The world’s largest ‘cultural’ organization, the Rashtriya Swayamsevak Sangh (National Volunteer Organization) recently met with the minister responsible for what is probably, in real terms, the world’s smallest ‘culture’ ministry, the Ministry of Culture, Government of India. Under Khaki shorts, size does matter. The big tell the small, what’s what.
Category Archives: Ecology/Environment
‘Cities of Sleep’: Anirban Gupta-Nigam
Guest post by ANIRBAN GUPTA-NIGAM – A Preview of SHAUNAK SEN’S film ‘Cities of Sleep‘
A few days ago, on its Facebook page, Business Insider India shared a series of images of Bollywood stars who had gone—plainly speaking—from “zeroes to heroes”[1]. The yardstick for what constitutes success is another matter (Mithun Chakraborty, for example, is celebrated because he progressed from being a ‘Naxalite’ to ‘India’s highest tax payer’), but accompanying the post were the following words: ‘Every great dream begins with a dreamer. Always remember, you have within you the strength, the patience, and the passion to reach for the stars to change the world’. In another words, dare to dream and you shall become all you want to be.
This simple, inspiring message is possibly more complex than it first appears to be. It contains within it a contradiction that might well be worth attending to. Specifically, the images implicitly demand that we ask who (or what) is a ‘dreamer’ today.
The famous comedian George Carlin once said that ‘they call it the American dream because you have to be asleep to believe it’. A problem of a similar order is posed by the images in question here. Taken at face value, the mantra ‘every great dream begins with a dreamer’ not only propagates an all too familiar narrative of entrepreneurial success. It also comes with a qualifier—every great dream begins with a dreamer. Which is to say, not all dreams qualify for this honor. Continue reading ‘Cities of Sleep’: Anirban Gupta-Nigam
Hindutva: A Political Theory of Nationhood?: Aman Verma
Guest post by Aman Verma
It is disheartening to see amongst supporters of Hindutva these days a silent acquiescence and at times even active support for extra-constitutional techniques being adopted by organizations like the RSS and its offshoots towards attaining the goal of Ram Rajya. An assessment is necessary of what would ultimately entail on the social, political and economic fronts if such a policy that envisages a supposedly ‘Hindu’ cultural and linguistic hegemony over cultures and languages represented by minority communities becomes reality. However, being a student of law what disturbs me more is the absence of any socio-political entity or civil society movement rooted in values of democracy that can effectively counter the impact of Hindutva organizations on the Indian social fabric. While the BJP has its RSS, every other political party claiming to be the upholder of secularism lacks its equivalent, or at the very least an effective social protégé.
Further, my personal interactions with supporters of BJP reveals that there is some deep sense of hurt and helplessness, part valid for the sake of argument, but for the most part carefully manufactured by Hindutva propaganda, which manifests itself in questions a friend recently put to me, “What are the other ways in which the Hindus can also claim their rights and send out a message that they have been too tolerant for too long?” and another which sounded like “How else to keep our dignity and identity alive in our land?”. These questions, based upon presumptions like those of “Hindu tolerance” of acts perpetrated by other communities supposedly only against Hindus and, protection of a completely vague concept of “Hindu identity” are clearly an outcome of a campaign strategy that relies upon upping the antics on the romantic-nationalist front.
Continue reading Hindutva: A Political Theory of Nationhood?: Aman Verma
Cheralam to Keralam to Ketta-idam – A Report on ‘Development’ from Trivandrum, Kerala: Sriranjini R
This is a guest post by Sriranjini R.
ISIS in Syria, Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, Taliban in Pakistan, Boko Haram in Nigeria, ecological problems, climate change … the list of the world’s ‘security’ problems seems endless. India has its own share of course – the India-Pakistan conflict, India-China problems, Maoism and so on. In Kerala, police have been desperate to find ‘security threats’ of their own. They first tried hunting down a ‘druglord’ whose picture was found on T-shirts of young people suspected of drug use. His name is Bob Marley. Please give the man up if you find him anywhere. Then they tried looking for Maoists. Every state has some, how come we have so few, was their complaint. After going after thin, dark-skinned, bearded fellows, Kiss of Love activists, and sundry others, hoping that one of these will be a Maoist, finally they caught one. And he didn’t look like any threat to most Malayalis.
Lions, Liars and Masters of the Universe: Shrinivas Dharmadhikari
Guest Post by SHRINIVAS DHARMADHIKARI
Last month’s killing of Cecil, the 13-year-old, rare black-maned lion by American dentist Walter Palmer, was met with global outrage and condemnation. However, this foolish bravado cannot just be treated as another sign of American (or white) exceptionalism (read sickness) because behind this is a much larger and thriving Trophy Industry.
A few facts will make the size and destructive power of this industry clear. Americans traveling to Africa make up more than 60 per cent of the foreign-participated lion trophy hunts carried out each year. This is according to John Jackson, president of the lobbying group Conservation Force. According to another scientist, Eric Jensen, a University of Warwick professor who studies public engagement in wildlife issues, the Trophy industry caters to the human need for dominance and control of nature and provides in addition a sense of masculinity having hunted a large animal. Continue reading Lions, Liars and Masters of the Universe: Shrinivas Dharmadhikari
An Open Letter to Mr Adani on the Occasion of Onam
Dear Mr Adani
Writing to you from Thiruvananthapuram, where you recently signed an agreement with the Kerala government, undertaking the construction of the international container terminal at Vizhinjam off the Thiruvananthapuram coast.
The Malayali press went wild in their delight ; the politicians beamed in triumph (well, most of them. Some of them –guess who — could not, having discovered that they had shot themselves in the foot); the contractors and sundry middlemen in the construction sector rubbed their hands in glee. This is Onam season in Kerala, and Onam, you may know, is our national festival. You are very much in the talk here. To the contractors and our miserably corrupt and craven political class, you are Maveli reborn in flesh and blood. To the poor fisher people on what is arguably Kerala’s poorest coastal stretch, you are a newer version of evil Vamanan himself, threatening to banish them to the nether-world. There was a time when the political left in Kerala reinterpreted the Maveli myth as a vindication of the Welfare State. But since the welfare state has been almost as good as dead in the minds of Kerala’s mainstream political classes, the throne has also been conveniently empty.The mainstream press has set you up on it indirectly but definitely, and that’s pretty much evident. But Malayalees who love this land and are not blinded by hollow –false– national sentiment can see that not only are you the very opposite of Maveli, but also that this Emperor-figure has no clothes at all.
Continue reading An Open Letter to Mr Adani on the Occasion of Onam
Who cares about the environment? Some notes on the ecological crisis in India: Shashank Kela
Guest post by SHASHANK KELA
The past few months have been exceptional, in one respect at least, for the Indian press: a serious structural problem has actually been given the attention it deserves. The Economic Times continues to play a prominent part in discussing air pollution in Delhi – there is no other city in the world where it is so bad. Nor is this all: including Delhi, India now boasts thirteen out of twenty cities with the worst air. More recently, the uproar over supposedly high levels of lead in a brand of junk food led to a (very) few articles on groundwater contamination: after all, the reason why lead and other poisons get into food is because they are present in the soil in which crops grow. Another piece, in the Guardian this time, speculated that the recent Sahelian heat wave in the Deccan might be a symptom of climate change (an “extreme” climate event of the kind likely to become all too common).[1]
These stories are only a tiny fraction of those that could be reported, for we are already in the throes of an unprecedented environmental crisis. Large swathes of our agricultural soils are contaminated or saline. Pesticide residues and heavy metals form part of our food. The air of our major cities is unfit to breathe. Freshwater availability is declining; most rivers, especially in the south, do not flow at all, or only seasonally, since their runoff is impounded in dams and used for irrigation (with very high rates of seepage and evaporation loss). Groundwater tables are falling as a consequence of over extraction and the disappearance of vegetative cover enabling percolation. The pattern of weather is being reset with gaps and lags – the available evidence indicates that the onset of the monsoon is changing and precipitation becoming more uneven. Our offshore seas are denuded of marine life thanks to trawler fishing at ever greater distances. Himalayan glaciers are shrinking with obvious long-term consequences for the hydrology of river systems dependent upon snow-melt. Sudden, destructive floods, exacerbated by embankments and dams, the building over of river valleys and floodplains, have become a regular occurrence. Continue reading Who cares about the environment? Some notes on the ecological crisis in India: Shashank Kela
Cities, Smart or Self Reliant? Rajendra Ravi
Guest post by RAJENDRA RAVI
The incumbent government has reportedly resolved to build a hundred smart cities in near future. And the concept seems to have taken our world by storm offering little space, if any, for a dissenting voice. Of course, a few tremors of resistance have emerged from areas where the lands are being acquired or have been marked for acquisition. For, resistance is something that is perennial: it never fails to strike back when the forces of eviction and deprivation come together to uproot people from their habitats. Human history stands witness to the fact that it is the mass protest and organized resistance that have compelled the development machinery to re-evaluate its orientation. Arguably, the tendency has actually reinforced and deepened the institution of democracy.
However, let us not overlook the fact that every community or a social group on this globe has taken the course of migration in its quest for development either as a conscious decision or compulsion. As a consequence, the phenomenon has substantially influenced the nature and configuration of habitats, leading the small hamlets to become large villages and bigger villages morphing into towns. Eventually, these very towns end up being cities. This has been quite a predictable trajectory of human development. Historically speaking, the process has involved efforts both at the level of government and the society at large. But, at the same time, we cannot ignore the fact that the government has a far more crucial role to play in it – a role, which is always informed by the ideological outlook of various political parties and governments. This role is also conditioned by the fact whether or not the parties and governments in question seek to build an egalitarian and democratic society. Continue reading Cities, Smart or Self Reliant? Rajendra Ravi
Nepal – An Earthquake Diary : Mallika Shakya
This is a guest post by MALLIKA SHAKYA
The earthquake in Nepal had been overdue for a while. At one level everyone knew that the 7.9 Richter scale jolt came from the continuing collision between the Indian and Himalayan plates. At another level, Nepalis internalized this seismic science by counterposing 2015 with personal memories of the 1934 earthquake which was the last big one in a seismic belt that shuddered every seventy or so years. Every family had stories about how some or other grand old person in the family perished under the rubble while someone else had a narrow escape, how a particular house needed to be rebuilt from scratch while another could be just mended in parts, or how one brave grand uncle mustered the courage to walk into the rubble to pull out a sack of rice so that the family could eat, so on and so forth Continue reading Nepal – An Earthquake Diary : Mallika Shakya
An Encounter in the Forest: Bharath Sundaram and Nitin Rai
Guest post by BHARATH SUNDARAM and NITIN RAI
The labelling of the Seshachalam incident as a ‘law and order’ problem by State actors obfuscates the larger underlying problem deriving from lopsided notions of the human-environment relationship, and flies in the face of ecological concerns and social justice
The massacre of twenty people in the Seshachalam forests in a joint operation by the Red-Sanders Anti-Smuggling Task Force (RSASTF) of the Andhra Pradesh Police and the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department is reflective of the hegemonic control of natural resources by an increasingly militarised state. It is particularly shocking that such a massacre occurred just as calls are being made nationally for a democratic forest management approach that gives local people more rights and powers to manage forests.
While the state has chosen to depict the killing of 20 people in the Seshachalam forests as a response to a law and order issue, such a draconian response to the cutting of trees by peasants is indicative of a much deeper malaise in the governance of natural resources in India. On the evening or night of 6th of April, 2015, twenty people, purportedly smugglers of red sanders, were shot to death by ten officials of the RSASTF and one official from the Andhra Pradesh Forest Department. The shooting and killing (using automatic weapons) was supposedly an act of ‘self-defence’ precipitated by an attack on the officials by more than 100 people who ‘rained stones and hurled sickles’ during the raid. Three days after the incident, ‘country weapons’ and ‘firearms’ were added to the list of weapons used by the smugglers. That would work in their favor, because who better than the smugglers to know where to buy AK 47 Rifles and assault weapons.
Observer accounts mention that several of those killed were shot in the face, chest, or back. Nobody was apprehended in an injured state. Official post-mortem reports of those killed remain unavailable. No government officials were reported injured immediately after the operation, although mysteriously, all eleven officials involved were placed in isolation in the A-Class ward of a government hospital four days after the incident occurred. Human rights activists, led by the Coordination of Democratic Rights Organization have labelled the incident as a staged encounter, questioned the use of brute force, and have pointed out several inconsistencies in the official version of events. Continue reading An Encounter in the Forest: Bharath Sundaram and Nitin Rai
Jalsatyagrah at Omkareshwar MP – Appeal to PM: Narmada Bachao Andolan
Statement for wider endorsement, sent by Narmada Bachao Andolan
Ousted for Narmada’s Omkareshwar Dam, Farmers on Jalsatyagraha in Madhya Pradesh (NDTV)
The jalsatyagrah at Omkareshwar M.P. going on to its 26th day now, with around 24 people in water for 24 hours, under deteriorating health conditions, protesting the proposed raise in the height of the dam and the complete disregard of promised R&R policy by the authorities.
The situation at the Omkareshwar-dam site is very serious as the voices, land and and livelihood of the people are being drowned.
We urge you to pledge your support in a petition to Prime Minister Narendra Modi, as the project is a joint venture with 51% central government stake and 49% state control. Despite repeated attempts, we have not received any response from CM Shivraj Singh Chouhan.
Please send your endorsement to this email address nba.khandwa@gmail.com.
TEXT OF STATEMENT
The people of the Narmada valley are in battle once again, this time, for their land rights and against the forcible and illegal submergence being brought in the Omkareshwar dam by the Madhya Pradesh government and the project company NHDC Limited since the 11th of April 2015.
Continue reading Jalsatyagrah at Omkareshwar MP – Appeal to PM: Narmada Bachao Andolan
Occupational Hazard- Militarisation and Disaster Vulnerability in Jammu and Kashmir: J&K Coalition of Civil Society
Guest post by JAMMU AND KASHMIR COALITION OF CIVIL SOCIETY
Jammu and Kashmir Coalition of Civil Society recently released a report called ‘Occupational Hazard: The Jammu Kashmir Floods of September 2014. The full report is available at jkcss.net. The following is a short executive summary.
The Jammu and Kashmir floods of September 2014, occurred in the most densely militarized occupied territory in the world, located in one of its most ecologically fragile– the Western Himalayan region—called the ‘third pole’ for its enormous glacial reserves of fresh water. Warfare, armed conflict and prolonged occupations are widely considered among the most environmentally destructive activities known to mankind. Yet the role of the massive military deployment, and the militarised governance structures of Jammu and Kashmir has not received much attention in this analysis. The military occupation of J and K has included the expropriation, and weaponization of huge areas of land, the building of large scale permanent military installations, and the creation of militarised infrastructure in the ecologically fragile Himalayas, which have contributed directly to the region’s disaster vulnerability. The occupation of civic amenities, public buildings and community spaces has also had a direct impact on emergency preparedness, evacuation and humanitarian response. Using official documents, news reportage, case studies, and oral narratives, the report explores the causes and impacts of the flooding, and local community responses, in terms of survival, rescues and relief. It also presents an analysis of the dominant media framing of the disaster, and the local resistance to media narratives of the militarised humanitarianism of the Indian occupying forces. This report thus raises questions of accountability, governance, media representation, political participation and democracy in the backdrop of a militarised occupation, at the disputed borders of a security state. Continue reading Occupational Hazard- Militarisation and Disaster Vulnerability in Jammu and Kashmir: J&K Coalition of Civil Society
Updating of “National Register of Citizens” and Recent Political Developments in Assam: Abdul Kalam Azad
Guest post by ABDUL KALAM AZAD
On 21st July, 2010 one of my close family relatives, Mydul Mullah (25) was one among the thousands of marginalized Muslims of Barpeta district who were demonstrating in front of Deputy Commissioner’s office at district headquarter demanding an error-free fresh NRC (National Register of Citizens). Eventually, police brutally cracked down on the picketers and fired upon them for the ‘crime’ of exercising their democratic right to peacefully protest. After the police firing Mydul Mullah along with his three comrades Khandakar Matleb (20), Siraj Ali (27) and Majam Ali (55) succumbed to the bullet injuries. The Tarun Gogoi led Assam government was forced to suspend the faulty NRC pilot project due to unprecedented public outrage.
The question of ‘illegal migration’ from Bangladesh has been one of the most significant and emotive topics in the political milieu of Assam for almost half a century now. .
The six-year long movement (1979-1985) against illegal immigration, popularly known as the Assam Movement, spear headed by All Assam Students Union claimed itself to be a secular and nonviolent new social movement of ‘indigenous’ people to drive out the illegal immigrants. But analyses of scholars and social scientists like Prof. Hiren Gohain, Prof. Monirul Hussain, Dr. Debabrata Sarma, Diganta Sarma etc. reveal that as soon as the Assam movement accommodated right wing RSS workers into its leadership, the whole movement turned against Muslims of Bengali origin in Assam. Heinous massacres like that of Nellie, Chaolkhuwa, Nagabandha etc. were orchestrated against Muslims of Bengali origin and in broad day light thousands of people were killed. After six years of deadlock, the movement culminated in the signing of the ‘Assam Accord’ with the Government of India in 1985. The accord says that the immigrants, who came to Assam after 25th of March, 1971 will be detected and deported from Assam. One of the mandates of the accord was to update the 1951 National Register of Citizen to facilitate identification of illegal immigrants from Bangladesh in Assam. Continue reading Updating of “National Register of Citizens” and Recent Political Developments in Assam: Abdul Kalam Azad
CPDR Statement on Maharashtra Cow Slaughter Ban
Committee for the Protection of Democratic Rights, Mumbai
THE MAHARASHTRA ANIMAL PRESERVATION (AMENDMENT) ACT, 1995
18 March 2015
As if the 1976 Maharashtra Animal Preservation Act banning the slaughter of cows, including the male and female calf of the cow, enacted by the Shankarrao Chavan-led Congress government during the Emergency was not enough, the Devendra Fadnavis-led Bharatiya Janata Party-Shiv Sena government is elated that the 1995 Maharashtra Animal Preservation (Amendment) Act, enacted by a previous BJP-Sena led by Manohar Joshi, that extends the ban to include slaughter of bulls and bullocks, has now received presidential assent. Despite the BJP’s claims justifying the ban on agro-economic grounds, among others, the driving force behind the prohibition is the ideology of Hindutva, presented as “a way of life” rooted in the central beliefs of neo-Vedantic Hinduism, of which cow slaughter and beef eating are supposedly anathema.
Continue reading CPDR Statement on Maharashtra Cow Slaughter Ban
The Land Ordinance (now Bill) is Bringing Back the Colonial Legacy: NAPM
Statement from National Alliance of People’s Movements
The Real Battle is between Farmers and Land Grabbing Corporates and BJP, not between Bharat and Pakistan!
Protest Against Land Ordinance, February 2015 Delhi
Image courtesy Joe Athialy
Forcible land acquisition has always been an issue of life and death for millions of people in India, not only farmers but also agricultural laborers and fish workers. With the Land Ordinance it has become a political hot potato. More than 350 people’s organizations gathered at Parliament Street on February 24th, with 25,000 people from Gujarat to Orissa to Assam, and from Himachal Pradesh to Tamil Nadu and Kerala. This show of strength has forced the political parties to take a stand on the issue, leading to heated debates and discussion on the floor of the Parliament. The Ordinance, now Bill, reflects the anti-farmer and anti-poor move of un-democratically amending the 2013 Act on Land Acquisition and Rehabilitation, killing its very spirit and purpose.
The Ordinance brought in by the NDA government just after the Winter session of the Parliament came to an end was an obvious imposition on the country’s common people, of the colonial legacy of a perverted vision of development through an unjust and undemocratic modus operandi. The Ordinance is an attempt to open up the land that is the life support, source of livelihood and shelter for India’s toiling masses, to wealthy investors, including big corporations and builders. Its intention is to forcibly divert India’s agricultural land at the cost of food security, giving a free hand with no ceiling to the private companies as well as private entities i.e. private trusts and expensive profit-making educational and health institutions. The intention is to benefit private interests in the name of public interest.
Continue reading The Land Ordinance (now Bill) is Bringing Back the Colonial Legacy: NAPM
AAP Victory and the Challenges of a New Politics
Let me say it once again, the AAP victory cannot be understood outside the post-ideological moment. I have argued earlier on Kafila (here and here), that one of the key features of AAP was its post-ideological character – one that moved relentlessly beyond many verities of 20th century ideologies and binaries like state versus market, or religious/communal versus secular and so forth. To reiterate, this formation represents the spirit of the moment that is itself post-ideological.
But it is also time perhaps, to underline that post-ideological does not mean post-political. At least, not any longer. There is no doubt that a politics of AAP is gradually and clearly coming into view – but it is a politics whose edifice is being built from the bottom up. It does not derive from any settled ideological blueprint that comes ready-made – a blueprint around which a politics is then sought to be constructed. That was the project of all 20th century ideologies, which had already divided the world into neat camps and made the divisions into permanent battle lines. Ideologies became repositories of Truth – universal and unchanging, taking away from politics the very contingency and fluidity that defines it. Ideology, in other words, was fundamentally anti-political. In parenthesis, it may be relevant to point out that that is why, perhaps, Marx himself celebrated the Paris Commune by underlining that the workers “had no ideals to realize, no blueprints to which the world must conform”; they merely had to set free the new forces that were challenging the old order. Socialism in the 19th century was not yet an ideology in that sense. Continue reading AAP Victory and the Challenges of a New Politics
Climate Change – Keep the Climate, Change the Economy: Sagar Dhara
Guest post by SAGAR DHARA
Contrasting outcomes of recent global warming meetings
Two recent meetings on global warming, one scientific and the other political, are of great public interest as they have a bearing on human society’s future course to become a sustainable global community. The meetings stand in sharp contrast with each other in terms of the clarity of their outcomes.
The first meeting was held by the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC), a body of over 2,000 scientists. IPCC released its fifth assessment’s synthesis report in Copenhagen end-October 2014. The report states unequivocally that “Human influence on the climate system is clear.” Further, it warns that the emission of another 1,000 Giga tonnes1 (Gt) of carbon dioxide (CO2), referred to as the carbon space, is likely to raise average global surface temperatures by 2oC above pre-industrial times. This is considered dangerous to the environment and human society.
Since the industrial revolution began in the mid-18th Century, humans have used 35% of the known 1,700 Gt of conventional fossil fuel reserves, and cut a third of the then existing 60 million km2 of forests to emit 2,000 Gt CO2. The consequent 0.85oC average global temperature rise over pre-industrial times has triggered significant changes in the physical, biological and human environments. For example, rainfall variation has increased, extreme weather events are more frequent, pole-ward migration of species is noticeable and their extinction rate is higher, human health, food and water security are at greater risk, crop yield variations are higher, a 19 cm mean sea rise and a 40% reduction in Arctic’s summer ice extent have occurred over the last century, glaciers have shrunk by 275 Gt per annum in the last two decades, and social conflicts have increased. Continue reading Climate Change – Keep the Climate, Change the Economy: Sagar Dhara
The Success of Nilppu Samaram: The Victory of Democracy
This is a guest post by ASWATHY SENAN
The Nilppu Samaram (Standing Strike) by the Adivasis demanding their land rights started on 9-7-12 under the leadership of Adivasi Gothra Maha Sabha (AGMS). The protesters stood for 162 days in front of the Secretariat, Thiruvananthapuram. This protest saw the support and intervention of people from all age group from various caste and religious communities (not under the banner of any particular political party or religious organisation) most of whom came to the protest space and stood with them to mark their solidarity. The government had to budge at the end under the pressure of the non-violent democratic protest of the adivasis backed by the civil society and on the 163rd day the ended their standing after the Government of Kerala agreed to all their demands on paper.
Continue reading The Success of Nilppu Samaram: The Victory of Democracy
The deadly land policies planned by Modi’s advisers and the links to Ukraine and Honduras: Aditya Velivelli
This is a guest post by ADITYA VELIVELLI
One year after the Land Acquisition Act was passed in Parliament with bipartisan support, commerce minister Nirmala Sitharaman stated that changes will be made to the Act during the upcoming Winter Session of Parliament.
The earliest indication that this would happen, came from of all people, a first-time MP and microfinance lobbyist Jayant Sinha. Sinha had mentioned in a CNBC interview right after BJP’s win that land acquisition policy was the first priority. For those wondering why CNBC interviewed Sinha and allowed Sinha to lay out the new Government’s priorities, and why Sinha has been appointed junior finance minister, they should refer – Who is guiding Modi’s economic thinking and what is their background? Continue reading The deadly land policies planned by Modi’s advisers and the links to Ukraine and Honduras: Aditya Velivelli
B Hridayakumari in My Garden: A Loving Memory
I cannot write the standard obituary. The obituary is expected to hold back grief in sedate, decorous ways, remember the departed person’s best qualities with quiet dignity, and forgive her less admirable aspects gracefully. When I try to write an obituary, I usually trip over my own grief and the terrible ache that the memories of the deceased one’s physical presence produce — the turn of the head, the peculiar contortion of lips forming a smile, the wave of a hand.(I cannot write obits for people I don’t feel for). To get away from that, I quickly turn to the personality, and here I find myself mired, completely unable to separate neatly those qualities that drew my admiration and those which I hated and hurt me. Far from sounding dignified, the obituary ends up structured quite like intensely physical mourning, only that it will be composed in words.
Continue reading B Hridayakumari in My Garden: A Loving Memory
The Majestic Parvati Valley – Paradise Lost: Ujithra Ponniah
Guest Post by UJITHRA PONNIAH
In what is known as the heart of Shiva, the majestic Parvati Valley in Himachal Pradesh, a trekker writes about a chance encounter with a Russian man and the impending destruction of the valley.
My growing alienation with Delhi and city life in general has been buttressed by my frequent, life breathing trips to the mountains. One such getaway took me on a week long trek to the beautiful Parvati valley in the Kullu district of Himachal Pradesh along with a friend. The valley is home to majestic waterfalls tucked away at every turn, lush green forests with the promise of thriving wildlife, unique flowers and a well marked trekking trail. The waterfalls are generous and since we went in the rainy season every shade of green was visible in the forest. The forests are generously sprinkled with their share of marijuana plants that provides a living to many locals and keeps the travellers, especially a large number of Israelis in states of bliss.
Russian Baba with Prem
The trek to Kheerganga begins from Barshani village, which is the last motorable point. It is a 14km uphill trek through the forest. The forest is alive and buzzing with life and the Parvati River accompanies you through your walk. Having recuperated from our long trek to Kheerganga and enjoyed the dip in the hot spring and rejuvenating sight of the first layer of snow on the surrounding mountains, we trekked further with the hope of reaching Tunda Bhuj, a place adorned with a wide variety of sub-alpine forests. About half way into our journey it began to get dark and started pouring. The mist was setting in impeding our vision and we were happy to see a couple of tents in the middle of the forest, next to a small brook. When we stopped by we were warmly greeted to join in for a cup of hot tea. This is where we met a foreigner, in his late 60s and his two companions – Prem and Mansingh (both from Nepal). The initial round of niceties revealed that the foreigner was from Russia and I realised this is the ‘Russian baba’, we had heard about in Kheerganga. He had dreadlocks in his hair, a pair of torn shoes, a torn t-shirt and a bundle of beedi that he constantly drew on. He could not hear too well and retained a thick Russian accent. Continue reading The Majestic Parvati Valley – Paradise Lost: Ujithra Ponniah
KAFILA - COLLECTIVE EXPLORATIONS SINCE 2006 