In continuum to the previous post – the serious part of it

The green hay prettily nods her head to get my attention. Like that girl fresh into puberty eager for men to look at her in awe. I am awed, my dear, by your freshness, by how tender you look, how alive and how happy you are by your birth and age. But I cannot help look at the men and women tending to your whims. You are the reason they are going to sleep with partially full stomachs tonight, under the stars , under the trees, close to you. To you they have to return.

The scene shifts from the grass to the people around her. Most were daily wage labourers, Paid paltry sums of money and probably a grain of paddy at the end of the season. Some of the paddy, I am told, they’ll save, the rest they’ll barter. Idyllic? Maybe not.

I enjoyed my trip thoroughly. Then came back and read a study done as part of the project? Not even close to idyllic. Food and health is still their priority. Good health, work, education, water, is still their worry. How will these computers and video-conferencing help them? Can it? In a land where the great godavari flows showering them with nature bountiful best can you imagine that clean drinking water is a matter of great concern.

I am brimming with ideas but I don’t know how applicable most of them will be. But the tints are off from my glasses. I see things plain and clear. The exhilaration about nature continues but for the people my heart aches. Will the project help them?

I can see Rama, the lady who is a panchayat member. She uses the edge of her sari to wipe her face as she walks besides me. Radiant at being by my side, hiding a smile and not succeeding much at it. She is tickled by my attempts to block the sun out by pulling my dupatta over my head. She has two children (but she cant be much older than me!) They go to a convent school (the village school government school is not good enough. I can vouch for the infrastructure part of that after visiting the school). There are toilets in some houses (of course in the homes if the richer guys. The poor I could visibly see live in the fringes of the village and have neither light nor a toilet), but there is no drainage system in the village. Also the school has no playground, she whispers. Can you help fill the swamp in front of the school? That was the allotted land for the school playground she informs. Now only flies, bacteria and hundreds other germs frolic there, I can see.

How on earth is a computer to help them do that? Isn’t the government supposed to do this I cant help but wonder? Maybe the project could also include a grievance redressal system. Help them talk directly would the local government. Would they listen? What on earth is the panchayat doing with the money? Hey lady sarpanch, Are you listening?

The deeper I look the more questions there are. Computers may help them, video-conferencing may help them. To what extent, I’ll have to wait and see. I have to hold onto the faith that some good will come out of it all. I just hope it helps those tiny tots at the government school who fought so viciously to pose in front of the camera...

when wishes are fulfilled

(c) Anita Satyajit 2005


It was culmination of desires accumulated carefully over years. The desire to move beyond what skill I have got slotted into and move into the platform where I get to do something that might add more meaning into people’s lives.

Working on the script last week I wrote, “When food is a priority there is no time for opportunity.” The situation was befitting of the villages I visited early this week, but for me it was the reverse. Food wasn’t the priority, god has given me all the basics and then some, what I was craving for was that opportunity that’d let me peek and hopefully move into the world which I have been aching to be a part of. I finally got me some opportunity myself.

I visited 6 villages in the West Godavari District of Andhra Pradesh as part of the project site visits. Now after visiting those six, I am greedy and want to visit all the 32 villages which the project will cover.

I couldn’t even begin to image how serene and beautiful the area would be. We breezed through roads that were bordered by coconut trees. Often a canal accompanied us all through the way and in some villages the aqua fields joined the gang to create stunningly beautiful vistas. Farmers were busy at work. Harvesting season was on. All around I could see people working hard toiling away trying to create those houses of hay (as I refer to them. Circular structures, with a cap atop its head. Grain is stored in these structures. Saw people separating the chaff from the hay, storing the hay, transporting the hay. It was harvest time! I was soaking in the beauty and was enthralled by it all.

Some images stay behind. The naked children uninhabited, diving into the canal and swimming in the mossy green; The tiny mud road dominated by the tall coconut trees on either side that met their heads to maybe ponder about us foolish wanderers below; the lady sitting with a child by the road side ( I got their snap), the aqua ponds and the whirring of the water churning machine which was busy oxygenating the water; the view from Patepuram village school roof top, the kids at school jostling for a snap and the four girls who came outside begging for one more, the girls at Ardhavaram standing shyly and their teacher eager and restless to move intellectually beyond the confines of her village...

The more you see the more you observe. Slowly I began to also take in the people working. The sweat streaming down the sometimes bare backs, Women’ blouses dark with patches of sweat, the bare feet, the threadbare houses along the way, plain sheets pulled across 4 stumps and people lunching beneath it. A colleague present said jokingly that they are picnicking. It was a daily affair I commented. But were they?

Go the very river

The river of life, she is
the mother of the trees, friend of the fields
Daughter of the rains and mistress of man

Her dress of many colours
She wraps around; weaving her way home
Through whatever her lover leaves for her
After he has claimed his right

Blossoming in places, she finally laughs
On the faces of the children
Swimming in her bosom
Glorious she nurses,
her breasts full and flowing

Cajoled to change her dance
Labouring to give her all, squeezed often she is
to her last ounce of purity.
Spreading her legs, she lets her man
Taint her, leaving only grey murk behind
His pain, his ills and his life

Nature’s gift, she is cursed by her man
Unmindful she moves on
Giving all she can, receiving the grime
Yet purifies and cleanses the sins of man
Who worships her, plays with her
And often carelessly her virtue and limpidness, destroys.