The Great Divide

I spent a couple of days at Kabini last weekend, facilitating a workshop for a team. We stayed at a resort that could only be classified as seven star and, at the edge of India's finest national park, it stuck out like a sore thumb with its lap pools, jacuzzi and multi-cuisine breakfast. I have always been uncomfortable in luxury, perhaps because it is my nature to be contrarian, and this was certainly no exception. There was far greater beauty outside the resort than in it and Ravi, a friend, and I spent a few idle moments in capturing this beauty. This hut, for instance, represents the maxim of eco-consciousness, even as its inhabitants are unaware of the label. They were displaced, unceremoniously I might add, from the forest when the Kabini reservoir was created in 1974 in the interests of 'the greater common good', just another family, amongst those in 117 villages who were informed that they were in the way of progress. Thirty five years and two generations later, they seethe with bitterness at the raw deal they received in compensation. A family that has moved from the status of the landed to seeking Government dole and possibly a job for a family member in the resort that I stayed in.

A few hundred yards before the reservoir is a lovely old temple, alongside which is a bilpatre tree, the fruit of which had the peculiar fermented smell that had me asking for more...... This combination, temple and tree, belongs to another era, an era in which religion and conservation worked hand-in-hand, a symphony of synergy.



...and by the tree, we met Puttuswamy, an old man who farms groundnuts with the same passion that he reserves for a commentary on the breathtaking banyan tree in his field, bigger than the biggest I have ever seen. Did some other banyan giants sink in the reservoir in 1974? What did we lose then for the gain?
What we do know is that hundreds of hectares of priceless forest were drowned in the cacophony of development. In many parts of the Kabini, the branches of trees stand out in the water, mute testimony to an outage of reason.
As I spoke to the local people, the image of a paradise lost is unmistakeable. The Kabini reservoir is now a tourist attraction for those who carry a whistle-stop checklist and need to tick this one off. Yet, the locals, the ones who have stayed and borne the brunt of brutal change ask the question: Which thought-deprived, senseless, asinine system designed this blunder that robbed them off a livelihood and future security ?
The tourists in the resort will never understand these questions. They need just the right water pressure in their jacuzzi.......

Hemant - the candle in the wind

I heard today that Hemant was gone. A candle, in the brightest moment of its life, extinguished by an unexplained calamity that modern medicine had no answer to. Hemant was not my best friend; indeed, I knew him only to a marginal extent, for he kept to himself. He was an outdoor support instructor for my training programs at Wonder Valley and I oftened marvelled at his ability to stay silent for hours on end, as participants played games and made predictable asses of themselves in pursuit of mythical team goals. In his quiet way, Hemant was a special guy, gentle to a fault, a contrast to his boisterous colleagues and I reflected this evening on the many days I spent at Wonder Valley, under the stars, making idle banter in his company.

Why? Why did he have to go, when others who are bad and nasty live to a ripe old age, leaving unhappiness in their wake? Hemant deserved to live more than most people I know and his smile - with its inherent simplicity that is the hallmark of the Pahadi - will be with me for a long long time.
What does someone's death do to us? You fret a bit, ponder as you potter around during the day, think of the times together, lament for one now gone and then ? Life goes on. As the World becomes busier by the day, there is little time for idyllic or sorrowful reflection or indeed expression. In the olden days, much time was spent in mourning, an activity so despised that professional mourners were often employed to do the job. Today, there is instead the escape that activity provides us, the sheer force of which compels us to look at the here and now, rather than to reflect.
Is there a larger purpose that we don't know about ?