One among the muri

Things seemed settled after rather turbulent rains. The clouds had left the sky blue, and multiple hues of green had covered the land. Gangu knew the Chilar must be calling, its crystal clear flows inviting girls to engage with her in some water games. 

Much before she could pronounce, Dhurpi, Thaki, Rakshmi, Janni and Kanti were ready to head for the river with their share of stuff to carry. In their early teens, it was that part of the year this bubbly bunch awaited with excitement for being in Karjat.  

As girls raced ahead dancing and giggling, the familiar setting echoed the past with its melancholic unease for Gangu. Twice their age, she was still ferrying the girls to the riverfront while all her peers had moved out with their grooms. Why?

Is she short of feminine attributes or is the lady luck taking time to smile on her? Her thoughts were speared by a loud call by one among the bunch ordering others to take their positions along the riverfront, to set themselves up for a day of fun and frolic. 

Gangu inspected shallow waters for depth and clarity, to lay trap for catching muri. For her and rest of her clan, what was a freshwater loach to others was an enticing delicacy. She often wondered how her Katkari tribe would survive if there were no muri!

Kanti had led the group to scout for slimy snails and small crabs to set the bait for unsuspecting muri. Placing the crushed bait beneath few stones placed on a black pan, the entrapment was carefully lowered in shallow waters for muri to forage upon.     

The crystal clear waters flowing at a leisurely pace allowed muri the so-called free lunch as the girls went about washing muddy clothes and dirty utensils. With few muri busy taking the bait, the pan would be slowly lifted out of water for the first of many such harvests.  

With sumptuous pickings from different locations, Gangu was ready to feed the girls with delicious muri cooked over a makeshift stove. By the time the girls had danced around and the clothes had dried, the catch was enough to take back for the household. 

Little did it occur to any in the bubbly bunch that they were learning a rather unique practice of catching small fish that would often evade fish nets? That they could learn the trick while at play has been an unwritten virtue of such informal schooling. 

While treading home after a busy day, Gangu thought for herself if she too was not one among the unsuspecting muri who awaited someone to cast a bait for her. Was she ready to give herself up for someone’s consumption, she wasn’t sure yet.

- Sudhirendar Sharma

(Rajeev Khedkar, who has spent a lifetime working for securing land rights for Katkari in Raigad, has helped provide the basic framework for this short story).

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The short story is based on the daily life of Katkari girls, the once forest people living in the Western Ghats of Maharashtra (Raigad and Thane), with a special relationship to forest creatures such as the tiger and carried  the sir name of ‘waghmare’, (wagh = tiger, mare = slayer; so tiger slayer). Today this tribe is highly dependent on others for their livelihoods and for a place to live. Most Katkari are landless with only periodic and tenuous connections to their original nomadic, forest-based livelihoods. Many have become bonded laborers working on the brick kilns/charcoal units serving the urban and industrial interests of Greater Mumbai. Their special skills in freshwater fishing, hunting of small mammals/birds remain exclusive.

Malin: A haunting manmade tragedy

The Malin Memorial: author (in hat) with Pandurang Hegde

The village of Ahupe, overlooking the twin mountains of Machindergad and Gorakhgad in the Western Ghats, is tucked picturesquely at an altitude of almost 4,000 ft in the Ambegaon taluk of Pune. This little plateau is a favourite of weekend trekkers who climb upwards from Khopivali in the Konkan to enjoy the lush green valleys and amazing waterfalls. Despite its craggy hills and picturesque dales, it remains one of the most deprived areas, inhabited predominantly by the Mahdeo Koli tribe.

The undulating landscape on basalt rocks is largely grassy, though the cattle population in the region remains sparse. This is because the grass cover is not fodder for cattle, but has a role in binding the top soil layer on the rocky surfaces. The region is home to several devrais, sacred groves protected by rural communities to preserve their biodiversity.

Not many trekkers and tourists ever notice that about 10 km from Ahupe is the uninhabited village of Malin, where no humans live today, because on July 30, 2014, a massive landslide had swallowed up almost the entire tribal village of around 50 families. The final death toll was 153 when the rescue operation was stopped, and around 100 people were reported missing. Nothing of the old village remains except for its school building. A memorial with the names of men, women and children who died has been erected by the State Forest Department. In addition, trees bearing the names of the deceased have been planted to make the lifeless slope look green again.

The Malin tragedy has been long forgotten, but it did trigger a familiar environment versus development debate then, leading to inconclusive studies on the cause-effect of landslides. Interestingly, a few months before the tragic event, in December 2013, the infamous Western Ghats Ecology Experts Panel of the Union Environment Ministry had declared 37 villages in the Ambegaon taluk as ecologically sensitive, banning all kinds of mining, quarrying, and big construction activities. Ironically, the taluk continues to remain a hotspot for real estate developers who entice city-dwellers to park their disposable income in farm houses and boutique residencies.

There were incessant rains the week before the tragedy, as much as 600 mm, which had triggered mudslide of a deeply weathered soils the slope of which are known to be susceptible to disturbance. It is recorded that disturbances were caused by the flattening of large tracts of hills to promote paddy cultivation as a source of livelihood for the tribal under the government scheme called Padkai. In reality, padkai is a traditional practice wherein tribes carefully select small patches of barren uplands to be converted into fields using bullocks. Appropriation of this by the government resulted in heavy earth-moving equipment leveling the land with no regard to its vulnerability.

Given the nature of such ecological devastations, attribution of cause(s) remains a contested subject. The Western Ghats remain as vulnerable as these were on the night of July 30, 2014, and no less than remembering the day as an avoidable human tragedy can have those perished rest in peace.

Utter desolation has settled on the spot which was full of life only a few years ago. Where households once stood with its teeming population, the traveler now beholds a lonely wilderness of concrete memorial of dead people, tall grass and abandoned building, the fittest emblem of the manmade folly. Has the tragic fate of Malin stirred the popular imagination in this country or have we forgotten the past to commit ourselves to repeat it? With landslides being a recurring phenomenon ever since, have we not circumscribed our ecological vision like a frog in the well?

First published in the Hindu BusinessLine, issue dated July 30, 2020 

The King of All Times

P Gowri Shankar is as watchful of the King, as the King itself.
One of the most dreadful of all snakes, King Cobra is an innocent creature. Although it has enough venom to kill as many as twenty persons with one bite, it rarely unloads the entire amount in its prey. No wonder, human casualties from King Cobra bite are rare!   

The bee masters are back

Much before the Colony Collapse Disorder (CCD), a term coined by commercial beekeepers in 2006, had wiped out some 40 per cent of the honeybee colonies in the US, the invasion by the Thai Sac Brood (TSB) virus in 1978 had led to a huge loss in the bee population in many parts of India. It affected the fledgling small-scale beekeeping sector in the Western Ghats region in Karnataka, which had until 1985 produced the highest quantity — an estimated 7.5 lakh kg — of honey in the country.

The TSB invasion had eroded beekeepers’ confidence to such an extent that many turned away from the vocation for good. The once-conducive environment and the expansive availability of flora in the Western Ghats had prompted the setting up of one of the country’s earliest beekeepers’ cooperative society at Honavar taluk of Uttar Kannada district in 1941.

But after the TSB attack, Venkatappa Naik of Honavar was left with just two beehives out of the 40 he had earlier. The biggest honey producer in Asia at one time, Suresh Chengappa in Coorg could never recover after losing his 800 beehives. It has been reported that as much as 95 per cent of the beehive population was affected across the country. The worst impact was on the locally suited Asiatic honeybee called Apis cerena indica.

“While Europe had resorted to creating ‘flowering recovery zones’ to restore the bee population, we brought beekeeping back into the popular imagination through exposure and training,” says Pandurang Hegde, who has spearheaded the Save Honey Bee Campaign in the Western Ghats since the late 1990s. Each year, during the honey harvesting period from April to June, several camps are organised across the region for people to appreciate the value of honeybees in their lives.

The results are impressive. At last count, nearly 500 beekeepers had re-established their bee colonies, and the number is growing. Part of the credit goes to Dharmendra Mashigadde, in Sirsi, who took up the challenge of scouting for the virus-resistant red strain of the Asiatic honeybee, and introduced it into the region. It has paid dividends in reviving the culture of domesticating honeybees in the region, which holds a cultural significance for the farmers here.

The Save Honey Bee Campaign has demonstrated that while the problem may be complex, it is not altogether impenetrable. Einstein’s prophetic words, “If the bee disappears from the surface of the Earth, man would have no more than four years to live” certainly rings true. The campaign’s volunteers have replaced the erstwhile Jenu Master (Bee Master), who used to go from house to house to assist beekeepers in keeping their beehives healthy.

This write-up was first published in the BusinessLine on April 7, 2017.

Where have the children gone?

Balni village is not far from the coastal town of Karwar, south of Goa, known for the heavily fortified naval base called Seabird and its little known beach named Rabindranath Tagore. Drawing inspiration from the beauty and serenity of the beach, Gurudev had initiated his work on his Nobel Prize winning work Geetanjali here. Vinod Gurav takes pride in rich legacy of the place but regrets its consistent decline of values.

Retired as a school teacher over a decade ago, he informs that the enrollment has uniformly declined across all the classes, from 1 to 7, in the Government Higher Primary School at Balni. ‘As against 153 students a decade ago, there are only 10 students in the school today,’ regrets Vinod. Given its close proximity to various towns on the outskirts of Goa, including Karwar, parents prefer sending their children to English-medium private schools.      

Balni is located in Joida taluk in the Western Ghats of Karnataka, the most densely forested area in Uttara Kannada district. Joida is located in the Kali river valley, the most-dammed river in the country.Not only are there six hydro-electric projects along its 184-km length, one dam every thirty kilometers, the controversial Kaiga Nuclear Power Plant is located along its banks too. Despite such developments, the valley is inhabited by traditional forest dwelling communities. 

Further upstream into the valley, at Henkol, is located another Higher Primary School. Mid-day meal is under preparation for its 76 students and 4 teachers. ‘Sustaining enrollment and retaining children is tough’, admits headmaster E Revappa. Revappa is joined by his colleagues in asserting that despite adequate financial resources and facilities at their disposal, enrollment of students in higher primary schools has been on the decline in the region. 

The trend is prevelant all across the district. In many schools, there are classes without a single enrollment. Does declining strength of students in the schools concern the teachers? The biggest worry the teachers harbor relates to the probability of school being closed down with the likelihood of them being transfered to schools at far off places. To ward off such fears, some teachers coax their relatives and friends to enrol their children.    

In contrast to overall improvement in school enrollment across the country, enrollment as well as retention continues to be a serious issue in this district. However, one look at any school gives a distinct reflection of region’s rich culture. Not only are school premises clean and green, the classrooms are neat and engaging too. Though teachers seem competent and committed, they are grappling with the reasons behind declining enrollment of children.
   
While migration of families to urban centres remains the prime reason for poor enrollment of children in schools, small families and declining fertility in the region could be another plausible reason. In the absence of any demographic study, many hypotheses persist to justify the prevailing trend. All said, teachers in government schools remain circumspect about their future and the future of government schools in the region. 

As one leaves the taluk limits, one is reminded of the fact that Joida is the place where legendary writer Manohar Mulgaonkar grew and attained prominence as a literary genious....Link 

(First published in The Hindu, Sept 18, 2013)