I went to Shimoga the day before yesterday. On a jeep. Office work. Got to drive all round the district. Went to Sagar, from there to Ulvi, and Shiralkoppa. A small malgudi-isk town. Thirty km from the town is a village - Chikmaghadi. Thirty km of kutcha road with as many potholes as the moon. Through lush green fields and distant hillocks, breathing pure oxygen. Cattle on the road. Villagers stopping their work in the fields watching us pass. Chikmaghadi has around fifty mud houses cluttered together - why do villages have houses cluttered together when they have such vast expanses of space around them?
Met the village Patel, who has the only concrete house in the village and a tractor in the garage. Am offered tea thick with milk and sugar in tiny steel tumblers encased in a wide mouthed short steel tumbler in typical karnataka style. Make small talk, they nodding to my hindi understanding nothing, and me nodding to their kannada understanding nothing.
Local Forest Guard and Forester are around and they speak Kanada and nothing else. The local school teacher's not around as we have reached late in the evening. Yet, I get my work done, am able to communicate the information I need from them and they in return are able to inform what I need to know.
Try to show off my mobile, until when we are departing and I need their contact address, each damn villager flases his mobile number. The Forest Guard and Forester inclusive.
Later drive back the way I came and put up camp at Sagar. Vow never to imagine villagers in India are not "backward".
Reminded me of the time when friends and wife had been hiking to a village where there was no electricity, mud houses, cooking on firewood, eating zoonka bhakar under kerosene lamp, no school, just a temple. It was the birth day of one of the friends and we had brought shrikhand to celebrate. The villager in her nau-vari serving us bhakari tells her three year old son, that it's uncle's birthday and the tiny tot begins to sing "Happy Birthday to You" and we nearly choke...
Well, I did vow then never to imagine villagers in India are not backward!!!

Comments

  1. Words11:48 AM

    I really liked this article.
    These days the villagers are among the first to catch up with the trends.

    ReplyDelete
  2. walk don't run1:02 AM

    Nostalgia..nostalgia...But surprised to hear about the penetration of the mighty mobile. No wonder the Sunil bharti Mittal's of the world are getting richer by teh day. Hat's off to the India that thrives along the hinterlands. And psst...I want your job!!

    ReplyDelete

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