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 endless Latha

..with Latha on the sidelines of the historic Kotagiri meeting.
(Pic: Vinay Aditya)

For most of those 42 hours on the train, I had kept thinking about 'Madhu' whom I had never met. In my thoughts I had imagined her to be a young 'mallu' with curly hair washed in coconut oil. No sooner I had alighted at Thrissur on my first ever visit to Kerala in 2002, I had looked around for the elusive young lady on the platform. Not spotting 'her' among those who had come to receive me, I could not hold myself from asking my hosts Latha and Unnikrishnan about 'madhu', whose name had featured as the third host in the invite. What followed was a riot of laughter, as they had instead pointed towards their colleague Mr Madhu-sudan*. 

Laughter, it is said, is the shortest distance between two people, and we had shortened it further in our first meeting itself. Latha and Unni lived their life to the fullest, enjoying every moment of their activists' identity. I was lucky to have had their presence at several 'water' events within the country, and abroad. 'Laughter' was the signature tune of our friendship. Without their untiring contributions, we (me, Pandu and Kalanand) could not have revived the historic Save Western Ghats Movement (of the mid-80s). What followed (the Gadgil Committee) thereafter is history. Need it be said that Latha had played a stellar role in all the public hearings that the Committee conducted through the region. She stood true to her name - Latha Anantha - the endless Latha!

I'm indeed privileged to have drawn the attention of the Ashoka Fellowship towards her untiring efforts to save the Chalakudy river from yet another dam at Athirapally. I had pushed hard for the fellowship to be bestowed on the couple, Unni being the silent Buddha behind all that Latha could accomplish, and proving on the contrary that 'behind every successful woman there is a man'. Latha used to read zodiac signs, and I would often find her checking up with Unni about her interpretations. They don't make couple like this anymore!
   
In all my visits to Kerala, Latha and Unni had given me an unconditional company. After her winning the first bout against cancer, we did meet in Calicut in early 2015 during first of the inter-faith dialogues we had planned across the region. But her situation had deteriorated thereafter, and the news of her inevitable departure had seemed a matter of time. When I had got a message from Unni at around 10 PM on the night of Nov 15, 2017, I had prayed that she dies only on Nov 16. The reason I had wanted her to depart on Nov 16 was that that is the day I was born. So, as long as I'm alive I'll remember her. That's how she helped define our sweet and sour friendship of over 15 years.  

(My sincere apologies to Madhu and Sreeja, who are now a happily married couple.)      

Invocation to self-flagellation

1988: The march that was

It has been three decades since the famous Save Western Ghats March, a momentous event in the ecological (activist) history of India. It had reminded people then about the virtues of protecting nature to keep the 'gateway to the monsoons' thriving with natural processes. Much has happened since 1988, when the marchers had congregated in Goa after traversing from the southern and northern tip of nearly 1,600 kms of the amazing biological corridor. While the news of comprising ecology for the sake of development continues unabated, the voices of conservationists has been somehow lost in the din of the fast-paced development. That a large majority favours development is no reason for the small minority to remain silent, because history tells us that a 'majority' has always been protected by a 'minority'. 

'For some reasons, it has come to my realization that pleasure and pain, and in somewhat similar tone paradise and hell co-exist. Paradoxically, neither is complete without the other. Not without reason, therefore, has man understood that suffering, if confronted without fear, is his passport to freedom. There is a volume of literature which indicates that pain indeed complements pleasure, prompting people through the ages to inflict pain as a way of attaining freedom, a celebration of life. A Treatise in Self-flagellation, published in 1718, shows how to achieve pleasure through pain, but without harming the body. In ancient Greece, the finest Spartan warriors were whipped once a year, from morning till night, in homage to the goddess Artemia, while the crowd urged them on, calling on them to withstand the pain with dignity, for it was preparing them for the world of war. At the end of the day, the priests would examine the wounds on the warriors' backs and use them to predict the city's future.'  

The contours of the resilient ecosystem of the Western Ghats, and the emerging challenges posed by persistent obsession with development calls for the young spartans of the Sahyadri to prepare themselves for protecting the unsuspecting people, flora and fauna of the region, yet again.  

(the text in italics is from the Preface to the book Sahyadri: Reminiscences and Reflections, 2009, Prakruti. Limited copies of the colorful book are available from appiko@gmail.com).  

We were in the race, not to miss the race

We were in no mood to let go that opportunity. And so were a couple of others, including Pandurang Hegde and a young South African photographer Luke Metelerkamp. Much to the displeasure of our other colleagues* who were waiting for us at Moodbidri (a town near Mangalore) to discuss next set of actions to scale our efforts for protecting the Western Ghats, we had set out on our journey to witness the race of a lifetime instead. Can 'environment' of a place be protected without preserving 'culture' of its people? 

Not to undermine our own efforts, I must confess that there were several times more people at the racing event than what we could bring together for our meeting. It is the collective exuberance that is natural to such congregations, something which cannot be artificially created. There is a cultural chord that binds people together. But there were many among us who were vociferous in their opposition to racing animals as it violated animal rights. They were vindicated three years later when, in 2014, the buffalo racing was banned in the state. 

I was happy to have witnessed one such race, not knowing it would be banned one day. It neither involved horses nor cars but a pair of buffaloes racing on a slushy track with a determined athlete in toe. Much like the sturdy pair of bovine, the six-pack athlete was no less determined to win the race either. It was indeed a festive occasion with hundreds of villagers cheering the racing duo, it has been a long-held tradition of celebrating the man-animal co-existence for a bountiful harvest in coastal Karnataka.   

Barapan Kebo: Sanawa tribe holds buffalo race in Indonesia

This was my first brush with this cultural extravaganza, called Kambala, in village Venur in the coastal region of Mangalore. It was a pleasant wintry evening in January 2011, the well-lit arena was decked up in celebration with people in all hues thronging the racing track. What had begun as a thanksgiving event for protecting the cattle against diseases, the annual racing event has grown into a competitive sport that enthralls and entertains.    

It wasn't a long track, 150 meters only or even less. Keeping pace with raging buffaloes on the slush track was indeed testing. Racing at an incredible speed, it was a perfect test for human endurance against incredible bovine power. For the fear of running over, half a dozen villagers had to herd together to take control of the animals at the finish line. They would calm the animals by giving it a hug, make it eat and rest before the next race. Each of the racing pairs looked well groomed and healthy, as did the accompanying athletes.

Were the animals tortured during training? Were these creatures intoxicated to run the way they did? The organizers had led us to the animal resting places to find for ourselves if that was the case. 'These are no ordinary cattle, they bring laurels to the village', quipped one athlete. These are treated like sportsmen, nurtured and trained in the art of racing from early years. No wonder, there were no marks of external injury on any of the participating animals. I later learnt that some owners even train their buffaloes in separate swimming pool for getting them used to conditions before every race.  

That these are special animals, treated like children and selected for their sturdy features including disease resistance, made me think that this annual cultural event was more than just an occasion for fun and frolic. It promoted the process of natural selection in disguise. The best among buffaloes get selected, nurtured and tested. The animals people race are the animals that help breed the next generation of calves, sturdy to withstand adverse conditions. That such a valuable process was conducted by the communities at their own initiative, and for the benefit of the society at large surely called for a celebration! I'm indeed relieved that the ban has been lifted, the intangible gains of such events are too costly to ignore.        

With hardly anything worth celebrating in the countryside these days, the assent for re-conduct of Kambala by the first citizen of the country (as a parting gift before the Hon'ble President of India demitted the high office in July 2017) has given something for the last citizens in coastal Karnataka to cheer about.  

*we meant no disrespect then for the sentiments of our colleagues who had frowned at us for giving the all important meeting a miss, to not miss the race.

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.