Mahua memoirs 2

---

While I was roaming amid the sandstone temples of Ranipur-Jharial on a blissful Sunday, Left-wing guerrillas were blocking all roads leading to the western border districts of Koraput and Malkangiri. They had called for an economic blockade in their strongholds on Sunday and Monday and a state-wide bandh on Tuesday, India’s 59th Republic Day, protesting the arrest of Subhasree Das, a propaganda leader of the banned Communist Party of India (Marxist-Leninist).

“On Saturday night, the Berhampur-Rayagada route was blocked by felled trees. Bus communication to many places was affected in Ganjam, Gajapati and Rayagada,” Monday's New Indian Express said. The Orissa State Road Transport Corporation halted services beyond Rayagada, cutting off Koraput and Malkangiri. The few private buses in the area too stayed off the road. Even the East Coast Railway cut short Hirakhand Express and Samaleswari Express, the only trains that go to Koraput, at Rayagada.

I had planned to cut through Bolangir, Kalahandi and Koraput districts of Orissa and then board a slow passenger train that traversed the scenic hills and descended to the Andhra plain. Koraput was out of bounds for two days at least and I was in no mood to be waylaid by armed rebels or paramilitary personnel. Four civilians were killed by a landmine planted by the rebels in Koraput on Saturday. I decided to stay in Bhawanipatna for two more days and return home.

The district hq was a bit in contrast with the images of starvation and malnutrition associated with Kalahandi. There are enough rich men. One of them owns a chain of hotels and a fleet of buses. A new hotel, which could consume a labourer’s two-day wage for a single meal, has just been inaugurated. Kalahandi had the most rice mills in Orissa, I had read, when tribesmen were dying of starvation.

“Everybody is selling Kalahandi’s poverty - politicians, non-governmental agencies and even us,” local journalist Santhosh says. Starvation deaths no longer really make it to the headlines, he says. The dominant theme nowadays is the indigenous tribes’ protest against Vedanta Resources’ bauxite mining in Niyamgiri. India’s poorest state is also the richest in terms of its natural resources and its industrial exploitation.

There were very few buses leaving Bhawanipatna, because of the blockade in the west. I got into a bus that had a window seat vacant. It goes to Dharmagarh, on the Chattisgarh border. Everybody was chewing pan. If there were to be an accident now, there would be more betel spit than blood. In five minutes, the façade of town vanished and we were on a long road flanked by dry fields. Mud huts popped up here and there.

After a three-hour windowside view of rural Orissa, I was too tired to explore Dharmagarh and its surroundings. Energised by a good meal with the fork-shaped fish, I followed someone’s advice to a temple. The white cement structure evidently didn’t have any antiquity to claim. “This used to be our playground. Now people from so many places come here,” says Shiva. I strayed with the teenager on a mud road that led to a remote village. White bulls contrasts with chocolate-coloured men plowing the fields. Small patches of land are cultivated. Motor pumps that lift water from a nearby canal don’t come cheap.

The road passes through the colony to the bus route. Shiva is on his way to an impromptu film show in the house of someone who has a television and a CD player. Everyday he goes there and pays a nominal fee to watch a Hindi or Telugu film hired from a local library. “We don’t have a theatre in Dharmagarh and we can’t go to Junagarh or Bhawanipatna to watch a movie. People think theatres near schools affect studies,” he says. Blame it on Shah Rukh Khan or Chiranjeevi, Shiva quit school after seventh class. “Problems at home,” he says as he stops a crowded bus for me.

Tuesday morning had an air of celebration. While batches of school students in uniform pedalled their way to a Republic Day parade, a steady trickle of villagers were walking the opposite direction. Most of them were balancing loads - sacks of grains, baskets of vegetables, wooden frames of coats - on their heads and shoulders. I followed them to a bustling bazaar. This is Bhawanipatna’s tribal market that convenes on Tuesdays and Saturdays. Farmers and labourers from distant tribal hamlets assemble here to sell what they have produced and buy what they could not. Kalahandi is on offer in this colourful market.

My journalist-friend Santosh suggested that I visit Jugsaipatna and surrounding hamlets, if I really wanted to see the face of Kalahandi. In the afternoon, I hired a jeep to Jugsaipatna. Only jeeps go there. The journey seemed smooth till we diverted left from the T H Rampur Road. Go straight and you reach Phurli Jharan, the driver tells me. Everyone I met in Orissa these past days has been telling me to visit the waterfalls at Hari Shankar and Phurli Jharan. I avoided both.

The road to Jugsaipatna is wide enough to be a highway though there are hardly any vehicles on it. But I soon learned why this was a jeep-only destination. We had to take a detour through dusty fields wherever road construction was underway. The road and bridges over the streams owe their origin to the frequent cholera deaths reported from the tribal hamlets on the other end. The road has come of late, but villagers lack the money to hire a vehicle. In case of medical emergencies, people still rely on the ‘guniya’, the oracle-cum-healer of the village.

We cross a forest check post, with no one to check us, and stumble upon a river. The new road ends here. Sesha, the driver, thinks we have come past Jugsaipatna. The hamlets beyond this ford are still in the jungle, with only a mud road and certain government schemes connecting them to civilization. Sesha has never gone beyond the river and he thinks it unwise to venture there at this time of the day. We might get lost. We turn around to locate Jugsaipatna, a tribal colony comprising 13 families.

An Indian tricolour atop a thatched roof marks the Republic Day. In several other parts of the state, this gesture of occasional patriotism would invite the wrath of the Maoists, who are into an all-out war against the republic. In this belt, which was once synonymous with the misery of rural India and apathy of the administration, the Union government is catching up with a few employment and housing schemes. For the villagers, however, every job comes from the ‘malik’, the almighty contractor.

Sarango Dhoro Majhi wraps a blanket around him and comes out of his hut to greet us. The village elder thinks we are here for a government survey or something. New schemes mean more jobs. Thatched huts are slowly giving way to brick houses, thanks to a Union government project. The housing project, rural road-building project and the more recent National Rural Employment Guarantee Scheme are the only lifeline for these tribesmen trapped in a time warp. The hamlets have no electricity connection. Every monsoon, there are a few deaths due to cholera and diarrhea from contaminated water.

Govind Majhi must be around ten years. He carries a heavy log on his shoulder and dumps it near his mud hut. While the other children gather around the visitors, he hacks the log with precise axe strikes. He is the firemaker of his family and his elder brother, the breadwinner. His brother, like the other youngsters in the hamlet, is busy building skyscrapers in distant cities. Families get money from the sons every month and wait for at least a year to see them. As a construction labourer in the city, they earn thrice of what they may get from government projects. But life is miserable in labour camps. Oriya and Bengali labourers in Kochi collect chicken feet and other waste from the butcher’s shop to make a broth.

The Majhis plaster mud and cow dung over the bamboo structure to make their houses. Govind, his sister and his father share their one-room hut with goats. The animals are herded to a platform on the left side of the room every evening. The family can’t afford to keep their pets - their only asset - out in the fringes of a forest. In the morning, Govind would herd them to the forest. One day he too will leave this goat-scented hut to be a migrant labourer building the new India.

The tribesmen in this region - the Majhis and the Patras - cultivate rice and maize and raise goats and cows. Their crops forever depend on the monsoon. They carry the produce to the Bhawanipatna market twice a week. Labourers collect their weekly pay on Monday to go shop on Tuesday. A mini-truck from the town would come here early morning on Tuesdays and Saturdays to collect sellers and shoppers from the many surrounding hamlets.

Villagers return in a trickle from the market, at least 10 kilometres away. Obviously, the single truck can’t transport half a dozen hamlets. On our way back, we meet Laxman Patra, the elder of another village. The bearded man in white trousers and white shirt too is coming from the market. We ask him for some homemade mahua. He politely refuses: “We don’t keep it in houses. We keep it near the river. Come back in the morning and we will drink together.” The tribesmen collect the flowers from the forest and get Rs 6 a kilo from the state-licensed brewer. Of course, they keep some for domestic use.

By the time we say goodbye to Patra, it was pitch dark. On the way, we bump into three swaying youngsters blocking the road. As one of them reluctantly moves and tries to tell us something, Sesha gets the car around. “There is a local daru shop near here,” he explains. “Is it good?” I ask. “Didn’t you see?”

Was the flower drink such a knockout? I suspect it was a diluted version that Yuvaraj Rane gave me.

---