the nagar, which has only one nasa, the contemporary tractor comes with nine. It took me less than half an hour to plow the field with the tractor; I could manage only two kuds with a nagar in that time. But it is a lot trickier to plow the tractor in a slushy, water-filled field- indeed, there are instances when tractors have overturned, fatally wounding its driver. (see below)
However, the greatest danger facing the farmers here is the monkey-plague. The rumor whose veracity I cannot verify is that monkeys (bendra) from all over the nation are being packed off to Chhattisgarh by the trainloads. Apparently, there isn’t much one can do although my advice to domesticate (pausayya) a red-faced monkey to drive off a pack of black-faced ones- something I learnt at Delhi, where a similar plague threatens the workings of North and South Blocks, the twin-epicenters of India’s Government- went down rather well with the villagers. For their sake and mine, I hope it works.
27th being the date of (a friend) Sanju Thakur's wedding, I debunk to Bilaspur; Pradeep Uncle, after three days of chaperoning me, returned to his farmland at Saja. His observation that it is becoming increasingly difficult to hire daily-wage farm laborers (banihars) even at increased wages is both good and bad: good because banihars now get higher remuneration for their labor; bad because they have to leave the state, go to the metros and work in the construction sector under mostly inhuman conditions in order to do so. A lot of the rural educated youth that I’ve come across don’t care to work the fields, not even their own, because education, like the Biblical forbidden fruit, has apparently taught them that plowing the nagar is beneath them. At every village I visit, groups of young men can be seen flocking around the local paan and booze shops, in various stages of drunkenness. Infact, the plight of the contemporary rural youth is an issue that I intend returning to later. Curiously, booze itself is referred to as ‘Amolak Singh’, after the notorious liquor contractor who controls the country liquor shops in this region, and indeed all of Chhattisgarh.
This afternoon, I went fishing. I am told that until they open the gates of the dam at Gangrel, our chances of catching fish in the Maniyari- or the Seonath- aren’t very good; so we head with our fishing gear, comprising garis (fishing rods made of bamboo sticks) and gangarvas (earthworms used as bait), to the fishing-tarayyas (ponds) of Kapa, a neighboring village. Putting the squishy-gangarvas into the hook is considered ‘dirty’, and so most castes, apart from the Kevats and the Dhevars, avoid ‘playing’ gari (apparently, this caste-restriction doesn’t seem to apply to the kids, who seem to love it). Akhil, who has accompanied me from Bilaspur, catches a rather juicy tengna (the tastier but smaller kotari, beloved of Papa, are harder to catch). As for me, while I manage to bait 13 times, I don’t catch even one tiny fish. The villagers console me that feeding fish (which is precisely what I did although I had rather hoped that it would be vice-versa) augurs a significant blessing from the lake deity, who is worshipped in the form of a wooden pillar at the centre of the pond.
Armed with such a blessing, we head to Chunchuniya, to see the do-mohan or the confluence of the Seonath with its tributary, Maniyari, on the opposite bank of our temple-complex. The majhis (fishermen-boatmen) here have much better luck with their soukhis (fishing nets); ergo, we won’t starve for dinner.
The tribal headman of Chunchuniya regales us with Karma- or Gond devotional- music, and a song he has composed to commemorate my stay. His repertoire of musical instruments comprises a Mandar and a pair of Tabla-dubki, made exclusively of goat-skin and baked clay. An almost primordial sound is produced by beating the goat-skin (chavni) on either sides of the instrument. The number of gotis (circles) in the kharvan- a blackened circle at the centre of the chavni- determine the tonality and range of the instrument’s acoustics. A quartet that impressed me particularly goes something like this:
Kan kan ma sabké tain rahité (You dwell in every grain of everyone)
Sabké ghat-ghat chhayé (You give shade to everyone's heart)
Gondiyan ké purkha kahilayé (You are called the Ancestor of all Gonds)
Sada kal lé aayé (You come from time immemorial)
On our way back, we witness a burial: a rather somber affair sans ceremony of any sort. It’s a lot cheaper than lighting a funeral-pyre.
June 29, 2007
It’s been raining cats and dogs all day; consequently we while away time listening to a Satnami gentleman called Mr. Indal from the village Darua-Kapa, who had previously floored us with his vast treasure trove of folksongs during our visit to Matku Deep. His songs- both their content and rendition- deserve a separate commentary, which I shall undertake once I’ve been able to decipher my quickly-scribbled notes.
In the evening, we visited the village Godhi, where I dined on angakar, a local delicacy of flattened rice-flour dough wrapped between parsa leaves and gently baked over cowdung fire in an earthen gorsi: it tastes best with patal (tomato) chutney. For now, it’s late and thanks to Dr. Raman Singh, there is no sign of electricity; best then to sleep.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Note: I am in Raipur tonight to attend Mr. Chaveendra Karma's wedding reception, and will return to Tala tomorrow morning. Presented below are excerpts from my Village Diary. Before I part, I would like to share with the Reader the following hana (folk-saying):
Char godh ké Chappo (Four-footed Chappo)
Tekhar upar Nippo (Above, Nippo)
Aa gayé Gappo (Came Gappo)
Lé gayé Nippo (Took Nippo)
Baacché Chappo Chappo (Remains only Chappo Chappo)
The above hana makes so much more sense once we know that 'Chappo' stands for Mother Earth; 'Nippo' refers to Mankind; and 'Gappo' is Death. Makes one think, doesn't it?
AJ
June 21-22, 2007
Mr. Kuber Yadu, a longtime family associate handpicked by Papa & SNT principally due to his incontrovertible ‘Chhattisgarhi’ credentials, accompanies me to Tala; enroute, we halt at his village, Marrakona on the banks of the river Seonath. At Mr. Yadu’s farm, I am given a crash course in the three kinds of sowing prevalent in the region: khurra (dry-sowing, before rainfall); batar (after rainfall); and ropa (wet-sowing, i.e., transplanting of saplings raised in a nursery, tharra). He insists on my paying obeisance to the local deity, Mawli Mata.
After crossing the river Maniyari, a tributary of the Seonath, we arrive at our destination, Tala (aka Ameri-Kapa). Well, not Tala per sé. My host, Mr. Siyaram Kaushik, who is also the local MLA, has lodged me in one of the rooms of a newly constructed temple-complex adjacent to the historic- and only one of its kind- statue of Rudra-Siva (more about this later; photo above). To my disappointment, he has had a rather noisy water cooler fitted in it. Happily though, for ablutions I must, like the rest of the village folk, rely on the Great Wide Open. Or, as the locals refer to it: bahi-dahar (literally: out of the way, or outskirt). It is well past midnight by the time dinner is cooked: it comprises a simple but fulfilling meal of rice, dal and beans (sémee) with a relish of raw onions.
My desire to sleep outside is summarily dismissed citing snakes: the ghodi-karayat variety, which is small, jet-black and deadly poisonous, is more fearsome than the asadhiya, which is long, fair and has the cumulative effect of a shot of marijuana (weed). Mr. Yadu fondly recollects that this reptilian analogy was used by his late father, the freedom fighter Mr. Parasram Yadu, to compare my father with his rival, Vidya Charan Shukla.
I wake up at 5:30 a.m. Bravely, I venture out into the unknown for my morning ablutions; with a little help from Mr. Yadu, I find a nice little spot to defecate. Unfortunately, despite my best efforts, I remain constipated for the rest of the day. After a quick bath at the local bored-well, right in the front of the historic Siva statue, we head off to the nearby fields: here, I try my hand at the Nagar, the neolithic plough still in vogue. It is pulled by two bullocks: to make a right-turn, shout Arra to the bull on the right; for left, it’s Tatta to the bull on the left; and to stop, Ho-ho. If they don’t obey, simply use the stick (tutari). For a first-timer, I do OK.
I also learn a little bit about how farmland is divided. Apparently, the revenue department has got it all wrong. Instead of the patwari’s maps (khasra), villagers prefer to follow the rule of the incline (slope): water flows downwards from the pakhar to the ghansa; accordingly, the field on the side of pakhar (upland) is called pakhar-bhata; likewise for ghansa. The problem, really, pertains to ownership of the raised piece of land that separates the fields, called med. According to the law, all owners have equitable rights over the med. This is easier said than done, and quite naturally, becomes a major cause of disputes: who, for instance, owns the mango tree growing on the med? Now, according to the custom of chanda-munara, each farmer has rights to two of the four meds, one of pakhar and the other of ghansa. This example illustrates the precedence custom- or common law- has over formalistic (land revenue) regulations.
In the evening, we take a bullockcart (bailagadi) ride to the village to participate in the evening ritual called ‘gudi ke goth’ (literally, talks of the village square). The commands Arr-Tatta-Hoho apply equally to the Nagar as well as the bailagadi. At the gudi, where I sit cross-legged on the ground with the rest of the village folk, the entire atmosphere is marked by a refreshing frankness: more than the men, it’s the women who do the talking. The politest way of starting a conversation is to ask: “ka saag rangath has?” (what’s cooking?) Soon, I am in the midst of a culinary class. The staple, basi, or left-over rice from last night soaked in water, is also the favorite: it tastes absolutely marvelous with a jojo (fried-chutney) of tomato, red-chillies or (as Papa likes it) garlic, a bhaaji (sautéed green leafy vegetable) and some curd. As a rule, womenfolk are expected to carry a batki of basi on their heads along with these condiments to the menfolk, who are working hard at their fields, at precisely twelve ’o clock. This hour of midday rest is called thad ki béra (ironically, thad means to stand upright, no doubt an allusion to the sun's perpendicular position).
The womenfolk, comprising all castes, gather around the choura (sacred platform), to dance to the Sua. From the lyrics, it appears that Suas are intensely religious songs, not very different in content from the monastic evensong:
Ayodhya mein Ram khélé hori (Ram plays holi in Ayodhya)
Mati mangalé, Choura bandhalé (Get the mud, Build the Choura)
Ayodhya mein Ram...
Chaanti bechara dohara mati (Even the poor ants bring mud)
Ayodhya mein Ram...
Jahan bajé nagada dason jodi (Where drums resound is ten-pairs)
Ayodhya mein Ram...
As we walk back to the temple-complex, a distance of a kilometer and a half, we stop at a house. Here, we are given a demonstration of three household implements found in almost every village home, by the family’s venerable ‘mayaru bhouji’ (beloved eldest sister-in-law): the jata (used for grinding flour); the déki with its iron-pounder called musar (used to dehusk paddy); and the konéta jata (mud grinder used for dehusking the relatively softer kodo, an excellent diabetic-substitute for rice). There is also the gorsi, an earthen vessel in which cowdung cakes are burnt, to roast rotis, or simply to keep warm during winters. All these implements are made at home by the ladies. On the road, we are crossed by the dreaded ghodi-karat. As with every other omen, this is interpreted as a sign of good luck.
Tomorrow, we intend going fishing with the Kevats & Dhevars. The prospective catch, comprising of Tengna and Kokhiya, promises to be appetizing. Naturally, I am rather looking forward to it.
June 23, 2007
It’s almost four p.m., and there’s no sign of the boatman: the geriatric sarpanch, it appears, has bungled gloriously and wishes to makeup with extra-doses of ‘Chhattisgarhi’ lessons, which I am understandably in no mood for.
Consequently, I spent much of the forenoon with the daily-wage laborers, beneficiaries of the REGS, constructing the embankment. The female laborers are called reja. It is their job to carry an iron-basket called dhamela filled with the mortar on their heads; the headrest- a piece of rolled-up cotton scarf- is called gurri. They are paid Rs. 60 per day. Hardly adequate compensation, I should think, for them to afford the anthi (a silver bracelet, less thick than the harayya), the Rupayya (a necklace of silver coins) and the four-beaded (ladi) kardhani (silver waistband), with which they are all adorned. Indeed, I am in no doubt that they are better economists than the chaps sitting in the Finance Ministry.
The rains prompt a group of young girls to play Fugri. The game begins with a song that ends with one of them asking the question: tor beti ké ka naav hé? (what is the name of your daughter?). The answer- Shree Kajar Mati- initiates the next phase, where the squatting girls quickly start to move their legs, one by one, in a fast kicking motion; and the one who does this the longest wins. Mr. Kaushik very wisely informs me that games such as these help prepare pubescent women for natural child-births.
The boatman arrives at 5; his oar- kirwar- is located by 5:30. The boat called Donga, part of the state government’s Nava Anjor doleout, is large; it is also extremely leaky. “The wood,” the dongahar or boatman explains, “dried up in the summer.” At considerable risk, then, we ride upstream to the old dolomite overbridge below the national highway. Unlike the donga, this relic of the Raj is in excellent shape. All of us are quite wet, not because of the rain (which has momentarily stopped) but because of the copious amount of water in the boat. Under the circumstances, it is only natural that our conversation turns to Alhan, or mishaps. An alhan, if not stopped, turns to Karlai, or tragedy. In a karlai, the appropriate lingo is: “jeev kalla gé” (soul is shaken). By the time we set anchor (after a nearly-missed alhan with an unseen rock), I am thankful that this truly soul-shaking excursion has finally ended.
June 28, 2007
I have been truant, dillydallying confiding my sojourns to the Diary. Given the rigors, mostly physical, of rural life, it’s no wonder that most villagers don’t bother keeping one. There are times, like when we made an excursion to see the ancient Chaturbhuja Vishnu statue excavated on the banks of the Arpa at Mangala-Matiyari, when I wish they did: the keeper of that temple professes to be 122 years old (I couldn’t help wondering that he was born in the same year as when that Mandarin, Alan Octavian Hume founded the Congress); he lives all by himself, and complains of having been abandoned by all but his deity, whom he serves relentlessly. I must mention that the banks of the rivers Arpa, Seonath and Manihari, all of which crisscross this constituency, are a hidden repository of untold treasures- entire archaeologies of long lost civilizations, now buried under the sands of time- that demand to be excavated, restored and preserved for posterity; if nothing is done, then we- those who live in this Age- are alone to blame.
But I am getting ahead of myself: the narrative must recommence from where I left it: a visit to Matku Deep, a riverine island on the Seonath with an area of about 40 hectares. For reasons I haven’t been able to decipher, it is now the site of an annual Christian Méla (fete). To get to it, we have to ride a dongi (a two-seater donga). The ride itself is somewhat precarious, as the hon’ble MLA discovered much to his chagrin, when the dongi overturned and he very nearly drowned: the correct expression is, he got choro-boro. Thankfully, the water was only waist-deep (kaniya-bhar); and yet another alhan was avoided. Later, after lunch comprising of bankukuri (jungle-hen), we explored the ruins of the haveli of the local zamindar, Akbar Khan, at his capital at Sargaon. As it happened, we scared a bunch of village-alvain (miscreants) busy gambling in one of its several rooms. It was to one of Akbar Khan’s descendants that the Congress turned to, to defeat the formidable Barrister Chedilal, who (if the memoirs of DP Mishra are to be believed) was tricked-out of the state’s chief ministership by Pandit Ravi Shankar Shukla. The other piece of trivia that is worth reporting concerns the christening of the sole railway station of this area: Dagori. The story goes that Akbar Khan challenged the British that his horse, Gauri, was faster than any rail-engine. Our British overlords accepted his challenge, and lost. However, true to form they did name the station after Akbar Khan’s legendary equerry, and in time, “The Gauri” became “Dagori”.
Pradeep (Choubey) Uncle took charge from Mr. Yadu on the 24th. Unlike the latter, Pradeep Uncle insisted that my rural-education must be caste-blind. I am thus instructed to ignore all Hanas (village sayings) with casteistic undertones. Here, I beg to dissent. Hanas, after all, provide an invaluable insight into the dynamics of village-life: how people see, and interact, with each other; what divides and unites them? Also, unlike Mr. Yadu, Pradeep Uncle’s primary language is Hindi and it was not uncommon for him to ‘slip’ into Hindi at the slightest instance. However, his knowledge of Hindu culture made him an informed guide during our visit to two temples (on the 25th), one of which- the Chaturbhuja alluded to above- is of vast historical importance. The other is a rock that has jettisoned out of a field at Belbhata, which the villagers worship as a Shivlinga.
On the 26th, we journeyed to the village of Bamu, some seven kilometers downstream from the dam at Kutaghat (Mummy’s constituency). Although this wasn’t exactly part of our initial itinerary, the fact that Mr. Ramesh Kaushik, the newly-elected chairman of the district Cooperative Bank, is possibly the only farmer in this region to have already begun ropa plantation (transplanting of saplings, alluded to before) on his fifty-acre farm made his invitation irresistible. Most others will do so only later next month, with the onset of Sawan (when the monsoon peaks). His reasons, I believe, are twofold: first, unlike others, he doesn’t believe in the efficacy of consulting the deva-panchanga (the traditional Hindu calendar)- with its not always arbitrary emphasis on the Anjoriya (bright) and Andhiyar (dark) paksha (side) of everything- on matters of agriculture; two, his farms proximity to the dam and the more than ten tube-wells he has dug here ensure a constant supply of standing-water, necessary for this sort of cultivation. I use this opportunity to plant tharras (grown saplings from the nursery) with my feet knee-deep (madhi-bhar) in the slushy water; and also learn to plow and level (jotai-matai) the field using a tractor. Compared to the nagar, which has only one nasa, the contemporary tractor comes with nine. It took me less than half an hour to plow the field with the tractor; I could manage only two kuds with a nagar in that time. But it is a lot trickier to plow the tractor in a slushy, water-filled field- indeed, there are instances when tractors have overturned, fatally wounding its driver. (see below)
However, the greatest danger facing the farmers here is the monkey-plague. The rumor whose veracity I cannot verify is that monkeys (bendra) from all over the nation are being packed off to Chhattisgarh by the trainloads. Apparently, there isn’t much one can do although my advice to domesticate (pausayya) a red-faced monkey to drive off a pack of black-faced ones- something I learnt at Delhi, where a similar plague threatens the workings of North and South Blocks, the twin-epicenters of India’s Government- went down rather well with the villagers. For their sake and mine, I hope it works.
27th being the date of (a friend) Sanju Thakur's wedding, I debunk to Bilaspur; Pradeep Uncle, after three days of chaperoning me, returned to his farmland at Saja. His observation that it is becoming increasingly difficult to hire daily-wage farm laborers (banihars) even at increased wages is both good and bad: good because banihars now get higher remuneration for their labor; bad because they have to leave the state, go to the metros and work in the construction sector under mostly inhuman conditions in order to do so. A lot of the rural educated youth that I’ve come across don’t care to work the fields, not even their own, because education, like the Biblical forbidden fruit, has apparently taught them that plowing the nagar is beneath them. At every village I visit, groups of young men can be seen flocking around the local paan and booze shops, in various stages of drunkenness. Infact, the plight of the contemporary rural youth is an issue that I intend returning to later. Curiously, booze itself is referred to as ‘Amolak Singh’, after the notorious liquor contractor who controls the country liquor shops in this region, and indeed all of Chhattisgarh.
This afternoon, I went fishing. I am told that until they open the gates of the dam at Gangrel, our chances of catching fish in the Maniyari- or the Seonath- aren’t very good; so we head with our fishing gear, comprising garis (fishing rods made of bamboo sticks) and gangarvas (earthworms used as bait), to the fishing-tarayyas (ponds) of Kapa, a neighboring village. Putting the squishy-gangarvas into the hook is considered ‘dirty’, and so most castes, apart from the Kevats and the Dhevars, avoid ‘playing’ gari (apparently, this caste-restriction doesn’t seem to apply to the kids, who seem to love it). Akhil, who has accompanied me from Bilaspur, catches a rather juicy tengna (the tastier but smaller kotari, beloved of Papa, are harder to catch). As for me, while I manage to bait 13 times, I don’t catch even one tiny fish. The villagers console me that feeding fish (which is precisely what I did although I had rather hoped that it would be vice-versa) augurs a significant blessing from the lake deity, who is worshipped in the form of a wooden pillar at the centre of the pond.
Armed with such a blessing, we head to Chunchuniya, to see the do-mohan or the confluence of the Seonath with its tributary, Maniyari, on the opposite bank of our temple-complex. The majhis (fishermen-boatmen) here have much better luck with their soukhis (fishing nets); ergo, we won’t starve for dinner.
The tribal headman of Chunchuniya regales us with Karma- or Gond devotional- music, and a song he has composed to commemorate my stay. His repertoire of musical instruments comprises a Mandar and a pair of Tabla-dubki, made exclusively of goat-skin and baked clay. An almost primordial sound is produced by beating the goat-skin (chavni) on either sides of the instrument. The number of gotis (circles) in the kharvan- a blackened circle at the centre of the chavni- determine the tonality and range of the instrument’s acoustics. A quartet that impressed me particularly goes something like this:
Kan kan ma sabké tain rahité (You dwell in every grain of everyone)
Sabké ghat-ghat chhayé (You give shade to everyone's heart)
Gondiyan ké purkha kahilayé (You are called the Ancestor of all Gonds)
Sada kal lé aayé (You come from time immemorial)
On our way back, we witness a burial: a rather somber affair sans ceremony of any sort. It’s a lot cheaper than lighting a funeral-pyre.
June 29, 2007
It’s been raining cats and dogs all day; consequently we while away time listening to a Satnami gentleman called Mr. Indal from the village Darua-Kapa, who had previously floored us with his vast treasure trove of folksongs during our visit to Matku Deep. His songs- both their content and rendition- deserve a separate commentary, which I shall undertake once I’ve been able to decipher my quickly-scribbled notes.
In the evening, we visited the village Godhi, where I dined on angakar, a local delicacy of flattened rice-flour dough wrapped between parsa leaves and gently baked over cowdung fire in an earthen gorsi: it tastes best with patal (tomato) chutney. For now, it’s late and thanks to Dr. Raman Singh, there is no sign of electricity; best then to sleep.
Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Monday, February 26, 2007
HAPPY BIRTHDAY, SNT!
SNT turns 42 today (although I overheard him tell someone that he's hit the half-century mark). I surprised him last night- at the precise stroke of the midnight hour- with an impromptu cake (courtesy: Mr. Monty) the moment we returned home after attending a wedding at Pallari, some sixty kilometres away.
The first photograph shows SNT cutting the cake, with a little help from Papa and me.
In the next one, the birthday baby is force-feeding the first slice- and a very large slice at that- to Papa. I can be seen trying to save Papa from an otherwise inevitable bout of indigestion. (SNT's rather skewed version is that I was trying to steal a piece for myself before Papa could eat it!) Manoj, Papa's attendant, can be seen beaming in the background.
The following evening witnessed heavy-duty partying at SNT's hideout by a very select gathering. While photographs were taken by the incorrigible Girish, it's for the best if they are not displayed here for fear of evoking the censor board's- not to mention, the ever-trusting Mrs. SNT's- wrath!
In any event, I wish SNT all the very best.
AJ
Picture (dis-)credit: Pammu Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
The first photograph shows SNT cutting the cake, with a little help from Papa and me.
In the next one, the birthday baby is force-feeding the first slice- and a very large slice at that- to Papa. I can be seen trying to save Papa from an otherwise inevitable bout of indigestion. (SNT's rather skewed version is that I was trying to steal a piece for myself before Papa could eat it!) Manoj, Papa's attendant, can be seen beaming in the background.
The following evening witnessed heavy-duty partying at SNT's hideout by a very select gathering. While photographs were taken by the incorrigible Girish, it's for the best if they are not displayed here for fear of evoking the censor board's- not to mention, the ever-trusting Mrs. SNT's- wrath!
In any event, I wish SNT all the very best.
AJ
Picture (dis-)credit: Pammu Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
Sunday, February 18, 2007
Deux Videos: In flagrante delicto!
I. While you were Snoring
'le enfant terrible' saurav secretly video-recorded me while i was sleeping at SNT's: definitive proof that i am a polyphonic if somewhat loud snorer. the really astute observer, however, will notice an ever-so-slight dis-sync between the audio and video components of the recording. cfsl, i.e., the central forensic and scientific laboratory, has recently confirmed that the voiceover matches saurav's ;)
II. SNT's Challenge
yesterday, shailesh nitin trivedi put up a challenge: he said he could climb down a waterfall (tamraguda, about ten kilometres upstream from chitrakote) and come back in less than twenty minutes. in less than five, he returned- having covered less than 1% of his expected-itinerary. age, it seems, finally caught up with fancy. still, snt's joie de vivre is more than commendable: it's positively heroic.
this recording shows a footage of "the wannable-bastaria dr. livingstone's expedition"! no points for guessing that the white figure moving at the speed of light is none other than mr. trivedi. Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
'le enfant terrible' saurav secretly video-recorded me while i was sleeping at SNT's: definitive proof that i am a polyphonic if somewhat loud snorer. the really astute observer, however, will notice an ever-so-slight dis-sync between the audio and video components of the recording. cfsl, i.e., the central forensic and scientific laboratory, has recently confirmed that the voiceover matches saurav's ;)
II. SNT's Challenge
yesterday, shailesh nitin trivedi put up a challenge: he said he could climb down a waterfall (tamraguda, about ten kilometres upstream from chitrakote) and come back in less than twenty minutes. in less than five, he returned- having covered less than 1% of his expected-itinerary. age, it seems, finally caught up with fancy. still, snt's joie de vivre is more than commendable: it's positively heroic.
this recording shows a footage of "the wannable-bastaria dr. livingstone's expedition"! no points for guessing that the white figure moving at the speed of light is none other than mr. trivedi. Read More (आगे और पढ़ें)......
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