It speaks volumes for the limited and rather self-indulgent nature of my commitment to this cause that I don’t actually know which the relevant government department is. The work may even come under the “non-forest activity” remit of the Forest Department. Furthermore, I didn’t arrange to stay in Maal for enough time to organise a meeting where I could personally oversee the production of the petition, but simply went around explaining the situation and stressing the need for action.
But I jump the gun. The roof top ride from Kesariyaji to Kojawara was idyllic as ever, this time suffused with legitimate nostalgia rather than the artifact of late afternoon light. Walking into the hospital in Kojawara, I felt a thrill of coming back excitement, although for a second seeing Dr Kishan on his usual chair almost made me cry because he suddenly and inexplicably reminded me of my grandfather Dips. In fact, the whole experience – arrival, joyful greetings, putting my bag down in the familiar room, climbing to the roof for the familiar, heart-stopping view, walking around Kojawara again – was just a little redolent of arriving at my grandparents’ house in Norfolk, the Old Anchorage, an escape from fast-paced urban reality, a retreat into familiar company and charming landscapes. Gita Mehta, in her social commentary Snakes and Ladders, puts her finger on the nail exactly with the pithy observation that India’s “serene rural landscape [is] the sleight of hand by which India [can make] even poverty acceptable”.
I have thought a lot about poverty in the last 24 hours, and my seeming inability to be shocked by it. It isn’t because I just haven’t seen poverty at its worst (although I haven’t), it is that I have managed to conflate people’s happiness, even joviality, with the absence of a problem. But these people wear old tattered clothes, have to toil hard from early morning to late evening, have to trudge long distances for water, longer distances for basic amenities like oil, foodstuffs, education, healthcare. They make do with long power cuts, or no electricity at all. They sometimes eat only one meal a day, and rarely eat more than two. They live lives almost entirely devoid of variety, lacking in comforts and luxury. That they smile, joke, gossip and take an interest in the world around them is probably a testament to the fact that poverty, as I have described it, is actually a fairly natural state for humanity. It is probably because some of us – the lucky ones (in a sense) – have moved away from this state, partly by pushing some of the rest of humanity further back into it, that poverty is seen as the result of unfairness. Thus spake the privileged English volunteer.
On balance, it was a successful weekend. Everybody seemed on fine form in Kojawara when I arrived. It was lovely to see Dr Kishan, partly as I was finally able to tell him how sorry I was to hear of his son’s death. He seemed as delightful and delighted as I remembered him, although he had clearly suffered and was still suffering a great deal. I think he is a great rationalist, and emotionally stable enough to deal with this, at least to the extent of not being overwhelmed by it. I hope so anyway - I shall miss him. Rupchand at first was absolutely the same as ever, slightly bumbling and earnest but up for a laugh, and his radiantly happy son Ramesh, who is going on three, seemed genuinely pleased to see “Jon uncle” again. In the evening, however, he received some bad news - his grandfather had just died, and he would have to to Udaipur early on Sunday. He seemed strangely unmoved, even though the grandfather was only 65 and had been ill for about a month. He described all the rituals that would have to be gone through in animated detail with his customary exaggerated gestures. He told me that there would be a lot of crying.
“Will you cry?” I asked.
“Tomorrow!” he said smiling and miming vigorous tears.
“You won’t cry today?” I asked.
“I am here today. Why should I cry?”
*
Maal was almost no different – a few new houses being built and, I regret to say, a number of trees chopped down. Vikas Samiti is not currently doing any work there, as there is a wait for the government to give them the go-ahead for the technical survey. India’s bureaucratic machinery moves slowly, so it may be some time before anything happens, which is disappointing. I think I managed to fire up enough people to get their act together to write a petition for a road and I hope that this will genuinely be able to “fast-track” (however slow this is in reality) Maal’s request for a proper road.
I told everybody I’d be back one day, and I meant it. If I ever come to Udaipur again – and I truly hope I will – I am determined to set aside the time to visit Maal, mainly because I am utterly intrigued to know what is going to happen to it. Already, the modern world is seeping in – newspapers and radios are not uncommon, whereas twenty years ago, the teacher Bhagwanlal tells me, nobody owned a radio apart from him. Laxmanlal’s eldest son is working in Kuwait alongside three other Maalians. Rakesh, Amratlal’s extremely bright young son, who is now in 9th standard (equivalent to the year before GCSEs) is determined to pursue his education up to university level, and Bhagwanlal’s teenage son Jayantilal wants to get a nokri (job) outside. As I sat with him on a wall eating dried chickpeas, I felt a palpable and almost poetic fascination about the change he and others like him will see. Whatever the truth of the Vandana Shiva/Helena Norberg-Hodge view that economic growth is always a corollary to robbery, wealth from the top is clearly going to trickle down in some way, making the next fifty years a remarkable time for rural India.
Next Post - Wednesday 7th February 2007: Delwara and Udaipur (will be posted Tuesday 7th Februrary 2012)
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